We are Kate Freeman and Hillary Kay. For the last  22 years we have made our life together with as much integrity, compassion, creativity and joy that we have been able to bring to our little off the grid world. We didn’t choose the easiest way and certainly money was not the primary goal. We are musicians, artists and grew medicinal herbs on our home in the Santa Cruz mountains. We got by until the sickness got worse. Kate struggled with long term Lyme disease for many years and was overwhelmed and became bedridden for three years. Things started to fall apart.   Hilly got West Nile virus and has been chronically exhausted ever since. Her knee blew out from a torn meniscus and serious bone damage. She got surgery but it is slow healing. We got co-vid before it had a name. I fell off a ladder and broke three ribs. I woke up one morning and was completely deaf in my right ear. Everything that was normal became hard. Playing gigs, making jewelry and farming started to slip through our grasp along with our ability to make money to sustain us. Just this week I got more life threatening health news. Our brains are so over whelmed.
   Then there are the fires - we were forced to evacuate our home for at least two weeks, four times in five years - which basically means packing up the house every year. The threat of fire day and night created full blow ptsd in both of us. A car accident sent our only vehicle into dangerous disrepair. We had four loved ones dying. It became a situation of what is happening to us? Try as we might we couldn’t rise up and put these disasters behind us.

  We made the hard decision to sell our cabin and 20 acres in the SantaCruz mountains in California. Every day we work as hard as we can trying to get it ready for the market. Just the survival of living off the grid for Kate 72 years and Hilly 62 years old is breaking us, let alone packing and repairing the cabin and sorting our life. We just haven’t had the money to pay for any help and the boxes ‘are doggone heavy! We took out a small mortgage out and now it must be payed or we will be foreclosed on.   Time has zoomed by and we are about to loose our home over $15,000 that we must pay. I can’t believe we could loose our  home over such a small amountWe have been trying to sell things but the sicknesses that we struggle with make it nearly impossible without the help that we can’t afford. We thought we would have sold our place by now but there are obstacles at every turn. We would be filled with deep thanks and gratitude to anyone helping us get this threat out of the way so we can move to a more sustainable life. I can’t imagine being homeless and sick at this point in our lives. It’s very scary. I know there are so many folks that are going through so much as well. These are such strange and trying times. 
We are lucky because we love and respect each other. We will continue to live our life together from the heart, with a spirit of gratitude, curiosity, joy and a hope for all living beings and the earth to heal. Now I guess it is time for us to learn and let our fiercely independent selves tell our story and reach out for help to heal. Love to you all.