Her grandmother had heard about Mercy Home from a friend. “At first, I was not really sure about it,” Mayra remembers. But it didn’t take long for her to change her mind. She found herself liking the environment and the coworkers, and she realized just how different Mercy Home was from the place she’d been living before.

Mayra’s mother was in jail, and so was her sister. Mayra and her other sisters were living with their grandmother, who doctors thought was ill. “I was having family problems,” Mayra says. She and her sisters were always fighting, and their mom wasn’t around to take care of them. “It was hard,” Mayra says, “[but] I wasn’t showing it. I used to smile even when I was feeling bad.”

At Mercy Home, Mayra found she could open up about her family and her past for the first time. “There’s someone you can talk to, like your therapist,” she says; “It feels better because when I was keeping my feelings inside, it was not a good feeling.” Building relationships with Mercy Home’s coworkers, and knowing she is supported and cared for, has helped Mayra’s attitude about herself. “After a while,” she says, “I started to get confidence.”