Cristina Guajardo sat in her East Austin apartment on a recent Friday while trying to juggle studying for finals and entertaining her 2-year-old son, all while facing the news she was laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 42-year-old single mother said that while the pandemic was never something she could have predicted, she was fully prepared to face the global crisis head on.
It wasn’t long ago Guajardo was in the midst of another crisis after she became a single mom when her son was 3 months old. Guajardo said she went through fertility treatments alongside her former boyfriend to get pregnant with her son. However, they broke up shortly after he was born.
“We had planned for me to be a stay-at-home mom, so I had quit my job,” Guajardo said. “I didn’t have any family here and I didn’t have too many friends. I was super lost. Fear had me paralyzed and I didn’t know how to take the next step, but the Jeremiah Program gave me all of the resources I needed and took away all of the barriers.