Often when we talk about affordable housing, we speak of unacceptable choices people make when housing costs too much. Rent or groceries? Rent or the light bill? Rent or medicine?

Shameca was staring down the “rent or medicine” choice when she came to Our Towns Habitat. Diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, sarcoidosis, in 2005, Shameca takes a regime of medication to help keep the disease under control.

With continued hikes in her rent, Shameca could not afford to pay her bills and still buy her medicine—and skipping her medicine was simply not an option.

So, after living on her own since the age of 19, Shameca and her two children moved back in with her mom. By this time, she had already been accepted in to our homeownership program, and knew she was on her way to a home of her own.

“My mom has been with me all along this journey,” Shameca told us. “She has been out here every Saturday, even working on other people’s homes—she’s my rock.”

Shameca’s medical challenges have made that journey all the more challenging. Sarcoidosis starts in one organ—for Shameca it was her lungs—then begins attacking other organs. Shameca’s case is aggressive, and she has faced multiple surgeries, including cervical fusion and gallbladder surgery. She is now undergoing treatments she hopes will help her avoid surgery on her lower back.

Shameca is fiercely independent and used to taking care of others—she worked for 15 years as a home health CNA. Learning to accept help from others when she is not physically able to do things is not easy for her.

But she has learned to ask for help when she needs it, and she draws a beautiful analogy from her own physical struggles to describe her support network.

“I like to think of them as little individual pieces of my spine that hold me up when I can’t do it myself,” she said.

Many family members have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work to help her build her home. Her father, brother, sisters and even cousins have all volunteered to build.

When asked to pick her favorite part of building her home, Shameca said it was “everything—there wasn’t one thing that I didn’t like to do.” But for her, framing day, when she watched the walls of her home to up, was the day that made things real for her.

While Shameca is grateful that her mom took her family in, she is looking forward to regaining some of her independence with her new home—and building a stable foundation for her son and daughter.

Before her daughter Chanazia, 14, was even born, Shameca made a promise to her son Chad, 21, that one day they would have a house—a place where they can be comfortable, create new memories and that will always be theirs. Today, she fulfills that pledge.

Shameca’s home was generously sponsored by Publix Super Market Charities. Publix has donated $5.5 million to Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the Southeast, helping to build 60 new houses in 2017 for families in need of decent, affordable housing.

Additional financial support was provided by Well Fargo and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences’ Collegiate Challenge team.