Help Victoria Bounce Back...to CA and Her Dreams!
TL;DR:
My best friend, Victoria Carter, has had an exceptionally hard last five years: a career change led to an injury that has left her disabled and unable to find secure employment and, despite her resilience and ambition, life keeps getting in her way and has left her without the safety net she needs to pursue her dream: living full-time in an RV and working as a writer. I'm trying to raise funds to support her in returning home to California and having financial stability to make her dream a reality. Please help!
The Background
My very best friend Victoria, one of the best humans I know, has had a rough time over the last few years. In 2016, she left her decade-long career in the film & TV industry in NYC to be closer to her family (and me!) and explore less stressful career options, but an injury at work soon after her return left her with severely reduced mobility and trouble securing employment ever since.
In 2019 she relocated to the Midwest where she has been focusing on her writing career and enjoying the lower cost of living. In Indianapolis, she found herself with the opportunity to realize a long-held dream of living a nomadic life on the road and documenting her journey.
She and her boyfriend purchased an RV and started the process of renovating it to become their full-time home.
They were going to live in it and travel around the country while she wrote about their adventures. She even secured a couple yes-es for some pretty big-deal writing assignments— opportunities that would allow her to support herself on the road as well as continue to advance her career as a writer.
Things were going great! 
And then she got dumped.
No more boyfriend, no more RV, no more network of people to help build out the RV, no more partner to go on practice bike rides, hikes, & backpacking trips with… all gone.
She’s only been in Indianapolis for about two years (one of which was, y'know, a pandemic) so she is almost entirely without support there, and there’s just no way she can start all over and make this dream a reality on her own. So she’s coming home.
That’s where you come in!
The Ask
If it were up to me, I’d pay to have her house in Indianapolis packed up and sent back to California, put her on the next flight back, and have a new RV of her choosing waiting when she got here— but I'm a non-profiteer and not independently wealthy.
What I do have is a generous and supportive network, who can empathize with the roadblocks that Victoria has faced in the last five years and who will be inspired by her dream to pursue a more healthy and fulfilling life.
Getting her dreams restarted won't come cheap--what we raise through this GoFundMe will support her as much as possible with three key milestones, that will ultimately cost her $15,000:
1) Moving back to her family in California from Indianapolis on short notice ($5,000 total need)
This is my first priority in supporting her. If we make this goal, THEN we can get her started on making her dream a reality!
* POD - $3,500
* Movers to load POD (Victoria can't load it herself because of her disability) - $1,000
* Moving supplies - $200
*Plane ticket to CA - $300
2) Acquiring a truck & camper shell ($5,000 total need)
Victoria has decided that rather than going with a more expensive and elaborate van or RV set-up, she’ll be hitting the road in a small pickup truck & camper shell with living amenities built-out in drawers in the back. We stan a thrifty queen!
3) Building out truck without the financial contribution of a partner (up to $5,000 total need)
The built-out truck will look something like what you see in these pictures. We stan a thrifty AND DIY queen!
* Solar system - $1,500
* Appliances & building materials - $2,000
* Mechanical work - $1,000
* Finishing details - $500
Maybe it’s more “practical” for Victoria to put this dream on hold until she can establish more solid footing to set out from, but the career-opportunities she has access to RIGHT NOW are too big to pass up, and frankly, she deserves this win.
Victoria has “gotten by” for long enough, and I’d like to see her start this next amazing chapter of her life from a position of strength & security, rather than one of financial precariousness. No one deserves it more than she does. Please help if you can.
What Victoria Means to Me
Other than my mother, Victoria Rose Carter is probably the person who has played the largest role in shaping me into the man I am today.
She is thoughtful, compassionate, stalwart, generous— both in deed and spirit, extremely hard-working, indefatigably creative, ridiculously funny, and so fun to be around.
While her convictions are ironclad and she is unlikely to back down from them for the sake of “being polite” or “keeping the peace,” she is almost always willing to take the time to explain her reasons for remaining unmoved. I personally have benefited from this insight & patience more times than I can count, allowing me to move through the world with a far broader sense of perspective than I naturally would’ve acquired as a white man raised in privilege.
As if that weren't enough, she makes me laugh harder than anyone else I've known and has taught me the true meaning of love and commitment. She's a gift to me and to the world.