Support the Ushers
Our amazing sister and her family need our help to remain housed, healthy, and whole.
Valerie, Clayton, Ian, Elayna, Peyton, and Emberly have our love—but they also need our financial support to remain together as a family. Like so many of us, they have been hit hard financially by the COVID-19 recession. Valerie is a freelance writer; Clay is in sales. Neither industry has fared well, and they are struggling to make ends meet for their family. While that is true for so many of us right now, they have the added layer of now facing a health crisis.
Our brilliant, beautiful, empathic, creative sister has long sought ongoing treatment for lifelong mental illness. Unfortunately, pandemic stresses have triggered her illness, and she is now faced with an intensive treatment plan that in turn magnifies the financial stresses their family faces. The Ushers are no longer able to manage simultaneously her health needs, financial precarity, and care for their young children.
Clay and Val are devoted and loving parents, and anyone who has met their children—Ian (10), Elayna (7), Peyton (4), and Emberly (2)—knows that they are raising beautiful and brilliant babies. Valerie completed her BA from Miami University while parenting, pregnant, and working; Val and Clay have taken turns being the breadwinner while the other is the stay-at-home-parent. Val has aspirations as a writer, as a mental health advocate, and as a home spa artisan—and she is more than capable of accomplishing all of this! But for that to happen, she first needs intensive (full-time!) outpatient treatment.
This is where our help is essential.
While Clay and Val work to find a way forward as a family, and while their children come to stay with family in Milwaukee, the Ushers need the financial means to (1) pay medical bills; (2) catch up on rent, utilities, and car payments; and (3) look for more sustainable work. They are actively pursuing local resources (unemployment, Family Resource Center help, etc.), but this is not enough to keep food on the table, a roof over their heads, and their family together. And this precarity fans the flames of chronic mental illness.
Our sister, her husband, and their babies deserve stability and health. They deserve to realize their potential as a family, and as individuals. They deserve the chance to find work that pays a living wage and is fulfilling. They deserve a life together, secure, and full of love. And in the absence of a functioning social safety web, we are calling on our collective village to help support them through this crisis.
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