Support a Single Mom's Health and Recovery

Where to begin....

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I share my life on social media to my community of friends, family, followers and brothers and sisters in Christ. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

You also know that for the last few months, my life has been rough, to say the least.

As a single mama, I have always worked hard to provide for my 3 children. While my oldest daughter has her dad in her life, my 2 youngest children do not, so I have been their sole provider the majority of their lives. Last year at this time I was watching a little boy in my home who I took care of from 4 months old to nearly 4 years old. I also watched my 2 nieces, sold jumping spiders, and was just starting a business growing and delivering microgreens to the Yuba Sutter area. At times i had 6 children in my home. Life was busy but my heart was so full. Life was busy, but good! I have loved growing a summer garden, and I learned about foraging and started a local foraging page on Facebook. I have homeschooled my children while being a homemaker, so am very involved in my children's lives and have schooled my 2 youngest children most of their time in school.

Over the last year, I slowly began to lose everything. I knew that the little boy I watched would be going to preschool very soon, so with my aunt and uncles help and support, started Dani Greens, a microgreens farm where I grew and delivered freshly harvested organic microgreens. This was such an exciting adventure and I enjoyed every moment of doing it!

Samuel went to school in September, which meant losing my main source of income. While Dani Greens grew for the first 4 months by more than doubling in income every month, eventually that wasn't the case, and Dani Greens struggled just to support itself. I continued working at it, hoping that if I kept working, I'd have a breakthrough.

At the beginning of year I found a family to provide childcare to in my home and would be doing so through the agency children's home society. I watched a precious baby girl for a couple of months, then heard from the agency that I didn't pass the background check due to my past criminal record. I have been in recovery now for 11 years in May, but have a pretty substantial arrest record because of my past drug use. This meant I couldn't get paid for watching the little girl. Around the same time I began to have pretty uncomfortable symptoms, and had over time become unwell. I felt tired all of the time, and just generally unwell. But the worst of these symptoms was itching and crawling. Have you ever had an ant or a spider crawling on you? Imagine that all over your body times a thousand, simultaneously. I took my whole family to urgent care to treat all of us for what I believed to be demodex mites. These are mites everyone has living mostly in the pores of the face. With high stress and compromised immunity, they can overpopulate. I let the family of the little girl know that I could no longer watch her since I was really struggling with how I felt everyday and just couldn't keep up, and had found out at that time that I couldn't even get paid anyways.

We were all treated with permethrin cream. It helped, but my symptoms did not go away and they still haven't

Since, I have had to close my microgreens farm, have had to quit 3 service positions that I have absolutely loved including teaching Wednesday night kindergarten girls class at church, serving the homeless lunches every Saturday, and going into the Sutter County Jail to have church with the women in the maximum facility. I have been unable to go to church. I have missed family functions. I am currently facing eviction from our home of almost 7 years and have been unable to pay a lot of my bills.

I spend hours everyday cleaning, doing laundry, showering, and putting things on my skin. I have seen 4 doctors who have all offered me the same cream which I've taken twice now. I have discovered myself what I am dealing with and the situation is horrific. I will not go into detail, but these are things seen in horror movies. I am daily tired, have struggled with depression, and have consistently had other problems like a broken dryer, a clogged bath tub, and a broken air conditioner that the property management doesn't have to fix since I haven't paid the rent. I have struggled to care for myself let alone my family. I receive aid from the county, and have had no choice but to spend more money than I should on products to try and treat myself and to protect my family. My 10 year old son has struggled with skin issues as well.

I want my life back. I have shared what I am experiencing with some family, but have felt that they mostly just don't believe it. I do understand since it's pretty unbelievable what is happening in and on my body. I feel that I haven't been taken seriously and my family has told me I just need to go get a job.

My character is proven by the last 10 years of my life, working hard to provide and care for my family and doing the next right thing. I have always had one job or many. I have always found ways to support my family, and I have not always been on welfare. About 7 years ago I had gotten a section 8 voucher, and was in the process of finding a place for us using section 8 when my uncle and aunt who I worked for as a social media coordinator came to me to offer me a pretty significant raise at my job. If I accepted, however, I'd not only no longer qualify for section 8, but also for food stamps and cash aid. I decided that if I could support my family myself, I wanted to do that. I was able to move into our current home and to support us. I continued getting raises each year to the point I had to pay for medical insurance for myself since I made too much money at my job for medi-cal but insurance was required in CA by law. While I was able to support us and pay all of the bills, the situation for most people in these circumstances is that as you get raises at your job, you lose aid- cash, food and medical insurance, and in the end, really aren't getting ahead of where you were before since you're just making up the difference. Still, I wanted to support my family and I worked hard to do that while also having my 2 youngest children at home the majority of my time working remotely from the time they were toddler and infant ages.

While 37 weeks pregnant with my youngest child, I was in an abusive relationship and had gotten a restraining order against their father for abusing me while pregnant. I decided that I needed to focus on being a good mother, and told him to focus on being a good father. If that worked out, we might be able to work through this if he got the support he needed for his own abusive behaviors. I continued to allow him to visit my children, but he would do so for a few months, then would disappear. Sometimes for a year at a time until I hunted him down and told him that my children needed their father in their lives. At first I took him to his parenting class, but he never went back. He did not complete anything the judge ordered him to do. But I knew how important ot was for my children to have a father, so continued allowing him to visit. Eventually, there was another incident where he had threatened to punch my mother, so I decided to stop visits. I hunted him down once again for my daughter's 7th birthday after she told me she wanted to see her daddy for her birthday, but again visits didn't last long and he stopped coming. I decided I would no longer allow the inconsistency for my children and that if he wanted to have a relationship with them, he would have to make that effort without me enabling him. He has not seen our children in almost 2 years.

When I parted ways from my job working for my aunt and uncle, I wasn't sure what I'd do. I was paid severance for several months, but eventually didn't have income and had to get on welfare again. Then covid hit. My son was in a private Kindergarten, and had to go on distance learning while I was already schooling my daughter for preschool. I decided that I couldn't send my children to a place to be masked all day, to be socially distanced from all other people, and had always desired to teach them at home. This was my opportunity, so I stepped out in faith as I felt convicted to school them, without having a source of income aside from welfare. Very shortly after, the opportunity to watch a 4 month old baby literally fell in my lap. I reached out to respond to his father's search for childcare, and I was watching him the very next day! This solidified God's provision to me, and my choice to school my children. That if I exercised faith, God would provide. And he did.

This is who I am. I love God, I love my family, I want to do the will of God, I want to raise my children myself with godly morals, to know Jesus, and to learn to do what is right above what is easy. At the end of this last school year, I found it very difficult to continue schooling my children and am now planning to put them in school, hopefully at a private Christian school so they have that foundation. I am passionate, I love to serve, I have many hobbies, and I am an active and loving mother. I am not lazy, careless, or uninvolved. I have been unable to keep a summer garden this year, among every other thing I love to do. Including being a present mother for my children. My heart has been breaking everyday. My family has seemed to believe that I just dont want to do the things I normally do, including to work to provide for my family. I am up late most nights cleaning, doing laundry, showering and doing my best to manage what is happening in my body. I have spent so much money on products to try and treat this. Because who cares about money, when this has stolen almost everything I love.

I have never in my life gone around begging or feeling entitled to what I didn't earn. If I can do it myself, I will. I have had to learn to humble myself and to ask for help so much more than I ever wanted to over the last few months especially.

Thankfully God answered my prayers for a housing solution and we will be moving to public housing soon. But this battle is still heavy, and I need help. I am seeing a dermatologist who recently took a swab of my skin and I'm praying for some answers so I can be treated effectively. But for now, I am daily fighting this, daily going through so many emotions, and daily praying for deliverance from this thing. I would never wish this on anyone.

I am once again asking for help. I hope to be able to see a functional medicine doctor or naturopath who will help me. But the cost is high and my insurance of course does not cover doctor visits like this or any treatment they would prescribe. I would love to be able to see someone who really wants to help me and who takes this seriously. Because I cannot continue to live this way indefinitely. My children need me. I want to serve. I want to do the things I love to do again. I want to be able to be a present mother. I have so many hopes and dreams.

Among wanting to see a naturopath or functional medicine doctor, the products that do give me relief are costly. One is natural enzymes that have greatly helped, but I go through them quickly and they are expensive.

This is the hardest thing I've been through in my life by far. And I have been through divorce, addiction, losing everything I had, abuse, domestic violence, and so many other things.

I keep telling myself this can't go on forever. I have continued to lose weight, find it difficult to eat some days, and feel increasingly fatigued.

I would appreciate all of the support I can get. I have had so many friends and brothers and sisters in Christ help my family over the last 6 months and I want you to know how much I appreciate your heart. Please know how much that has meant to me. I have often been brought to tears, seeing how other people have wanted to help my family. I know that I will get through this. But this is too big for me to fight alone. There aren't enough hours in each day. I have had a very difficult time finding time to pack up our home, and we are moving very soon. I don't know how i will do this, but I will. Having financial support at this time would help my family and would lighten the load on my shoulders while helping to pay for treatments of my family and home. We have all been effected at various levels in various ways. There is a fogging treatment I would like to use for the house, but the kit that I'd need is around $500.

I have been considering also quitting selling spiders, since I'm having to deal with feeders that can be a source and I need to eliminate sources. It breaks my heart, and is just another thing I love that I will likely need to give up in this battle, but it might be for the best.

I know that stress and lack of sleep isn't helping this condition which has been absolutely traumatic but i feel i have no choice but to keep fighting this thing. If you are unable to donate, please keep my family in your prayers. We need them.

❤️