Teen Turns Life Around

By the time Krystal McMartin was 15, she had already lived a lifetime.

Now she hopes her experiences will help other young women escape the traps of addiction, teen pregnancy and poverty.

Raised in a home fuelled by alcoholic rage, McMartin was a heavy drinker by 14.

By 15 she had run away to Calgary to live with her 18-year-old boyfriend.

But instead of escaping the toxic atmosphere at home, McMartin simply brought it with her.

“I don’t know if I’d say I was an alcoholic, but I was getting really drunk every weekend and some weekdays,” she says. “Sometimes I’d just sleep through the whole day.”

It wasn’t long before she dropped out of school.

Then the ugly fights with her boyfriend started.

“It was the same thing I used to see at home when I was younger,” McMartin, now 19, says. “We were fighting all the time and it soon became abusive.”

McMartin’s entire world was knocked off its axis when she discovered she was pregnant.

Read the full story here: Teen Turns Life Around