***UPDATED GOAL***

I first met Lydia Theon Ware i at a workshop for writers more than a decade ago. At that time, Lydia had overcome the profound challenges of being unhoused.

Lydia has cultivated a career for herself as a peer recovery specialist and coach while continuing her artistic development, including the creation of original curricula to teach poetry to the unhoused and mentally challenged conserved as well as the general population, populations she identifies with.

Then came 2022.

The past few months have been rough.

She lost her apartment of twenty years when an unscrupulous property manager terminated her lease after changing the terms to disallow her cats, Lion and Mask, whom she'd had since first moving in, and Lydia was forced to take refuge in the homeless shelter.

She lost Lion and Mask when she had no choice but to rehome them, one of which subsequently escaped and the other became terminally ill.

She lost her sole vehicle to a car accident that left her without transportation to work, which she was continuing from her temporary bed in the shelter.

And, in the midst of all of this, Lydia lost her housing assistance.

After several extensions and an extensive search for an affordable rental, Lydia was faced with exiting the shelter on February 13 without anywhere to go.

But Lydia is persevering.

She is out of the shelter. We are now working to keep it that way.

On February 8, Lydia signed a lease agreement for a room rental in Eastvale that is within her budget.

Calls to a short list of good-hearted friends resulted in the gift of a used but reliable car.

The next step is to help Lydia pay overdue bills in order to break the cycle of housing insecurity and help her maintain her employment.

So how do we do that? By holding a FUNdraiser in support of Lydia!

There will be music! Live jazz by Parish Lantern and pop/hip hop by Mellow Lando.

There will be art for auction by Steve Lossing.

There will be an open mic and featured poet guests.

And all we ask in return is you drop a dollar or two (or whatever you can afford) in service of our good friend Lydia.

If you are free Sunday afternoon join us at Back to the Grind. All monies raised go directly to her to keep her safe, housed, and maintain her transportation so she can get from her new place in Eastvale to her job in Riverside.

Let’s have a poetry party! Hope to see you there.

(This concurrent GoFundMe is for those who can’t be there but want to help.)