Hi, my name is Amy Webb.

I am having a hard time asking for help because this is the most stressful and humiliating thing that I have ever had to do. I desperately need help though and even if I get criticism and hate for asking, I still have to do it. It's not for me, It is for my kids. Believe me, I don't want to be in this situation and I don't want the world to know my life. I wish I had another option but I am out of options and out of time. Let me explain.

I am a mom to 7 wonderful kids. I am also a mom who is going through a very hard divorce and has been for the past two years. I won't give any details about the reasons that I am going through a divorce out of respect for my ex. I don't believe that the father of my children deserves to be on blast. If you know me you probably already know why and if you don't, just know that it is a necessary divorce and I wouldn't be doing it unless it was.

I have been a stay-at-home mom our entire marriage and now I run my own small business, I have a food trailer. I am working hard to make ends meet but with the great overwhelming amount of burdens that have hit me this year I am drowning and my whole ship is about to sink with me. I feel like I don't have enough life rafts for all of my children.

You see, last winter when my seasonal work slowed down and I was planning to pick up extra money in my off-season by cleaning houses, my kids brought home COVID 3 times, the Flu 2 times, Strep throat 1 time, and Pink eye 2 times between September and February. I am the only parent who was able to miss work and stay home with sick kids. I also caught all of those illnesses and lost a great deal of my income and was living off of credit cards and child support but it wasn't enough. I was unable to afford our mortgage payments and I had to pause the payments for three months in November with a COVID forbearance plan. At the end of the three months, they gave me the option to either pay all three months at once or to continue the forbearance for another three months. I chose to continue it to allow myself some time to get back on my feet and to be able to make at least partial payments on the balance. At the end of those three months, I still could not pay the whole amount so I had to pause it for another three months. I was making payments and my work with my business had really picked up and I was able to knock a good chunk of the balance down before the program ended but I still owed about $4.800.

The biggest event of the year for my business is the Fourth of July events. My business is a business that my dad started and ran for almost 10 years before passing it on to me when he retired. I knew that from previous years I would have enough money to pay the balance after the two events that I had booked. I wasn't terribly worried because I expected to make that in a weekend.

At the end of June, a big storm rolled through and hit our city that did severe damage knocking down power lines for miles and leaving thousands of people without power for over a week in some cases. The damage was so bad that almost all restaurants and businesses in 20 miles were closed because of no power. Our first event that was scheduled for June 30th was canceled because of all of the storm damage. I still had hope that the second event in a different area of town and was 4 days later would still go on. I cooked up a ton of product for that event and I bought supplies for a large crowd. I knew that I could still make the money that I needed to cover what was owed on the house. On the night of the event I had employees show up ready to work, I set up my tent with tables underneath it right next to my food trailer, and I was hopeful that the slight chance of rain that was forecasted would pass over us and the fireworks would go on as planned. Many other food vendors were doing the same. Unfortunately, the rain came and didn't stop. The city had to cancel the whole event. I still had to pay employees, and I paid a babysitter $400 a week for weeks so that I could work and prepare for these events, I lost a ton of money and I was out of time.

I filed for the Tennessee Homeowners Assistance Program the next week on the 12th. They are supposed to help people who have been affected by COVID by paying the past due amount on their mortgage. It is a government program and it was my only hope. I sent in everything that they asked for and waited months to hear that I was denied because my name wasn't on the mortgage loan. I filed an appeal because my name is on the deed to the house and the program reopened my application for review. I sent in a ton of other stuff that they asked for and again I waited. I waited with no answers until the mortgage was referred for foreclosure on October 3rd. The program told me that if I got a sale notice on the house to send it to them immediately and they would be able to pause the sale pending the outcome of my approval. On December 2nd I received a notice of sale with a date of December 28th. I sent that to the THAF program and they began expediting my application and paused the sale. My ex also applied for a mortgage modification at this time but we were previously turned down for one in the summer so I am not sure if we will qualify now or not. It is a backup plan in case the TNHAF program denies me. We won't know anything until January. I got a message the other day from the TNHAF saying that they denied me because they were unable to prove a 10% or more reduction in my income due to COVID. I have filed another appeal with e-mails attached from all of the clients that I was cleaning for stating that I wasn't able to clean for them because my kids were sick repeatedly with COVID-19 and the amount that I was paid from them when I was cleaning their homes.

I am terrified that the backup plan of a modification isn't going to be approved again and that this TNHAF program is going to draw this out so long that my home will be sold. They have already taken 5 months and denied me twice. This home is my children's stability and safe place. It's so much more than a house. Each of my children has been struggling in different ways since the beginning of the divorce but they have their home with their bedrooms that is their safe place that shields them from the ugly pain of this divorce and a school with the most amazing team of teachers that have supported them through all of their struggles. If we lose this home we will not be able to stay in this school district with all of their friends and their loving teachers and counselors. I have no credit because I have been a stay at home mom for 16 years. I don't think I can qualify for an apartment with 7 kids and I know that the qualifications in this area to rent a home are that you have to make three times the monthly income and have good credit to qualify. I won't qualify on my own. I can not lose this home. They have already lost so much.

This year I have had the hardest time that I have ever had with bad luck and things going wrong. My truck that I use to pull my trailer broke many times and I was paying a guy that claimed to be a mobile mechanic to come fix it every time so that I could keep working. Without the truck I would have been out of business. Through a series of unfortunate events, I found out that he wasn't actually repairing any of what he had been telling me he was. A local automotive shop verified that my truck needed about $8,000 worth of repairs. I have paid this guy around $9,000 this year in total to fix my vehicles and he lied to me. I was T-boned in my minivan and it was totaled. I took the money from the insurance to by another minivan on the FB market place and had the mechanic that I didn't realize was a con-artist look it over before I purchased it to tell me if it was worth buying or if it needed a new engine and wasn't worth my money. He looked at it and told me that it was a great deal and he could fix it for about $1000 and that it would be worth more than what I paid for it in the end. He lied. ended up selling it for less than half of what I paid for it because it needed a new engine and I wound up paying him another $1,200 "for parts" before I realized he was a liar. After that, my upstairs heating and air unit went out and had to be replaced. Thankfully my best friend is married to an incredibly kind and caring man who replaced the unit for me at cost. It still cost me $2,400 because new units aren't cheap. I have had to pay $3,500 to a divorce attorney this year, $350 for mediation, $400 a week to a babysitter for 7 kids, bought 3 new tires for my truck, and then someone broke into my trailer and stole my lemon slicer and smasher equipment that costs around $700. My electric bill was sky high all summer and into the fall because of the upstairs unit that was going out running constantly so I was paying about $600-$750 each month. Currently, I am running on one vehicle that needs work, have a broken dishwasher so I am handwashing everything, I have a broken dryer that I have already replaced the heating element on and it went out again a week later so I am hanging all of our clothes on hangers in the house to dry, and I am scared to death that if this appeal doesn't go through I will lose our home.

I am so stressed that my hair is falling out. I have decorated our home for Christmas with a very heavy heart because I know that this could be their last Christmas in their home and I have no idea how to tell them or how I will manage to pack all of their belongings and move them away from all of their stability and their friends. I know that I should have a backup plan but how can I plan for us all to go anywhere else with this many kids and no money saved up? I have prayed and begged God to work this all out for us. I have tried so hard not to worry about this because I have seen God do huge things in my life that I could have never made happen on my own. The problem is, I am running out of time. I have to ask for help. I still believe that God will put his hands all over this issue and work it out for us. I also realize that hiding my struggles and carrying them alone isn't helping and sometimes we have to swallow a great deal of humility to provide for our children. I would do anything for my children.

If I can get enough money together to cover the mortgage balance that would be the biggest blessing. If one of the options for mortgage assistance goes through and does help with the missed payments, I still need a minivan to be able to transport all of my kids safely and I am in some debt that I need to pay off. If the mortgage payments aren't covered by the TNHAF program or a modification then I am hoping to have enough money to rent a house somewhere close by and keep the kids in their school district or at the very least be able to move to another house. So I am asking anyone that has a few extra dollars to spare to help us out so that I can keep a roof over their head and relieve some of the stress that I have secretly been carrying alone for months now. I can not do this alone anymore

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