I started this GFM in May to help offset some of my monthly costs in honor of my Big Birthday month of June -- turned 50, much to my surprise and the surprise of that statistic I read back in 2020 -- and have decided to leave it up for now because I could sure use any financial help I can get.

For those who don't know me, my name is A.T. Gruber and I am a writer (essays and plays, mostly) and author of two books, You're Not Edith (2015) and Transference (2022). In January of 2020, I had a recurrence of the breast cancer I was treated for almost ten years earlier, while in my early thirties.

The cancer was metastatic, stage iv. Treatable, but incurable. Barring a medical breakthrough, I will be a cancer patient for the rest of my life. In 2022, I was hit with a surprise divorce. At the time I was a teacher in Arizona public schools, and utterly reliant on my spouse financially. If you don't know already, Arizona public schools pay just slightly better than the public schools of rural West Virginia.

My ex and I had been married for seven years. During that time, I had sought to build up finances that had been totaled when I was diagnosed with stage ii breast cancer at the very beginning of my former career as an English professor. I believed we were saving money, and that my paychecks, honorariums, and royalties were being used appropriately.

In 2022, early in therapy to treat my then active c-ptsd, I learned that financial abuse was a real thing. I lost pretty much everything I had -- or thought I did -- in the divorce when I believed my ex's story that she had also been diagnosed with incurable cancer. She did not have cancer, but when I still believed she did, I agreed to a lesser settlement that would let me off all but the medical debt, and allow me to keep my Arizona Teacher's Retirement fund -- which was just about enough to help me move back to Chicago, replace furniture, kitchenware, and other necessities I left behind in Arizona. Just enough to pay my rent and bills, to get my meds, to get set up at a cancer center, get a therapist, a psychiatrist, and new glasses until SSDI kicked in.

Today, I am on SSDI due to side-effects of cancer treatment. As anyone on SSDI knows, it's really not much -- especially not after Medicare Part C Advantage Plan takes its chunk, and I really, really need that.

Now that I have the "fancy" Medicare, most of my healthcare bills are covered. I am left each month with 2,000 from which to pay my share of the rent ($950), pay my share of the electric, gas, and internet (roughly $100 per month), buy groceries (a billion dollars?), cat food and litter, afford my co-pays for my mental health treatment ($40 per visit, twice monthly with one, once a month with the other), and Ubers/Lyfts when I don't feel up to taking public transportation (I don't have a car). And those are just the recurring costs of my life.

I've done a ton of work on my mental health and wellbeing in the years since my divorce. I still have stage iv cancer, I still have no savings, but what I've managed to repair on the inside has saved my life in ways that no money or medicine or single person could have done.

This year, I finally feel mentally and spiritually well enough to work on my third book of essays. So I'm doing that. I also feel clear enough to start rebuilding financially, as best as I can.

While I stopped working full-time in the classroom, I never stopped working. Writing gigs, speaking engagements, comp classes, creative writing courses, tutoring, babysitting, playwriting, planning for another book -- I have been working. But all the little gigs and temporary/part-time work didn't pan out to much, and often left me even more exhausted than I was feeling at the end of my time in the classroom.

After I was diagnosed with stage iv cancer, I taught another year and a half before the side effects of oral chemo, androgen blockers, infusions started making themselves known in ways that suggested I was not going to be long for this work. And that broke my heart because back then, classroom teaching, especially with teens and adolescents, was my favorite work besides working on writing projects that were mine.

When my ex left, and I kind of lost myself, and my mind, and all my money, I decided to swallow my pride and accept that perhaps I was now one of the millions of Americans who needed the help of SSDI. So I took that help. And while it is not much, it's been enough to sustain me during times when I really do feel too ragged to work, to create, to labor.

In a kinder and more just country, SSDI payments would be higher, rents lower, and we'd have single payer healthcare. Alas, that's not the country where we live. The reality is I am a fifty year old cancer patient, who takes oral chemo 21 days a month. I get tired sometimes, but I still have to make money somehow.

At fifty, I am finally in a headspace, and a homespace, to do what I had considered doing back in 2022 -- start my own creative writing consulting practice, offering teens and adults one-on-one coaching, group workshops, and customized lessons on various topics relating to the arts & humanities. I don't yet have a website (forthcoming), but I already have three clients. This is promising.

In addition to the work I'm doing to get the consulting practice off the ground, I am teaching part-time as an adjunct, and freelance editing. I am trying to leave plenty of time, also, for me to complete my third essay collection that means so much to me.

And yet still, I am living hand to mouth. A lot of people are right now, in America, and I am far better off than many. I have loving friends, a safe and comfortable apartment, food in the fridge, a damn good oncologist . . .

There's better causes you could donate to than mine. But if you do decide to contribute, I want to let you know that the contributions not merely help me pay my bills, my co-pays, and get a new pair of glasses (haven't had the extra $ for a pair since 2022), but they provide me with a peace of mind that is invaluable. It's hard to teach, to help, to write when my mind is overburdened by an overdrawn bank account.

One goal for this year is to put together a life for myself where I am earning enough money, by using my talents and years of experience, to no longer have to ask others for money. The idea is to get enough clients through my new consulting practice, and enough adjunct work to have a little extra left over each month, while also not literally killing myself. Ideally, I can shake out a work life that makes room for the type of rest, relaxation, and care that are necessary for me as a cancer patient, a writer, a teacher, and a human being who wants to stay healed and healing.

Any donation would give me a little more headspace to dedicate toward my intention of building an income that might even allow me to be a donor sometimes instead of the one asking for donations. That would feel great.

Thank you for reading what might be the longest GFM "story" ever.

If you want you can follow me on Substack -- agruber -- or just keep following me here, wherever it is that you're following me, and know that I can most definitely accept good thoughts, healing vibes, warm wishes, funny jokes, and book/music/movie suggestions in lieu of a monetary donations.

- A.T. Gruber