Raise money to send me to ED residential treatment

Selamina, my name is amelework wagaso

I was adopted through a corrupt agency that sold my brother and me when I was six from Soddo, Ethiopia.

I am 22 years old and a Pre-K art teacher,

I love people deeply and passionately,

The way I know how to connect with people through music and art; I love documenting your stories are everywhere & anywhere I meet you.

I spend my days fighting the deadly illness of restrictive Aneroxia.

In 2021 I was brutally raped and almost lost my life. With the littlest strength I had, I took my abuser to court and lost in Missoula, Montana.

I was 19 when my life ended. I tried to end my life one month after the rape. I have relapsed in my eating disorder and sitting at 100lbs. I spent all of last year in residential ED facilities on a feeding tube, fighting for my life at 90lbs. I didn’t see the sun for four months. My body is starting to shut down again. Breathing and walking is hard. The risk of not recovering is very high. I spend days at a time sleepless with PTSD Flashbacks. I am scared.

The first trauma I remember was when I was four years old and I watched my dad die from Malaria in Ethiopia. I have been facing significant trauma since that age. I am tired. I am breaking, and I need help.

I am beautiful and intelligent. I have survived everything and often get overlooked as someone who needs help. I cannot do this alone. As a survivor of childhood molestation, abuse, neglect, ED, drug addiction, homelessness, and rape, I have overcome everything I have needed to be alive today.

I want to stay alive for the first time since I was nine. I need to wait, to finish my degree to help kiddos being abused like me. I love brown humans. I love our culture, our flavor, and our color. Everything makes sense about the way we are designed; that’s why I paint us and write our stories everywhere I go.

I need to be in the hospital as soon as possible, but due to systematic oppression and incredibly racist institutions, I am so poor. I need to raise money to buy a plane ticket, be able to pay several months of rent ahead, and basic needs such as groceries, a bed, and shoes.

If you have any empathy, hope, or belief in my story, my power, or my truth, please support me. Please repost and share. Tell my story because I reflect on you, and that’s why you care. You would never let a child suffer in silence.

Please don’t let me suffer in silence. Again.

I love cooking and eating with people. I hope to buy and refurbish a food truck to feed and travel the world while documenting people’s life stories. I have so many goals. My prospect in being in Business school is to gain credentials to open my own sustainable wellness recovery center for brown and queer folks. I have passion and a desire to be a powerful voice for brown girls and women. I aspire to keep seeking truth and understanding. Watch my light shine so brightly. Watch the blessing of this life.

Amen.