A Family Just Trying to Stand Back Up

My name is Cody, and my wife Destiny and I are reaching out because our family is going through the hardest chapter of our lives. For the past five months, we’ve been living in a motel, doing everything we can just to keep a roof over our children’s heads. No matter how hard we try, we haven’t been able to save enough to get into a stable place. I work in landscaping, and with the weather changing, my hours have been getting cut. It’s becoming harder and harder to afford our motel room — let alone groceries, birthdays, or the holidays coming up. Every day has become a fight just to stay afloat.

A year ago, our lives changed forever. We lost our two-month-old son, baby Cody, to SIDS. The pain of losing him broke us in ways we never expected. The depression and grief that followed were overwhelming, and only a few months later, we lost our apartment. Since then, our life has felt like complete chaos — trying to hold our family together while carrying the weight of that heartbreak.

Destiny and I have four kids together, and we’re trying so hard to give them a sense of normalcy. Two of our children have a father in Michigan, and we share custody, so Destiny has to travel back and forth between Ohio and Michigan. I also have a daughter in Ohio, which makes keeping our family connected even more challenging. With only one vehicle, it makes everything even harder, especially when we’re already stretched so thin.

We’re not asking for much — just a chance to breathe again. A chance to finally save enough to get a stable home for our kids. A cushion so we’re not constantly choosing between paying for our motel or buying groceries. And if possible, help toward a second vehicle so Destiny can safely make those long trips for our children.

We’ve been trying so hard for so long, but right now we can’t do it alone. Any help, no matter how small, would mean the world to us and bring us one step closer to stability, healing, and giving our kids the home they deserve.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story, and thank you for any support from the bottom of our hearts.