Help Gabe & Emily With A New Start

I am Ivy Phillips, and I'm helping Gabe Mills and Emily Jantzen with a Go Fund Me Campaign. Please share this with anyone you think would like to help.

I could say Gabe and Emily are my friends, but it feels more honest to call them family. If you know them, you probably feel the same way. They are both struggling, but are in the middle of a huge transition that feels hopeful and full of potential. Financial support would make a huge difference to help them start a new life.

From my perspective, Gabe and Emily have been swimming in hell this past year. My heart breaks sitting next to Emily by a campfire and as she fidgets every few minutes because she can't find a position to get comfortable. Despite her intense, chronic, physical pain, it feels like she beats herself up even harder because she needs help financially to survive. I have witnessed Emily's condition turn from minor discomfort to her current reality of overwhelming agony, and through it all she shines as an unconditional compassionate human. I'm inspired every time I see her watch the sunset, embracing the mystery of life with wonder, despite her suffering. From my perspective, the space of Emily’s love allowed Gabe to be brave enough to seek help with his mental health for the first time in his life. I have known Mills as the quiet, honest, funny, munk-like farmer for over 10 years. Gabe is living with us until he can move to Olympia, and now I can see how much he has been pushing down for years. And yet, he is committed to Emily, work, and school despite the insomnia, PTSD, depression, and deep anxiety around unknown transition.

Gabe and Emily have both written pieces to share their stories, but I want to highlight that Gabe and Emily are working to create healthier lives. They have turned towards their pain together, and they are in the honest grit of healing together. They are moving to Olympia to start a new home (Emily is currently living with her parents until Gabe and Emily can move in together again). They want to be close to Emily's parents and in a bigger, diverse, town. It was my idea to reach out to community for financial support to help them in transition. If we all help a little bit, I think we can make a bigger impact in their lives together.

You can support Gabe and Emily by donating to this Go Fund Me Campaign. Donations will go towards their first and last month's rent and deposit. Additional donations will go towards rent in the first few months if it takes time for Gabe to find a solid job while still attending school. Donations would help with needed repairs for Gabe's Truck. Any additional donations will be support for Emily as she wades through the disability process and is unable to currently work.

Emily:

The summer I met Gabe, I had plans to live in a tiny town, East of Astoria on the Columbia called Grays River. I had most of my belongings, gear to set up an off-grid home in the forest, and two dogs, all crammed into the Ford Ranger I'd just bought.

After realizing that would not be my home, I got my things together and emergencied over to my Folks’ place in Olympia.

There, I pulled out a big map to determine where home would be next.

The day I rolled into the farm in Sequim to start working, Gabe was the first person I met. I walked right up to him, sitting on his porch, like we were magnets. Over the next four-plus years, I found sooo many instances where I was drawn to him like a magnet...… when he was sitting quietly in the grass, in a greenhouse picking tomatoes, and even when he would swing his knife around in the cauliflower. I just kept being drawn to him.

Over the past 4 years, Gabe and I have traversed the muddy waters, flooding rivers, and mountains of pain in each of our lives while standing by each other’s side.

For me, chronic pain has slowly been taking over my life, and the last 2+ years have felt like a REAL struggle. In the Summer of 2021, I got diagnosed with spinal stenosis (and various related names), and Gabe was there with me for that appt....... And afterwards, we sat in his truck and cried together, and as I realized life would never be like I once knew, I felt the solid, steady hand of Gabe Mills' in mine and knew we would be in this together.

So now, in an effort to get me closer to medical facilities and my family, and to get Gabe out of his small-town farm life and into the bustling world of cybersecurity, we are trying to relocate to the Olympia area.

Currently, I am not working due to the pain. I am now on food stamps and applying for disability through the Social Security administration (which I would mostly closely compare to ‘writing a dissertation while climbing Everest’)

I'm staying at my parents' house, searching for potential homes for Gabe & I that are "affordable." Gabe is currently busy working at a new restaurant job in Port Angeles and saving up for a move, despite his constant struggles with insomnia, PTSD, ADHD, and depression.

This past winter, I think Gabe and I both felt like we were about to drown in a tumultuous sea, with the water lapping at our noses.

That's why we're asking for help now. It seems more logical than drowning in life :)

Gabe:

When I met Emily, I was in the 12th season as an organic produce farmer, both working and living on the property. Over those years, I had become accustomed to seeing all types of people come and go. Over the years I'd gotten tired of getting to know one person or another who I knew that I would likely not see in a few short months. Not only that, but had spent years knowing that, despite its simplicity and beauty, this life was not for me. I was a hard worker, good at my job and got along with people, despite being the quiet type, but along with feeling like a square peg, I had continued all that time to neglect lifelong mental health issues that were clearly keeping me from earnestly seeking to actualize my potential. I was lost and jaded. I always strove to be as helpful and respectful as I would hope for myself, but this was (and sometimes still is) a bare-minimum. The less I could say to a new coworker, without making them feel alienated, the better.

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But it was different when I first met Emily. I was told that there was an Emily scheduled to start on the farm but had never met her. When she arrived that one morning, however, walking toward our typical morning meeting place, I had no doubt that it was her, and felt an immediate quality of happiness and warmth to meet her that I have never experienced, before or since. I greeted her with a handshake and the words, "You must be Emily!" -- words that, after years of committed partnership, I still repeat to this day.

We connected immediately. Virtual strangers, yet neither of us seemed to have any reservation in sharing the details of our lives. She had for a long time dealt with a level of physical pain, and I had talked of my own experiences with chronic insomnia, depression, and PTSD.

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In the years that followed, our connection has continued to grow. It's a blessing that I mark as among the singularly most meaningful and fulfilling throughout my life, and I have no doubt that she feels the same. We have grown with each other through a connection that has felt simply fated, and through sharing and supporting each other’s own personal journeys, with no lack of deep acceptance, bare honesty, and being so fully present with the best and worst of one another. I feel so incredibly fortunate that, as I continue to devote my life to ever-becoming the best version of myself that I can, she has stood with me through my own personal journey of a deep commitment to overcoming and growing from my own personal challenges.

Aching with my own mental health challenges, I have also longed to begin a life outside my own small hometown. I am in school to become a cybersecurity specialist, so that I may build a new life, both in support of my lifelong partner, and supporting my own, deeper dreams of becoming a writer and performer in the arts. I cannot stress however, how deeply I want to be a greater support to Emily and her life’s pursuits, not only in being a support in her healing journey, and being a person that she can rely on in her pursuit of the governmental financial support to which she should absolutely be granted, but – gee golly gosh – her being able to have a life beyond constant pain management.

She is a beautifully skilled builder and artist that has never ceased to surprise me. I wish so much that she is able to transcend and include her current journey in order to share that with the world.

Neither of us have ever had to ask for help to the extent that we are, and honestly, this one’s a doosey. But we are committed to using this first step as a means of finding the balance that we need in order to continue building a life that we have dreamed of for years.

It’s with all the love, humility, and sincerity that we’re reaching out. My gratitude for whatever help offered is hardly describable.