The Story

I have vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It's a connective tissue disorder, which is a clinical way of saying my body doesn't hold itself together the way most bodies do. It's already given me a heart attack and a string of cerebral aneurysms.

I know that reads like a lot, back-to-back medical procedures, without much room to breathe. Here's what's true: I've kept moving through all of it. I write, I produce, I build things. The Larder Society, my novel, has ten chapters down and twenty-four to go. My podcast, Afros & Knives, is still running.

I often present like a person who's fine, because optimism is genuinely how I'm built, not a performance I put on for an audience. I didn't want to ask for help again, but I'm asking anyway, because the alternative is pretending, and I'm done pretending.

Every round of this, the aneurysms, the recovery after the heart attack, has cost me ground that's been hard to get back. Housing instability has constantly been a part of this experience; it seems like a problem that refuses to be solved, no matter how much support and work are thrown at it. I keep working through all of it, because stopping has never felt like an option I could afford.

This GoFundMe covers stable housing, the basics that keep a body and a life running, and enough of a runway to get back to writing my book and the work opportunities waiting for me on the other side.