Hello-
My name is Whitney, or many of you may know me better as Pierretta or blackandwhitestriped. I’ve been working full time for over a decade as a freelance costume designer and occasional performer for the drag and queer nightlife community, collaborating with everyone from up-and-coming local artists to Drag Race superstars.

If you’ve been following me online or worked with me directly you may have noticed I’ve been not quite all there lately- disappearing on social media for months at a time, failing to keep up with personal correspondences, struggling to meet deadlines in ways that are unlike my usual self, and just generally seeming sad, frazzled, distracted and exhausted all the time. Up until now I’ve been waving it off with a vague “going through a lot right now” but now that I've reached a pivotal breaking point I’d like to explain what’s been going on, and ask for your help.

In June of 2022 I lost my father. Without getting into too much detail, his death was sudden, unexpected, preventable, and deeply traumatic. Almost immediately after this while still struggling to recover from that shock and the circumstances that unfolded as a result of his death, we were forced to begin the process of packing up and moving out of the house that my parents had been living in for several decades.

First I had to take time off from work in the wake of my dad’s death to grieve and process the loss. Then I had to take more time off to organize and pack all of my childhood possessions to get them out of the house that needed to be sold, and then I had to take a significant amount of additional unexpected time off to assist my mother with the cleaning, packing, and moving, as she was mentally and emotionally struggling to do it herself. My income was very spotty for most of a year while this was occurring and I had to dip quite a bit into my savings to get by, but I hoped I’d be able to recoup it once things calmed down.

Unfortunately it seems the stress and trauma of her husband’s death and the subsequent move has triggered an emergence of cognitive decline in my mother, and now a few years later just as it felt like we were finally successfully settled and moving on from the last crisis, my mother’s memory and cognitive functioning has gone from mildly concerning but mostly functional to deteriorating at a concerningly rapid rate over the past 6 months, re-triggered by the news earlier this year that the apartment she’s been renting for the past two years is being sold and she needs to once again upend her life and find somewhere new to live.

I’ve been put in an incredibly difficult position in which I’m the only person in my mother’s life who lives close enough to her to be able to get to her on short notice. With her requiring more and more assistance to be able to accomplish basic tasks, I’ve had to take more and more time off from work in order to help keep her on track with day to day life as well as accompanying her to doctors and other appointments and dealing with the various crises that arise when she’s having particularly confused days. Amidst all of this I’ve also had to try my best to keep myself afloat mentally and emotionally while grappling with the previous sudden loss of one parent followed by the current painful ongoing loss of another, and have lost a lot of additional work time and income to struggling with my mental health as a result of this.

At the same time, I’m still a self-employed person who does not have the luxury of a guaranteed salary or paid time off- if I am not actively working I do not have income, and recently I’ve hit a wall where I’ve repeatedly had to choose between not making rent or suffering severe burnout because of how much responsibility has been falling on my shoulders and how thin I’m being spread.

Between running a business, taking care of my mother, and taking care of myself I’ve reached a point where I’m not accomplishing any aspect of my life successfully- I’ve had no time or energy for a social life, my few days a month I’ve been able to spare from work have gone to taking care of my mother or attempting to catch up on long overdue cleaning/laundry/dishes/etc, and the amount of 18-24 hour work days I’ve had to pull recently only to still barely make most of my deadlines and fall behind on all my other life responsibilities because of how drained I am has been really disheartening.

As things currently stand, my mother needs to be out of her current living situation by the end of November and she has not been able to retain this information enough to be able to take any of the necessary action on her own. With her condition being what it is and continuing to worsen, and with me being her geographically closest support, it’s looking like it’s going to be largely my responsibility to manage the process of apartment hunting, packing, and moving, as well as continuing help with day to day life concerns until we are able to hopefully find and establish professional care for her.

This is where you come in- I’ve come to the difficult realization that it is not physically or mentally sustainable for me to be able to successfully accomplish all of this in the next couple months while also having to worry about where my rent is coming from, and with how much I’ve already had to take out of my savings the past few years the thought of having no income for that long really scares me.

I have already booked projects through Halloween and intend to honor those but my goal is to be able to put a pause on additional orders and take off from work early November through mid December so that I can have the time and energy needed in order to get my mom packed, moved, and settled in a new place with the care she needs in order to continue to function as well as get my own life back on track by being able to rest and recover from the severe burnout I’ve been struggling through.

This all has been really impacting my ability to successfully or fulfillingly do my work or maintain basic functioning as a person and it’s been breaking my heart knowing I haven’t been able to be the person I know myself to be or keep up with my usual output or standards of quality in my work. I hate to take time away because I love my work, but it has been becoming more and more clear the worse my mental, emotional, and physical state has gotten that this time off is necessary in order to be able to be able to successfully continue forward.

The amount I’m asking is to cover approximately a month and a half’s worth of my rent and living expenses but any amount will be a huge help. Any additional funds received over that amount will be used to help recoup bills owed and the loss in my savings from previous time off, with a stretch goal of being able to put some money aside to cover future circumstances since this is unfortunately just the beginning of what’s bound to be a difficult journey for the foreseeable future.

Anything you can spare will help greatly. Thank you in advance for your kindness and patience and I hope that once this current period of stress and uncertainty settles I can get back to being more present, functional, and flourishing as both the person and artist I know myself to be.