Share the Spirit: At the Bay Area Rescue Mission, a mother finds reasons to live

What makes Martina Lozano a survivor?

The 33-year-old graduate of the Bay Area Rescue Mission’s holistic, year-long recovery program asks that herself sometimes. A Native American, Lozano describes growing up in a loving but “dysfunctional” family In Oakland and Antioch. She was sexually assaulted as a child and began running away at age 11, landing in a dangerous mire of gangs, juvenile crime, abusive boyfriends and sex work. After giving birth to the first of her four children at age 15, she became addicted to drugs, lived at times in her truck and lost custody of her children.

Her life only got worse after her first boyfriend, a parolee and the father of three of her children, was murdered in Oakland in 2022. Several months later, another boyfriend shot her in the face with a flare