Claudia Suzanne, known to most people as Harris, is my business partner, my landlord, and the closest thing I have to a second mother. For nearly two decades, we have lived and worked side by side. I have watched her pour herself into other people’s dreams, other people’s books, other people’s careers, often at the expense of her own comfort and health.

Harris was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when she was just fifteen years old. She is now seventy‑two. For more than half a century, she has lived with a disease that slowly takes pieces of your body away from you. She kept going anyway. She built a career, a community, and a program that trained over one hundred professional ghostwriters and helped launch nearly 300 books into the world. She mentored people who had nowhere else to turn. She loaned money when people were desperate. She gave time when people were lost. She has been the person others call when they don’t know what to do next.

Last week, Harris had a heart attack.

Since then, everything has changed. She now needs near‑constant care. She cannot move easily. She cannot manage day‑to‑day tasks on her own. She is in pain. She is exhausted. She hasn't been able to leave the house for a couple months because she needs a wheelchair. She needs medications that we cannot afford. She needs stability at the exact moment our lives have become anything but stable.

Our business, which has always been how we kept a roof over our heads, has taken two devastating hits. But then, as so often happens, things changed, and we couldn’t pivot fast enough. First Covid wiped out much of our client base. Then the rise of AI made it even harder for people to see the value in the kind of high‑level ghostwriting and education Harris spent her life teaching.

We threw everything we had into keeping the company afloat and paying the people we worked with while not taking salaries ourselves—just like so many other businesses in the book industry. But we didn’t have massive financial support behind us like the bigger entities do, and we went through our resources. The work (and therefore the income) slowed. The bills, of course, did not.

I am now spending most of my time caring for Harris. I do it because I love her and because there is no one else. But every hour I spend helping her is an hour I cannot spend trying to bring in new work to keep us afloat.

She has carried others for decades. Right now, we are the ones who cannot carry ourselves. We are behind on rent. We are struggling to keep the utilities on. We are rationing groceries. We are choosing which expenses can wait and which cannot, and the list of things that cannot wait keeps growing.

We would not be asking if there were any other option left; we've already done swallowed our Pride. This is simply where we are.

Your support will help us pay for a wheelchair, a ramp, medications, food, rent, and utilities for the next couple of months so I can focus on stabilizing our situation and getting work flowing again while making sure Harris is safe and cared for.

If Harris has ever helped you, taught you, mentored you, loaned you money, answered your questions, or changed your path in any way, this is a moment to help her back. If you do not know her personally, please know that you are helping someone who has spent her entire life helping others.

Any amount helps and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.