Dear Community, Our friend Lera, an Indigenous (Anishinaabe) single mother and Ojibwe language teacher needs our help to reduce the financial strain of her illness and focus on recovery from surgery.

Lera is a fun-loving, creative, single mom of an adorable toddler. She is an Anishinaabe language and culture carrier, regalia beader, dancer, and an Indigenous language teacher. Today she needs our help to get well.

Lera’s Story:

Overcoming the combined challenges of chronic illness, very little financial support, and increased barriers as an Indigenous young woman in rural Minnesota, Lera managed to graduate from higher education with a degree in Anthropology, American Indian Studies, and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization. She returned to her home and began a career serving the Native community as an Anishinaabe language teacher and mentor.

Lera’s role as a Native teacher to Native kids is incredibly important. Anyone who knows her can attest to Lera's love for her students and her passion and dedication to supporting their learning.

Illness and Surgery:

Lera has Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory disease of the bowel that can involve any area of the digestive system and can affect the entire thickness of the GI tract. Her symptoms have worsened and have not responded to medications. Due to her illness she has missed many days at work and been hospitalized several times over the past year.

Now, surgery is a needed step to help improve symptoms and manage her disease.

This surgery (an ileocecal resection which will include the removal of an ileocecal stricture) is thankfully very likely to help overall. It is relatively safe and will give Lera a good chance to recover, manage her illness, and get back to living.

The surgery is scheduled for 2/15/2022. Lera’s doctor expects a full recovery to take 6 weeks barring any complications.

How we can help:

On January 12th, Lera learned that she has run out of paid leave and does not qualify for short term disability through her work. This was the point where she realized she needed to ask for help from friends and community, “Everyone's always telling me to ask for help when I need it. Well, I need it now … Any little bit would help!”

The prospect of an upcoming 6 weeks of zero income is a major barrier to Lera’s healing. Together, we can help Lera to fund her recovery and focus on getting well! So let’s do this, friends!

Reaching our fundraising goal of $9,800 will:

- re-coup missing pay from recent hospitalizations

- replace 6 weeks of missing income* - covering living expenses for Lera and her daughter during the 6 week expected surgery recovery period.

- remove the recent stressful financial burden of illness faced by this family.

There are many of us who care about Lera and her situation. Using the power of crowd-funding, we can relieve the financial strain of illness for Lera and her child. With this relief, Lera can truly focus on healing, resting, and mothering- and once recovered, can return to her beloved career supporting the education of Native children in her community.

Thank you for your support,

Friends of Lera

*Avg weekly teacher salary in MN for a first year teacher is $1,300/wk https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/First-Year-Teacher-Salary--in-Minnesota

*Lera has lost at least $700 of income due to illness already since running out of PTO.,