Homeless Teen Mom to Army Veteran to Founder | Madeline Martinez on REAL Mentors Podcast 99 EP

Madeline Martinez was a teenage mother living in the New York City shelter system before she was old enough to graduate high school. She got her GED the same year she would have walked across that stage, enrolled in college and kept moving. Then life pulled her back under.What followed was fourteen years of addiction, an $800 a day habit, sex work, evictions, shelter system violations and a morning she woke up at 108 pounds with no shoes, people crossing the street to avoid her, and two kids she had somehow never lost custody of. That last part is what saved her.She joined the Army to escape the cycle, built a life in Arizona, watched it fall apart again and finally hit a bottom so complete there was nowhere left to go but up. She came out the other side with one mission, to make sure nobody else goes through it alone.Today Madeline is the founder of Boots Underground, an organization born from her own hunger and heartbreak, dedicated to serving veterans, single mothers and people fighting their way out of systems that were never designed to help them win.This Episode Explores:✅ Growing up in the Bronx and entering the shelter system as a single teenage mother✅ Getting her GED the year she would have graduated and starting college at LaGuardia✅ Joining the New York Army to escape a cycle she did not know how to break any other way✅ Leaving her baby behind to go into service and what that cost her✅ An $800 a day addiction and what it took to feed it✅ Hitting rock bottom at 108 pounds with no shoes and people crossing the street to avoid her✅ Never losing custody of her kids throughout fourteen years of active addiction✅ Why she refuses to judge anyone because you never know what road they walked✅ What finally made her stop and how she rebuilt from absolute zero✅ Founding Boots Underground and turning her pain into a platform that serves others🔗 Connect with Madeline MartinezInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/alwysmaddi3/Boots Underground: https://www.instagram.com/bootsonground_nyc/Follow REAL Mentors PodcastInstagram: https://instagram.com/realmentorspodcastHost Sean Martin: https://instagram.com/theseanmartin