Hello!

I am Matt. Amanda is my wife and the little one is Raine (4).

I have never done one of these and I'm not sure what to put, so I'm just going to tell my situation.

Back in 2023, I had to undergo spinal surgery, a laminectomy and discectomy, at the L3-L4 range, which led to two more surgeries over the course of two years.

My most recent surgery was in April of 2024. During this time, I was trying to obtain disability. My wife, Amanda, was the main income during this time. I did DoorDash when I could to help.

Amanda has needed spinal surgery as well for the past year and a half, but she has been pushing it off as long as she could.

Amanda had to resign from her job due to her back. The spinal stenosis paired with degenerative disc disease and herniations has made a negative impact on our lives.

Amanda does DoorDash when she can, but the Portland, Oregon area doesn't do too well with DoorDash.

I am employed, but I am a traffic control flagger for a local construction contractor. This time of year is very slow for work. We don't know if we work the next day until 7 pm, so it makes finding other employment difficult because you never know when you're going to be dispatched out to a job.

I would resign, but I really love this job. The sense of satisfaction I get from keeping my crew safe, both the road crew and the traffic, is so surreal. Supervisors already want me in a lead position, and it makes me feel great knowing I'm doing my job correctly.

With that being said, we have been searching the community for resources to help us make ends meet. Unfortunately, we haven't found much aside from food pantries.

We are asking for help to catch up on bills (utilities, rent, insurance) as well as cover the current bills, not just the bills we are behind on.

My landlord has been extremely understanding. We had a severe string of bad luck; our tire blew out on a DoorDash delivery and cracked the rim, so we had to save up money to replace that as well.

We have had to borrow money from family to cover bills. Once bills were paid, we worked to pay the family back that we borrowed from. It's an endless cycle of borrowing and feeling like a failure.

I had to rehome my German Shepherd because we could no longer afford to care for her properly, which really broke our hearts.

We were barely able to scrape by and have a Thanksgiving dinner thanks to food pantries.

But we will not be able to have a Christmas this year. With the amount we are behind, I don't see any possibility of being able to celebrate this year, and I am still working on a way to tell my daughter Raine.

If you are able to help in any way whatsoever, I will be extremely grateful.

I hate asking for help, but I am adult enough to understand when I need help.