Single mother finds hope at Buckner Family Place in Midland

MIDLAND—Neikedra Butler was accustomed to uncertainty, but that didn't make things any easier.

She and her children, Crissean, 14, Keyana, 10, and Alayjhia, 7, were trapped in a cycle of poverty and occasional homelessness. Butler struggled to make ends meet while she worked at a sandwich shop, cared for her children as a single parent and tried to pursue her education.

Neikedra Butler, with her youngest daughter, Alayjhia, teaches her children that education is essential. Butler is a graduate of the Buckner Family Place program in Midland, where she went from homeless to self-sufficient. She now works as a respiratory therapist for Medical Center Hospital in Odessa.

In 2008, she lived in her grandfather's home with several other family members. Her grandfather died that spring and willed the house to Butler's aunts. So, she and her children had to find a new place to live. The cheapest apartment she could find cost $1,000 a month, and she just couldn't afford it. She put their things in storage and moved her family into a hotel.

"I got us a room for the length of time that the money would last," Butler said. "And then every one or two days we'd spend in the car so I could collect more money in order to get another room."

She was accepted into the respiratory therapy program at Midland College and planned to start classes in the summer of 2008. With college on her horizon, she focused on getting her children through the 2008 school year and finding a safe place to sleep every night. When her sister offered her a place to live in Corpus Christi over the summer, she moved her family south and started her education online.

They returned to Midland at the start of the fall semester, and Butler attended classes on campus. She and the children continued living between hotels and the car, often spending their nights parked in convenience store parking lots or truck stops. They scraped by from day to day, relying on convenience store meals and looking forward to sleeping in beds again.

"They were living out of the trunk, basically," said Anna Rodriquez, director of Buckner Family Place in Midland. "She would wake the kids up really early in the morning, get them cleaned up in the gas station bathroom, drop them off at school and then go to class herself."

Butler lived in fear that Child Protective Services would find out about her circumstances and take her children away. She didn't know where to turn, until she heard about Family Place, a residential program for single mothers enrolled in a vocational or educational program. She knew it was the break her family needed. She applied and was accepted.

They moved in, and everything changed. Butler didn't realize how much the instability had affected her family and her outlook. One of the professors at Midland College told Rodriquez that before Butler came to Family Place, she was awful to be around. Her attitude was bad, and she was unpleasant.

"It was because she was under such constant, extreme stress all the time," Rodriquez said. "But the difference between Neikedra before and after Family Place was like night and day."

There, she had the support she needed to focus on studying and becoming an example for her children. Her attitude and outlook were transformed completely.

"Buckner is like a relief," Butler said. "That's what it took for me. It was off my shoulders, where I didn't have to worry about where we were going to lay at night or anything like that. They gave me a foundation, a home. Everything else from there took off."

Butler did well in school, Rodriquez said. She took her state board exams in fall 2010 and found a job at the Medical Center Hospital in Odessa in October that year.

She moved out of Family Place and has been self-sufficient ever since. Her family has a stable living situation, and Butler has the skills and confidence she needs to be a great parent and provider.

But she hasn't stopped there. Butler has been accepted into Texas Women's University in Dallas for a bachelor's degree in respiratory therapy. She plans to move to North Texas and begin her degree program after her children finish this school year in Midland. She continues to check in regularly with the staff at Family Place and keeps them updated on her life and her plans.

"We're so proud of where Neikedra is today," Rodriquez said. "She's an excellent example to any woman who goes through our program of what can be accomplished."

To learn more about Buckner ministries for single-parent families, visit www.buckner.org, or call (214)758-8000.