Help support our friend Marianne Warfle

My dear friend and forever inspiration, Marianne, has fallen and I am trying to help her up. Her story is below please read and consider helping me, help her.

In 2020 Marianne opened her first coffee shop in Pittsford NY. Since that time, she has opened a second location in downtown Rochester, NY. Here is Marianne’s story from the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse Website from 2020:

Hello,

I’m Marianne

… the owner. So was opening a coffee shop and an event space a lifelong dream? Definitely not. But life threw me some curveballs that landed me here and I couldn’t be more thankful. After years working “for the man” in marketing and advertising, a seven-year stint as the General Manager of a new marina, and raising a wonderfully successful son, life got weird. Cancer hit, and shortly after that an untimely and painful end to a long-term relationship. Pile on Covid and the shit storm was real. But a life-saving stem cell transplant cured my health on 6/2/20 (my new birthday, thanks Bro), and my friends, family, and Harper Lee, my English Cream Golden Retriever puppy, cured my heart.

Do something for yourself they said, put all your talent and experience toward something of your own they said, open a coffee shop they said. So, I sold my house of 34 years, and threw my heart and soul into Neutral Ground Coffeehouse. After 7 months of regular WTF moments, designing, laboring with the help of family and friends, blowing my budget and learning that starting your own business is hard, here I am. And I’m forever grateful for all those curveballs, my shit storm is over.

Fast forward to 2024:

Unfortunately, Marianne’s shit storm returned with a vengeance...

Marianne’s cancer has returned, severely impacting her day-to-day life. She’s currently relying heavily on a walker and is in a lot of pain with four fractured and compressed vertebrae (cancer and medication causing bone weakness) severe Edema, and Lymphoma swimming around in a few locations. However, that hasn’t stopped her from trying to keep her coffee shops up and running, even after a big staffing shakeup. She’s has been restricted from driving per doctor’s orders, but to her, the biggest challenge is restrictions from walking her life companion and baby. Harper Lee. She has enlisted friends to come by to lend a hand, but Harper requires walking three to four times a day at least, so Marianne stresses out so much on how this is impacting her. If you know Marianne, she is not great at asking for help (actually terrible), and has resorted to Uber, online grocery shopping, hiring house cleaners, and the kindness of neighbors and friends to help when they can.

So that's where I am coming in and am asking for some help for my dear brave friend. Marianne jokes that her hourly cost of living is criminal with all her restrictions, and I really can only imagine. So many of us want to help her in any way we can with the absolute best intentions, but life is busy with jobs, kids etc. and she needs consistent reliable help. Therefore, she is using hired people which is so expensive, intrusive and she is struggling with dumb stubborn pride. I thought a Go Fund Me page could take some pressure off her, allow all of us that want to help her in some way be able to contribute to lowering her stress and easing the financial burden she is facing. She is one of the hardest working women that I know, and with our help we can get some of these daily chores accomplished and help her focus on beating this whole stupid cancer thing again and keeping her shops open. Consider donating any contributions small or large, enough to cover a Uber Ride or a Harper walk would be amazing, and will help Marianne alleviate some of the serious stress she should NOT be carrying around. We all need her to focus on ending her shit storm yet again.

Thank you,

Bonnie