Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me your name and your kids names.
My name is Reba Jones. And my kiddos are Rayana Jones and Ryden Jones.
How old are they? Can you tell us a little about them?
Rayana just turned 11. And Ryden will be 9 in about six months. So Rayana is in fifth grade, and she is just growing. The past month, she’s grown over two inches. So we’re sharing clothes now. She loves it. She tells people all the time how she gets a new jacket to wear every dayS. he’s growing into her own. And I love that for her. I love how she wakes up every day, and it’s a new adventure, like a new discovery on who she is, and what she likes, and what she doesn’t like.
It’s been challenging for me, because even though I’ve gone through all I’ve gone through as far as my own growth therapy and healing journeys, I really do feel like I hit a plateau of I knew what not to do, I just don’t think I was quite prepared for what I should be doing. And that’s been an interesting journey to navigate with her.
Has she helped you discover that a little bit like discover parts of you never really tapped into?
Oh yeah. Just Seeing her navigate the world and realizing that whatever feeling I have is the ground she’s walking on. And so they have been – her and my son both – my biggest reasons why I keep raising the bar for myself, because that’s all they’ll have. At least for now until they get out and make their own way in this world. It‘s a journey. Parenting is a journey. And growing with them has been a journey and reparenting myself. Wow. Parenting them has been my biggest grief, but it’s also been my biggest reward as well.
I’m realizing that a lot of the things I do is not only is it for them, but it’s for me to experience the joy that I never got when I was growing up. We went to the Dominican Republic, and we stayed at the Nickelodeon resort. And I was more excited than them to see SpongeBob. I was super excited. I was like, “Can I hug you? Can I take some pictures with you?” They’re like, “Mom, wait in line like everybody else.” And it was just beautiful because I didn’t have those opportunities when I was growing up, and there was part of me that convinced myself that none of it was real, because I knew while I was growing up that it wasn’t going to happen. And so now that I’m an adult, and I have my own kids, I realize the chances that I get to give them on the realities that they can create. And so it’s also a chance for me to tap into that childlike joy that I never got to experience.
What about your son? What can you tell us about him?
He is amazing. He is so in touch with himself. And I know nowadays it’s like people like to say, “Oh, he’s sensitive, he’s this.” I’m like no. He just feels all his emotions. And I am so proud of him. I’m proud of him because I know that when you look around in the world, we need more of that. We need more men feeling their emotions. There’s a lot of backlash on being a single mom who raises her son all on her own. People tell me all the time it takes a man to raise a man. And I’m like, I’m going to do what I can do. I’m going to teach him how to be responsible with his emotions and other people’s as well. I am going to teach him how to show up in integrity, and I’m going to teach him how to show up when he needs to show up. And if that’s all I can do, I truly do feel like that’s good enough.
There is no shortage of good, influential males in his life. They just don’t live in the home with us. I have seven brothers, and they’re there, they’re present. When he feels something that I am even having a hard time helping him navigate, he knows which brother, which uncle, he can call. He has a male therapist who looks very similar to him, too.
It truly does take a village, and so, trust me, it’s not just me. Although I am a single parent, it’s not just me. I have an entire community of people who I call on daily, Whether it’s to help with help me navigating my own healing landscape, or whether it’s to help them navigate theirs, we’re not doing it alone.
Can you tell us a little bit about your life before Warren Village and what brought you to Warren Village?
You know, just like many other women before me, I was given an identity that I was supposed to step into. I grew up with parents who were addicted, had their own struggles. And I grew up with parents who, for whatever reason, they just weren’t present. And so my version of who I was supposed to be was extremely fragmented. I was either, as a child, leaning way too far into whether it be too much focus on outer appearances or whether it be too much focus on food. I just recently finished an eating disorder recovery program. And that first memory of starting that food addiction started at, I want to say, 8 years old. And so there were many messages that I picked up along the way that led to me having many fragmented pieces of my identity in place. So by the time I was an adult, I had no clue. When you add up all the abuse and all the homelessness and the lack of guidance into what wholeness truly does look like, you got me. And I’m just now starting to realize at 32 that had you given anyone else that background, they would have ended up in the same place. This isn’t something that’s special to me. That’s what trauma and a lack of healthy parents does.
I grew up as a child experiencing abuse, and I became a woman who tolerated abuse. And that’s eventually what led me to Warren Village, I was tired of it. I was 24 with two kids, and I was tired. I was tired of having to fight every day. I was tired of realizing that my goals of graduating were just pushed another three years out, another four years out. And I’m just like, OK. When will it happen? And me getting grilled with that question and asking myself, is this even what I want? It always led to the loudest No, always. And after that no was, then it was, what’s next? Like if this isn’t it, the house on the golf course… you know, after moving here from Louisiana, from the outside looking in, we did pretty well for ourselves. Two-car garage, two brand new Mercedes, 2,000 square-foot home. From the outside looking in, we had the American dream going for us.
I mean, hindsight is 20/20, but looking back on it, what I was truly giving up, it was just material stuff. Houses can be bought; Mercedes can be bought. What I was losing every day was more of me. I lost more of my voice. speaking up and not having your voice honored, having to physically fight with someone who’s more than double your size, in front of your kids. It wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want them having those memories, their very first memories of me, like that with their dad. It just wasn’t worth it. So although I gave up the house on the golf course, what I gained was clarity into who I truly wanted to be, and that’s priceless.
I mean, I had a house, but it wasn’t a home. I had their dad, but I was more lonely than I had ever been. And so the only thing that truly kept me going was my kids and asking myself, who is it that they see? I know for a fact that the version of me who they were seeing in that moment, it’s not the version of myself that I was proud of. And I’m like, I have a daughter who’s looking up to me, who wants to be just like me. You know, before she ever even knew this concept of God, of this divine being in outer space, she had me. That’s all she knew. In that moment, I was who she looked up to as the most divine person in her world, and here I was being abused every night.
You took the opportunity to break generations of that. That takes a lot of strength.
It does, like unraveling the chaos of the ancestral trauma where all those women before me believed it was OK to stay with a man who put his hands on you. Mom did. Her sisters did it. There’s more to life. There’s more to relationships, and there’s more to the relationship you have with yourself. There’s so much more. At some point all of us made an agreement with our soul that that was OK, abuse from an intimate partner was OK, and it’s not.
So then you came here. How did you hear about Warren Village?
I remember waking up another night with tears in my eyes wondering, where is he at? And just putting it all together, putting all the pieces in place. I want to go to school, but I also don’t want to live on Section 8 because you know, the reality is that I wasn’t quite aware of how hard it would be to get off that level of government assistance had I tapped into it and lived on it. And although I wanted the support and I wanted the help, I didn’t want to just move in somewhere and be left to my own devices, Especially with two kids, I knew that I was going to need so much more support than what I had initially set out to even realize in that moment.
And so I looked around at quite a few other places. Either the terms of the lease was way too short or they didn’t have a robust support program that says, we see that you want to do more. You want to have more. You want to be more, and we’re going to help you in getting there. There was no other program in Denver that was offering the type of support that Warren Village was offering. There was no other place in Denver that had the type of security that Warren Village has. The location, I felt safe when I drove over here to see it. It was a hard pill to swallow, him not knowing that I was packing up the kids so that we can come over here and look at this place that I knew I would eventually live in. Getting here, there was so much fear. I remember parking right outside the 1300 building and just staring at it and visually closing my eyes to see myself walking in and out of those doors. And how different our reality would look from walking outside and putting our feet on the ground on a golf course to walking outside of here. Although I knew it was going to take a lot of adjustment, I knew that it was what we would have to do.
I was at this point where I was just, alright, whatever it takes to feel safe. Whatever it takes to graduate. Whatever it takes to become the woman that I am proud of and that is who I want my kids to be, outside of gender, outside of all these different programs and social constructs that we have here. I want my kids to be proud of who they are. I want them to walk in their own truth. And I knew that had I stayed, I wouldn’t be the example for that. They would have to look outside of me, outside of my home, outside of the words that I am telling them for someone who can teach them what it truly meant to live your divine purpose. it wouldn’t have been me.
When did you move in? How did it feel at first, and when did it start to feel real and like home?
We moved in July 2017. The first day getting here with just a trunk full of stuff, it was surreal. I walked in. I was handed the keys by the lady in the front office, and I thought she would come in with me, and she didn’t. She was like, “You go.” She just scooted me on my way, and the door shut behind me. And I immediately just fell on the ground and cried, because I knew I wasn’t going to have to fight that night. I knew that my kids weren’t going to have to hear the yelling and the screaming that night. I knew I was safe. To say blank slate is an understatement. It was just an apartment. No furniture. No dishes. It was just me.
I signed the lease. I just remember walking in there and the smell, I still remember the smell of when I first walked in and that it was like this smell of like fresh paint. That’s how it smelled, like fresh paint. And for years, walking through the hallways at Warren Village, every time I smelled that fresh paint smell, I would cry because it reminded me of the freedom I knew I had the day when I moved in in July of 2017. It would always take me back to the day my back hit the wall, and I just knew it was a surrendering moment. I just threw my hands up and I was like, I’m going to trust the process. I’m going to lean on all that they’re offering me. And I’m going to keep moving forward. My life does not have to stop here, and it won’t.
What were some of the first resources and supports you tapped into?
I remember going downstairs to talk to my Family Advocate, and the first thing we discussed, it was school. I was already in school. I was working on an HR Associate’s degree at that time. And I was really close to finishing it up. And so that was our main discussion. I remember telling my Family Advocate that once I get this Associate’s degree, I’ll be moving out. I won’t be here for very long. I’m going to get this Associate’s, and I’m going to go on my way because this is just temporary. And my plan was to move out of here into a one-bedroom apartment with two kids, and figure it out from there.
I had a two-bedroom apartment here., and when I moved in, my kids were 1 and 3. So that was my plan, to leave here, go to a one-bedroom apartment. I was like, alright, a one-bedroom is doable. But my goals were so incredibly low, because I felt like I was taking an ego hit every day being here. I went from being in college in New Orleans, getting pregnant, finishing up the semester, moving here, house on the golf course, and then Warren Village. It was like a slow ego death every day.
It was so hard. And you’re exposed to so many other people who are in so many other walks of their lives and in their own journeys. I was learning how to relate to those people. I came from it being just me, two kids, and their dad to coming over here with other women who would also try to find their way. It was hard. It was hard knowing what they were coming from as well. Many similar stories of abuse that were going on in their backgrounds. It felt good after I was able to realize that. Now I have a community. I’m not the only one with this story. They navigated it, got out of it. There were women who were moving out of Warren Village when I moved in, and I realized that I’m in the perfect spot to be primed, not only for being here, but for what I want life to look like after. It even took me a while to get to that realization.
I think the first six months to a year of me living here, it was a blur. It was hard. I felt like I was going through, like, almost withdrawals of, gosh, maybe it was love addiction. like the validation you get out in the world from being partnered up; the validation you get from driving a Mercedes; the validation you get from living in a house on a golf course. It was withdrawals from all that validation. It took a while for me to even tell people I lived here. It took more than a year. I just remember being so embarrassed and being so terrified of what people would think of me. And it took me really tapping into the essence of what it meant to truly just surrender, the essence of what it truly meant to be a woman who says, “I know that I’m here, but I’m not going to stay here forever.” There was such a level of clarity that came with me asking myself what is it that I want to happen after Warren Village that I didn’t have before.
I finally got connected with therapist. And it took a lot of therapy for me to see the beauty in this place. The first six months to a year, I walked around with my head down. I don’t think I knew how to process it all. And so, once I connected with a therapist who worked for me, I’m thinking she’s gonna help me process. She was like, “Oh, no, we got to start at the beginning. We have to go back, back, back where it all started.” And that’s what we did. And so the more I started to unravel the dysfunction, the more I started to unravel the generational trauma, the financial trauma, all of it, the more it gave me just a whole new page to write on. Like on one side of the page, it said domestic violence survivor, and on the other side of the page, it said thriving single parent, Bachelor’s degree from Regis.
When did you start to think about more than just your HR associate’s degree and how did that happen? When did you start thinking about the Reba you could be that you’d never really thought about before?
I was guarded. I was too attached to the version of who I was before I came here. The money that he was making that sustained the lifestyle that we had, I was way too attached to that. It took a lot of surrendering for me to realize that that was no longer my reality. Not saying that I couldn’t recreate it, this time for myself with myself, but it took a while for me to drop that. Also, the reality of having an Associate’s degree going out on this market to even secure a one-bedroom apartment, that was 2017 when I moved in. I mean, prices were going up overnight for rent, for mortgages. It was just not attainable anymore. When I moved in, that could have been a good dream to have of moving out of here and getting an apartment with just an Associate’s degree. That was not the reality after I was here for about a year. Me just being privy to the market and having the financial support that I had from, I think it was called Financial You, at one point Warren Village had that program going on, and just taking a really good look at financially what it really took to go out here and live. An Associate’s degree was not going to cut it.
So then I started going back to my Family Advocate and asking about doing a Bachelor’s degree. The goal was always a Bachelor’s degree, it just wasn’t the goal for me to finish it here. I was trying to finish it in that one-bedroom apartment with my kids. I was like, you know what, since I’m here, let’s just talk about what a Bachelor’s degree looks like while I’m here. And I had already done two semesters at an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in New Orleans. And the prestige of that school Is really what set the tone for what I felt like I wanted to walk into for the next chapter of my educational career, which is why I chose Regis University. They’re a Jesuit university. And I was so on board with their values of spirituality and focusing on the whole person. Although I didn’t have the language to say that my identity was fragmented in that moment, it was something about reading those Jesuit values that made me finally see myself as a whole divine being outside of the trauma.
Then, once you let those values in and let them touch your soul, you realize that love. And once it goes beyond the human experience and that we are all so worthy of having an amazing life and we all deserve it simply because we exist, there is no amount of who your ancestors are that should hold anyone hostage to living a good life. And those values really helped me tap into that compassion, not only for others, but for myself. I just I had so much contempt for what I had been through. I had so much contempt for my parents for allowing me to go through that. That was a level of forgiveness that I tapped into. And I don’t mean like that toxic forgiveness. I mean the had they known better, they would have done better. I was not the same, just even navigating through Regis.
But before I got to Regis, I was at the Community College of Denver making my way through there with all of the support that they had to offer. And that’s where I eventually did that project funded by NASA. It was at the Community College of Denver, and I just remember my astronomy teacher asking me if I wanted to be part of it. She said, “I think you’d be a great addition”, and I’m trying to talk her out of her believing that I’m a good addition to this team. I’m like, “I’m not majoring in engineering. I’m A project management major.” I had switched my major from human resources to project management. HR was just not a good fit for me. So I’m telling her, “I’m a project management major”, and she goes, “We need a project manager.” And I was like, “OK. It’ll look good on my resume. Let’s do it.”
I went in there with the belief that this is going to help me land a really good job. What I was not expecting was how much that project stretched me into the woman who I am today. I was learning engineering principles. I was learning how to code. I was learning how to work. Everyone in the room was an engineering major, except for me, and they just took me under their wing. And a lot of the Students who are in that room at the time, they were going on to go to the School of Mines. I mean top notch programs. And here I am going on to a top notch business program at Regis and that just speaks to the testament of The community that the Community College of Denver has when it comes to getting involved with your peers and the levels you can go to. these were not by any means people who were like just here because my family expects me to be here. No, they were there because they had a vision of themselves that was greater than where they were. And walking into that room, you could just feel it, The Energetics of it. it was greatness in that room.
And so I met some amazing people, and they mentored me. They tutored me. And I grew so much from that. That was also the hardest time period of me being at Warren Village as well. luckily I had Kaycie as my Family Advocate, and she was so instrumental in helping me secure daycare for my kids. There were times I had to be on site at 5:00 am. The Learning Center didn’t even open its doors until what, 7 am? I had so much support in making sure I showed up to our deployment when we eventually sent that self-contained payload into space. There was no way I would have been able to navigate all of that on my own.
And during that time, My immune system was so incredibly taxed. We were so sick. I remember my kids being diagnosed with hand, foot and mouth disease twice, not even at the same time. They were just passing it back and forth. And pink eye, passing it back and forth. How I managed to avoid all of that is still beyond me. And then their dad had a heart attack, and he ended up in ICU for over a week. And it was something about being faced with his mortality, me having two small kids still. It still brings tears to my eyes. Even though we weren’t on good terms, it’s still their dad. And so I felt for them. What this could mean if he didn’t pull through. We met the sweetest nurse. I remember going to go and see him, and he was in ICU, and at the time I didn’t know that kids weren’t allowed in ICU rooms. And this nurse snuck us in through the back door. She allowed us in, and he just laid there. And none of us knew what that meant, even tomorrow, not even knowing he’s gonna be there tomorrow.
Not only did I have to put my feelings aside for all that we have been through, my family had to put their feelings aside of him. I have seven brothers. They were not on good terms with him whatsoever, and I remember calling my brother while I was in the ICU with tears in my eyes. And he said, “Put me on speaker phone and even though he’s unconscious, we’re all going to pray for him.” And to have my family see beyond that situation, whether or not he deserved it, because he didn’t, after all, he put me through. But my kids saw forgiveness in action. My kids saw grace. He did pull through. He eventually ended up being released from ICU, probably about a week later.
We were moving into the end of 2018. And then I had the reality of a breakup going on. There were just so many things that I felt like were being stripped away from my identity. And I was having to navigate all of that. It was hard, so here I was showing up for what felt like the biggest moment of my educational career doing this project funded by NASA and having to navigate a breakup. Their dad was in the ICU. The kids were constantly passing sicknesses. They were petri dishes during that time. They were so sick all the time.
Then I ended up being diagnosed with… I know we don’t call it this now because it’s not honoring to a whole nation of people, but at the time I was diagnosed with what they were calling the Chinese swine flu. That was in 2018. I was put into an isolation room with my kids. I was so sick, and at first I thought it was the flu, so I was like, just sit it out here. I’ll do whatever I have to do for this project at home. And I remember getting up one day and my heart was beating so fast you could see my shirt going. And I was like, this isn’t normal. My fever was through the roof. I remember walking downstairs to get my kids out of the Learning Center, and we drove in to the hospital. And immediately they hospitalized me as soon as I walked in. And they were like, “Your heart rate is so high that this is dangerous to your health.” And all I could think about was, am I going to get out of here, and then the team that I had for that project.
And so I made a call while I was in the hospital, and I said “I think that I’m not going to come back to work on this project, like I’m so incredibly stressed. And I know that this is adding to the stress, even though we’ve gotten so many benefits out of this, and I’ve grown so much as a student and as a person because of this project. I don’t think I’m going to come back though. I have to focus on my health. I have to focus on my kids.” There was a guy by the name of Mark, and he was a team leader. And he said, “I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through right now. But if you leave now, You won’t get the story of seeing this through to completion, and this project is going to change your life.” He said, “We will put your part on hold. We’ll get other people to work on it with you when you get back, but you cannot walk away. You’re coming back out the hospital. You’ll be back.” I cried. That was the type of team I had. And I was their project manager and they were building me up. And I stayed in the hospital for a few nights, and it was so scary to see the doctors walk in in full-blown hazmat suits.
That whole time period, I look back on it now and I’m like, God, everything I went through, and I still didn’t give up. I came home recovered, and I was so happy to get back to that project. I was so happy to see my team. And we finally saw it through to completion, and we went out, drove many hours out to the middle of nowhere, and we sent our self-contained payload into the edge of space. And it came back down, and we got all the data collected and sent it off to the Space Consortium, and they analyzed all the data. It was so cool. And at community college. And so we got paid. We actually got checks in the mail for that project. And just to see the number of paths that everyone went on after that, I’m like if they could do it and I was in the room helping them do it, I can do this too. I was so incredibly Grateful to put That on my resume and officially apply for Regis.
There was no set path that any school in Denver, even Colorado, the whole state, had for me to enter into Regis. I was literally piece working everything at many different schools. I went from Community College of Denver to Metro State University. I met a teacher when I was at the Community College of Denver, and he just blew my mind with the way he taught this psychology class. And it was like a whole person approach. And I was like, whoa, so you mean humans aren’t just this and they’re not just that? it was the first time I had ever heard anyone speak like that. And then eventually, you know, he told me that he works at Regis. And I was like, this makes sense that this is your approach to teaching psychology. I followed that teacher from the Community College of Denver over to Metro State and took two more of his classes before I actually went to Regis. It was just the way they saw humans as whole and as pure. And we all have our stories to tell. It released me from my own stories and my own limitations.
Can you tell me a little bit about some of the things that your kids accessed while they were here?
The Learning Center was amazing. I would literally drop my kids off at school in my pajamas. The Learning Center and having access to all this support they offer, the emotional and mental support, was huge. We were coming from a domestic violence background. One of my biggest takeaways from just what got me and my kids here, it was not only the Learning Center, it was the environment that we were able to create in that apartment. There would be times where my kids would come in, I would pick them up, and there was such a level of comfort and such a level of safety that we had, they would just come in and lay on the floor, they weren’t even concerned about laying on the couch or in the bed. I didn’t know it then, and I didn’t have the words to say it then, but I was already resetting their nervous system. I was rewiring them genetically to heal from all that abuse that we had gone through. And that was my biggest take away from being at Warren Village. I knew that when we moved out, wherever we moved into, we had to carry the energy of this space with us. We had to. We had way too much peace.
I do distinctly remember this level of despair I felt. At one point I had this desperation of not knowing what was next shifting. It changed to if I show up, do the work, and if I continue to dream and visualize what I want in my future to be, I can do it. If I pull on all the resources they were offering, connecting me with DHA and connecting me to Financial U and all of those were paths to home ownership, helping me fix my credit. It took a lot of work to get there. I had no levels of financial literacy when I moved in. None. And that is a part of being a whole person and a whole woman out here in this world is taking responsibility for your finances and not just handing that over to someone else.
So the financial resources and just balancing it all and finally seeing myself as a woman who was worthy of an amazing life. I didn’t have that outlook on my life when I moved in. I no longer had to run a lot of those maladaptive behaviors that I moved in with that I finally got help for in therapy. And the more I came back to this apartment and just rested in this peace that we had created, the more I started surrounding myself with others at Warren Village who wanted just as more for their lives and lives for their kids, the more I started to see that this is what a village is. I had a whole tribe within this village. I had a sisterhood. I had women who are holding me in such high regards to my vision and in respect to what I was doing every day.
I do a lot of work with women outside of here. And one thing that I know to be true is that people don’t rise to their visions, they fall to the low of their habits. It took me creating new habits. It took me waking up and doing something different every day and partnering with my Family Advocate and letting her know what I wanted out of this.
So you graduated with your Bachelor’s. Did you right away get a job?
No, I graduated during COVID. I graduated in the fall of 2020. I moved out of Warren Village in 2022. And of course, it felt like another setback. I’m like, I did all this hard work, and you tell me the world is on lockdown now and all these dreams I had of walking into this corporate career, it’s going to have to wait. And that’s what happened. It all had to wait. And during that time it really allowed me to just pour over my finances, like where I was at that moment and where I knew I could be and making plans on tangible steps to get there. I did eventually end up taking a part time job. And it was life changing, you know? My employer was just like, “Yeah bring your kids to work with you.” It was at a home health care agency out of all places. I had no healthcare experience. He hired me in to wear all the hats, the accounting, the trainings, all of it. And the home healthcare industry boomed during COVID because everybody was at home, and had no choice but to be. And so I was hired in lickety split. And although I was like another ego death, here I am making $15.00 an hour with a Bachelor’s degree from Regis, with a NASA funded project on my resume. But I do get to bring my kids to work with me, and that was new for me. And I was happy to say I had a job.
Time went on. I was there for just a little bit, and I got into a car wreck. And the chiropractor I was seeing struck up conversation one day and asked me, “What is it that you do for work?” And I just remember telling him, “Oh, I graduated from Regis not that long ago. I have a Bachelor’s degree in project management. I have some engineering experience because of the NASA funding project.” And he goes, “I have a brother who works at Saunders.” I said, “What is Saunders?” And he goes, “They build stuff.” And I said “OK. OK.” He goes, “Let me give him a call, and I’ll get back to you at your next appointment” I said, “OK.” And I came in, he goes, “Give me your number. My brother will call you.” I was thinking to myself, they all say that. He’s not going to call. I want to say a week or two later, his brother reached out and it was life changing.
And I just remember walking into that Saunders Construction building and meeting with all those people. And the only engineering experience I had was through that NASA funded project. But I had a lot of project management experience. Then somebody was sitting at the table and they said, “You have healthcare experience.” And I said, “Yeah, you know, I am working for a health agency.” They said, “We have a whole unit where we build hospitals. Your healthcare experience has prepared you. Do you want to build hospitals?” And I was just so shocked how everything just came together. You would have thought that there was a book somewhere, and I was reading out the book, and I was just following the steps in the book. That’s what you would have thought with the way that conversation went and the people they introduced me to afterwards. And it happened to be 10 minutes away from Warren Village. It all leads up to something, something amazing, too.
It was a major comeback. What they were offering me, they said let’s start out with an internship before we marry ourselves to you. I said OK, let’s do it. What he offered me pay wise during the internship per week is what I was bringing home for the whole month working at this home, healthcare agency. I remember not even being able to take it all in. I was like, I get paid that much for the month right now, and you can offer me that for the week, and that’s just the internship. Not even if they were to hire me on full time. And I walked out of there and sat in the car and I cried, because I knew my life would never look the same making that type of money ever again. I drove back here, and I met with my Family Advocate and I said, “Here’s the internship offer.” And she goes, “You don’t even qualify for government assistance anymore.”
Were you ever afraid that it was just going to all slip away? Or had you built up enough confidence in yourself that you were like, no I worked hard for this, I deserve this?
If I’m being honest, that came later. I thought that they were going to call me and say, “Actually we made a mistake.” That’s what I thought, because everything leading up to that was barely minimum wage jobs. And so every day leading up to the start date was pure anxiety. I truly did convince myself that they made a mistake and they would see. Because That’s how low my sense of self-worth still was in that moment. There’s no way you want me on your team. All I’ve done is a project funded by NASA, and all I’ve done is graduated from Regis University with a Bachelor’s in project management and navigate Warren Village with two kids. And by that time I was doing speeches for Warren Village, and to me that still was not enough. What I was really telling myself is that I wasn’t enough. Every day, up until I walked in there, it was unreal.
And then the day I got there, I remember the manager at the time of that department, he looked at my resume and said, “Hey, your zip code, we do a lot of volunteer work in that area.” And I went home and I looked through my Warren Village emails, and I typed in Saunders, and sure enough, Saunders was a regular here at Warren Village. There’s no way you can make this up. Then the next week, he goes, “Hey, I remembered we do a lot of volunteer work at Warren Village. We’re actually going to do a family night there in about a week, do you want to come with us?” I’m an intern, newly hired and then everybody was like, “Yeah, we do family nights out there.” And I just remember, once again, just being like this embarrassment of, these people are making money, they were telling me about the houses they live in and the cars they drive. I was still very much driving a car that I wasn’t very proud of, and and I thought to myself, you all give back on the daily to the place that I live in, and you’re asking me to come? And so I told him, I said, “Jason, give me some time to think about it. I think my schedule may be full that night, but I’m going to get back to you” because I just didn’t have the courage to say at the time to say I actually live there. I live in this place that you go and volunteer at. It was so hard. And that day, I purposely stayed late because I knew Jason was going to stay late. And as soon as the office cleared out I stood up and said, “I actually live at Warren Village.” And the look on his face, he said, “But your resume.” I said, “I know. I did all that while I was there. I’m still there. I live there.” And he goes, “You did tell me you had two kids. I just never thought. I would have never imagined.”
In that moment it’s like I found this like immediate strength. I was like, I actually do live there. It went from, hey, I live there [quietly] to actually I do live there. You want to see some of the speeches I’ve done with the mayor? You want to see some of the housing conferences I’ve gone to and I’ve been able to speak and tell my story on what this level of housing has done for me and my kids? You want to see the pictures from the project where we sent that self-contained payload into space? It was like this immediate shift into pride. And it was beautiful too. And it was like I started wearing Warren villages like this badge of honor moving forward. I was like, I do live there. I don’t know for how much longer now because I’m making too much money to live there, but I do live there.
When I got hired on, I want to say we were coming into the end of the year. I remember the next day he came back and he was like, “Hey, I went home and talked to my wife. And if you need anything, you or your kids, if you need anything, you give us a call.” And it just spoke to the power community, and the amount of grace that he had in his heart, and the type of people who show up here. I’m like these are the type of people. And I knew then as long as I’m here in this department with Jason, it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be OK, because in that moment he saw me fully. Like, here, Reba was standing in front of you now as a newly hired intern project engineer going out to work on some of the most prestigious hospitals. I remember they sent me up to Lafayette to work on a NICU that was going to be built on top of the roof and I was like, where do I even start? They literally trained me from the ground up to read blueprints, to read engineering studies, to speak with the city of Denver, the city of Lafayette on permits, on tearing down walls and reading panels to see how all the electrical is gonna work in the building. They trained me from the ground up.
I thought back to everything I had gone through and had I walked away, I wouldn’t be able to put that NASA funding project on my resume and say only completed half of it, it just wouldn’t have flew. It wouldn’t have got me in the door, wouldn’t have got me in the seats. And in that moment, I was so grateful to every person. I was grateful to Mark for picking up the phone and saying, “It’s meant to stretch you. This project is going to change your life.” I was grateful for being hired on as a person who wears all the hats in that home health care company. I was grateful for the chiropractor. I was grateful for the night I sat up in that bed and said, I think Warren Village is it. In that moment, everything made sense. And it took years for it to make sense. It finally did. It finally did, and I was so proud of myself. I was a brand-new woman. I was finally making money. They cut me off food stamps. I was being cut off of everything left and right. I had a letter on my door in Warren Village being like hey you reached the end of your turn girl. It’s time for you to go.
I was, I’m not even gonna lie, a little bit afraid because what I wanted to do, I didn’t see anyone before me in my family do. I wanted to own a home. I wanted to travel the world with my kids. I wanted to give them so much. And I knew that I had been prepared for it finally. It went beyond Just me dreaming about taking them on international trips. It went beyond just dreaming about owning a home, because by that time I was already working with housing counselors at DHA.
I was surrounded by all of these people at Saunders who already owned a home. And then there was this one guy who was working in the process of buying his third home. I remember him sitting me down and he gave me this spreadsheet and he said, “I know you’re about to go out on the market and look for your first home. This spreadsheet is for when you own multiple homes. And I want you to keep it. And I want you to listen to this podcast” I’ll never forget. This is what they do, buy homes. They create generational wealth with these homes. They change their lives and the lives of all their kids and their kids’ kids forever. At the time, it didn’t seem that far-fetched after I analyzed everything I had gone through here at Warren Village. I was like of course I can own more than one home. Of course I can tap into the power of real estate. There was nothing I felt like I could not do by the time I was at those tables and having those conversations, nothing. So I welcomed it from him and I started tuning into the podcast.
When I finally did leave to purchase my first home when I was moving out of Warren Village, there was a lady by the name of Mercy Tucker. She was the executive director, still is, of the ICU Project to give $10,000 grants. Jasmine White, who used to work here, she told me about it. Me and my kids were on our way out the door to Costa Rica and I said, “I’ll look it up”, and I did. I applied, got some wi-fi from a cafe in Costa Rica, up in the mountains. And the next day I went back to that cafe and she had sent me an email. She said “Can we talk? Can you give me a call now?” And I did. And she said, “This whole program is focused on women taking ownership of their lives through real estate, through home ownership.” And I thought, how does this keep happening? And she was like, “You qualify for the $10,000, for the grant. And in addition to that, what do you want your life to look like after?” And I was just so overwhelmed with joy. So overwhelmed with all things good. I knew it was gonna feel good, I just didn’t know it would feel this good. It was like I felt it in my bones. We talked and we did all the things. I was thrilled for the $10,000. Then I had gotten a call from the real estate agent and the offer was accepted and they wanted to close on the home on my birthday while I was in Costa Rica. And when I tell you I sat on that beach and I went into that resort and I said, “Can I use you all’s computer?”, and I signed my initial closing documents while I was in Costa Rica for my home. So when we came back to Warren Village, we were homeowners. All we had to do was pack and get a U-Haul and move out. That was my whole homeownership story of how much of it unfolded in Costa Rica. we were ready. Not only was it happening, but we were ready for it because we had did so much prep work.
So tell me a little bit about now. you are doing your own thing as an entrepreneur.
So I eventually founded Rediscovering You. It is a healing business for women, and right now what I am doing is I teach a lot of classes and workshops to really help women see the divinity within their soul. And my signature course program, it’s an eight-week program called Rediscovering You. I help women break the ties to codependency so that they can disconnect from the trauma by reconnecting to their wholeness. It’s going really well.
I’m also doing speeches. I’ve always loved public speaking. I finally tapped into it when I was here. My very first public speaking class was in this room [at Warren Village] with Ethan Hemming. And I was like, what is he see in me to invite me to a public speaking class? But it was right here in this room with Ethan, and Tracy Graf was right here at the front. She taught that very first public speaking class that I ever attended. I was just so fired up and ready, and she gave me so many tools, and I still used them to this day. Now I use my voice and my story to help other women see that it’s possible to do this type of work with two kids as a single parent in America. And it speaks to the testament of all the support I’ve had in order to get here. Warren Village, Community College of Denver, Regis University, all of it. Those were supports, those were pathways to the woman I am today.
So tell me about this Miss Mile High City. How did it happen? What does the title mean?
So back in August 2024, I received an invite to an event on behalf of The ICU Project, and it was for me to give a speech like I always do. I show up, I tell my story, and the people who are in attendance, they give to the cause of helping a woman take ownership of her life. And while I was there, someone asked me if I could model dresses, that are eventually going to go to teenagers to help them prepare for prom and homecoming, and they will be free to them. But the people here are going to pay for them with the auction money and then eventually the money would go to The ICU Project. I got all glammed up, did the speech. And it was my turn to model the dress, and it was so much fun. When I was done, one of the ladies walked up to me and she said, “Hey, I’m a part of the Colorado pageant, and I wanted to know if you have ever done any pageant work?” And I said, “No”. And she said, “Well, call this number so that we can get you started if you’re interested.” And I was like, “OK.” And I just remember going home and letting it sit there, and being like girl, I’m no pageant model. I’m not… heels, what? No, not me. And the more I thought about, and the more I looked into pageant work, I saw that it’s so much more than getting glammed up. These women are backing causes that impact our lives every day, and if all I get to do is walk on that stage in a beautiful dress and say I’m here to support the cause of financial mobility and economic empowerment for women, oh, I’ve done more than my share of work.
So I signed up. I remember contacting her and she said, “I’ll e-mail you this application and then you send it back to me.”. Then, a few weeks later, she said, “Congratulations. We selected you as Miss Mile High City.” I was for certain that they would say you only done one modeling gig and it was for charity. What she did say was, “We love your story. We love the impact you’ve already had. We love everything you’ve overcome. You know, how you go from a struggling single parent, two kids to building hospitals owning your own coaching business. And you did it. And that’s such a testament to what’s possible for others. We would love to have you represent Denver on the stage in April 2025.”
So now you’re representing Denver for the title of Miss Colorado. Then whoever wins Miss Colorado goes to…
Miss USA. So yeah, there’s a few tiers to all this. I talk to my family about this all the time. They’re like, so are you in it to win it? I’m like, you know, I’m in it to shine the light on women in their power, in their divinity. I’m in it to let other women know that you’re not too young, You’re not too old, You don’t have too many kids, You don’t have not enough kids. Right where you are, you’re enough. That’s why I’m in it to win it.
Between now and April, I’m learning how to walk in heels. Learning how to do a cat walk in heels. I’m excited about all of it. You have to really know what you know in order to get up there on that stage and speak about the causes that you’re supporting. I’m excited about all the work I have done in Denver to support this cause of economic empowerment and financial mobility for women. I’m excited about how much more work I’m going to do in order to really get the depth of that in my bones. I do have so much of it already in my bones because my whole story is that. My whole story is waking up every day and rewriting my own financial story and rewiring my brain in order to receive, in order to create. That’s my whole story. And so I’m excited to be able to stand for that on a much bigger stage now and to be given the platform in order to speak about that. And that’s what’s important to my heart.
