The Johnson/Winters Autobiography
This is our story of our life’s journey. My name is Kayla Winters and I was born in Bloomington, Indiana. In 2004 my mother and I moved to Indianapolis in search of better job opportunities. Within the first few months of being here, we ended up at Holy Families homeless shelter. We were all out of money and resources. Not to mention that my mother had not found a job yet, and the school semester was approaching fast. All we had in our possession were some clothes we brought with us from Bloomington and a car. Before we made the decision to go to the shelter we stayed with five different families. We figured if we go to the shelter our odds would be better. While we were at the shelter my mother made the decision to move back to Bloomington. I was already enrolled in school and had transferred too many times. My mother sent me to live with a family friend until she got back on her feet. The woman I went to live with didn’t have any children but she was very welcoming. She was an excellent provider and a wonderful friend. She had also taken in another teen whose name was John Johnson. I knew him from my early childhood. Our parents had been friends forever. Like me he had family issues that caused him to move from place to place. He often resided at his grandmother’s house. When he wasn’t living with his grandmother he was back and forth from place to place. He ended up at the same place as I did because of the living conditions at his parent’s house. While we were there John and I started dating, but we were young and we had a lot of adolescent problems. A year and a half had passed and my mother had finally got back on her feet. She moved back to Indianapolis and got a place to live. As soon as school was out I went to live with her. John had moved back with his mother that same year. We stayed connected. We were always with each other on our free time. In 2006 I became pregnant with our daughter Janiyah. When I became pregnant John and I moved in with his grandmother. It was overcrowded and low income there. There were fifteen people residing in a four bedroom house, in a rundown neighborhood. Times were very difficult and we had to plan our next move carefully. John dropped out of school in order to care for our daughter during the day while I attended school. I transferred my studies to John Hope Day Adult. I also managed a job after school. John found work shortly after. We saved up our earnings and as soon as I was legally able to sign a lease we moved out into our first apartment. It was a low income apartment and it was small, but it was home. This point in our lives was a learning experience because we had to teach ourselves about being financially independent. The next apartment we moved into was worse. There were numerous issues with this apartment and there were many things that needed to be repaired, but because of the situation we were in, we took it. The ceiling in our daughter’s room had caved in after a storm. The light fixture had begun sparking and pour down with water. The apartment came and cut off our electricity so that the sparks would not cause a fire. We were left in the dark for days with a hole in our roof. We ended up suing the apartment and winning that settlement. We got out of the lease and jumped right into another one. We are currently located in Broad Ripple. Although there were minor repairs that needed to be done, this was the best place we lived in. We both come from low income backgrounds and our wish is to be successful. We want our daughter to have what we couldn’t growing up and that is a stable loving family.
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