Homeless to Happy

Discomfort typically goes hand-in-hand with the final months of pregnancy. But the discomfort Ashley Pearson was experiencing was a bit more extreme. The 25-year-old was eight months pregnant with twins and living with her boyfriend in a tent in an International Falls backyard.

Pearson shuddered as she recalled the memory of being homeless with her boyfriend Chris Worley a little more than four months ago.

“It was awful,” Pearson said. “There were many times we wondered what we were going to do. The babies were coming and we had nothing... I was freaking out.”

Coming to grips with reality was difficult, but Pearson admits she and Worley had nobody to blame but themselves. After 10 years of an on-again, off-again relationship, drinking, drugs, losing custody of their 4-year-old son, and unable to keep a job, they had hit rock bottom. Fearful of not having a place to bring the twins home to after their scheduled July 20 birth, Pearson and Worley reached out for help.

“We didn’t know what else to do or where else to go,” Pearson said. “We needed help.”

A local agency took a chance on the troubled pair and provided a roof over their heads and a place to bring their newborns home. Life since has taken a turn for the better. But getting to this point wasn’t easy. The couple needed to put unhealthy habits aside and realize if they wanted help, they first had to help themselves.

Following a pattern

Life wasn’t always hard, especially for Pearson.

The 2010 Falls High School graduate was an honor roll student who played volleyball and ran track and field. She hadn’t been surrounded with an ideal home life, but was determined to not follow the examples she had growing up.

picture: http://www.queenieaustralia.com/yellow-formal-dresses

“I came from a hard home,” she said. “But I was raised good. I was raised well.”

Worley, on the other hand, made some decisions early on that set him up for a harder run as an adult.

“I moved out when I was...