Help Vanessa Recover Financial Losses from Helene

My sister, Vanessa, is located in western North Carolina and was directly impacted by Hurricane Helene. Vanessa has owned her own business for 11 years. She has worked so hard to get her small business successful. She sells her jewelry in 3 shops around Asheville. Unfortunately due to the storm all of the shops were closed for weeks. They are beginning to reopen, but Asheville still has no clean drinking water and tourism will likely be down for the months to come. Right now is prime time for small businesses for the holiday season. Vanessa and her partner, Carmelo, just purchased their first home together. It’s such an uncertain time for them with making ends meet. They are both self employed and were without power, internet, or running water and had bad cell service for two weeks so they were unable to work. They lost almost all of their food in their refrigerator and freezers and have to replace it all. Please consider donating or supporting her small business. http://Livinfreely.etsy.com

Below is a post from Vanessa.

The past couple weeks have felt like blur. In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s already been over 2 weeks since Helene hit and it also feels like it’s been months of being in survival mode.

As many of you know, we just bought our first house and have been trying to navigate all that comes with that, while also trying to get through a natural disaster that no one could have prepared for. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions and sadly none of them have been the excitement I was hoping to have after signing papers to my first home.

A couple weeks ago my biggest worry was what color I was going to paint my office and now I’m worried about how I’m going to pay my mortgage for the next few months.

We are working on getting the rest of our things to the house this week and I will finally have internet and running water which will make life and work a lot easier, but there’s still alot of challenges ahead.

If you are planning to shop for gifts for the holidays, I, along with many other Western NC businesses, would greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting us.

If you don’t have the funds to shop and you could take a minute to simply share my Etsy shop, that would mean so much to me.

Livinfreely.etsy.com

Thanks friends! ❤️