Empathy in Action
Cheryl Folden's Obituary
In Loving Memory of
Cheryl Folden
August 13th 1966, to January 8th 2004
Cheryl died suddenly on January 8th, 2024. Well, suddenly if you don't consider decades of drug abuse that just finally wore out a strong and loving heart. She was addicted, and homeless. She had been a major drug dealer at one time. She did time in jail and also various rehab centres. She was sexually abused as a young child, neglected and rejected. That beautiful Little girl that was born in 1966 did not choose to be treated the way she was.
Pregnant at 16, she didn't complete high school. She was an extremely intelligent woman with a fiery spirit, great insight and a strong sense for justice. She could have been a great human rights lawyer. She should have been a university graduate. Even in her S0's she talked of wanting more education. She was very athletic and had a love for sports, but was denied that opportunity, too.
She was also compassionate, empathetic, caring, loving, generous, and insightful and a delightful person to be with. Sadly, she couldn't defend herself. She had been raped, and beaten, in a car accident that damaged her back which caused constant pain and endured other tragedies to numerous to mention.
She came to live with me 8 months before her death after being kicked out of the Hamilton for having a messy room. In response, she intentionally overdosed on fentanyl and I got a call from the hospital. I wasn't prepared for her to be homeless again.
She was paranoid, schizophrenic, autistic, dyslexic, narcoleptic, and a variety of other mental descriptors. She was scared. But, over the 8 months with me she improved, her symptoms of mental illness decreased greatly, and she had a strong desire to be healthy. She did, however, spend most of her time in her room, smoking crack. Sometimes it was laced with fentanyl and I'd find her collapsed on her floor. She was also on a methadone program as well as other doctor-prescribed drugs which she took daily.
The pride of her Life was her two children. I witnessed the reunion of her and her oldest son, now 40. She had improved enough and become stable enough while Living with me to reach out to him as he Lived in the area. They hugged each other, they told each other how much they cared and loved each other, and they cried. I cried too.
People Like Cheryl never had a chance. She was toothless, with red-dyed hair. We should never look at what people Like that 'appear' to be, but why they are like that. What was done to them, and what did we not do to protect them? All she ever needed was love,
respect, and good guidance, something she just couldn't find.
Cheryl, she was a friend of mine when the sky looked the other way.
From "On Hearing of Lori" written by Ann Mortifee and Valerie Hennell, and recorded on Ann Mortifee's album "Baptism".
Empathy in Action
This site was created in memory of Cheryl Folden, by the students of Lake City Senior Secondary, to encourage empathy and kindness. A better world is what she wanted.
Cheryl Folden
August 13th 1966, to January 8th 2004
Two brothers hold a photo of their mother, Cheryl Folden, when she was in high school, younger than they both are now.
In the photo, she is beautiful, a warm smile turning the corners of her eyes. No one likely would have predicted this young woman would end up in a homeless shelter, dependent on crack cocaine.
But Cheryl's picture-perfect smile doesn't give away the struggles she was already facing early in her young life.
A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, she said she first experienced homelessness at 17.
She had her first child before graduating high school, and as a new mom, she said the social service workers told her to marry the father if she wanted to be eligible for support.
"What I needed was a counsellor, not a husband," she said.
There were a lot of ups and downs over the next decades, struggling to keep her two sons out of foster care, working to get them back when they were taken away. Then, after her sons had grown up and left home, after rocky relationships and becoming more and more involved in drugs, couch surfing until her options ran out, she was homeless.
Cheryl moved into the Hamilton Hotel emergency shelter in 2022.
By this time she was heavily addicted to drugs and said she had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. She was on methadone treatment but still also used street drugs. When speaking to the Tribune, she talked about hearing voices and she believed cocaine helped her with these problems.
She was evicted from the shelter for having too much stuff in 2023, and said, with nowhere to turn she tried but failed to kill herself with
an overdose. She ended up in the hospital and called Stuart Westie, who had befriended Cheryl after meeting her panhandling outside a grocery store on a cold winter day.
Westie offered her a room in his house and by January of 2024, the two were close friends, bickering and giving each other a hard time, but also praising one another in equal measure. When she first spoke to the Tribune on June 1, 2023, only one week after trying to commit suicide, Cheryl was erratic and scattered. But she was also kind and incredibly grateful and proud of her two sons.
"Anyway, I don't know how I turned out to have so much love, and my children really love me," she said. She called them the best
the best thing she'd ever done and that her main objective raising them was to give them love and support.
She spoke to the Tribune two times in 2023 because she wanted to be a voice for other vulnerable people living on the street. She wanted to share her story to help others who might be hurt by the system. At the time, she was angry she had been thrown out of the shelter and she was frustrated there was so little in the way of mental health supports.
Four months later, still living in Westie's spare room, she had improved significantly. Cheryl had gained weight and was more sociable, and Westie said she was thinking about looking at having her teeth fixed.
But on January 8, 2024, Cheryl died at 57 years old after experiencing abdominal pain for a couple of days. She had a doctor's appointment for the next day.
On April 27, 2024, a room full of people, including her two sons, Jason and Nathan Myhr, and her mother Diana Folden, gathered to remember Cheryl. A street nurse who knew Cheryl from when she lived at the shelter spoke of the special spark Cheryl had. A nephew recalled a story of how Cheryl had once borrowed money from him. When he came back to town for a visit, she heard he was in town and sought him out to make sure to pay him back the $80, which he said he had long forgotten.
Both her sons told the Tribune how they remember their mother as kind and loving.
Nathan had not seen his mom in person since Christmas of 2020.
He said his mom's ability to empathize with other people really opened up the world for him in ways he is only now fully realizing.
"She's had friends, family, but never the true support she needed to get through those traumas," he said. Instead, he said, many times, what should have been her support network was who was hurting her.
He said had he not had the support he found in an adopted father who took in him and his brother, he could have ended up on the street.
Cheryl's oldest son Jason also remembers their mom as both loving and kind and said Cheryl did the best she could for him and his brother.
"She didn't put her burden on other people," he said.
"She taught me love is more powerful than anything you can imagine."
Cheryl's Writings
Cheryl wrote a lot throughout her life, mostly about injustice in one form or another. She wrote on anything that was around: napkins, receipts, paper plates, etc. Every time she moved, She left her writing behind. She lived with me for 7 months and in that time amassed a shopping bag of work. A few of her writings are included here. They are not the work of a great literary talent. They are the work of a troubled, damaged soul who never stopped fighting injustice and wanting to be heard. ~ Stuart
What Others Thought of Cheryl
