Phoenix (STN) – The worst part of being homeless was waking up in the middle of the night to police cars shining their lights into the car where Ra’Necia slept. She was three months pregnant, in a high-risk pregnancy, and had gone months without money.
“You’re in constant survival mode,” she said. “Nothing is safe. No one is safe.”
Then came being told, “You have to relocate. At three o’clock in the morning. With nowhere to go and no idea what parking lot you’re going to sleep in next.”
In an STN-produced video for the annual gala of UMOM New Day Centers, Ra’Necia tells how she found help and hope there.
“When I got to UMOM, the first thing that I felt was relief,” she said. “Once we got here, it was like, ‘Yes, I have a place for my kid.’ It was a moment where it’s like—you see hope for the first time in a situation where you have no idea what’s going to come next.”
Kala Maupins, a UMOM case manager, remembers meeting Ra’Necia. “Once I actually met her, got to hear her story, played with her daughter, I was like, ‘I got this. I have to be that support for her,’” Maupins said. “Good or bad, I’m here, and I have her back.”
Ra’Necia described what that support felt like. “To have that level of support and to have that level of trust, it’s like having your own cheer section while you’re going through the worst time of your life,” she said.
Today, she is “learning how to get myself out of survival mode, learning what it means to get a good night’s sleep again.” She now has a stable job at Wells Fargo and has formed an LLC and obtained an employer identification number. “So I’m officially an owner of my own business,” she said.
She remembers the day Maupins told her she was nearly finished with the program. “She said, ‘You’ve got three more months left, and you’re almost out of our program for good,’” Ra’Necia said.
Maupins said watching her go feels “as if my own 27-year-old son was flying the coop.” She added, “I’m still here in the background supporting, but I can release you now. You’re ready. She’s ready.”
For Ra’Necia, what UMOM gave her child matters most. “UMOM helped my kid have a future,” she said. “And that, to me, means everything.”
