Chelsea Burgoyne first realized she might be pregnant after Googling the symptoms of her morning sickness. She was 15.
“A lot of 15-year-olds are either worried about spending a night at their friend’s house, or getting their school work done, or whatever,” Burgoyne said. “But me, all I was thinking was how am I going to provide for this child?’”
Nine years later, Burgoyne has built a life that seemed impossible to her when she was 15. She purchased her own home last year, and is working hard to give her son and daughter a better childhood than her own. For the past three years, she has found support and community through Step By Step, a nonprofit in Lexington, Kentucky, that serves young single mothers, ages 12 to 24.
“I want people to avoid underestimating young single moms,” said Tanya Torp, executive director of Step By Step. “Because we see them come in, especially moms with incredible trauma, incredibly hard, difficult pasts, and when they have an opportunity to breathe a little bit and get some support, everything changes for them.”
One of the first words Burgoyne uses to describe her own childhood is “lonely.” Growing up in Frankfurt, Kentucky, she experienced neglect and abuse as she and her brothers were forced to live with various relatives while their parents were in and out of jail.
By the time she was 13, Burgoyne was hanging out with older teens and young adults. She was back living with her mother, who was off drugs, but their relationship was strained. Two years later, she became involved with the 21-year-old man who would become her child’s father. Four months into her pregnancy, he died by suicide. Her son, Amari, was born premature at 32 weeks after Burgoyne spent nearly a month in the hospital due to complications with her delivery.
“They already know that people think that they’re a statistic, that they’re never going to make anything of themselves, that they are a burden on the system, and that our tax dollars are paying for them. They literally hear those things,” Torp said. “We want people to realize that these are people with real feelings and what they desire most is to belong to a community, and to give their children all they can give them.”
Facing school truancy charges after Amari was born, Burgoyne dropped out in the 11th grade. However, she passed the GED and earned her Certificate of High School Equivalency a month later. When she was 18, she found a job in Lexington and moved there with her son and mother.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re less of a person or that we’re not going to be successful,” Burgoyne said of becoming a teen mom. “It just means it might take a little longer, or we might have to try a little harder.”
Step By Step was founded as a church support group in 1995 by three friends who wanted to do something after reading about the frequency of child abuse and young mothers losing custody of ther children. The group caught on, more and more young women kept showing up, and eventually Step By Step became a nonprofit.
The organization has evolved further this year in response to the coronavirus pandemic, shifting into gear to gather and deliver supplies, like diapers and wipes, and providing young single moms with much-needed money to help cover their bills, rent, and mortgage payments.
“When the child care facilities closed, it was over for moms. Single moms cannot work if they don’t have adequate childcare. And so we started paying their bills. Cell phone bills, light bills, all utilities,” Torp said. “We would pay their full rent and up to $300 a month for other bills. And that gave people wiggle room so they weren’t evicted.”
Torp said this program prevented about 22 families from being evicted before a national moratorium on evictions was declared on September 4. This became possible after Step By Step quickly raised about $40,000 in emergency funds. More recently, they received a $33,000 grant from the City of Lexington to continue making emergency payments as needed.
The organization serves about 250 mothers and children each year. Torp estimates that 96 percent of the families they work with are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is about $17,000 for a two-person household.
“We have a holistic view of serving these women. It is not just us wanting to pour the gospel into them. We’re meeting them right where they are and recognizing whatever they need and want,” Torp said.
When she showed up at Step by Step for the first time, Burgoyne had a second child, a daughter named Naomi, with a man who turned out to be physically and emotionally abusive. He was eventually arrested on drug charges, and Burgoyne was living on her own with both children when she heard the nonprofit’s commercial on the radio. She called and was invited to a weekly meeting, which happened to be scheduled for that night.
“I haven’t missed a meeting since,” she said. “I had a lot of helplessness, hopelessness, a lot of depression, and anxiety. That has dramatically changed just by getting God into my life and my kids’ life and just knowing that there is a bigger purpose.”
Prior to the pandemic, the Thursday night meetings were a foundational program for Step By Step. Free transportation and child care were provided so the young women could attend life-skills classes and support groups, eat dinner together, and socialize. The meetings are now held via video conference, but Burgoyne and Torp admit it’s just not the same.