Rent Crisis: Help Disabled Mom Escaping Cult & DV

I'm going by Rebecca right now (not my legal name, for safety reasons). I'm a very sick single mom of an amazing toddler who needs help escaping a very abusive situation in a fundamentalist cult while in a medical crisis & after religious abuse & caregiver abandonment. Most urgently, I need to raise $6,110 (to bring this GFM total to $8,248 -- financial details listed below) to take care of needs through the end of June plus rent for July (factoring in GFM fees), $3160 of which is due by June 5th for the rest of May rent plus June rent (this includes fees for late May rent). Donating directly via Paypal, Cashapp, or Venmo is also an option (links directly below) & great if you want to avoid fees.

CashApp: $RChappellMusic

Venmo: @ChappellAsPhoenix

Paypal: @RChappellMusic

Note: If you mark your gift "gift" or "donation" for IRS purposes it helps. Thank you!

***My Story In a Nutshell***: While escaping from both a DV situation & a patriarchal fundamentalist cult, I was recently suddenly abandoned by my one caregiver, someone I thought was safe. They left me after starting to believe that the problems with finding safe & stable housing for us were a sign from God that I'm not healing from my diseases because I have a spiritual or sin problem. They went back to the cult.

This loss of my last bit of support from my old life was devastating. I initially raised $1643 on this fundraiser when we first escaped months ago. Unfortunately, right after we came down with Covid again & because of my very immunocompromised status & underlying conditions my health was further devastated. We then also got the flu & I've battled 6 months of infections with almost no break, including another Covid infection, despite my best efforts (see more details below). I now need to see multiple specialists (cardiologist, neurologist, immunologist, neurosurgeons, & more) & need to radically rest for a while because with Long Covid & MECFS rest is essential to prevent further decline. I'm going to need neurosurgery because of my other conditions that Covid has exacerbated. I also have new cardiovascular damage & am currently in a wheelchair or bedbound most of the time. I know I can improve with rest & treatment from specialists, so I'm just trying to buy us some time for me to stabilize while I really fight for my health on this medical journey & try to heal from religious abuse & other severe trauma.

Even though I'm remaining anonymous for serious safety reasons, friends of mine in the disability & church survivor communities know the details of my situation & can confirm they are accurate. A friend helped me type this up. Another friend encouraged me to make this GFM & set it up myself because of the urgency of accessing funds for rent. CW for spiritual, physical, & other abuse:

I'm fleeing a community that believes: adult women should submit to their husbands (or fathers if they have no husband), sexual assault in marriage is not wrong, children should be spanked until their will is broken (see To Train Up a Child book parenting philosophy), disabled or poor single mothers should adopt their babies out or have their autonomy taken away, & disability & disease are sometimes spiritual problems (especially when you aren't submissive enough).

I'm determined to break the cycle of spiritual, physical, emotional, & psychological abuse for my child. I feel like I'm climbing up a deep, dark abyss carrying my baby on my back. It is slow going, but I won't give up. I just need emergency support right now.

More details below, but there is a shortage of affordable housing where I live & I've exhausted or am utilizing every public & non-profit resource available. I'm applying for Section 8 vouchers but they are lottery systems & in high demand, so haven't secured one. Unfortunately, single moms with serious disability tend to fall through the cracks as SSI isn't enough to support a family on, at least not in my location where I need to stay safe & close to my current doctors. My goal is to get back to working as a music teacher after fighting hard for medical improvement. I'd eventually like to finish my other degrees (first became disabled right before college graduation) & change careers. Right now, though, I'm fighting for my life with this medical decline. I need a little help from a lot of people to make it out of this pit.

***Financial Breakdown (amounts reflect GFM fee estimates)***:

1. Amount Raised Months Ago: $1643

2. Amount Just Raised for May rent (hasn't covered all of it): $495

3. Amount Needed Urgently to Get Us Through July 1st (includes July rent) $6,110:

A. May Rent & Fees Remaining (I bought us a grace period but this is almost out): $1320

B. June Rent: $1840

C. July Rent (if I can't raise this earlier in June & pay in advance, it will go up on July 1st before I can move, & I'm too sick to find housing & move within the next 30 days so I'm trying to pay in advance so I can buy us two months before we have to move while I'm this severely ill & dealing with immediate post-Covid complications): $1840

D. Car Repair on my old car: $510 estimated to get us running to get to local appointments again

E. Current Medical Out-of-Pocket Expenses: $300

F. Specialized imaging needed: $200

G. a few other small bills from May/June: $100

Total: $6,110

4. Remaining $5,840 needed to help support us for a few months, pay off medical debt so I can move into a safer place, & continue to pay out of pocket for some treatments to mitigate symptoms while I work on my medical case, seeing specialists, pursuing spine surgery, & longer-term treatments.

***More Details***: After our escape from the DV & cult, we were initially able to get into a temporary apartment that is wheelchair accessible & I was still able to work a bit, but unfortunately in late fall (2022) my baby & I got Covid again, me for at least the 4th time. It was another severe infection due to my underlying conditions & I've severely deteriorated. He recovered in a couple of weeks but I was sick for over 6 weeks before we both got the flu around the holidays. After that, I had almost non-stop active infections all winter & spring up until this month. I now need neurosurgery & likely also have persistent Covid. I'm waiting to see an immunologist at a nationally recognized hospital as well as multiple other specialists. Despite our isolation, continued masking, & my best efforts to avoid, living in an apartment with high turnover, poor ventilation, & a lot of secondhand smoke has exposed us multiple times. I'm currently too ill to move but plan on searching for still accessible but safer housing over the next couple of months, given how severely immunocompromised I am & my worsened environmental sensitivities.

Apart from May & June urgent expenses we need just to survive, the other $5,840 reflected in the total amount will be used for crucial out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by Medicaid (treatments for ME & Long Covid are largely experimental &/or off-label at this point & therefore often not covered), & to help with rent & basic bills for a few more months to buy me time to rest & focus on my medical case (which will be a full-time job in itself). If there is any extra it will also be used for a deposit on another safer place. To be honest, I don't expect there to be any excess between bills & medical expenses, as the latter add up very quickly.

***My Health Story***: I've been disabled for over 12 years with ME, but took a big turn for the worse when I had my child & then another huge turn for the worse after the first two Covid infections in March of 2020 & 2021. It was discovered I have spine damage & a connective tissue disorder (hEDS & now suspected Sjogren's -- waiting to get the latter diagnosis confirmed) which all of these events exacerbated. I've now survived at least 5 rounds of Covid, three of them serious & requiring some hospitalization, so am dealing with Long Covid on top of my other diagnoses, which include: severe ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME), Long Covid, POTS/dysautonomia, hEDS, craniocervical instability (CCI), gastroparesis, chronic migraine, neuropathy, spine damage, & suspected tethered cord syndrome. My functioning is currently severely limited: I'm mostly bedbound & have 24/7 severe head pain, tinnitus, difficulty swallowing, cognitive dysfunction, swollen lymph nodes, body-wide inflammation pain that OTC meds don't really mitigate, nerve damage in my hands, eye pain & damage, difficulty reading, & throat cramping due to my craniocervical instability & other spine damage that the infections have worsened. I can't stand up for more than a moment & any sitting up must be done with legs elevated due to visible blood pooling in my legs from vascular damage. I'm still on supplemental oxygen due to shortness of breath & hypoxia that hasn't gone away.

I've floated for several months by scraping everything possible together & now I'm out of luck. I've utilized or exhausted all local public & non-profit resources currently available, which is how I've gotten this far. I am entering all the Section 8 lotteries I can, but haven't gotten a voucher yet. In the area I live in the demand for low-income housing & housing assistance currently exceeds supply. I just had my 5th Covid infection & to prevent further deterioration that could be permanently devastating, I need to rest as much as possible & see numerous specialists while caring for my sweet child & focusing on medical treatment. I'm dealing with seizures & am on supplemental oxygen for my continued breathing problems.

Because of my relatively young age when I became disabled & the fact I was in university at the time, I only qualify for SSI disability payments. These are not enough for us to live on, so it's crucial I improve well enough to get back to working in the near future. Someday I hope to return to finish my degrees.

Medical expenses include but aren't limited to: digital appointments & prescription meds, oxygen, air purifier, masks, therapy for CTSD, special upright & rotational imaging for the neurosurgeons, a few crucial supplements, & OTC antihistamines & pain meds.

CashApp: $RChappellMusic

Venmo: @ChappellAsPhoenix

Paypal: @RChappellMusic

Thank you again from the bottom of my heart for any and all help, including small donations & sharing this fundraiser.