Sitting with Heather on her living room couch, the eye is drawn to the festive – if curious – array of holiday decorations, the pinnacle being a 5-foot, upside-down black Christmas tree with decorations inspired by the movie “Beetlejuice,” topped with a grinning, coiled sandworm. 

“We love that movie,” Heather said, with a nod to the other “Beetlejuice” decorations in the room. 

Soon the room will be filled with family. Heather is hosting the family Christmas party and estimates around 20 people will be there to celebrate. It is her first time hosting the event, and her first Christmas in her new Habitat home. It’s been a long journey to this point in her life, and she retells it by starting on a specific date: Jan. 22, 2016. 

That’s her clean date, the date she got sober and began working toward bringing her family back together. 

Heather grew up with parents in addiction, including alcohol and drug abuse, and gambling, which ultimately led them to lose their home and move into an apartment when Heather was 11. For Heather and three siblings, these conditions were the only normal they knew.  

“We didn’t feel like we had a bad life,” Heather said, describing their youth as being “spoiled with guilt” because of their parent’s addictions. “They really took care of us. They just did what they knew best. But with that being said, growing up in a home like that, it was difficult.” 

Heather struggled with her own addiction while she was a teenager, but she got sober and started a family. In 2002, her mother died from complications due to alcoholism. Soon after, her father’s health declined. Heather was already the mother of two young children, working two jobs to make ends meet, when she and her partner took her father in to care for him.  

Her father’s continued substance abuse divided the family, and she and her partner, who was also in recovery, separated. He moved out with the children, while Heather stayed in their rental home to care for her dying father. She relapsed. 

“I was a wreck,” she said. “I couldn’t maintain my jobs. It was to the point where I was out of control. I didn’t even know who I was anymore, like I literally lost myself.” 

She and her father were evicted – her father went into a care facility where he received treatment and later passed away. Heather became homeless, staying at motels, sleeping on friends’ couches, living in tents. 

Ultimately, she knew she had to make a change. She went into treatment and began working to restore her life and her family. She went back to work and got into clean and sober housing through Home Forward, the housing authority for the Portland area, and her children were back together with her. Through Home Forward, she was able to rebuild her credit and enroll in a program to help save money toward a larger goal: owning her own home. 

“I wanted to buy a home. That was my goal,” Heather said. “It was important for me to be able to own my own place and have a home for my children. I wanted to grow. I wanted to be able to have something to pass down to my kids.” 

She began applying to Habitat, and in 2022, just before Christmas, her Habitat application was approved. 

“It was amazing,” she said, about receiving the news. “It was the best Christmas present ever!”  

Each homebuyer Habitat partners with contributes participation hours toward their new home, which can be in the form of helping build onsite, volunteering at Habitat ReStores, taking education courses, or volunteering in the community. Heather went to work on her new home, a 3-bedroom townhome in Southeast Portland. 

This summer, Heather closed on her home and got the keys. Family and friends helped her move in and furnish the home where she lives with her three children, ages 17, 12 and 9. (Heather has three children of her own and guardianship of a fourth.) Her oldest son is 24 and lives in Salem.  

“I have all my kids back in my life, and we all worked on building this house together, and now, this is our first Christmas here,” she said proudly. 

The children love the new home, Heather said, and one of the best joys is the simplest: being able to walk outside and explore. They lived in an apartment before the move, in what Heather describes as a bad neighborhood with lots of gun activity. Heather wipes away tears talking about her children dropping to the floor at the sound of gunshots outside near their apartment. 

“Moving out of that situation was amazing, because that was the hardest thing to have to watch,” she said. 

For six years now, Heather has worked as a recovery parent mentor with Morrison Child and Family Services. She helps families who are dealing with drug and alcohol addiction navigate child custody matters with state authorities. She knows how daunting the system – especially combined with recovery – can be, and she knows first-hand that it is the most important journey they may take in their entire life.  

One of the biggest challenges, however, is housing. Most of her clients are living in either shelters, low-income housing, or a tent, she said. “That’s the biggest struggle out there, housing … Nobody can afford it.” 

Which makes Heather all the more thankful for her own home, where her children are safe and she has an affordable mortgage, with money left over for her family. She’s the first among her siblings to own their own home, and she is quick to thank everyone who helped her along the way, teaching her new things like home maintenance and gardening – things she didn’t learn “being brought up in addiction,” she said. She’s now looking ahead to spring when she can grill outside and enjoy family time. 

“I’m just really blessed,” she said. “I was really happy with Habitat and all their hard work they helped me with, and all the resources they helped me with. That was just amazing.”