Hi, my name is Taryn. I am a 24-year-old trans woman living with my partner - Megan - in Portland, Oregon. I am a music producer who works with various creators to help realize their artistic visions, and my passion lies in creating art that can make people's lives better. I have worked for years in hospitality, customer service, and accounting as to support myself and my partner while pursuing this endeavor. In the past two years, that effort has finally paid off as the music I have worked on has touched the hearts of tens of thousands of people.

Unfortunately, all of that is currently in jeopardy, as we are currently at risk of losing our home. In the past several months, my symptoms of cognitive impairment and amnesia have rapidly declined. This led to a lengthy process of speaking with my practitioner, a psychiatrist, psychologist, and eventually a dissociative specialist who diagnosed me with Dissociate Identity Disorder. This condition has directly affected not only my ability to work, but my ability to participate in my hobbies, engage in my relationship with the person I love, and even take care of myself at times. As a result of how this has affected my memory and cognition, I have been homebound unless accompanied by my partner, and am completely unable to work a traditional job. When things are at their best, I may forget important information from the last several days. At it's worst, I'll be unable to recall weeks to months worth of time.

For more information, I've attached my disability letter with redacted information for privacy and safety (please excuse the printing errors, we ran out of ink and simply cannot afford more right now).

I have been working tirelessly with the help of specialized therapy that I attend twice weekly to try and understand and live with this disorder. However, the process is excruciatingly slow. It could be years before my memory even remotely resembles what it used to be, if it ever does. This has left me in a situation where I cannot work a reliable job, will not be able to work for the foreseeable future, and my partner does not make enough to support both of us. Furthermore, the process for applying and being approved for disability is lengthy and unfriendly, and we will not see anything come of that for months. I have been looking for commission work for the few things I can still do from home that are relatively unimpeded by my disability, but that has been slow.

However, there is good news. Because of my music work - one of the few things I am still able to do at this time - we are just now starting to make enough of an income in order to get by. The key words there being "get by". We were barely living paycheck-to-paycheck beforehand, and are now back to making roughly the same income. That does not erase the past several months of near-zero income on my part, which has resulted in us being multiple months behind on rent. We've been in contact with our property management, who has informed us that they have filed with our local court to begin eviction proceedings. While we have been attempting to find rental assistance (and still are), our unique situation has made that a challenge. While our situation is stabilizing, we cannot afford to be evicted. We need to be able to pay off at least one additional month of backrent while maintaining the ongoing rent in order to avoid this. We do not have this money, nor the means to make it on our own in time, which is why we are asking for your help.

All we need is help getting back on our feet. Once that's done, we will be in a secure enough situation to manage on our own. Megan and I hate asking for help. We are stubborn and self driven and hate having to rely on anyone else for anything. As you can probably imagine, that's made this situation especially difficult for the both of us. I hope that conveys just how little we wanted to have to do this, but we've explored as many options as we can, and put this off for longer than we should have. If you are able to donate any amount in order to help us get there, it would mean the world to us. If not, we would appreciate if you could spread the word.

Thank you so much for your time and support ❤️