“Tell donors your story” is the prompt. And gosh, do I begin at the birth? No, even though my daughter was born by knives cutting through my abdomen via the hands of five strangers wearing all blue in a freezing cold room. That emergency still wasn’t the most traumatic part. I could have healed from that if the days and weeks and months and years post birth were.. different. I gave birth on a Friday, Jesse went back to work that Monday. 3 weeks after, he was flying to Seattle to pick up his son. When he was at work I was alone with a newborn and my stepson, barely able to walk still, eating mostly peanut butter filled pretzels and granola bars as meals, new baby crying crying crying. We moved to Washington when my daughter was 5 months. We stayed in an isolated house in the woods with no car. Jesse would take ours to make $17/hr working at a grocery store. The amount of times I heard “we only have $20 to last us until next payday” is absurd. How does a postpartum, healing, breastfeeding mom nourish herself when she can barely afford to eat? My card declined in the grocery line that one time and I wept. We moved to a house closer to the city, Jesse got a new job with much better pay but still not enough to support a family. The poverty line is $3,650/month in Washington and since we made $100 more than that we were considered out of poverty, so we couldn’t receive food stamps or get on health insurance. A married mother does not receive the same benefits as an unmarried mother and this is a curious thing to me. It reminds me of my brother and my own mother telling me that since I have a husband I should not need anyone else. That it is he alone who should care and protect me mentally, emotionally, physically, materially. That it is his responsibility to provide (provide what?) for the family because he is the head of household. But in our household, he is not. This is a matriarchal home. And when the mother is unwell the whole family suffers. There’s more but I will tell you now why I am asking. I have been without a car for many months. I had to get it repossessed because it kept breaking down and I could not afford to fix it and I could not keep up with my monthly payments. I have to file bankruptcy. I need a car so I can drive to work and stop waking my baby up early and taking her immediately from our cozy bed and into the truck so Jesse can bring me (I can’t drive his truck because it’s huge and old and it’s stick shift). I want her to be able to wake up slow, to have a relaxing morning. My job is 30 minutes away which means she’s in the car for two hours a day 4 times a week and it’s a lot on her. She cries the whole way home. We also need something that’s better on gas because when you’re already down to your last dollars and then you have to put gas in the vehicle in order to drive to work to make the money you need to put the gas in the vehicle it puts an added stress on our already taxed nervous systems. A married woman/mother should not suffer because she chose to marry and have a child. A family needs community. So I’m asking for help in this because we can’t do it alone. We just can’t. It’d mean a lot for me to be able to get to where I need to go after years of feeling so stuck & trapped. I’m asking for help to buy a car because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to save up for one. We live paycheck to paycheck. We’ve barely been able to afford birthday cake ingredients when the kids birthdays roll around. Jesse and I haven’t gotten each other birthday gifts, anniversary gifts, Christmas gifts, nothing for the past 2 years. We’ve been needing to get herbs for his sons eczema but keep having to wait unit next paycheck and then the next paycheck and then the next one because as soon as we get paid it all goes to rent, food, and bills and then it’s all gone. It would mean so much to be able to free myself & my family of the burden of waiting to have enough money for a car. I would like to be able to make it to my appointments, take myself to work, take the baby places while Jesse’s at work. Not only that, but having a car would help our lives have some sort of flow, which we’ve been missing. Trips to the grocery store would be easier. Not having to load all the kids into the truck on the weekend to run an errand or to drop me off, etc etc would really make such a difference for the whole family. Like today, it’d be such a relief to be able to stop and get wipes and diapers on my way home from work instead of dragging all the kids out of the house to pick me up and then stop at the store and then drive all the way back home. It might not sound like a lot but.. it’s a lot. Especially when all you have is each other. No family, no community, no help. Please help me build the life that I want for my family. Community means everything to us. It really does take a village.