Hello friends, acquaintances, and total strangers!

My name is Lidia and I'm a hair stylist who has been working in Austin, TX for over a decade. I am seeking financial assistance for two reasons (a vehicle and my business) and will try to be as transparent as possible about both in this message so you can understand how these two things are related.

The first reason I started this GoFundMe is because I need help to purchase a car. As some of you may know, ten years ago I had a car that my mother gifted to me and I cherished it both as a parting gift from my mom and also as my only form of reliable transportation having just moved to Austin. My mom was originally going to use the car to learn to drive for the first time, but she decided it was more important for me to be able to get myself where I needed to be in a new and unfamiliar city as a young woman and I was extremely grateful to her for doing so.

Unfortunately, one night while I was driving myself and my friends home, my roommate (at the time) drunkenly grabbed the steering wheel while I was driving on the interstate and I had to act quickly to avoid driving into oncoming traffic. While I was lucky enough to regain control of the vehicle and prevent any major injuries to my passengers or anyone else on the road, my car was completely totaled in the process. My former roommate and I were young at the time and didn’t have the capacity to handle that situation as adults. He walked away from the situation and I was left without a way to get around and, unfortunately, a lot of trauma and trust issues.

Since that happened, I have relied heavily on public transportation and rides from mainly my partner and friends to get where I’ve needed to go around town. At one point, my brother-in-law gifted me a used truck that lasted me for a while, but as luck would have it, it broke down and I ended up selling it for pennies. At this point, I had to rely on Car2Go (which no longer operates in Austin) and Uber to travel, but it came at a great cost to my financial stability in the short and long-term. I found myself struggling every month to make ends meet, despite working full time as a stylist and I realized quickly that I would need to find a solution as soon as I possibly could. I decided to save my money for a down payment on a car, but again, having to pay so much to get around in the meantime meant that most of what I had left over went to bills and food.

This was the situation I found myself in when COVID hit and due to the touch-heavy nature of my work I was put in dire straits without a way to keep myself afloat. Thankfully I was able to keep a roof over my head through the crisis because of pandemic assistance, but that was short-lived as I actually returned to the salon in a relatively short amount of time and that meant that I was no longer eligible for assistance, despite there being virtually no clients willing to come to the salon for service for quite some time.

All of this leads me to today and to my second reason for starting this GoFundMe. After struggling to keep my finances (not to mention mental and physical health, lol) in order through this pandemic, I have suffered great losses and find myself back at square one, but now (thanks to all of these factors) I am also dealing with the debt I’ve acquired by continuing to rent out my booth, which, ironically, is the only way I can make any money. This means that I am on the verge of losing my only steady source of income despite having worked through the pandemic in an effort to avoid this very situation.

It is because I am at the end of my rope that I have decided to reach out and ask for help. If you are able to donate any amount at all it will impact my life in ways that you can’t imagine and if you aren’t able, please share this GoFundMe so that people see this and maybe decide to contribute to a woman of color who is working to make a better life for herself in the midst of all of the chaos that we’re subjected to daily. I hope that you can understand my struggle and that (regardless of whether you’re able to contribute) you’re able to relate to it and that it helped you feel a little less alone in what feels like a very lonely time for us all. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this message and I hope that it finds you well.

With much love and humility,

Lidia Moreno