Meet the Family: Natalia

Happy Meet the Family Friday and (almost) New Year's Eve! If going through a global pandemic wasn't challenging enough, Natalia's entire life turned upside down when she became a single mother and sole breadwinner for her family after separating from her daughter's father in 2020. Before the world and her life changed, Natalia started a part-time job at a plant nursery to help make ends meet. They weren't struggling but made just enough to get by and provide for their daughter, she remembers.

When the pandemic left millions unemployed, Natalia was among them. While her partner at the time maintained his job, his hours were massively reduced, putting pressure on their finances. Then the pandemic struck close to home: Natalia's entire family, including her parents who were visiting from Mexico, contracted COVID-19. In the early days, when there were no vaccines and hundreds of thousands of people died, Natalia remembers being terrified.

"It was so bad. I ended up in the hospital for over a week," she says. "I still have anxiety and nightmares about it and not being able to breathe." 

As the bills piled up and fears of eviction became more intense, Natalia made the difficult decision to end her relationship with her daughter's father. Jobless, she began using credit cards to pay for necessities and accumulated significant credit card debt. The neighbors in her building arranged a meeting with their landlord to discuss eviction fears. Luckily, the landlords were understanding and assured Natalia and her neighbors that they would be able to slowly pay off rental debt without being evicted. Natalia was relieved, but the creditors were not as understanding. 

It was at that moment that she received an email from Upward Scholars inviting her to apply to the student Safety Net Fund. "At first, I was shocked and skeptical, of course. It just seemed too good to be true. But I knew that I could trust my Upward Scholars family, and I had no other options, so I applied," Natalia explains. When she received her first check, it was a "ray of light, and a huge burden was lifted from my shoulders," she exclaims. "I knew my daughter and I would be OK because angels out there care about us and won't let us become homeless or go hungry. You are our angels!"