‘allo!

Birdy Diamond here, m.k.a. Barbara Cox, along with my husband Mike, and our ComfortCat Leona, to ask for your help.

Help with:

• reuniting as a family (Leona is currently with a chorus-friend as we negotiate this complex & confusing time, having a grand time observing the yard for rodents and waiting impatiently to be back with her prroper humans.)
• finding (and keeping!) a safe space to live
• generally get back on our feet/paws

Which means:

• move-in costs to a new home = ~3333 (depends on what programs we can qualify for and where we can get in, hopefully this will be a lot less, but from our recent explorations of the A2 housing market, it may end up being just about on-target)
• help with expenses as we find work and grow our business = ~4444 (rent and utilities)
• help with covering transitional housing between here and more permanent housing = ~2222 (again, this will vary depending on whether we can stay with people or have to absorb the cost of a hotel room)
• help with re-buying furnishings, dishes, the like, since our storage went to auction on 07/13/21 = ~ $1111

These numbers are all estimates and will be refined as we get better data.

How We Got Here

We’ve had a turbulent last few years – from being evicted from our home of over thirteen years after the complicated friend we were caregiving for passed away and her sister chose to make us the bad guys in the story rather than appreciate what we’d been able to do for her sister, and by extension, her and her family.

Then just when we were starting to find our way again, covid hit, and while it took longer than for some, the paralyzing depression eventually set in, preventing progress.

Friends and family have helped, so much and all they can. We are soooo close, and yet, a Universe away, at all the same time. Or so it feels.

We'd Love Nothing Better Than to Get On with Our Lives, But...

We’d like nothing better than to curl up with our creations and get on with helping our chosen audience of Rebel Zebras, Unique Unicorns, and Creative Missfits to be inspired, prrroductive, and Dreams to Done with our poetry, prrrose, mewsic, Creative Helps, Purrformances, and more.

But the reality is, we can’t do that when we are constantly worrying about how the rent is going to be paid, the bills taken care of, and our cat fed and with a clean litterbox (she quite reasonably insists on these).

The furrther reality is that it takes both time and Spaciousness to grow a business. You have to find your Audience, and they have to find you. You need time to grow the relationship between you, so they understand why they should care about you and your prrroducts.

And that seems nigh-on impossible when your primary focus is on getting your basic needs met, rather than on your customers.

How You Can Help

That’s where you come in.

• Are you ready and willing to help a couple of creatives get the time they need to go out there and find and nurture their Amazing Audience members?
• Are you willing and able to help a couple of people who nearly gave their all trying to help another, get the time they need to heal and move on with their lives?
• Are you willing to help an elderly, former half-feral cat keep her humans? She has next-to-no chance of being re-homed successfully, if we do not regain stable housing.

If so, thank you in advance for your support! I know that everyone says that, and that your support means the world to them. But it sinceriously does. Ever since our world came crashing down with our complicated friend’s final illness and passing, their family's reaction to their death, and the constant roller-coaster of life since, we’ve been trying frantically to reassemble our world in a way that works with our current lives and limitations.

If you choose to become a part of that world-reassembly, well, even as a writer, I, and we, have no words to adequately express our joy and gratitude. (Or, in the cats of Leona, her catitude.)

Chirp, chirp! :-)

Birdy :>O<: