Holding it together, breaking the pattern

At night, when most of her six children are finally asleep and the house grows quiet, Jessica Montalvo keeps moving.

There are dishes to wash, laundry to finish, homework waiting beside the glow of a laptop. Sometimes she steps outside to check the balance on the swimming pool she insisted on buying for her children because she wanted them to have a childhood that felt different from her own.

Then, sometime around 2 a.m., she finally rests. A few hours later, the cycle begins again. For Montalvo, survival has never really allowed the luxury of stopping.

“I want them to know that life is hard,” she said of her children. “But you just have to keep going. Don’t give up.”

That belief — stubborn, exhausting and deeply hopeful — sits at the center of her life.

It is why, at 46 years old, Montalvo works full time caring for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities while attending New Mexico State University full time pursuing a degree in Human Development and Family Science. It is why she balances classes, parenting, chronic illness, financial instability and a household of eight people while still talking about the future as though it remains wide open.

And it is why Soroptimist International of Las Cruces selected her as one of this year’s Live Your Dream Award recipients.

“My children deserve to see their mother reach her goals,” Montalvo wrote in her scholarship application, “and I want them to learn that education is powerful and that dreams are worth pursuing, no matter the obstacles.”

Obstacles have followed her for most of her life.

Montalvo’s story stretches from South Texas to Roswell, from Kansas to Houston and eventually to Las Cruces, carried by generations of instability that began long before she was born. Her grandmother abandoned 11 of her 12 children. Years later, Montalvo’s own mother left when Jessica was 14, moving to the Middle East with her new husband. By then, Montalvo was already helping raise her younger siblings.

At 17, after dropping out of school, she enrolled herself in Job Corps, earned her GED and became a certified nursing assistant. She lived alone in Kansas before eventually returning to Texas, where she worked a series of demanding jobs — CNA, EMT, phlebotomist, truck driver, landfill supervisor — while raising children and trying to build stability on her own.

What followed instead was years of emotional abuse inside a marriage that slowly dismantled her confidence. Her husband isolated her from family, controlled finances and repeatedly convinced her she was incapable of succeeding on her own.

“He told me so many times, ‘Why would you want to go back to school? You’re dumb. You’re a box of rocks,’” Montalvo recalled. “After a while, listening to somebody constantly, you start to believe it.”

When he finally left during the first week of the COVID shutdown, he took the family’s money, phones, vehicles and food with him. Montalvo suddenly found herself alone with four children in Roswell during one of the most uncertain moments in modern history — no childcare, no school, no income and no clear way forward.

But in the wreckage of that moment, something unexpected happened.

Freedom. For the first time in years, Montalvo could make decisions for herself.

She underwent long-delayed medical procedures, including a hysterectomy after serious health complications. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with lupus, along with PTSD, clinical depression and severe anxiety tied to years of trauma.

Oddly, she remembers the diagnosis bringing relief.

“At least now we know,” she recalled telling her doctor. “Now we can find the cure.”

Then she went back to school. At first, she planned to pursue nursing. But her own experiences gradually pulled her elsewhere. She realized she wanted to understand not only physical health, but emotional survival, the invisible ways trauma shapes families, children and entire lives.

Today, Montalvo plans to become a family and marriage counselor specializing in helping parents navigate trauma, depression and emotional hardship.

“Nobody knows people’s emotions better than a person who’s been there,” she said.

Her studies have become deeply personal.

“Your mental health will affect how you treat your kids,” she said. “If you’re depressed, your children will get neglected. If you have severe anxiety, your children will feel the anxiety.”

She wants to interrupt those cycles. Not only for clients someday, but for her own family now. That determination can be seen everywhere inside her crowded Las Cruces home.

Her 18-year-old son works two jobs and cooks dinner for the family many nights while she works evening shifts. Her daughter, despite being deeply introverted and diagnosed with Asperger’s, recently announced plans to attend college in Portland — a decision that both terrifies and fills Montalvo with pride.

“She told me, ‘I’ll pick myself up like you did,’” Montalvo said, her voice breaking slightly at the memory. “And I was just like, ‘Oh. Okay.’”

The family still struggles financially. She and her partner, Dan, who collectively share 10 children, six of whom live in their home, recently went nearly six months without a working vehicle. Utility shutoff notices remain a reality. Montalvo walks a constant tightrope between mortgage payments, tuition costs, medical problems and the needs of six children living under one roof.

Yet she continues forward with almost relentless momentum. Part of that resilience comes from refusing to accept the limitations she once inherited.

“We come from a learned environment,” she said. “And I don’t want to be stuck right there. I may only move up one level, but maybe my kids won’t stay stuck there.”

That idea, that one generation can absorb enough hardship to make life lighter for the next, may be the truest definition of what the Live Your Dream Award represents.

The scholarship program through Soroptimist International of Las Cruces supports women who serve as the primary providers for their families while pursuing educational goals. The awards help cover not only tuition, but also childcare, transportation and emergency expenses that often derail students trying to rebuild their lives.

For Montalvo, the recognition felt almost surreal.

“I was surprised when I got the call,” she admitted. “Even more surprised that I got first place.”

But perhaps nobody should have been surprised.

After all, Jessica Montalvo has been carrying impossible things for most of her life. The remarkable part is not that she struggled. It is that she kept going anyway.