Meet Tanya
“I’m a firm believer that knowledge is power,” Tanya says about the many certificates hanging around her Journey House apartment, certificates for communication, self-esteem, parenting, and a certificate from U of A, to name a few. “If there’s something that needs to be fixed, and you know more about it, then you know where to begin to fix it.”
Tanya didn’t have an easy life. She left home at the age of 16, “there was partying, there was drug abuse, there was unplanned pregnancies,” she said. She has four older children that are no longer in her custody and says, “it took until about six years ago when I lost custody of my older children because of my drug use that I finally went into treatment and it’s been a slow uphill battle since then.”
Tanya and her daughter Fallyn left an abusive situation and when all domestic abuse shelters were full, they landed at Inn from the Cold for the first time. They spent time in both the Knox Overflow Shelter and the Emergency Family Shelter.
“It can be difficult bouncing back from homelessness, especially with a child,” Tanya said as she recounts her journey out of homelessness. She and her daughter have lived at Journey House since June of 2015 and since then, Fallyn has really opened up. “[Journey House] is a program that’s helping me get back on my feet… it’s enough of a transition between a shelter and a place of your own where it helps you put your feet underneath you, but you don’t end up completely up the creek if something were to go wrong”.
