At one point in time, Kayla and her kids had nowhere to go. A mother of two skateboard-loving boys, Kayla was coming out of a difficult divorce and was finishing up six-month drug and alcohol program at a residential center, where she was staying with her children. On top of completing her recovery program and being there for her kids, Kayla needed to find a place for them to live.

Kayla found her lifeboat when she was recommended to the Bringing Families Home (BFH) program. BFH helped Kayla to find permanent housing, get access to education, and become self-supported.

“Bringing Families Home has been a huge help in getting us back on our feet after being in a situation that we had no control over,” Kayla said. “It helped us to become stable … and get our lives on a footing that we could thrive and do something positive.”

Now, Kayla and her boys live in their own apartment in Santa Cruz. She is working part-time at the same facility where she completed her drug and alcohol program. While Kayla enjoys her job, she isn’t done giving back to the program that put her back on her feet — she is currently taking classes with aspirations to become an advanced drug and alcohol counselor, and is set to graduate in August 2019. For anyone else going through hardships of their own, Kayla offered up some words of wisdom:

“If you have willingness and mindset to keep going forward to change, you can do it,” she said. “Hardships are a pathway to peace. The pain of change grew less than the fear of change.”