Help Nidia get back on her feet

Help Nidia Get Back on Her Feet

Dear Friends of Nidia (and others who want to help!): Many of you may know that last year Nidia fell and broke her leg. After her accident, she couldn’t work or walk and had chronic pain for months. Eventually she underwent surgery on her knee. After surgery she still had chronic pain and couldn’t work. While we don’t know all the details, Nidia’s life fell apart around her. We think this was probably a combination of unfortunate things happening to her and unfortunate decisions made by her. While it’s easy to judge others, we are asking for your empathy and compassion. We all fall down at some point in our lives and sometimes we need helping hands to pull us up. Whether you know Nidia well, or maybe just chatted with her on her regular walks on the beach — when you’d probably hear her enthusiastically commenting on how beautiful the day was, every time — Nidia deserves humanity, care and love just as much as anyone else.

After losing her health and mobility, Nidia lost her job and her rental home. Nidia was living in her car for some months and had lost the ability to take even basic care of herself. When we found her, she was in an unimaginably bad state and was honestly unrecognizable. Now, Nidia desperately needs your support and help.

A group of friends and even some (former) strangers have donated their time, efforts, finances and most of all kindness and generosity to keeping Nidia alive, literally, and have more recently relocated her from her vehicle to various temporary, safe and clean places to stay. Nidia currently weighs about 80 pounds. She is not strong enough to take care of herself on her own. We are sharing this with you to convey how desperate the situation is.

During this time, tireless work has been done in trying to get Nidia into a care facility and/or transitional housing. We have spent countless hours on the phone with Nidia’s doctor and nurses, with her healthcare and with various facilities - because we know Nidia needs professional support. But after jumping through a million hoops, filling out forms and advocating our hearts out, we are sad to report that Nidia was DENIED both short and longterm care in a facility. She has also been denied admission into hospitals. We don’t want to sound cynical, but to say this has been an exhausting, trying and heartbreaking experience is an understatement. We have tried and are continuing to try to access every public and private resource and program for Nidia. Until you’ve dealt with a situation like this, it’s impossible to imagine how many walls there are between needs and care.

Right now we have a temporary roof over Nidia’s head (we’ve been moving her from one place to another), but we honestly don’t know where she’ll be sleeping after the end of this week and we are committed to not letting her be houseless again. She’s eating food every day that we bring to her and she’s bathed when we bathe her, and it’s our efforts that are keeping a roof over her head. This is the reality of Nidia’s life right now. 

In contrast to how hard this experience has been for Nidia most of all, but also for her support group, we want to acknowledge the beautiful humanity we’ve seen and experienced ourselves. Compassion takes courage and we have seen so much courage in Nidia and her community members.

We are asking for your help in getting Nidia to the next stage of her recovery. Help could be in the form of: 1) monetary donations (to keep a roof over Nidia’s head) and sharing this Go Fund Me, 2) joining “Team Nidia” and assisting us in bringing food to Nidia and spending time with her (she is lonely, and friendship is helping her heal!), 3) sharing any care facility / housing connections, expertise, etc. that you may have (we need all the help we can get!), 4) any other way that you can show your love and support for Nidia.

Truly, any amount of support that you can offer is needed. 

From our hearts, thank you so very much.

(As to the current photo of Nidia, we ask that you please use discretion and thoughtfulness. We are only sharing this very personal and vulnerable photo to help people understand how much Nidia needs your help.)