The Rebuild

A Seacoast Family Promise Story

It was 11 years ago. Becky is the first to admit she didn’t always make the right decisions. Those misfires led to eviction after eviction after eviction. Eventually Becky, her husband, and her two children had nowhere else to go, no other apartments to occupy, no options. Following a visit to the town offices searching for any kind of answers – something, anything – they were referred to Seacoast Family Promise.

”We had moved enough times and had enough evictions under our name that it wasn’t going to be possible to find anything,” Becky says. “Seacoast Family Promise was our last stop.”

Becky and her family stayed in the program for four months, stabilizing their financial situation, honing a variety of budgeting and job skills, and developing new, more positive habits, all with the eye of getting back on their feet and finding a more permanent housing future.

One of many tangible results from her time with Seacoast Family Promise?

“I pay my rent on the first of the month, every month now,” she says. “Before I came to Seacoast Family Promise, I wanted to have fun over being responsible. My kids were still well taken care of, but, obviously, I could have done a much better job. Now I’m more responsible and more mature.”

Becky is the first to say there have been subsequent ups and downs. After leaving Seacoast Family Promise, the family spent two relatively stable years in Hampton, but, eventually, their financial bottom had fallen out due to several punishing circumstances, including a massive heart attack sustained by her husband (“I almost lost him,” Becky says).

”We had moved enough times and had enough evictions under our name that it wasn’t going to be possible to find anything,” Becky says. “Seacoast Family Promise was our last stop.”

And, then, they were homeless once again, spending consecutive summers in a tent at a campground and winters in a hotel. Seacoast Family Promise remained a key part of their lives, helping them through these tough times: they accessed the food pantry and were able to get clothes and birthday presents as needed, along with many other items that would return a sense of normalcy to the children.

“Seacoast Family Promise helped with Easter baskets, Christmas presents, school supplies, clothes, Thanksgiving dinners, anything,” Becky says. “Thankfully, I finally got on my feet where I can take care of all that stuff by myself.”

That is an understatement. When Becky had first left Seacoast Family Promise, she worked at a local diner, washing dishes. She took a job through a temp agency where she would shovel driveways in the winter. Whatever it took to put food on the table.

While at the temp agency, someone had mentioned the idea of SERVPRO. And just like that, Becky wasn’t looking at simple, fly-by-night jobs. What lay ahead was a path forward.

“They hired me full time in September of 2017,” Becky says. “Just over a year later. I was taking my second class to be certified for fire and flood remediation.”

Becky’s instructor gave it to her straight: now is the time to decide if this is a temporary job or a full-fledged career.

“So I went for the career,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to work with people. My main goal when I go out to somebody’s disaster, whether it’s water damage or fire damage, within the first half hour, I want them to find the silver lining. I want to say something that’s going to get them to chuckle and just kind of make them stop thinking about what’s going on. And I just tell them to relax.”

It’s not lost on her that those early experiences of homelessness and rebuilding her own life have given her a unique perspective to connect with others who are dealing with disaster.

“I’ve been through some things,” she says.

Today, Becky is a project manager for SERVPRO, and her future is wide open. Whatever her next steps are, she knows she has a firm foundation and a clear point-of-view to make a decision that will be best for her family. That confidence can be traced back to that day over a decade ago when she showed up on the doorstep of Seacoast Family Promise with nothing.

“If you had asked me how I felt 11 years ago, I would have told you it was the worst experience of my life,” she says. “But now that I am a bit older, a bit wiser and more experienced, I can see now that those were some of the best times of my life.”