From living at a Louisville gym to lifting others, Aryn Williams turns pain into purpose

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When people say they live at the gym, they usually mean they're there every day. But for Aryn Williams, it meant something far more literal.

"I would park in this area," she said, pointing to a space in the parking lot outside a Planet Fitness near the University of Louisville. "... as long as the camera was facing my car."

She meant every word.

"I guess I was smart because I don't think a lot of people think to come here and to shower," Williams said.

For a time, the gym was her home.

"To not have the basic, bare minimum living necessities — it is the most crippling thing that could ever happen to you in your entire life," she said. "I'm just grateful to have made it out of that situation, because there are a lot of people who don't."

This week, Williams will be part of WDRB's Beyond the Bullets roundtable, a raw conversation about Louisville's youth violence crisis — a problem claiming hundreds of young lives.

"I remember posting a flyer for my 16th birthday and being told 'Oh yeah, we're going to shoot your birthday party up,'" she recalled during the discussion.

In the last five years, more than 500 young people under 18 have been killed, shot and survived or pulled the trigger, according to Metro city records and county prosecutors.

"They're tired of being hungry and sleeping on the floor," Williams said. "So they go and try to make that money their self (and) end up robbing people."

The Beyond the Bullets roundtable brings together those impacted by youth violence, involved in it and working to stop it. The panel consists of about a dozen people who lost loved ones to violence and others who encountered the justice system when they were young and are now trying to turn their lives around. It also brings together crime prevention and intervention advocates and spotlights programs with successful track records of mentorship that keeps kids safe and off the streets.

Williams connects the dots between desperation and danger, explaining how instability and poverty can push kids into risky — sometimes criminal — choices.

"He was 42, and I was 16, and I lived with him and did whatever he wanted me to do to survive," she said.

Williams said she had run away from foster care. That's how she ended up in the Planet Fitness parking lot.

"Really, I feel accomplished," Williams said. "Even though there are things that I still am going through — charges that I am still facing — I feel like I'm glad that I've made it this far."

Williams isn't on the panel because of her past. She was there because of her future. Now 20, she's working toward her high school diploma at Goodwill's Excel Center and juggling three jobs, including one with Kentucky Youth Advocates, where she has helped lobby state lawmakers on the needs of foster children and the ills of the system.

"My goal is one day to eventually have my own nonprofit for children who have been through a hardship," she said. "I want to be a voice for kids who don't have a voice, essentially, and I want to put them in a position to have a better chance than I did."

Faith and community programs helped Williams climb out of homelessness.

"I prayed to God," she said. "I was like 'Please just get me where I need to be. I will do the right thing.' I searched online endlessly for programs. The Boys and Girls Haven helped me. The Spot helped me. The Excel Center? Definitely. They helped me. ... Eventually, I was able to dig myself out of that hole."

Now, "living at the gym" means something new — motivation to lift others.

"I have no shame from where I came from or from the past, things that I have done," she said. "Because if it wasn't for those learning experiences, I wouldn't be in the place that I am."

From life's tests to classroom tests, Williams is a living testimony on the will to press on.

"Beyond the Bullets" will air at 7 p.m. Thursday on WDRB.

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