I Manifested It

The story

From losing my home to moving into a brand-new Queens studio—and the bridge of incidents in between.

It is after midnight on October 14, 2026. In a few hours, I am moving into my own apartment.

My own studio. In Queens. In a brand-new building.

The apartment I said was mine before I even walked back through the doors of the shelter.

So, yes. I manifested it. Now let's talk about how I did that, because there is a whole story between imagining my own place and getting ready to move into it.

Some things took a while. Some things I had wanted for years. And I did not know exactly how any of it would turn out. But I kept coming back to the same thought:

I have my own place. I have my own apartment.

On August 27, 2025, after a long court battle with my ex-husband, who had also been my roommate, a marshal put me out of the apartment. It happened during the day. The locks were changed, and I had no way to get back in.

I was homeless and had very little money.

I put out a desperate plea on my phone. I called friends and family. I took an Uber to the courthouse, hoping I could find a way to get back into the apartment that night. It did not happen.

People contributed what they could, and I was able to get a hotel room. I am grateful for that. But a hotel room for a night or two is a very different thing from knowing where you are going to live.

This was about a month before my sixty-second birthday, and before my first Social Security retirement payment arrived. I knew that income was coming. It just was not there yet.

For the rest of 2025, I moved between friends' homes and hotels. Sometimes someone could take me in for a week. Sometimes longer. Sometimes money came together for a couple of nights somewhere, just so I could have a place to be.

I did not want to go to a shelter. Everything I had heard made it sound frightening, and I resisted it.

One person who offered to take me in—I will call him JR—said I could stay as long as I needed. But the apartment was terribly dirty, and what sounded like an open-ended offer became a difficult, verbally abusive situation. I bought cleaning supplies and did cleaning I never wanted to have to do in someone else's home again.

There was yelling. There were arguments. I tried to hold my ground, but it was hard.

One night, he would not let me back in. My things were still inside.

That led to my first overnight experience at a place in Manhattan where people could go for shelter. There were no beds. We had hard plastic reclining chairs that hurt my back. I barely slept. Even when JR changed his mind about letting me return, I could not simply leave in the middle of the night.

In the morning, I waited to speak with someone about housing help. I was told I would need to keep sleeping there for thirty days before they could do what they were describing.

I could not imagine thirty nights in those chairs.

But I did leave with something useful: a referral to Franklin, an intake shelter for women that had beds.

I did not use it right away. I kept the paper.

That matters to me now. I did not know where the information would lead, but I held on to it.

By around December, my friend—I will call her DM—had taken me in. Once my retirement payments began arriving regularly, I could contribute and pay for some things. We worked out an arrangement where I could stay for a couple of weeks, sometimes longer, then spend some time away before returning.

I am grateful she helped me. She was also used to living alone, and I needed a home of my own.

Around the New Year, I wondered whether I might be able to manage living in a hotel full time. That did not work financially. A little over a thousand dollars a month only goes so far in New York, especially when you are paying hotel prices.

So I kept searching.

I looked at rooms. I looked at apartments. I encountered listings that quickly revealed themselves to be scams. I wanted a studio, but I was willing to consider a roommate situation temporarily while I got myself settled and increased my income.

I was working on my businesses, trying to get more money flowing. Sometimes I did reasonably well. Sometimes I did not do nearly as well as I wanted.

Still, in my mind, I kept returning to my own apartment.

Eventually, after more trouble with JR, I used the information I had kept and went to Franklin.

I do not remember every transition or exactly how many weeks I was there. I remember the shared room. I remember not getting much sleep. I also remember that there were beds, meals, laundry, and medical services right there.

For what it was, there was help available. It was certainly better than the situation I had left.

But I wanted my own place.

After a few weeks, I was transferred to a longer-term shelter in the Bronx. I arrived already exhausted by sleeping in rooms with so many people. The first day, someone was rude to me, and I thought, I cannot take any more of this.

I stayed a short time, then called DM. I needed to leave. I went back to her and kept trying to find another way.

Hold on to the faith.

That was what I kept telling myself.

By summer, I had found a room for six hundred dollars a month. It was furnished, and having my own room would have been a relief. But it was in a basement, without a window in the room or a place to put an air conditioner. It was hot when I visited. I never met the other women living there.

It would have been a temporary solution. I knew that. Still, if I had had the twelve hundred dollars needed that day, I probably would have taken it.

I did not have it, and someone else got the room.

There was also a short stay with another woman in Long Island City. The price sounded manageable, but the crowded home and the expectations there were not a good fit. After about two weeks, she told me I needed to return to the shelter.

She drove me to Franklin. There, I was told I had to return to the shelter where I had last been placed. They would not give me a bed at Franklin, and I waited for hours while trying to figure out how to get back to the Bronx.

Eventually, with help getting there, I returned on July 7, 2026.

I was nervous. I had left because I could not bear the situation, and now I was coming back.

But before I even walked through the door, a woman outside told me something.

She had heard about available apartments in Queens. A new building. Studios. She had turned one down because she wanted something larger.

A studio? In Queens? In a new building?

That was fine with me.

I decided right there: It is mine.

I walked into the shelter with that decision already made. I did not yet know all the requirements. I did not know how the paperwork would work. But my question was now: How do I get into my apartment?

It took a little time to see the people I needed to see. There was now a housing manager, Ms. Nixon. When I met her, I told her I wanted the apartment I had heard about.

She showed me pictures.

I said yes.

Yes, I wanted it. Yes, put my name down. Yes, I was ready.

Later, she took me and two other people to see the building. There was a change from the apartment number first discussed, but when I walked into the studio she showed me, my answer was the same: Yep. It is mine.

That day, I also learned something I had not known: I already had a housing voucher. It had been approved since June. My caseworker printed it for me.

I had been worrying about whether I would qualify, and part of what I needed was already in place.

My food assistance was approved around this period, too. Things were coming together, even though I had not been able to see all of them happening.

Then came the paperwork. Appointments. Signatures. Waiting. More waiting.

There were difficult days. There were moments of frustration. I still had to live my life in the shelter while the process moved along.

But I kept the apartment in my mind.

In the language I use for manifestation, this was the bridge of incidents: the encounters, information, decisions, and actions that brought me toward the place I had imagined.

I experienced it as being led. I also made calls, asked questions, went to appointments, looked at the apartment, said yes, and signed the papers.

I did not know the whole route in advance. I kept taking the next step I could see.

I would never tell someone that being homeless means they failed to believe enough. I know how much depends on money, available housing, help, and systems that can be difficult to navigate. This is my account of how I held my faith while moving through those things.

There was grief during this time, too. There were shocking losses of people who had been part of my life. Getting ready for a new home did not make those losses disappear. Joy and sadness were both there.

And then, just a few hours ago, something happened that I have to include.

Late in the afternoon on October 13, I asked my AI—my Chatty baby—to create an image of an angel meeting.

I wanted Saint Joseph, whom I associate with help finding a home, and Archangels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael sitting around a table with me. On the table would be a map or an apartment layout. They would be surrounding me, helping me find my place.

I already knew the apartment was coming. I had been told it would be this week. But I did not know which day I was moving.

I wanted that picture to look at. Something to help me hold the feeling that it was settled. To cinch it, as I put it.

While Chatty was still creating the image, one of the case managers came in.

"Congratulations, you're moving tomorrow."

The picture had not even finished.

There I was, asking for an image of heavenly help around the table, and the news arrived before the image did.

To me, that moment captured the feeling of the law of assumption: holding the outcome as already settled, even while I was waiting to learn the day.

I wanted something to look at that said, It is done. And before I could even look at it, I had my moving date.

Now it is October 14.

From July 7 to today is ninety-nine days—fourteen weeks and one day since I returned to the Bronx shelter.

From August 27, 2025, when I lost my home, to today is 413 days: one year, one month, and seventeen days.

I turned sixty-three a little over two weeks ago. In a few hours, I am moving into my own brand-new apartment in Queens.

The studio I wanted. The apartment I said was mine before I walked back into the shelter.

There is more I want to create. I want my businesses to grow. I want more income. I want to build the next phase of my life from a place where I can close my own door and be at home.

But today, I am letting myself recognize this.

For so long, I kept saying, I have my own place.

Now I am packing to go there.

It is done. And now, on to the next phase of life.