My name is Elias and I've started eating disorder recovery. Right now, I'm in an Intensive Outpatient Program 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. Initially I'd intended to go down to part time hours at my job to make this work, but because of that my paid leave of absence applications were denied for not taking enough time off. I'm being faced with the choice of leaving recovery and going back to work full time to pay rent and bills, or a full leave from work to focus on recover - the latter is the preferred option.

The struggle here is that the leave application wait time is 4-10 weeks before I would see any of my pay. In that time, I would need to pay rent and bills without any income. The program I'm in has small grants they can give me to help cover groceries, as food access is a barrier to eating disorder recovery that they want to remove from the equation. The fundraiser amount is the absolute bare minimum I would need to get rent and bills covered to ease the financial stress that's been looming over me since starting recovery.