heidi's amble to wide sky and sweet gravel

Heidi Diaz is a teacher, an artist, a desert and insect lover, and a community organizer with a chronic neurological condition Multiple Schlerosis. She is currently homeless and living in a van, which is increasing her vulnerability to her condition drastically. Moving to a home in one of her favorite places in the world, New Mexico, would set her on a path to a new life of healing and recovery.

There is research indicating that symptoms of Multiple Schlerosis improve with quality of life and dynamic exercise. Heidi loves space to move and nature, so this move would be deeply therapeutic. Being trapped in a tiny van space in the hardscaped city currently takes away a lot of needed healing movement and autonomy.

Heidi is a Santa Barbara local teacher who especially loves teaching for middle school and special ed. She uses her creativity and empathy to help her students grow, be liberated, and learn about the world and themselves as she grows and learns with them. She is an artist, using multimedia, found objects, collage, poetry and more to create beautiful art that shares her story, and our stories as she sees them. She is also an animal lover (especially insects, crows, skunks). She is powerfully loved in her community-- she volunteers for good causes and helps those in need. She is a good friend to many, giving her time and support to help many other vulnerable people in their struggles, while facing so many struggles of her own.

Heidi has been living out of a vehicle for years. She faces endless challenges from being unhoused, both trying to survive day to day and trying to secure stable housing. She has tried many ways to get housing, but with everything she balances and with such expensive housing it's become impossible without assistance. She has been working hard to save up and to reach out for resources, and has worked with a social worker already to obtain financial assistance with first month/last month rent, and security deposit. New Mexico housing is much more affordable than Southern California, as you can see from this document we made outlining the kind of humble housing she's seeking. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NVPbUtq9nIXsC5-2Rg6VqDmzYnaseyzfb2E9UbL3nu0/edit?usp=drivesdk

The money raised here will only go to the necessities and nuances of her move, and to rent support to help Heidi settle in her new home without spending all her small monthly SSI income.

Heidi deserves our support and care-- she has been doing so much to take care of herself and others, so much effort in a day to just get by with the little she has. She needs and deserves help to gain security and peace in her own life, so she can keep doing all the wonderful things she does with strength and health.

If she meets her goal for this move Heidi will be posting photos, thoughts, art, and poetry in a travel log posted on this GoFundMe as she ambles to New Mexico.

"I've always felt deeply drawn to the desert. The sky, alluvial fans making impossible metaphors in my body. It's really vibrant out there and I feel most at home under New Mexico sky. It's something that's kind of beyond the scope of the city that I've grown up within and it feels like something that needs to happen.

With the growing community I feel from friends and people around me, as we're all moving away from something that really hasn't made much sense that we've grown up around, I think this is where I would I need to ask for help from friends and people around me to help me out to there, to chase these kind of feelings and a deep sense of meaning that I have, with connecting with the sky, the insects, and art, and kids." -Heidi

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