You’re Safe Here: Ruth Kruger on Creating Spaces to Breathe

In this episode, John Marshall sits down with peer support specialist and former Episcopal priest, Ruth Kruger, to trace a powerful arc from childhood trauma and poverty to a vocation of radical presence with neighbors navigating homelessness and housing insecurity. Ruth shares about growing up in a “ghetto” neighborhood of San Diego with an abusive, alcoholic father, a terrified younger self who learned to survive by hiding in trees and waves, and the years of housing insecurity and couch-surfing that leave her describing herself today as “homeless adjacent.”Along the way, Ruth reflects on the long, nonlinear work of healing: decades of depression, weekly therapy, leaving an abusive marriage, going back to school in her 40s, and slowly trading a rule-based, punitive faith for a God she now names as “Mother and Papa,” the birther of the cosmos who loves without condition. She and John talk about low-barrier care at Church at the Park, why trauma-informed practice always asks “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?,” and how safety, belonging, and a cup of coffee can become sacred ground where real change begins.Ruth also speaks candidly to staff and caregivers about compassion fatigue, the holiness of “tucking someone in on the couch” when they come back drunk or high, and the need for people in this work to seek their own refuge, rest, and honest support. If you’ve ever wondered what makes Church at the Park’s approach distinct—or how one person’s hard-earned wisdom can humanize homelessness and reveal grace in the margins—this conversation offers a tender, hopeful look at love that holds the outcome loosely and refuses to give up on anyone.