Keep Django Truckin'

Cassandra Burt is organizing this fundraiser.

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For those who know us, I'm starting to believe this is why I was brought back to BC.

For those who don't know me, My name is Cassandra (River) Blondin Burt. My grandparents are Georgina Blondin and Duncan Pryde, and Beverly and Douglas Burt. I am a Dene two-spirit ND parent, artist, musician, and plant medicine maker.

My seven year old has major surgery scheduled for Oct. 29th and I am here to ask for your support - as a parent and community member.

This will be our seven year old's fourth surgery in five years. We have both been through a lot.

Django's last surgery came directly after the loss of my closest family member in October 2018, our biggest support, my Grandmother.

These two events pushed me, as a single working parent, into (was at the time an inevitable) major burn-out. Coming to grips with the destructive loss that grief brought into our lives has taken me years to reconcile, but at the time the best I could do was willingly let my co-parent, Ben, take full custody and I started on a healing journey that is still on going to this day.

We learned so much from this transition. Ben parenting solo for the first time, and me taking the time to heal long forgotten wounds.

Surgery has hidden costs and while I've been finally able to send Ben support every month in myriad ways, this is different.

Anyone who has been through surgery knows the difference of going in with resources.

Surgery is Oct 29, at the same time rent is due, and a recent diagnosis for myself is showing me that I no longer have to pretend that I can do this on my own.

Right now I'm paying half of Ben's rent each month because the recent housing crisis meant we needed to get them something that was (ohso shockingly) more than his disability payments could support.

We need help.. lots of it - Prayer, blessings, abundant good thoughts. And I have nothing from the family house I spend 5 years building - no toys or books or stuffed animals, and from what I understand my kids are wearing the same clothes I had bought for them last year. For the surgery - support for travel expenses to the mainland, hospital expenses, rent, groceries over the next month, it all adds quickly, especially while I'm not working and have been living on savings... and so, we're asking for help.

I've been working hard to earn money and in years past I've pushed through his operations fuelled unhealthily on caffeine adrenaline and hope, only to quickly burn out after.... But this time? I've been burnt out for three years already. This time, for them and I to have our best chance at success, I'm going to reach out and ask for help before the storm hits.

Django and Maia don't need a mom who is stressed. They need a Mom who is wrapped up with them in blankets watching Disney flicks on re-run.

I wish I were closer to family, or that either of my grandmothers were alive… or we were closer to loving aunties.. I wish a lot of things, but I've finally realized over time that even without that extended family there, we're still not alone.

So i’m reaching out to you, our extended human family, to ask for a little extra love over the next few days.

At BCCH Django will be having telescopic wires replace ones he is currently outgrowing in his right tibia. They are there to support a break in his leg bone that happened when he was 18 days old. We sought answers for months. He has Neurofibromatosis - Type 1, and that, for him meant a “congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia” - a false joint in his right leg a.k.a - a third knee. Thats what this surgery is, and has been, over and over. His bone won't heal, ever, so we continue to seek new was for him to stay mobile. Whether thats me carrying him on my backor bio-medical evolutions thanks to teams around the world, this kid continues to remind me to choose life.

For those of you who know me politically? This is why I fight for our imperfect democracy, because this system, however it needs to change, has granted my son a new life, and my own life, education, housing. This is why policy works. This is why evolution is necessary, and so is engagement within this system.

I joke that Django is my amazing little X-Man, because NF Type-1 is a genetic mutation, and was not inherited from either Ben, or I, it was spontaneous.

Django is magic. And we wouldn’t have him any other way.