As someone who was raised to pick myself up by my bootstraps, my heart is racing as I write this. I hate asking for help because I was often chastised for doing so, and it was held against me; asking for help has never felt safe. So as I navigated infertility, I pushed myself to “figure it out,” uncomfortably accepting help from those who knew me well enough to recognize that I was struggling.

The love and intuition of my friends and family have prevented me from needing to venture into that unsafe space of asking for help throughout my previous maternity leave. Well, with this leave, I’ve reached the point that my boots have run out of strap, and I need help.

While preparing for maternity leave, I made plans that were designed to keep myself and my family afloat; however, we know how the old saying goes. I purchased short-term disability insurance, I hired an employee and an intern to keep money coming into my practice, and I changed my charting system to save money; all things designed to get me from June to September as comfortably as possible.

Well… short-term disability only covered 8 weeks rather than the anticipated 10 weeks, and they paid in a lump sum, not in weekly payments; this resulted in a large taxable amount and a lower deposit into my bank account. Changing my business’s charting system led to an extensive delay in payments by insurers; the length of the delay was not anticipated, and some pre-baby claims are still pending. And despite being able to keep a good fraction of my clients at the practice by reassigning them to my intern and employee, payment of those claims was delayed as my billing company figured out submitting claims for their sessions as supervisory under my license. Ergo, I have not received the income I had anticipated when I planned for my maternity leave.

Needless to say, while all this happened, none of my bills went on pause; instead, they increased as I added the new baby to my marketplace insurance; my monthly premium is now over $1k/month. I had to register baby girl in daycare, which meant a large deposit upfront; this had to be pulled from my leave money because years of infertility have completely depleted my backup funds. So, despite being “on leave,” I did light work from June up until last week, and as of this week, I returned to work a month earlier to combat my diminishing bank account. However, it does not appear to be enough.

The first of the month will be here in a little over a week, and I have $23 in my account that is not designated for an upcoming bill. I do not think insurance claims from my practice will clear in enough time, or with a large enough amount, to cover my mortgage, HOA, car insurance, medical insurance, and first two weeks of daycare for September. So I’m swallowing my pride, my embarrassment, and my shame to ask for help.

Whenever I’ve cursed my decision to professionally enter into public service, my best friend has reminded me that where I don’t have a corporate income, I do have people. So I’m anxiously and quite uncomfortably leaning into my people to see if they can help me make ends meet for the first of the month. I’m embarrassed and ashamed to need to start a GoFundMe, but being a parent has taught me that I need to be OK with being uncomfortable if it benefits my children.

If my people who are reading this can contribute what they can to help me meet my financial goal for September, I would greatly appreciate it. I know the economy sucks, and this is a horrible time to ask for financial assistance, but you miss every shot you don’t shoot, so I’m shooting this in the hopes that a few of you can help me stay afloat.

I humbly thank you for even reading this and will be eternally grateful to anyone that contributes.

Thank you.