Hello, my name is Tess and I'm a disabled trans person from the United States.

2025 has been one of the worst years of my entire life. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my story, I have moderately severe cerebral palsy, and I use a wheelchair. My Social Security disability benefits were terminated in early 2024, because they claimed I was making too much money, and they had overpaid me. This wasn't true, and I provided them with ample proof of my income and expenses. In September 2024 my financial situation, became even worse when I had to quit my main job due to health issues. As a result of losing both my disability and employment income, many of my living expenses over the last year have been put onto credit cards.

In June of this year, I received confirmation from an employee at the Social Security office that they had finished processing my income info, and that I no longer had an overpayment. She confirmed I would receive my full backpay, of over 32,000 along with my monthly benefits beginning in July. She said my benefits never should’ve been terminated to begin with. Prior to this, she had made several requests to try and get at least some of the backpay sent to me, but whenever the US treasury would send the payment to my account the illegally created department of government efficiency (DOGE) would reverse it. In spite of what the employee said, they never planned to pay me.

The day after I spoke with her, the decision about the overpayment and my backpay was completely reversed by someone unfamiliar with my case. I received no backpay, and only received the full amount of my monthly benefits for July and August. They also claimed I owed over $8000 on top of the backpay they stole from me, and were set to begin garnishing my SSDI checks by 50- 75%, and I was only going to be able to receive between 500-900 dollars a month.

This experience, along with the sweeping cuts to Medicaid, have made clear to me that my life in the United States is over. More recently, trans people and people on the political left have been deemed “terrorists.” My family and I belong to both of those groups and we are terrified of being targeted. The United States has descended into fascism, and the regime poses a direct threat to our lives.

So we made the difficult choice to flee the US and we are now refugee claimants in Canada. This was not a decision we made lightly. As a refugee claimants, we understandably had to completely cut ties with the US government. This included terminating my remaining disability benefits. Our families are helping us as much as they are able to, and I have since found some project-based contract work. Also, one of my partners is now working as a dishwasher. But combined, this is barely enough to cover our rent and food expenses.

I had initially planned to sell my wheelchair van to pay off my debt, and give my family and I a financial cushion for a few months. However, when my service dog in training Hotspur became ill last week I was reminded of how vital it is for me to have a reliable vehicle I can independently drive when emergencies happen. There are also many jobs I could be applying for which would require me to have a personal vehicle.

We received confirmation that Hotspur has Addison's disease, an auto immune disorder that affects the adrenal glands. The prognosis is usually good, but he will have to be on two different steroid medications for the rest of his life. He may also need to be on a liver medication because one of the steroid meds increased one of his liver enzymes.

I'm trying to raise 61,000 CAD, but my first benchmark is $6000 CAD.

$6000 raised is enough to pay off Hotspur's current vet bills and the remaining balance on my car payment.

$10,000 raised covers all of the above plus the entire balance of one credit card.

$47,000 raised is enough to pay off the entirety of my debt.

The full $61,000 raised covers all of the above, plus 3 months of: