This is Hannah’s story, told in her own voice.* We are grateful to her for letting us share it here.
“My name is Hannah and I am 35 years old. I was raised in Hawaii with my six siblings by a single mom. As you can imagine, there were a lot of hardships. I started drinking really early. I went to my first rehab when I was in 8th grade. We were homeless. I dropped out of high school in 10th grade, so I never completed school. I struggled with substance use. I always felt very alone. I never really had any role models, anybody I could look up to or that I felt I could trust.
“I never really had any role models, anybody I could look up to
or that I felt I could trust.”
‘That led me to stripping and then into prostitution pretty young, I think I was about eighteen or nineteen. When I was eighteen, I moved to Portland, Oregon. This had just become my life – I wouldn’t even call it a life, it was just an existence. I wasn’t living. It all came to a head when I was kidnapped – I was tied up in this guy’s car, he had a butcher knife and he was threatening to kill me. By the grace of God, I was able to get out of that. That brought me to my rock bottom. I did not want to live; I just couldn’t live the way that I was living anymore. l think that God needed to get me there because I am so hard-headed and I am so…just the way that I am! So God allowed those events to take place, but he didn’t just allow them to take place, he brought about good from them.
“God allowed those events to take place,
but he didn’t just allow them to take place,
he brought about good from them.”
“That’s when Adorned in Grace and Compassion Connect came into my life through a friend. She introduced me to Linda Tribbett. God began to put these strong women and men of God in my life to come alongside me in my darkest times. At twenty eight years old, I finally got my GED. This was another major step for me in believing that I could actually be different, that my life could actually look different. After graduation I knew, along with my support system in Adorned in Grace, that moving back to Portland would not have been healthy for me. We decided that I needed to go out of state, because I needed to get out of that environment. Through the grace of God, Compassion Connect really helped me to find a place I could go to be launched, which led me to Ohio with a pastor couple – like so many of the men and women in Compassion Connect, just a really strong man and woman of God who continued the work that Compassion Connect had been doing thus far. I was able to get my driver’s license for the first time in my life. I was able to get a job and I got my associate’s degree and now I’m currently working on my bachelor’s.
“My life today looks so different
than I ever imagined that it could.”
“My life today looks so different than I ever imagined that it could. And of course there’s so much more growing to do and so many more things that God has in store for me that I’m actually looking forward to! I have so much more hope today than I ever have – that I ever even thought possible. I currently work for a suicide and crisis hotline; I just got a promotion. God is opening so many doors for me that I never saw coming. I’m just really looking forward to what the future holds for me, to what God has in store for me.
“But I know that none of it would have been possible if not for the work that Compassion Connect and Adorned in Grace do. I cannot say enough good things. I don’t even think that I would be alive today if they had not intervened in my life when they did.”
Hannah’s name has been changed for privacy and minor edits were made for clarity.
