Dear Friends, on behalf of those who love and care about Marya I am reaching out to you for help.

Marya Summers, beloved poet and professor, is disabled and homeless.

She has been struggling to find safe and healthy housing since 2018. Her multiple disabling conditions create a very specific set of needs when it comes to “healthy housing.”

In 2017, Marya was suddenly stricken with illness so severe she had trouble processing language and had trouble walking and sitting up for very long. This made her work impossible. She tried to go back to work after a month’s rest, but found she could not finish the semester and was unable to continue her own writing projects. She consulted many doctors: general practitioners, infectious disease specialist, neurologist, rheumatologist, allergist, and mold illness specialists. But none could offer a diagnosis that explained all the symptoms. Worse, her body had developed an immune disorder (mast cell activation disorder) that made her unable to tolerate most of conventional medicines, and she could not afford the out-of-pocket costs of the treatments that might help. Still to this day she can’t access these medications.

Marya lives alone in an 11-foot metal camper which she tows behind a 20-year-old vehicle. Her condition requires her to avoid most indoor spaces due to the presence of toxins, molds, volatile compounds, etc. Outdoor spaces have provided the best results; however, she regularly moves locations to avoid a variety of challenges such as agriculture contaminations, floods, and wildfire. The hardship of being disabled and homeless has left her vulnerable to constant relapse. She suffers multiple debilitating symptoms — impaired focus and thinking, digestive issues, headaches, difficulty breathing, chest pain, sore throats, watery and red eyes, skin rashes, and EMF sensitivity, all while surviving harsh outdoor conditions. Marya did finally receive a comprehensive diagnosis: impaired methylation (body’s detox pathways), mold toxicity and hypersensitivity, Lyme and bartonella disease, chemical sensitivity, systemic candida, mast cell activation disorder and chronic fatigue syndrome.

For the last six years, Marya’s basic needs have remained unmet. In addition to not having a suitable location to stay long-term, living in an 11 ft trailer, living mostly outdoors even in the winter, bathing while standing in the snow and doing laundry in buckets between snow storms, she’s been mostly alone, a toxin free, sustainable home could change all of this. 

Our Ask:

Please join the small community of caring friends who are determined to provide Marya with safe and healthy housing. There are several ways to help:

You can share this and tell others why Marya and this fundraiser are important to you.

You can donate whatever amount feels good for you.

You can help buy land or donate land.

You can help buy a Non-toxic prefab home $189,000 - $325,000.

You can donate design, engineering or other professional services (construction, electrical, well-drilling, etc).

For those of you who want to be involved in more than fundraising, there is a FaceBook Group dedicated to the effort, copy and paste this URL for more information: https://www.facebook.com/groups/503979508592102/