It is 11 o’clock in the morning at La Casa de las Madres’ office and the phone rings. A young woman is looking for help for a teenager she is working with at an after-school program. As calls to our office go, that is nothing out of the ordinary. But what made this call unusual was the young woman on the phone.

I was the La Casa Teen Program counselor who took the call, and I smiled as I listened to Yvonne, the young woman on the other end of the line, speak. Yvonne spoke about the teen with whom she was working with so much passion and concern. She was wondering whether I might have any suggestions for her. Yvonne was asking me for help, and though the circumstances were new, this certainly wasn’t the first time.

I had first met Yvonne three years previously. At that time she was 18 years old, and her son Marco was one year old. She, Marco and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend all lived in a room in her older sister’s apartment. She had dropped out of high school and was spending most of her time alone with her son in their room. Her boyfriend did not allow her to leave the room unless she was going to an appointment of some kind. Whenever she did try to spend time with a friend, or look into going back to school or getting a job, if her boyfriend found out, he would berate her and accuse her of sneaking off to be with another man.

Yvonne got so tired of the accusations and so depressed, that eventually she gave up trying to do much of anything. Unfortunately, as much as she hated her living situation and as angry and sad as she felt, there was a piece of her that expected no different from those she loved. The yelling, the insults and the hitting felt like the same kind of confused love she had experienced and seen growing up in her own family.

One of the few people Yvonne was ‘allowed’ to visit was her TAPP (Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Program) case manager, and so she did visit her, often. In fact, she began to visit her almost daily. Slowly she began to open up to her case manager about how unhappy she was. For the first time she admitted out loud how terrified, and yet stuck, she felt in her relationship with her boyfriend. She thought she might want to leave him, but she was filled with self-doubt and did not see any options for herself.

Yvonne’s case manager was anxious to help facilitate her decision-making process around leaving the relationship, and to help her to get some ongoing support regardless of her decision, so she set up a meeting between the three of us at the TAPP office. After the initial meeting I met alone with Yvonne, and we continued meeting almost weekly for about two years. I also continued to have frequent communication with her TAPP case manager. This relationship between service providers formed the foundation of a safety net of support that was being built under Yvonne.

In those weekly counseling sessions Yvonne and I worked together to change her life. Slowly she began to step out of her fear and isolation, to rejoin the world. We worked on rebuilding her self-esteem and on challenging what she had been taught about what to expect from love. By the time she was making the phone call to La Casa, three years after having first been brought in as a client, Yvonne was 21 years old. She had a high-school diploma and a full-time job at an after-school program. She and her son continued to live in her sister’s apartment, but she only saw her son’s father when he came to pick him up for his Saturday afternoon visits. At the after-school program, she was able to work with young teens to help in whatever way she could. She helped with homework assignments, organized activities, and some days she just listened to their problems the way she wished someone had been there to just listen to her before she got into the abusive relationship.

Yvonne realized how important the support of La Casa’s Teen Intervention program and the other pieces of her safety net had been in her being able to make changes in her own life. Now she was ready to be a part of someone else’s safety net.

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