Dad Seeks Stable Home for His Daughter

When you love someone, you love them unconditionally, wholeheartedly, the type of love that you just feel in your entire body, deep within your soul. I have loved in the past, but when my daughter was born, the electric feeling of love towards my daughter that I had within me was so great and even greater now.

On August 8, 2016, my daughter’s mom was awarded sole legal and physical custody of my daughter, and I was awarded visitation, deemed appropriate by her mother. The reason for this happening is because I was fighting Mom in court and I had run out of money to fly back and forth from Florida to Maryland, in which I defaulted, and then that was the outcome. Since then, I have wholeheartedly searched for my daughter, and when I found her, I would send her letters and her mother a letter, begging her to let me be a part of my daughter’s life. She never responded after all these years. Mom would continue to move from state to state with different guys, and it wasn’t only hurting me that I couldn’t see my daughter. It was hurting my daughter too. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love my daughter, and I can provide so many names and numbers for anyone to speak to.

In January 2025, my daughter was removed from her mother’s care by Child Protective Services (CPS), and CPS called me in Florida and asked if I could come and get my daughter, and I happily obliged. My daughter had been taken to a mental hospital for threatening to kill herself, not for the first time but for the second time, along with self-harm because of what Mom was doing. On January 20, 2025, I came here to get emergency custody in Virginia. Since I have gotten custody, my daughter and I have been living in a hotel, and I have been renting a car since then. It has been hard to find a job here, but now I just found one that I start on May 7, 2025, and I also do Instacart. However, Instacart and the TANF I get from the state of Virginia are barely getting us by, and we are desperately trying to get out of this hotel and into an apartment.

If anybody knows Virginia, there is not a lot of help for funding to get into an apartment as a single father. I am always on the go trying to make ends meet with Instacart and any which way I can to earn money. Needless to say, in doing everything to make money, I’m taking my daughter to all her doctor’s appointments, her therapy, school, and after-school programs because all her medical was messed up. Her mouth was messed up. She never got her shots. There’s so much, and I am desperately wanting to get into an apartment, and I’m asking a kind soul or souls if they could help in the amount we need to get into an apartment. Once in the apartment, I can maintain, but it is getting harder and harder to keep up with the hotel and the rental car as I am paying double in hotel bills that I wouldn’t rent. I have reached out to the only two programs here in Virginia that help with funding, and they say that I make too much with Instacart and TANF, and it’s not them. It’s the government who doesn’t understand all the money I make goes to the hotel and the car, and I have no room to save.

I’m a single dad. I will do anything for my daughter. I will die for my daughter. If my daughter needed my heart in order to live, I would happily give her mine. She has a whole future ahead of her. When I first got my daughter, her grades were all F’s and one D. Since then, she has gotten all her grades up. I have been on top of everything. Child Protective Services is on my side. My daughter’s lawyer is on my side. The school is on my side. They see what I do. If I can be able to get the donation that I need to get into this apartment, so much stress would be lifted, and you would be helping for a good cause. I can provide any information that you may need as far as court documents, etc. 

Thank you in advance, for being apart of our journey to a place my daughter and I can call home