Perpetual Help Home, Inc.

Meet Carmen

Perpetual Help Home was where time stopped for 24-year-old Carmen. That’s how she puts it. It was where she could be still for a moment and take a good look at her life and what she could do with it. “I don’t’ think about not having Perpetual Help Home in my life. I was wandering aimlessly and probably would still be. Perpetual Help Home took me out of chaos; it took me out of a learned routine of bouncing around and living paycheck to paycheck.” Her father was a migrant worker and her mother died when she and her sister were babies. “We grew up in a nomad lifestyle and we never had a home,” she said. When they were older they were left with their stepmother. But by that time, she said, they were out of control in the sense that they were not answering to anyone. When she arrived at PHH, the big blue house with the white picket fence looked like “the epitome of the American dream,” she said. “It was a big change for me, because I’ve never lived in an environment where there were rules and consequences and a budget.” She was full of fear, but also felt hope. “I said, ‘OK Carmen you screwed every other opportunity up. Let’s see where we go from here.’ “ Despite the chaos she grew up in, Carmen had never gotten into any real trouble. She graduated and went to college on a scholarship. But she dropped out of college after the first year to help support her sister after her sister became pregnant. She put off her education for the sake of being available to her family. Eventually, they both ended up living with her sister’s boyfriend in an abusive environment. When her sister had had enough, they left, but neither of them was capable of providing for themselves. Carmen said she followed her sister to Perpetual Help Home. “I was actually at very loose ends. I didn’t have a plan; no goals. I was just accompanying my sister who was going through a bad time in her life.” About four months later, her sister left PHH and returned to her boyfriend, but Carmen stayed, wanting to focus on her future. By that time, she said, she had gained a new sense of self worth thanks to the staff of PHH. “They built me up. They helped me heal from a lot of things in my past.” During her stay at PHH, she worked and got back in school. She was one of the first residents to work on building up the Center for Peace, PHH’s micro-enterprise. “I was there when it was dreamed up. We hadn’t actually set it up. It was in the process of becoming the Center for Peace.” She doesn’t view her role at the CFP as significant, but she did contribute to laying the groundwork taught computer skills to another PHH resident whose training led to better job opportunities. Carmen also got a job with the United Way, and when she felt she had the ways and means to live on her own, she left PHH to make room for others. “I could make it on my own. It was time.” Later she moved to McAllen to be close to her father when he retired. But she did not want to go back to being dependent on her family. She wanted a career that would allow her to work on cruise ships and studied massage therapy at South Texas Vo-Tech. But the school offered her a position teaching massage therapy, which allows her to remain close to her father and stepmother, and close to her sister who recently was able to buy her own home. “I feel like PHH was a great turning point in my life and helped me take the steps to the life I have now.” She plans to return to school and finish her degree so she can move up within the school. She works as a massage therapist on the weekends and still has the option of one day going working on a cruise ship. “I don’t think I’m yet fulfilled. But I’m comfortable.”