So it helps the family out tremendously because you have money to put back into the house
so they help rebuild the household as a totality.
That's something the first time I had ever done anything like that before.
Building a house, using a hammer, or using a glove.
What gets me going to work every morning is the reward of helping a family realize the
stability that comes from owning their own home.
You know, anybody can build a house.
I'm not just building a house, I'm building opportunity.
I'm helping to build the strength, the stability, and the self-reliance that a family needs
to grow and to flourish.
It's not anything physical about the house that makes it home.
You know, it's the peace that we feel when we're here and the love that we have here.
I just remember, you know, moving from place to place to place.
We never stayed anywhere too long.
My mom, she was an alcoholic.
Her struggling to create a home for us, it just kind of left us vulnerable.
She was a single mom, and I think it was hard for her to keep everything together.
By the time I was in the 10th grade, I had been to 10 different schools.
For me, it wasn't a choice, like it was just life.
Like I never got comfortable anywhere because I knew, as soon as I did, we would be going
somewhere else.
I think as a kid, you quickly understood no area is safe.
You know, right after school, you may be on your way home from your school bus and you
hear gunshots.
It really forced you to live a life of really fear and on the edge of uncertainty.
They were very premature.
Social services found out that, you know, I was pregnant and that I had the babies.
They just basically came back and took us.
I wondered about my future, what was going to happen.
I was scared.
All kids who experience, let's call it trauma, will deal with it in their own way.
And most kids, you know, will deal with it destructively.
But Habitat provided a new beginning.
Even to this day, like she's my guardian angel, you know, my foster mom, she ended up adopting
us when I was 16 years old and she took temporary guardianship of my boys so that they wouldn't
take them away from me.
The Habitat program, you know, it's not something that is just given to you or handed to you.
Like you work for it.
And so when you're finally there and you're in your home, you can just be like, I did this,
you know, finally.
The difference between a house and a home to me is ownership.
I think it means ownership over control of your destiny and your future and how you view
opportunity.
Being able to offer them the stability that I didn't have is just the biggest factor and
it kind of like radiates into everything.
They just turned 15 and, you know, I was already a mom.
How do you even compare?
Like they get to be kids and that's something that I never really got to be.
They get to enjoy their childhood.
I love being able to stand at the kitchen and just see them playing in the backyard.
And Habitat for Humanity is just one of the things that God blessed me with to give me
what I needed.
One of the reasons that I feel so strongly about Habitat is that I feel strongly about
home and that you can have a bedroom and that you can have a stable place to grow up.
I strongly believe in the mission of Habitat because I believe that everybody deserves
a stable place to call home.
You know, I get up and I look at my kids and I look at our home and, you know, what we've
become.
I've always wanted to have this stability for them and I feel like I've been able to
accomplish that.
