‘They don’t come to us from finishing school’

Kathleen Miller introduces her girls with a smile and a gentle joke: "They don't come to us from finishing school."

The girls instead come to Miller from broken families, abusive relationships, addictions, even the streets.

They also come with one on the way.

Miller runs Living Grace Home, a transitional group home for pregnant girls and young women who don't want to have an abortion and have no place else to go.

In the year since it opened in a quiet residential neighborhood near Sunset Road and Valle Verde Drive in Henderson, the facility has housed 20 such girls and women.

Girls such as 16-year-old Christina, a runaway who called Miller in desperation from a street corner when she found out she was pregnant.

Women such as Misty Martin, 19, a former foster child who says she got pregnant with her second baby while living at a shelter for abused and neglected children.

"They've had rough lives," Miller said. "None of the girls come from intact families."

Some have been encouraged by family members to terminate their pregnancies, which may be one reason they can't go home.

Miller's background includes degrees in psychology and marriage and family therapy. She volunteered for years at a local agency that helped unmarried pregnant teens and young women. But that agency closed in 2002.

Miller said she was inspired to start Living Grace after seeing "a real lack of services" for pregnant teens. The home operates on a $225,000 yearly budget, most of it from private donations.

The home's mission statement says Living Grace is "a nondenominational home run under Christian principles" and "an alternative to abortion."

But Miller, the mother of three adult children, said Living Grace isn't particularly preachy.

"It's faith-based, but not affiliated with any particular religion."

The girls already have made up their minds about carrying their babies to term by the time they end up at the home.

"I was really happy about it (the pregnancy)," 19-year-old Sarah Holloway said while relaxing on a couch at Living Grace. "I needed a change."

Holloway comes across as someone who in another life could have been student body president: cute, funny, outgoing.

Instead, she got kicked out of high school for "immoral conduct," which Miller explained this way: "You can't do it in the hallway."

Holloway was living in a "huge party house" when she got pregnant last year.

"It was not a healthy environment for me," she said with a smirk.

About two months pregnant, Holloway moved into Living Grace. She stayed until her son, Emilio, was 2 months old.

The red-headed baby is now 5 months old and lives with Holloway and her aunt in Henderson.

"It's really hard, man," Holloway said of motherhood. "It's, like, 24 hours a day."

As Holloway spoke, Christina, the 16-year-old, listened intently and watched wide-eyed. Six months into her pregnancy, the ninth grader doesn't have much time left to prepare for motherhood.

Like Holloway, Christina doesn't have a job. Her baby's father is out of the picture. She's behind her peers in school because she dropped out and the school wouldn't allow her back in.

"I came to school high or was fighting," she said.

Then Christina found out she was pregnant.

"I was scared," she said. "What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? I don't have anybody."

She heard about Living Grace and contacted Miller.

"I called her 14 times," Christina said. "I told her, 'I'm a runaway. I need a place to stay.' She helped me turn myself around."

Misty Martin also needed a place to stay. Once she got pregnant, she had to leave the shelter where she had lived for three years, she said.

Martin cried when she found out. "I didn't know about this place," she said.

Martin is about eight months along and plans to keep her baby.

Her first, to whom she gave birth at 15, is in the custody of the baby's paternal grandparents, she said.

The father this time around "was kind of a fling," she said. "That wasn't a good situation."

It's something the girls and women at Living Grace tend to have in common: problematic or nonexistent relationships with their babies' fathers.

It's so common that Miller has developed for her residents an informal set of criteria for picking a boyfriend: He can't be in jail, abusive or addicted to drugs.

The standards are admittedly low.

"I don't even require that they have all their teeth or a job," Miller said.

Boyfriends can visit Living Grace, but are not allowed to stay the night or wander upstairs to the bedrooms.

Residents of the home are subject to random drug testing. They often show up with the baggage of past drug or alcohol abuse.

Holloway called substance abuse "a family tradition."

Martin said she was born addicted to methamphetamine and prescription drugs, and admitted to having had a drug problem "a long time ago."

Christina said she has "lots of experience with drugs and alcohol."

She added, "My mom's not really there for me."

Living Grace residents typically are dealing with difficult or estranged relationships with their families, Miller said. "The babies are used as replacements" for those relationships.

Those who stay at Living Grace are required to do chores and must be either employed or in school.

Martin is on bed rest at her doctor's direction, but hopes to some day go into nursing.

Christina attends church regularly. Once her baby is born, she hopes to move in with a family she met there.

Holloway talks about eventually getting a place with Martin.

While at Living Grace, Holloway earned her high school diploma. Her plans now include: "Do you believe this? College."

"I don't believe I'm doing it," she said, pressing a hand to her forehead.

She wants to someday be a phlebotomist. "I can work at night while he's (Emilio's) asleep so I don't miss nothing."

Miller gently corrected her: "Don't miss anything."

Then Miller repeated her joke about the girls not coming from finishing school.

Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at lcurtis @reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0285.