Cancer job loss & abuse: Our story
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This is something of a last resort for me. What my mother & I have been experiencing for the last couple of years is something that not even close friends or certain family members know the full arc of. I'm doing this so that if I'm even mildly successful, I can try to dig my mother (who has been nothing but kind & forgiving to everyone in her life) out of this struggle.
I am nearly twenty years old and I graduated high school in 2015. Immediately after graduation, my mother & I moved across the country to California (where we are originally from) to be closer to family but mostly to move in with her boyfriend that she had been seeing for a couple of years before that. It's possible we may have not been able to make rent on her pay alone in California. We lived a mostly comfortable life in our old apartment but we chose to build on this propsective relationship with this seemingly sweet man. One thing that I now know about abusers is that they present this family man facade to everyone around them who they don't abuse because it makes their actions seem less believable. When reaching out to his family, they refused to believe us and only offered to keep us in their prayers at best. We withheld this information from our own family for the longest time. On many days, he would verbally abuse us and emotionally abuse us by taunting my mother, running us out of our own house, and yelling at us about any trivial thing. He would grow increasingly angrier that we used his things or were in his space (things/places that were open to all of us like the living room or the television or that were even purchased by my mother). He'd yell at my mother while she was trying to do her job (that she did at home). Chaotic episodes became commonplace, in which he would throw our belongings around and nearly threw out old momentos of my childhood because he was jealous of the close relationship I had with my mother. He never understood what we have but I was an only child raised by a single mother. In order to carry out his anger, he would find ways to stop us from communicating & helping each other out with regular tasks such as going grocery shopping together. As time went on, we began plotting escapes and how we would find our way out. Then after a couple of turbulent months, he would be this thoughtful person who would help out with finances & even become personable at times. It was hard to take help from an abuser knowing that in time, he'd likely throw it back in our faces (which he did). This will become important later.
Fast forward through a lot of abuse & plateaus, my therapist told me that his actions demonstrate traits of someone with borderline personality disorder. My mother's boyfriend agreed to go to therapy with her to air out these problems yet he never sought treatment.
January 2017 was when our foundation was rocked to its core. The first day of the year, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Two weeks later, my mother's job of nearly twenty-five years "laid her off" for being a whistleblower when she had been praised her whole career for being consistently one of the best employees there. It was her livelihood for so long and throughout my entire life. Immediately, her boyfriend stepped into a supportive role. With his history of abuse, my mother & I still managed to sing his praises to our family members who were much more reluctant about taking his help. We've had to travel between California & Salt Lake City, UT to come take care of my grandmother while she goes through the rounds of chemotherapy. We've spent lots of money on airfare & transportation as well as the incoming costs of cancer treatment. In an attempt to ease certain financial pressures, my mother & I have tried to convince my grandmother to move in with us so we can always be around when she's in need.
In just this last week, this man went back to his old ways and found a way to pick a fight over trivial things again while we're in Salt Lake City already stressing over helping out and the day to day worries of taking care of someone suffering from cancer. We asked him to take care of the dog while we're out here which is actually a pretty low-maintaince task for our old-ish dog. He began yelling about how I must return home to take care of "my" responsibility and how I'm not doing anything but hanging out over here. Eventually, this fight lead up to him putting us in a predicament where he was essentially kicking us out of the house to "stay where we are". If we return, which we will have to, we are under his rule again where he enforces these chauvinist views of his about how my mother should know her place and I need to man up and meet my responsibilities (his actual words). Anybody who's ever had a family member with cancer or serious illness probably knows how much it hurts to watch someone you love be so helpless and can hopefully relate and understand where I'm coming from and why all of that extra pressure is just too much to deal with for two people. I can only do so much with my part-time job while attending college to help out but I may just lose that job I've had for a year if I end up staying out here.
One last thing, I will be attaching my twitter & instagram below because I do want people to know my story is real but I want to help preserve the identify of my family. If you donate to my campaign, your money will go towards financing our move as well as my grandmother's cancer treatments. I've never been comfortable with the idea of asking for money before and my family has no idea that I'm doing this, but the kind of things I've seen on these crowdfunding websites has made me believe in the kindness & generosity of people.
P.S. The amount stated in my goal is a rough guesstimate. If I am so lucky to be able to exceed my goal or not even need the total amount I receive, I want to be able to donate the leftover proceeds to charities that help domestic violence victims, victims of child abuse, and also cancer research. I'd love if someone could recommend charities under these categories that you trust.
Thank you,
Ian Winstanley

Twitter
Instagram
I am nearly twenty years old and I graduated high school in 2015. Immediately after graduation, my mother & I moved across the country to California (where we are originally from) to be closer to family but mostly to move in with her boyfriend that she had been seeing for a couple of years before that. It's possible we may have not been able to make rent on her pay alone in California. We lived a mostly comfortable life in our old apartment but we chose to build on this propsective relationship with this seemingly sweet man. One thing that I now know about abusers is that they present this family man facade to everyone around them who they don't abuse because it makes their actions seem less believable. When reaching out to his family, they refused to believe us and only offered to keep us in their prayers at best. We withheld this information from our own family for the longest time. On many days, he would verbally abuse us and emotionally abuse us by taunting my mother, running us out of our own house, and yelling at us about any trivial thing. He would grow increasingly angrier that we used his things or were in his space (things/places that were open to all of us like the living room or the television or that were even purchased by my mother). He'd yell at my mother while she was trying to do her job (that she did at home). Chaotic episodes became commonplace, in which he would throw our belongings around and nearly threw out old momentos of my childhood because he was jealous of the close relationship I had with my mother. He never understood what we have but I was an only child raised by a single mother. In order to carry out his anger, he would find ways to stop us from communicating & helping each other out with regular tasks such as going grocery shopping together. As time went on, we began plotting escapes and how we would find our way out. Then after a couple of turbulent months, he would be this thoughtful person who would help out with finances & even become personable at times. It was hard to take help from an abuser knowing that in time, he'd likely throw it back in our faces (which he did). This will become important later.
Fast forward through a lot of abuse & plateaus, my therapist told me that his actions demonstrate traits of someone with borderline personality disorder. My mother's boyfriend agreed to go to therapy with her to air out these problems yet he never sought treatment.
January 2017 was when our foundation was rocked to its core. The first day of the year, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Two weeks later, my mother's job of nearly twenty-five years "laid her off" for being a whistleblower when she had been praised her whole career for being consistently one of the best employees there. It was her livelihood for so long and throughout my entire life. Immediately, her boyfriend stepped into a supportive role. With his history of abuse, my mother & I still managed to sing his praises to our family members who were much more reluctant about taking his help. We've had to travel between California & Salt Lake City, UT to come take care of my grandmother while she goes through the rounds of chemotherapy. We've spent lots of money on airfare & transportation as well as the incoming costs of cancer treatment. In an attempt to ease certain financial pressures, my mother & I have tried to convince my grandmother to move in with us so we can always be around when she's in need.
In just this last week, this man went back to his old ways and found a way to pick a fight over trivial things again while we're in Salt Lake City already stressing over helping out and the day to day worries of taking care of someone suffering from cancer. We asked him to take care of the dog while we're out here which is actually a pretty low-maintaince task for our old-ish dog. He began yelling about how I must return home to take care of "my" responsibility and how I'm not doing anything but hanging out over here. Eventually, this fight lead up to him putting us in a predicament where he was essentially kicking us out of the house to "stay where we are". If we return, which we will have to, we are under his rule again where he enforces these chauvinist views of his about how my mother should know her place and I need to man up and meet my responsibilities (his actual words). Anybody who's ever had a family member with cancer or serious illness probably knows how much it hurts to watch someone you love be so helpless and can hopefully relate and understand where I'm coming from and why all of that extra pressure is just too much to deal with for two people. I can only do so much with my part-time job while attending college to help out but I may just lose that job I've had for a year if I end up staying out here.
One last thing, I will be attaching my twitter & instagram below because I do want people to know my story is real but I want to help preserve the identify of my family. If you donate to my campaign, your money will go towards financing our move as well as my grandmother's cancer treatments. I've never been comfortable with the idea of asking for money before and my family has no idea that I'm doing this, but the kind of things I've seen on these crowdfunding websites has made me believe in the kindness & generosity of people.
P.S. The amount stated in my goal is a rough guesstimate. If I am so lucky to be able to exceed my goal or not even need the total amount I receive, I want to be able to donate the leftover proceeds to charities that help domestic violence victims, victims of child abuse, and also cancer research. I'd love if someone could recommend charities under these categories that you trust.
Thank you,
Ian Winstanley
Organizer
Ian Winstanley
Organizer
Fullerton, CA
