Mum who felt ‘helpless, vulnerable, invisible’ while homeless ‘regained her spark’ leading guided tours of Aberdeen

A mother-of-three who felt “vulnerable” and “invisible” while spending four months struggling with homelessness has “regained her spark” after finding a rewarding job leading guided tours around her city, reclaiming the streets with her story.

Like many people, Aberdeen-native Michelle Marie Edwards, 47, held the idea that to be homeless meant “sleeping rough, living on the streets”.

However, when a life-altering series of events – including separation from her husband and her daughter’s struggle with mental illness – led to Michelle and her teenage daughter sofa-surfing for four long months in 2024, she found herself dealing with ‘invisible’ homelessness.

“(I felt) extremely helpless, vulnerable, invisible…” Michelle told PA Real Life.

“I mean, this is my hometown. This is where I grew up. These streets are massively familiar to me, and yet I felt like a stranger. I felt like no-one could see me, no-one could hear me.”

Michelle lived in Aberdeen until 2006, when she moved to Yorkshire to go to university for the second time. She met her ex-husband in 2008, going on to have three children together, and in August 2020, the family moved to Swedish Lapland, entering a new chapter of their lives in the far north of Scandinavia.

However, just a few years later, Michelle and her husband separated and she left the family home in the Swedish town of Norsjo in January 2024 and moved into her own flat.

Things took a further turn in August 2024 when her eldest daughter, who was 13 at the time, had a mental health crisis and said nothing in life was bringing her joy. When a psychiatrist asked what might help, the teenager suggested moving home to the UK.

Fearing for her child’s life, Michelle made the difficult decision to fly back to Scotland in September 2024 with her daughter, leaving her other two children – now aged 11 and 12 – with their dad in Sweden. She left her flat and her job, and returned to the UK, initially sleeping in her elderly mother’s living room and on an air bed at her sister’s home for around four months.

However, it took longer than Michelle thought to re-establish her life in Scotland: without a lump sum of cash to put down for a flat deposit and first month’s rent up-front, she couldn’t get a permanent roof over her and her daughter’s heads.

Plus, since she was able to sofa-surf with relatives, her case was deemed a low priority by the council who, she says, “wouldn’t even put us on the list to register as homeless”.

By the end of January 2025, Michelle had started a part-time job in a coffee shop to get some money coming in, but this wasn’t nearly enough for a deposit to secure a rented flat.

Thankfully, however, her sister was able to lend her some money for a rental – and once she had a permanent address, it was easier to encourage life to fall back into place, including moving her other two children back to Scotland, too.

“I’m one of these people, like many of us, who assume that homelessness means you’re sleeping rough, living on the streets, and I was adamant that that wasn’t me, because I wasn’t sleeping on the streets,” Michelle said.

“But of course, the actual definition of being homeless is having no fixed abode, and I had literally given up my flat, given up my job in Sweden and landed at my mum’s place for a few weeks.

“I was fortunate to be able to do that, but also that put us in a predicament that we basically couldn’t get out of: Because we did have a roof over our head, it made it almost impossible to make that move from being homeless to actually getting our own place.”

During this period, Michelle started to spiral through questions about what had led her to this place. Despite having earned two undergraduate degrees, maintained a stable job and stable family life, life’s twists and turns had landed her in a position she once thought unimaginable.

“I did leave this country. I did go and live in a foreign country. I did make those choices… I started feeling like, was I wrong to have left my husband, to have asked for a divorce? Did I cause all of this to happen?” she said.

She also found herself questioning: “What can I do to change this? Can I just get back on a plane and take her back? It’s going to cost less to jump on a plane back to Sweden than it would be to fund a flat here.

“But I had my 13-year-old’s mental health to think about and she’d made it abundantly clear that being in Sweden is just not something she was able to do any more.”

Once she was able to move into a flat, with the financial help from her sister, Michelle could start getting back on track – but, she says, “just being able to make that leap, make that connection, was almost impossible without having a family member that was able to facilitate that”.

When Michelle found Invisible Cities, which supports people with experience of homelessness with training to guide walking tours in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, York and Cardiff, she says she finally felt seen and understood.

Now, Michelle is preparing to lead her first guided tour – which she devised herself – for paying tourists in Aberdeen.

“My tour is titled The Silver City’s Shadows, and it’s looking particularly at the Great Witch Hunt of 1597,” she explains.

“And then, interweaving with that, my own experience of feeling invisible in Aberdeen.”

Michelle’s first tours will have 12 participants, many of which are locals, though she looks forward to welcoming tourists from further afield on future walks.

“The research that I’ve done has taught me so much about the city that I didn’t know,” she said.

“I’m excited to get to share that with other local people.”

While Michelle is still finding her feet after a tumultuous year, she says that working with Invisible Cities, feeling empowered to tell her story in the context of the city she loves, has helped her feel like herself again.

“Invisible Cities has helped me regain my spark,” she said.