LEWISTON – Seven years ago, Bobbie Hill found herself on welfare with two children and a third on the way.

Today, the 34-year-old works full time as a hospice nurse and part time for an eye surgeon, while raising three daughters.

“I went from food stamps and not having any money – I’d call my mother to borrow money for gas – to being completely self-sufficient and owning my own home,” she said. “I love working as a nurse. I can’t imagine doing anything different.”

She made the transition by not giving up.

As a senior at Lewiston High School she was planning to go to college.

“I got pregnant. I had to re-evaluate my life,” she said. “I felt like my dreams were shot.”

Her daughter was born in February. In March she was back in class, lugging her infant to the school’s day care, juggling studying with night feedings.

After graduation, she saw college as unachievable. She moved to Solon, worked for a white water rafting company and waitressed. Despite working she was poor.

“I had MaineCare and food stamps and all the things I never wanted,” she said. “That’s not how I wanted to bring a child into the world.”

Eventually she moved back to Lewiston, fell in love, married, and had a second child. She was a stay-at-home mother, no longer on welfare.

While pregnant with her third child, her world fell apart. Her husband confessed to committing a sex crime. Police told her he couldn’t be in the home or she’d lose her children.

“I divorced him,” she said. “He hasn’t had any contact with the children since.”

She was financially worse off than before. She said she remembers thinking, “What am I going to do? I’m pregnant with two children. No job. No education. No money. I said, ‘There has to be a way for me to go to school.'”

Looking for help, she started flipping through the phone book and searched online. Lewiston Housing Authority helped get her into an apartment. After giving birth she applied for college “and for every scholarship I could find.”

Accepted in the Parents as Scholars program with the Department of Health and Human Services, Hill also won multiple scholarships. One was a nursing scholarship that gave her a monthly stipend.

Earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing wasn’t easy.

She remembers working on papers until 2 in the morning “and being so tired. I kept thinking, ‘Two more years, and it’s going to be over and I’ll be a nurse.'”

In addition to raising her girls she helped care for her mother, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. When visiting her mother at the hospice house, Hill used to bring her homework. Her mother would give her “her two cents” from the patient’s point of view. “Those times were so wonderful,” she said.

In her senior year she had the chance to study in the Dominican Republic, but her mother was near death. Hill didn’t want to go. Her mother insisted she go. “She said, ‘You’ll never get this chance again. I promise you I’ll be here.'”

Hill went. She found the Dominican Republic “so poor. The poorest people in Lewiston-Auburn are richer than the richest people in the villages. They have dirt floors. Generations of families live in one room. They have Tylenol for cancer pain.”

While there, she received word she had to come home. Her mother was dying. Hill returned home in time; her mother was still talking.

“I got to say goodbye,” she said. Her mother congratulated her on her upcoming graduation.

Hill credits her parents with her getting through college. They instilled “the ability to get through all these trials I’ve been through. Other people turned to drugs and alcohol, but you have a choice. Give up or fight.”

To high school students or single parents who think they can’t go to college, Hill advises “not to ever say you can’t. There is help out there. There are resources. They’re not going to fall in your lap.”

It is tough going to college while raising children or working, she said.

“But it will pass,” Hill said. “There are bigger things on the other side.”