Update 6/22/25:

While housing stability is a tremendous relief, Tara continues to grapple with the pervasive effects of CPTSD. The safety of her new environment has, however, created space for a different kind of pain to surface: grief. Tara is finally able to mourn the loss of her home, from which she was wrongfully evicted, and heartbreakingly, the loss of her mother. The relentless fight for survival while living in her car had previously subsumed any opportunity to process these profound losses, but now, the tears she couldn't shed before are finally flowing. This period marks a new, challenging, but ultimately necessary, phase of healing for Tara.

Please continue to make Tara’s health and healing a financial priority, as she continues on her journey of healing.

Update 6/15/25:

Tara continues to make remarkable strides in her journey towards stabilization after experiencing 90 days of homelessness. Each day brings her closer to a renewed sense of security and well-being. She is profoundly grateful for the simple yet fundamental comforts of having her own bed, a private bathroom, and a functional kitchen. These basic amenities, often taken for granted by others, represent immense progress and a foundation for healing for Tara. Her ability to now rest in a safe place, maintain personal hygiene, and prepare her own meals are critical components in rebuilding her life and regaining a sense of control and dignity. 

Understanding Emotional Dysregulation and Nervous System Issues in CPTSD - 

Tara's period of homelessness, an intensely traumatic experience, likely exacerbated her symptoms of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). Unlike single-incident PTSD, CPTSD results from prolonged, repeated trauma, often in situations where escape is difficult or impossible, such as chronic abuse, neglect, or, in Tara's most recent experience, the sustained stress and insecurity of homelessness.  

Two key challenges often seen with CPTSD are emotional dysregulation and nervous system dysregulation. 

 * Emotional Dysregulation: This refers to the difficulty in managing and responding to emotional experiences in an easy and flexible manner. For individuals with CPTSD like Tara, emotional dysregulation can manifest as:

 * Intense mood shifts: Shifting rapidly between extreme emotions like deep sadness, anxiety, or even numbness.

 * Difficulty identifying and labeling emotions: Feeling overwhelmed by internal sensations without being able to pinpoint the specific emotion. 

 * Difficulty returning to a baseline emotional state: Once triggered, it can be incredibly challenging to calm down and regulate emotions. 

 * Chronic feelings of emptiness or despair: A pervasive sense of void or hopelessness. While homeless, Tara's emotional system was constantly on high alert, oscillating between fear, despair, frustration, and perhaps brief moments of hope. This constant flux further cemented dysregulated emotional patterns. 

 * Nervous System Dysregulation: The nervous system, particularly the autonomic nervous system, plays a crucial role in our stress response. In CPTSD, this system can become chronically dysregulated, often getting "stuck" in survival modes. The two main branches involved are:  

* Sympathetic Nervous System ("Fight or Flight"): When activated, this system prepares the body for immediate danger, increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. For someone experiencing homelessness, this system would have been in overdrive, constantly scanning for threats and ready to react.

 * Parasympathetic Nervous System ("Rest and Digest" / "Freeze"): While this system is typically associated with relaxation, in the context of trauma, a particular branch can lead to a "freeze" response, where individuals become numb, shut down, or dissociate to cope with overwhelming situations. In CPTSD, the nervous system can get stuck in a hyper-aroused state (constantly feeling anxious, on edge, easily startled) or a hypo-aroused state (feeling numb, detached, fatigued, difficulty feeling pleasure).

Tara's nervous system was likely in a constant state of hypervigilance during her 90 days of homelessness. Even now that she is safe, her nervous system may still be accustomed to perceiving threat, leading to persistent anxiety, difficulty sleeping, or sudden feelings of being overwhelmed, even by seemingly small stressors to others. 

Tara's immense gratitude for her own bed, bathroom, and kitchen directly speaks to the healing of her nervous system. These elements provide a tangible sense of safety, predictability, and control, allowing her nervous system to gradually shift out of survival mode and into a state where rest, repair, and genuine calm are possible. This foundation is crucial for her continued emotional and psychological recovery. As expected, this will be a continued journey of stability. 

This Father’s Day, I want to encourage each of you to consider donating to Tara as she has spent her life giving to others and especially giving to her son, who she has been both father and mother to.

Update 6/10/25:

Great news for Tara! She has successfully secured much needed healthcare coverage, a significant step forward in her journey. She continues to make slow, but steady progress in emotionally regulating and actively learning strategies to manage her CPTSD symptoms. 

Looking ahead, Tara is now developing a thoughtful game plan to slowly reintegrate into the workforce, hopefully starting with part-time work, after experiencing a prolonged period of homelessness. Her resilience and dedication to her well-being are truly inspiring. 

Continued thanks goes to everyone who has continued to donate. We are both so grateful. As many of you know, this will continue to be a need, because she has so many needs, since she is completely starting her life entirely over. Please feel free to share her Gofundme on your social media pages, with friends, family, church group, etc.!

Update 5/26/25:

How do you convey the full scope of chronic trauma and complex ptsd in a single post? It’s a lot like trying to convey the entirety of the ocean in a single post - you couldn’t possibly communicate the full scope of the ocean in a single blog, sound byte or video post. Another analogy could be - describe your entire spiritual journey, including every phase, every player, every insight, every loss and precisely how it led you to this point in one fell swoop? Most of us could not, in any kind of meaningful way, convey experiential weight of spirituality and the journeys that accompany it in one statement, let alone even one conversation. 

So we are not going to attempt to do this in a single post. What we are going to do is begin the journey of sacred story telling by sharing a little each day, along with updates on the progress of our shared goal, which is to support and advocate for Tara to return to health and wellness after surviving multiple harrowing life experiences; experiences so acutely raw and traumatic that frankly, many of us may not have survived despite our deep faith, belief in healing and what we perceive to be diligence in advocacy and sense of personal responsibility in our own health and wellness. So tonight let’s start with some highlights to establish a foundational knowledge of Tara’s journey, which will help us communicate key events, themes, interdependencies, and complexities that not only inform but compel understanding, and may even contribute to your own healing journey as you support Tara’s. 

Like most humans, an undertone of trauma existed in all life phases for Tara including:

Childhood Trauma

Adolescent Trauma

Adulthood Trauma 

Approximately 15 years ago, the Trauma Quotient dramatically accelerated in intensity as a series of life altering crisis occurred in rapid repetition over a period of 5-7 years, resulting in a CPTSD reality that has continued to present day.  

While highly functional (some of which may have been a trauma response in itself), ultimately Tara’s biochemical and sensory reality changed as a result of accumulation of these intense traumas. Additionally, many of the types of trauma Tara experienced carry residual impacts and symptoms which often do not surface until after the events occurred (sometimes months, some symptoms years, and these ptsd experiential variants can shift and intensify depending on the complexity. Addition of new acute trauma experiences compounds this dynamic even further). Another way to put it is: the existence of trauma, complex trauma, and being a recipient of chronic, perpetual ongoing acute traumas make every day functioning exponentially more difficult and this only intensifies over time.  

Operating with the understanding that complex ptsd has been a tough terrain Tara has navigated for the last 15-20 years, it is important to also understand that Tara experienced in excess of 15 new, sentinel traumatic life events IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS ALONE. 

Both Tara and I so appreciate everyone who is donated to this point. We are approximately 16% into the overall goal that I have set on GoFundMe. Ultimately, I would like to set Tara up in the best position possible so that she can slowly return to normal everyday life and also adequately begin to do deep healing work for CPTSD. I am sharing all the ways you can donate. Please feel free to share with friends and family and on your FB page.

Update 5/20/25:

Here is a quick update on Tara: thanks to those of you who donated directly to Tara. Thankfully, she was able to extend her stay at the long-term hotel she is in until Saturday. 

My ultimate hope and plan for her, is that we can eventually get her into a place for rent that would be paid up for the next couple of months so that she can rightfully get back on her feet and start slowly living her life again. 

Long story short, donations are still welcome and needed, whether that be directly to her through the pay apps or through GoFundMe. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Also, I know that some of you have tried to reach out to her and she appreciates that. However, at this time, she is still trying to get her nervous system to settle down and regulation continues to be an issue. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have as I am her point person right now. Thank you so much.

Hey everyone! Lisa King here (or Lisa Burris to some of you) with a very important message:

My childhood friend is facing an incredibly challenging time. For the past three months, she has experienced homelessness after a long illness, loss of her job, being wrongfully evicted from her home she worked so hard for, domestic abuse and the traumatic loss of her parent. This series of heartbreaking events has left her living in her car, a situation no one should have to endure.

Despite these immense hardships, she remains resilient and is actively working towards getting back on her feet. However, the immediate need for safe housing and basic necessities is critical. I am reaching out to my community with the hope that you can offer financial support to help her through this very difficult period. Your generosity will provide her with a lifeline, offering her a chance to secure temporary housing (at the very least), cover essential expenses and ultimately rebuild her life. Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a tangible difference and offer a beacon of hope during what has been a very dark time.

If you have any more specific questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly.

Thank you for your generosity, compassion, kindness and willingness to give to someone who deserves the world and more.

"The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” - Gandhi

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-18