So here’s the short of it, this is our second time trying to set down roots in the UK! We need your help in order for us to STAY as a family in the UK and so our daughter can keep the amazing life we are building here for her. We are doing everything we can but we are afraid we won’t be able to do enough!

Here’s the long of it…

It all started with Myspace…the quintessential millennial love story.

I found this cute British boy and we became friends. Between the MSN Messenger pings back and forth, we quickly realised that there was something more there. But he was in the UK and I was in the US and there was just no way at the age of 17, we could make it work. We were young and dumb, but we stayed friends for years and years, until finally the universe aligned and we realised that there was “something” that was still there, and we needed to figure out what it was.

So in 2017, he came to “meet me” in real life for the first time, and it was love at first IRL, three-dimensional sight. I’ve never felt home in someone’s arms but I was home in his. We had spent years establishing who we were, having good relationships and bad, me having my daughter, all to realise that we were meant for each other all along. We didn’t want to waste anymore time. We married in Colorado in 2018, a small, budget wedding with our closest friends and family. We didn’t go on a honeymoon. We used all our money on our futures. We spent nearly $15K to apply for visas, and pay for flights and ship our prized possessions to the UK so that we could officially start our new lives.

The UK was everything that I hoped it would be for our family. I started my own business, we were renting a cute house, we were on the right track in life, we absolutely loved it and our daughter was starting to thrive, make friends, and adjusting to our new lives… when the COVID Pandemic hit the country. My Husband immediately lost his job even before lockdown went into affect March 2020, we couldn’t pay our bills and my Husband losing his job meant that our visas would be invalid, because one of the requirements was that He had to make a certain amount of money to qualify as our sponsor. Our visas were up for renewal for the last half of the 5 year route that it takes to become a citizen or obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain, and we didn’t know what we would do. So we made the VERY hard and heartbreaking decision to move to the states.

So despite the fact that it felt like a piece of us died, we moved back to the states in October 2020. We tried to make the best of it. We took positive steps in our lives, found a place that we semi-liked, my Husband officially adopted my daughter, we worked hard to build our credit and get good jobs, which eventually gave us the ability to become home owners, lease a new car, you know…the American dream. BUT we weren’t happy. We were very much alone, our daughter was depressed and isolated, we didn’t have friends local to us, and we were homesick; missing everything and the things that so many take for granted.

Finally, in 2023 we admitted to ourselves that despite the car, the house, the good job, the great wages, the better than some healthcare….we weren’t happy and probably never would be — fully acknowledging that we were privileged to even be able to talk about this. We made a decision as a family to take the risk to fight for the dream we had always had since we were 17-years-old — to live in the UK.

So with the incredibly generous loan from family, we spent another £15k for the visas (7K for two), to ship our prized possessions over, for a used car to get us going with the expectation from our realtor that our house was going to sell well enough for us to pay back that family loan. Then the election hit, Trump won, and the housing market panicked. We were getting hardly any viewings and the offers we were getting were less than we bought the house for to begin with.

We were backed into a corner after months of waiting for our house to sell and not getting a single good offer. We didn’t have the means or ability to wait the market out and we had no idea of knowing whether it was going to get better or worse. So when we got an offer that was $1000 more than what we had purchased the house for three years prior…we took it. Despite the fact that we put $10K worth of improvements to the house. It was soul-crushing.

And so now we are here. We owe our family £15k for which we are required to pay £500 a month, and we are also trying to save £500 a month towards our goal of £7k+ for our next round of visas (due January 2027) which will give us the ability to stay here for another 2.5 years, after which, we can apply for Indefinite leave to Remain which costs about £6,060 for two people. Then, the ultimate goal which is citizenship at £1735 per person. All of this on top of just basic living expenses.

We weren’t able to save anything last year because of our living situation so we are starting at 0…

£7k in a year and a bit….we think we can do this? We hope? We are working as much and as hard as we can, fighting for our family but most importantly our child, who is going to a really good school, getting an amazing education, has an incredible group of friends, and has such an amazing future here. We don’t want that to be ripped away from her again, and the pressure feels suffocating.

Steven works full time as a driver for private and for special needs people and children, in addition to two other jobs evenings, where he only has one day off of work.  I work as a full time artist where I make a living around my chronic illnesses, and anxiety — not something I usually speak about but I’m trying to be honest. Both of us are hardworking, committed people that recognise that asking for help for this, seems trivial compared to all of the suffering and loss that people are experiencing at an extreme and brutal scale all over the world.

It feels gross to even ask for help but after months of going back and forth about whether crowdfunding was the right thing to do. We want to pay our fair share to be in this country. We are happy to pay for our healthcare but its all so much and it terrifies us to have it all taken away again. If this fails again, we will be even worse off than we were last time.

It feels embarrassing to ask for help. I feel afraid of judgement and I don’t know why my family deserves this. We aren’t much different than most families. Sure, we are good people, we want to be good to the world and our community but we have felt since the month we got married that we are fighting to just be a family and exist where it makes us happy. And at the end of the day, that is what we all want but I don’t even know how to accept the generosity, and ignore how privileged and possibly undeserving we are of it.

But if we are too prideful and humble to ask for help, then we are doing a disservice to our daughter who surely deserves a home, permanence, opportunities, security and stability in a community that she supports and is supported by . And if we are constantly fighting to survive, we won’t ever be able to pass it forward, or to be helpful to our community or anyone else in need.

So here is our story and our humble plea To help if you are able. It would help give a girl who is smart, empathetic, an actor, a musician, an aspiring author, a spark of light… the future she so desperately wants and that we so desperately want for her. This is the third time we have started over and we really need this one to stick.

There was once a girl who from behind a computer screen, loved a boy who was halfway across the planet. All she wanted was to be with him and all he wanted was to be with her.

We are still trying. For that and our little family.