Liz Isaac holds her daughter, Alessandria, before bedtime in their room at Harvest Home in Los Angeles, California.Photo:Isadora Kosofsky
Isadora Kosofsky
Lizz Isaac spent more than six years desperate to escape the streets of Los Angeles, where she’d been living while battling a meth addiction and drifting from one violent relationship to the next.
But it wasn’t until Issac learned that she was pregnant that the 30-year-old summoned the determination to turn her life around and finally break free from her addiction.
Isaac — who is one of nearly 5,000 women each year in Los Angeles who have struggled with a pregnancy while homeless — knows that she’s one of the lucky ones.
Through hard work, plenty of grit and a little help fromHarvest Home, an LA-based residential program that provides housing for pregnant women and their children, Isaac is now a doting mother, two years sober, working at a Beverly Hills law firm and settling into her first apartment.
Liz Isaac sits beside her daughter, Alessandria, who plays in a box at their apartment in Inglewood, California.Isadora Kosofsky
“She didn’t ask to be born, and she didn’t ask to be out here on the streets,” Isaac says she recalls thinking shortly after learning she was pregnant. “I gotta do something. I gotta make a change.”
But in a city with fewer than 100 beds available to women like Isaac — who have nowhere else to turn — she knew she faced an uphill battle to transform her life.
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Sexually assaulted for the first time at 16, Isaac used drugs to fill the void that gnawed at her after her father was arrested on homicide charges and deported to Mexico.
“I want to cry just thinking about it,” she says of her years spent living without a permanent address. “I hit rock bottom so many times. I’d often get high and stay up for three days at a stretch just so I didn’t have to worry about where I was going to sleep that night.”
Finding her way to Harvest Home — thanks to a social worker who had helped her get into a rehab facility — proved to be a game changer. Since 1985, the nonprofit — which offers classes ranging from personal finance to parenting and birth control — has provided a lifeline to nearly 25 homeless, pregnant women each year.
Sara Wilson, director of Harvest Home, smiles, as she looks to Liz and Alessandria Isaac in an office at Harvest Home in Los Angeles, California.Isadora Kosofsky
“We’re not just a shelter or a place to stay,” says Harvest Home executive director Sarah Wilson. “The goal is to help these women get started on a pathway that leads to long-term stability and success for both mothers and their children.”
The nonprofit’s efforts certainly worked for Isaac, who moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Inglewood, Calif., in April with her daughter, a few boxes of her belongings and a heart filled with gratitude for all the people who helped make it possible. She’s since launched aGoFundMe fundraiserfor people who wish to help her furnish the home.
“I don’t have to run away from my problems anymore,” says Isaac. “My heart doesn’t feel so heavy now. And I know that I don’t have to be ashamed [of my past] because it made me who I am today.”
source: people.com
