LYNN — This Mother’s Day, three women in Lynn are celebrating strength — and recovery — through their own personal journeys to motherhood.

Kellie McCann is a mother of two living inside the Lotus House, a transitional residence by Bridgewell, a nonprofit based in Peabody that supports women and children who are in recovery.

The Lotus House is a multi-story, 10 bedroom home on Rogers Avenue. It’s there that McCann holds her 6-month-old daughter Sadie while telling the story of how she lost her own mother when she was 19 years old to brain cancer after her three-year long fight. It was after her passing that McCann, who had experimented when she was younger and struggled with her alcoholic, controlling father, began to struggle with her addiction.

“It went downhill. It got really dark, very fast,” McCann said.

She got pregnant with her son, Shane, while living in Florida for a year before moving back to Massachusetts, but struggled to support him and provide a stable place to live. After spending most of his childhood in recovery, McCann ended up relapsing and losing Shane to the Massachusetts Department of Children & Families.

“I couldn’t support him. I couldn’t support myself, and I couldn’t keep a roof over our heads. It was hard, and I didn’t know that there was help out there from others at this time,” McCann said.

McCann sought help immediately after losing custody of Shane, who is now 6 years old. She’s been in treatment for nine months and had her daughter, Sadie, in October 2025. Together, the three of them live in the Lotus House, which McCann found out about through Bridgewell’s women’s program on Johnson Street after completing 30 days at the Recovery Centers of America. McCann moved into the Lotus House on March 23, 2025 and is grateful to have a place where she can raise her children.

“I spent so long struggling to know where I was gonna lay my head at night and just not having good stability or peace of mind,” she said. “It means so much to me knowing that I have a safe place for my kids to be here.”

The Lotus House offers a sense of community for the mothers, including Amanda Ayres, a Falmouth native who has been in treatment for two years and is the mother of two children: her 2-year-old son, Cameron, and an older daughter who will turn 14 in July. Despite growing up in a two parent household in Cape Cod, Ayres believes she’s struggled with the disease since her childhood.

“Looking back, I think I had this disease long before I really knew it was a disease, just like the mental obsession component of it. I didn’t really feel like I liked who I was as a child,” Ayres said.

She started partying when she was around 13 to 14 years old, and then, at 19 years old, she lost her own mother to breast cancer. She experimented with harder drugs while hostessing and waitressing at a restaurant on the Cape, and, at 22, her father pushed her to go to treatment.

Ayres moved to Fall River with her daughter’s father and was clean when she was born in 2012. Shortly after, though, she started using again and went into treatment while he took custody of their daughter. They now live in Pembroke.

As for Ayres, her addiction spiraled into on and off again periods of sobriety and then relapsing. She was clean when she met Cameron’s dad and stayed sober throughout her entire pregnancy, and at one point, they all lived together in a family program in Framingham. Cameron was 1 week old when his father began leaving for long periods of time to party — and as result, Ayres and Cameron could no longer stay in the program. It was after the three of them moved into a hotel room that Ayres relapsed.

“I picked up for two days, and it was the worst two days of my life,” said Ayres, who immediately went to the HOPE Clinic out of Mass General seeking help. Given that they’re mandated reporters, Ayres lost Cameron to the DCF when he was around 2 months old on April 19, 2024.

She went into treatment a week later on April 30 while Cameron was placed into foster care with an “amazing couple” that lived in the Bedford area. Four months later, she got custody of Cameron back and sought recovery support at the Hart House, which then connected her with the Lotus House program.

Ayres has been living at the Lotus House since last June and has found the support there to have been transformative for both her and Cameron’s lives. She’s currently studying at North Shore Community College and even made the dean’s list her first semester. This summer, she plans on enrolling in their nursing program.

“It’s really cool to see myself grow as a person, while also watching Cameron grow up,” Ayres said while Cameron played with his firetrucks on the rug nearby. “And my daughter has been blessed that she’s had a father that’s been very healthy and supportive. I had to be that for Cameron, and now I get to be it for her, too.”

Cassandra Camcho, who goes by CJ, is the mother of four children, ages 16, 14, and 2, and lives at Project Hope on Johnson Street with her 11-week-old son, Legend, who is the only child that she has custody of right now.

Growing up in New Bedford, Camcho said she had a “good life” and felt loved and supported by her parents throughout her childhood. Still, addiction impacted her family: Her dad struggled with it and is currently in recovery, and her sister also passed away from addiction. The immense loss resulted in Camcho relapsing after being clean for five years; not long after, her mother passed away from kidney disease, too.

Prior to moving into transitional supportive housing, Camcho was serving time in prison and had to fight her lawyer hard to have her case be seen in recovery court.

It’s with the help of Bridgewell’s programs — which she described as “one of the best things that have happened” to her — that she’s been able to support Legend while focusing on her own recovery and well-being.

“I like to think I’m doing a great job,” Camcho said of her progress. “Motherhood means everything to me. I love waking up in the morning, and he’s just smiling at me. It makes me want to cry, even talking about it, like happy crying.”

It’s with a sense of purpose that all three of them have been able to find themselves again, as mothers and as women.

“I feel like motherhood gave me my most important purpose,” McCann said. “With all the loss I’ve experienced in my life, I didn’t really have the strength to fight for myself. So motherhood really gave me a lot of strength and a lot of motivation to care about myself.”