This is, by far,the hardest thing I have ever had to write. The urge to procrastinate has been enormous. It's hard to ask for help. We are taught to be independent. Stand on our own two feet! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Needing help is seen as a weakness. Our society judges those who are not self-sustaining. Yet, this last year has given us all a commonality. Everyone has experienced struggles, losses, grief, illness, and all sorts of weird, freaky, random stuff. Like, none of us are okay. So, I am hoping that as you read this, it will be from a place of empathy and understanding and not one of judgement or condemnation. My kids and I need help. We have run into a “series of unfortunate events'' over the last twelve plus months. Events that include domestic trauma, loss of our home, mental illness and most recently, loss of our vehicle. This is also where it gets tricky. How much do I share? We are asking for money and with that comes an obligation to share why we need the money. However, some of it is very personal and very painful. Please forgive if it seems glossed over in some parts. I am protecting my children from further trauma. I am happy to answer the more personal questions via direct message on Facebook messenger(Wendy McCreary) for anyone who needs more information. Here is our story. I am going to try and keep it to just the facts and as diplomatic as possible.

September of 2020, our family of five consisted of myself, my husband Conn, our son Logan, our daughter Isabel, and her fiancé Peter. We were staying in a house up in Oostburg, WI. I was working full time at PetSmart in Grafton as a salon manager. Conn was working from home, but the company was struggling because of covid, so he wasn’t bringing much income wise. He was also struggling with mental health issues which left him disabled on a day-to-day basis. This left many of the household tasks to the 3 kids. I say kids, but they are aged 13, 20 and 22 at this point. They are my rockstars. They held the house together while I was working full time and coming home exhausted. They were also dealing with their own physical and mental illness challenges at the same time.

We knew the owner of the property we were staying in was in foreclosure and could lose the house anytime, so we prepared by getting 2 used RVs to stay in. The idea was to find a long-term campground and park them there until we could figure out housing. We had 2 large dogs and 4 cats, and we wanted a solution that included them. By the end of September, we were living mostly in the motorhomes while being tethered to the house for electricity and using the house primarily for the kitchen and bathroom. The house was in major disrepair, and it wasn’t really fit to live in or use for more than that.

On September 29 at about 8:30 PM, I got a call at work from Isabel. She is screaming and yelling and it's hard to understand her, but something has happened back home. The words I remember hearing are “dad” and “attack”. I asked if they needed to call 911 and if anyone was bleeding? I’m 45 minutes away at work. 30 minutes if I drove fast. I did end up leaving early. I called her back from the car phone. Things were calm enough at this point that she could tell me what happened. Dad had hit her and had gotten hurt when Peter pulled him off her. Now, Peter didn’t hurt him. He grabbed him in a bearhug from behind to pull him away from Isabel. Conn continued trying to attack by headbutting him so our Peter let go. Physics did the rest, and Conn broke his arm when he fell. I’m including this in the story because it was a major turning point. I had already been considering a career change. My current job was taking a toll on my body, but after this incident, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving everyone at home and being 45 minutes away at work. I didn’t trust my husband not to escalate rather than de-escalate in any given situation. He also had a broken humerus that would need surgery and he needed help with most basic daily tasks. He had agreed to finally get treatment, however, the wait time for treatment was 6 MONTHS!!!! We had to wait until MARCH. It was now OCTOBER. So, for the next 6 months, I stayed home, only leaving for grocery trips and to work my side hustle with one or both kids. The more flexible schedule made it easier to bring in some income while still being home for the most part. This is how we continued through the holidays. In February, we received news from the bank about the house. We had until March 1 to vacate the premises.

Now, our original plan to find a long-term campground was changed when I had to quit my job. We ended up going to the local state park for the first 2 weeks and then moving to a new campground every 2 weeks after that. My husband went to live with his dad in South Milwaukee so he could start his treatment March 2. The kids and I were in 2 RVS, our son and myself with a dog and 2 cats in the one called Blue, and our daughter and son in law with their dog and 2 cats in the other one called the Duck. Every time we moved, we had trouble with the Duck. It would stall and not restart. We had to have it towed twice in the 3 months we were doing this. The second time, it got towed to a garage where it still sits. When we lost their camper, Isabel and Peter moved into Blue and Logan and I went to stay with a friend. This was supposed to be a temporary situation. After a few weeks of being split up, the parks started getting busy and we were not financially able to continue with this plan. During the winter, state parks are on a first come first served basis and you can pay as you go. When it's summer, you must make reservations ahead of time and pay ahead. This did not work with our budget as we were going along making money as we needed it. We decided to store the second RV and moved the kids into a hotel room while we tried to figure out someplace for them to go. After about 10 days, we moved them into the house I had been staying in and agreed to pay rent and utilities while we tried to get back on our feet. Our goal to leave was the end of summer. Isabel and I had started rebuilding our dog grooming business in March but really put the pedal to the metal at this point. We were doing well until I suffered an injury in July which left me unable to move my left arm for about 2 weeks. I did physical therapy for July and August and had started back to work about mid August, and we were getting back up that proverbial hill when…our vehicle was repossessed. That was September 1. We haven been able to continue working without our vehicle as it’s a mobile dog grooming business.

The dog grooming business has not been our only source of income. Isabel had a job working weekends over the summer and then working with me during the week. Peter has his disability income and was also working at a local shop. Isabel and I are currently in the interview process with a few job prospects. We are just running out of time. I’d really like to get my car back so we can continue making money with our side business. Also, it's really hard to be homeless without a vehicle. Another thing is we need to find a better, more permanent living situation. Our hosts are beautiful, patient, and loving people but they would like their space back and we would also like a space to call our own.

I have set the goal for $3500. This will help us get the car back. I feel the total needed is going to be closer to $6500 but the other $3000 is an estimate of housing costs for deposit and first month’s rent. Unfortunately, I do not have as solid of a break down for that as a lot of the housing plan depends on how the job hunt goes. I can update this as things change. The car is $2500 plus repo fees and other expenses that may or may not be added depending on what happens with the car while they have it. The finance company was vague as to how much that could be, so I’m allowing $500-1000 to cover that.

Thank you for your time and I hope you can donate even if it's $5 or $10. Everything is helpful.

Thank you again,

Wendy McCreary