resilient mother and veteran, Paula, “has her life back”
Paula never dreamed she would get divorced from her husband of sixteen years, she also never imagined the financial strain of divorce and unforeseen circumstances would leave her and her daughter, Alayla, without a home. “My husband and I were both active duty military,” shares Paula, “he deployed five times, four to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, and I think it eventually took its toll on him and he was no longer the same man I married. I always say I lost my husband in Iraq.”
Following the divorce, Paula and Alayla moved out on their own, finding a home in Louisiana where they could make new memories. Unfortunately, they were soon uprooted again when their new home was struck by two hurricanes and they lost what little they had left after the divorce. Looking at the devastation around their home, Paula decided it was time to seek a fresh start somewhere entirely new, Seattle.
At first, they stayed in a motel while Paula looked for work and a permanent place to live, but the money ran out and Paula knew she had to act fast to find a safe place for her and daughter to sleep. A resourceful and resilient veteran, Paula began calling around to shelters and services in the Seattle area looking for a solution. “I just started calling places and saying ‘Hey, I'm sitting outside of a motel on the street with my daughter, she's five, we have nowhere to go,’” recalls Paula, “one person did call me back and she said I'm from Mary's Place and we have a spot for you, and I was elated, and she said not only that, we'll send to Uber to pick you and your daughter up.”
“When families come inside one of our 24/7 family shelters they're able to meet a warm, friendly face to support them on their intake,” shares Mary’s Place CEO, Dominique Alex, “our Youth Services team is also really intentional about creating a trauma-informed environment where kids can come and feel safe and warm and have those nurturing relationships with their friends as well as the staff that works with them every day.”
“One bad thing could happen to a family, like a layoff or a broken down car, that creates this spiral effect where they're all of a sudden in a crisis situation, and as inflation has risen so have housing costs, so it makes it really difficult for families to keep their housing or find a new affordable solution,” shares Ryan Disch-Guzman, former Mary’s Place Outreach Director, “The outreach team goes out to meet families where they are, in the situation that they're in, and say ‘we're here to help and go alongside you and we're not going to stop working with you until you're in a better situation.’ For Paula and Alayla, we knew we needed to bring them into our emergency shelter where they could find safety and healing while Paula worked with our housing specialists to identify a housing solution, and Alyla could connect with other kids and get enrolled in school. For other families, sometimes the solution is as simple as helping them with that last $200 needed for a rental deposit. Whatever the solution, the outreach team shows up to work alongside families until they reach their housing goals.”
“We got to Mary's place and everything just started going forward with the support of the staff,” shares Paula, “I never thought we would end up homeless. What happened to me was the furthest thing from my mind. I had a successful military career, I’m an Iraq veteran, and for a long time, I couldn't even ask for help or say I'm homeless. Children sense when everything's not okay, and they sense when mom is worried. No matter how hard you try to hide it, they know. Now that we’re stably housed, I see a huge difference in my daughter. She's resilient, and she's strong, and she's beautiful, and we got through it together. The staff at Mary’s Place were so caring, I always tell them they gave me my life back. Truly, because of Mary’s Place, I have my life back.”