If there's one thing Sami knows all too well, it's that homelessness isn't a lightning strike, it's an erosion. A steady wearing away of security, one small disaster at a time.

It might start with losing your home, then reluctantly accepting friends' couches while you search for somewhere permanent. Then comes the job loss and suddenly your car transforms from transportation into your only shelter.

Or perhaps it begins with mental health struggles that make working impossible. Bills pile up until an eviction notice appears, and there's nowhere left to turn.

Sometimes it's the brave decision to walk away from abuse, trading four walls of fear for the uncertain safety of a shelter bed.

Homelessness isn't a split-second decision. It's a journey rooted in systemic failures that most don't choose to take.

For Sami, this came as "a series of poor choices and bad decisions" after years of stability working as a law clerk.

Caught in the cycle.

When Sami ended a toxic marriage with a narcissist, she was left emotionally "broken" and struggled to rebuild.

"In the space of six months, my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, my marriage ended and I had an accident and wrote-off my car," she told Mamamia.

"I never really sort of got back on my feet."

The downward spiral continued as Sami turned to marijuana and Valium to manage her growing agoraphobia and deteriorating mental health.

When she lost her accommodation, she and her new partner ended up living in her car before briefly staying in a homeless shelter.

"It's a vicious cycle," she said.

"By the time you get to that point and you're homeless and you're … trying to figure out what to do and how to better yourself, you just can't.

"I knew very well what supports were out there. I didn't have the capacity to advocate for myself to do anything."

Sami in 2017 after receiving her first haricut since becoming homeless. Image: Supplied.

After six months of sleeping rough, severe food poisoning landed Sami in hospital. Social services placed her in a boarding house with six others.

"Everybody's on drugs because that's what you do," she said. "To get help to get off the drugs, they put you through detox, but then they put you straight back where you were."

A move to Queensland marked the last time she touched heroin, though marijuana remained. When her social housing burned down, she again found herself living in a car and started using ice.

"Ice just stripped everything," she said. "I just gave up."

Her existence narrowed to living for Centrelink pay day.

"You go and you score and you get high so you don't feel and you just exist more than anything," she said. "Every day just runs into each other. The services are so under-resourced and there are so many people accessing, and being a middle-aged female, I'm low on the totem pole."

The turning point.

Eventually, Sami hit rock bottom. In a women's shelter, someone asked a life-changing question: "Why don't you go to rehab?"

It was something Sami hadn't genuinely considered for herself.

"Oh, no. I can give up on my own. I don't want to take it from someone who needs it," she replied.

"This person said, 'Well, why don't you need it?'"

Those words changed everything.

Sami after being at rehab for a month in 2017 next to visiting the sanctuary again, seven years clean. Image: Supplied.

That's how she ended up in Townsville. She found the support she desperately needed and has just celebrated eight years clean.

"Connection is the opposite of addiction," Sami said. "Just being part of that community, and they've been very supportive, I've sort of rebuilt my life," she said.

"I look around my house now and it's cluttered with crap, and I'm thankful for dirty dishes because it means I've got a kitchen to dirty dishes in."

Through recovery, Sami discovered The Good Box, a not-for-profit that offers boxes filled with essential items to help those experiencing homelessness.

Thoughtful presents, she explained, make all the difference when you're sleeping rough.

"I remember being given two-minute noodles when I was homeless, thinking, 'What am I meant to do with these? I don't have a pot to boil them in'," she said.

Sami's Good Box donation touched her forever: a blanket with a note and a handmade felt heart.

"'Hold on to this heart. We're thinking of you. Love, Tony and Ebony,'" the message read.

"I have still got that note and I still hold on to the heart and it gives me strength because when I was at my darkest and not seen and not heard, there was somebody who made this gorgeous crochet blanket and was thinking about some not necessarily me, but someone in my situation. That little bit of kindness really went a long way."

Sami dropping off The Good Boxes to Orange Sky. Image: Supplied.

Breaking the stigma.

Today, Sami volunteers at a wildlife sanctuary and serves as an ambassador for The Good Box. But while she's no longer homeless, the fear remains.

"Every time my lease is renewed, I'm scared that it's going to go up and I can't afford it. I'm terrified of being homeless again," she admitted.

Her message is clear: homelessness doesn't discriminate.

"It's not a choice. It's not a matter of, 'Get a job'," Sami said. "There's a reason people are homeless and there's a reason they're on the streets and you need to address those underlying reasons and the underlying causes of it."

She shut down a common misconception about homelessness with a powerful comparison.

"What do you do when you have a bad day? Go home and have a drink. It's reasonable, isn't it," Sami asked.

"Well, imagine you're having a bad day every day. Try and understand why people on the streets are drinking and drugging.

"These are people at their worst… Be kind. Acknowledge them.… A little humanity goes a long way."

Feature image: Supplied.