A group of teen mothers graduated yesterday proving their lives did not end with parenthood, but had just begun.

Graduate Michelle Looby, 18, admitted her world was turned upside down last year when she found out she was pregnant and would have to leave high school.

Miss Looby didn’t initially plan to keep the baby, but her mother, a Catholic, influenced her to do otherwise. She said: “It’s so easy to say your not going to have it, to say I’m not going to sacrifice my young life for a baby, but with my mother and her guidance... I did”.

The teen was determined to get her education and her hard work paid off yesterday when she graduated from the Teen Services Continuation School, alongside Allana Brown, Natricia Curtis, Crystal Swan, Terri Tear, Alshea White, Rhiannon Wilkinson and young men Jonathan Edness and Kacey E. Smith.

The Continuation School is an alternate educational program for school aged pregnant teens and teen mothers, which allows them to get a diploma while taking baby care and parenting classes. Though having a baby was planned by many of the graduates, Miss Looby admits her child, seven-month-old Zha-Lei, has motivated her to succeed and persevere in life.

She said: “It’s not the end of the world for me. Just because I have a baby doesn’t mean I won’t have a great future— I had plenty of people saying I won’t have a future.

“Having a child doesn’t mean my life is ending, it’s just beginning,” she said.

Miss Looby and the other graduates are coping with the help of their family and friends, but challenges and sacrifices have had to be made.

Young mother and aspiring accountant Alshea White,18, admitted it has been tough balancing school with her responsibilities as a single mother. She said: “It was very hard because when I was trying to do homework my daughter would cry or be hungry so I would have to stop my homework and tend to her. Or say she cried all night, I would turn around and go to school the next morning and be tired. It kind of slowed down my progress, but I knew I had to do it.”

Yet, there are rewards to being a mother explained 17-year-old Terri Tear, who has been forced her to grow up. “It’s made me more mature. It made me look at life different, just because I have somebody else to look out for now, somebody to put in front of me,” she said.

At the graduation ceremony, held at Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI), the graduates took the stage to sing and read prayers, poems and inspirational messages to family and friends.

Martha Dismont, the Executive Director at Family Services, agreed to speak at the ceremony and recited the Continuation School Moto while saying: “dreams are never destroyed by circumstances. “Dreams are born in the heart and mind, and only there can never die. Because, while the difficult takes time, the impossible just takes a little longer.

Mrs Dismount admitted she was inspired by the youth and said: “the Bermuda community is struggling today to find the good in society, particularly the good in our youth. You know it isn’t the good in the youth they need to find, the community needs to find good works, accomplishments and celebrate that. What makes what you have done so very special is that you made the choice to do it — and did it.”