Donate to Keep Bea's Family Together and Safe

Hi everyone. I’m Bea, a Minnesotan artist, advocate, healer, abuse survivor, helper, and mother. My family is really struggling and could use some help so that I can keep working on getting us a safe place to live.

Our struggle started in 2020, like the entire world the pandemic hit us hard. For me though it hit extra hard. I was diagnosed with kidney disease while pregnant with my middle child. The birth of my youngest child in 2017, has a huge impact on my previously healthy body. I had a kidney infection that refused to go away. After multiple surgeries, medication and pure exhaustion I found out the infection had killed one of my kidneys. I had a full nephrectomy (removal of my kidney) in Dec of 2020. During that surgery they found a large mass of infection, that was hard to remove. Once it was removed I felt great for one day, until I started bleeding internally from a hemorrhage where the surgery had taken place. I lost a large amount of blood and am still dealing with Anemia. The healing from this took months and even a year from the surgery I was still sick often. To this day I am still dealing with kidney infection, pain and full body inflammation that is debilitating.

My children and I have all been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and I believe this is a huge contributor to my health issues. For years I was unable to find doctors that would treat EDS. I am just now finding some answers but much of it is not covered by insurance. I want to be able to do anything I can to help my body work.

I am married to my husband Joe and our blended family consists of 4 magical children. In July of 2020, my 2 older children from my first marriage tragically and suddenly lost their dad to heart disease. He passed away in front of them while they were with him. The trauma of that is still felt daily and our family has been changed forever.

I then lost my mother and her dear brother to heart disease within months of each other. These two deaths came after brave health battles and they inspired me to look into my own heart health. Ehlers Danlos can impact your heart function since our hearts are full of connective tissue. It turns out I do have a genetic heart defect and have some beginning signs of heart disease. I’m just now beginning to explore the depth.

Through all of this loss multiple things were also going on. Our youngest child started showing some symptoms that concerned us. At around age 2.5 he stopped communicating with us in ways that weren’t yelling and pointing. We obtained help from the school district but at the time since we were in a pandemic they were not testing any children. He has struggled with so many things in his young life. Joe and I started to look into our own neurodiversity and we learned so much about different ways our brains are and how they impact how we communicate. We became advocates for our children’s mental health and in turn our own mental health. We are finally starting to get some diagnoses’ for our kids so we can access help.

Our son’s needs are extremely high and for 6 years Joe and I provided his care by ourselves. We would both work on and off but my health and our sons health prevented anything from being long term.

The unsteady income led us into four years of housing insecurity that ultimately led to homelessness in June of 2024. The stress of this was disastrous to our entire families mental health resulting in multiple hospital visits and treatments of different types.

Currently, our youngest child and I are in a family shelter. I’m so very grateful for a place to be other than our van, however, the environment is extremely difficult as a neurodiverse family. We’ve received aggression from housemates that just don’t understand my son. Joe is currently living at an inpatient treatment program where he is receiving dual diagnosis treatment for Mental health and drug treatment. He’s currently sober and exploring his own trauma and mental health. Our 3 older children are staying with family members.

My number one goal is to keep myself able to keep working on taking care of my mental and physical health so that I can secure a safe and stable home for the kids and me. I’m very grateful to have the brain and heart I was born with which allows me to make finding resources a full time job. Last year I did a 4 month partial hospitalization/ intensive out patient program for Suicidal Ideation and C-PTSD, it was life changing. I have learned so much about myself and my mind and my doctor and I agree I very much need to do the program again to continue to stabilize.

All of our belongings are in storage units and I’m driving an older car. I need to create an account for car repairs, storage unit payments and uncovered medical bills so that I can make sure our transportation, belongings and health are safe.

I am a huge believer in paying blessings forward and truly understanding and feeling grateful. Even now while we are unable to help our community financially we are contributing with time, energy, and creativity. When we have extra money we will always and always have helped where needed.

thank you for reading and please share with your community.

My heart is open and I am sending you all love and calming energy.

Bea