The Booker family

Hi, my name is Amy and I'm really uncomfortable asking for help. But, I'm at a point where I'm not sure what else to do. My friends have been pushing me to do this for a long time, and as I’m walking my own journey of healing from trauma and learning to trust myself and other people, I’ve realized it’s time to take this leap of faith. I’ve been super self-reliant my entire life, and have isolated as my life has been falling apart. Now that I’ve reached rock bottom and need help it’s epically uncomfortable for me to let my walls down and trust, but I know it’s what I need to do, because the walls are not helping me.

I'm a single mom to five beautiful kiddos. Their dad does provide child support but that is all. He is completely uninvolved otherwise. The child support goes entirely towards rent and currently only covers 87% of it.

Over the past few years my family has been struggling with significant, life threatening mental health issues. Two have been diagnosed Autistic. Those two also have been chronically suicidal, to the point where I had to quit my job of 6 years last March to stay home and provide 24/7 supervision and support, which is not only time consuming, but mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting for one person to handle.

I have worked in special education for 6 years and was heartbroken to resign, but knew it was the best decision for my children's safety and what we needed at the time.

As a result, my finances have reached a point of severe disaster. When able, I do DoorDash and InstaCart to help keep our heads barely above water, but I have to drive our only car, an SUV that gets about 12-15mpg so most of what I earn is going right back into my gas tank. Additionally, it was causing unnecessary wear and tear on my car and when my brakes needed repair, I wasn't able to get them fixed right away and then was in a further bind.

I have been struggling with a life threatening illness and last week I was able to resume treatment that I previously had to stop due to insurance problems and child supervision. I’m so mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. I just need to catch a break for once. We have been living in constant crisis/overwhelm since 2019. 

I have applied for unemployment, EBT, HopeLink, Energy Assistance, Disability, and any other assistive resource I can think of that we might qualify for. And nothing seems to be working or lining up/helping in the ways that we actually need. (Applying for these things is a full time job in itself! And is often very disheartening when I do a bunch of time consuming paperwork only to be told I don’t qualify.)

Unfortunately, my resistance to reaching out prior to now has me in this space where right now we really desperately need financial assistance. I kept thinking I would be able to do this all myself, if I just kept giving it my all, but I’ve just gotten so depleted and worn down by overfunctioning for so long. 

I'm drowning and feeling hopeless but I'm taking a leap of faith that there are still kind and generous people in this world who care and will help us in whatever way they are able. Thank you in advance for even reading this and for any help and support you are able to provide me and my family.