At 14, Bryana’s life was full of instability. She moved and changed schools four times and eventually began living with her grandparents. While middle school students often find themselves demanding to be treated more like adults by their families around this time, Bryana would be tested with yet another challenge that many adults aren’t prepared for: motherhood.

Pregnant during 8th grade, Bryanna watched from afar as her friends lived their lives how she wished she could. “It was hard because you see your friends and you want to be like them but you can’t,” Bryana says. “They don’t know the struggles you’re going through and you’re trying to do your best to push through and not make it obvious that you’re going through stuff,” she says.

At 15-years-old and now in high school, Bryana found herself without the ability to care for her newborn daughter during school hours. She already faced barriers to her education due to her disability with dyslexia and found herself completely disconnected from school.

“I got pregnant in eighth-grade and it was a tough road,” Bryana says. “I wasn’t going to school, I think it was already going to be two or three months so I went looking for a school that had a daycare. None of them really had one,” she says.

That is when she discovered United Way partner Healy-Murphy, who provides resources in both Ready Children and Successful Students Impact Areas. With this support, Bryana had finally found a school she could attend while trusting that her new-born was safe in the school’s child care center. She also enrolled in United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County’s Dual Generation Initiative, which provided her with subsidized child care so she could afford to focus on her education at Healy-Murphy.

“I was nervous because I was like, how am I going to pay for this? I can’t do this, I’m not even working,” Bryana says. “Luckily they accepted me,” she added.

With her daughter nearby in a quality learning center, Bryana was able to focus on her education. Despite her lost time when she wasn’t going to school, she managed to graduate high school early.

“It made me feel really happy that I was able to give my daughter a good opportunity to learn at a young age,” Bryana says. “They accepted me with my disability and didn’t just see me as another girl that got pregnant.”

United Way’s Successful Students Impact Area ensures that all students have stable, resource-rich environments where they can continue learning. Programs like this help students stay in school and prepare them to succeed in the workforce after graduation.

“Without United Way, I don’t think I would have ever been able to graduate,” she says. “Going through the program was actually the first time that someone actually believed in me like that.”

Today, Bryana is working as an educator in a child care center and continues to pursue her education so she can provide even more for her daughter in the future.

Watch Bryana’s Story on our YouTube channel.