In spring of 2015, as the trees and azaleas were beginning to bloom, Lonesha Cornelious was preparing for her life to change. Just 24 years old and at the dawn of adulthood, she was struggling to imagine her future, to find her place in the world, and understand her own value.
“I wasn’t focused or goal-driven,” she remembers. “Honestly, I felt worthless. I just didn’t feel good about myself.”
But those feelings faded away the moment she became a mom. Replacing them was a newfound purpose and confidence, and a metamorphic love.
“It opened up a whole other part of my brain,” she says, thinking back on the day her daughter was born. “I started caring for her right away, knowing she was going to love me.”
Now a mother of two daughters, Lonesha sees motherhood as the grounding and motivating force in her life.
“It gives me a purpose, being able to give proper love to my children, having somebody to love and having somebody love me unconditionally – that’s the best thing.”
As a single mom, she carries the full weight of making sure they are provided and cared for. She’s also spent much of her adult life caring for her own mother who suffers from multiple sclerosis. For many years the four of them lived together. But in the midst of her mom’s health declining, the family missed the deadline for Section 8 recertification. They were evicted.
Lonesha moved her mom into a nursing home; and, having no other place to go, she and her daughters began staying in hotels.
“It was like $85 a night, and on weekends they’d go up,” she remembers. “Certain places wouldn’t let you stay more than 20 days, so you’d have to pick up everything and move. There was no time to save anything. I had no rental history, nothing, because I always lived with my mom. I was working full time as a CNA and DoorDashing after work, but still just not making enough.”
At the time, Lonesha was fighting two battles at once: fighting to keep her family sheltered and fighting to leave a relationship marred by domestic violence and abuse.
“I felt like a prisoner,” Lonesha says of that two year period. “I really started to lose hope.”
It was time for another metamorphosis.
After hearing about it from a city social worker, she applied for the Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) program. Within a few weeks, she and her daughters moved out of the hotel and into the safety of Plaza Plaza, a CFH family shelter.
Then, after three months in the shelter, Lonesha and her daughters moved into their apartment—it’s a place that’s just their own, a place they can decorate and feel safe in, a place where they don’t worry about having to pack up and move at a moment’s notice.
“It’s decorated with pink. We have pictures up. We’re home,” she says. “That happened almost a year ago and I’m still not over it — in a good way.”
With space to breathe and heal, Lonesha is focused on building a stable future for herself and her girls.
“Now I feel free.” she says with a beaming smile. “Now I feel like we can spread our wings. I don’t have anything holding me back from the things I really want to do.”
She wants to earn her LPN, so she enrolled to start classes at CPCC beginning this summer. She wants to learn as much as she can, so she’s attending CFH workshops about budgeting and financial management. She wants to get better at caring for herself as much as she cares for everyone else, so she’s going to therapy. And most of all, she wants her daughters to see her drive and determination and know they should never lose hope.
“Just don’t give up. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. If God gives you breath in the morning, there’s still time to do something.”
This story is part of our “Mighty Like A Mother” series celebrating Mother’s Day and honoring the strength of single mothers in our community. Read more: Mighty Like a Mother – Charlotte Family Housing
