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Hello! My name is Lynne, and it's my pleasure to make your virtual acquaintance. We may as well jump right into the swing of things, as your time I'm sure is very valuable.
I'm a dedicated, hardworking, over the top extra but still like to believe that on most days I'm still the “cool” mom to two very empathetic, adventure obsessed, kindhearted truly wonderful kids. I work a full time job, I pick up neighborhood gigs on the side when I can, I even watch my neighbors dog while they are on monthly work trips and volunteer at my daughters elementary, once a month we even help serve dinner at the shelter down the street. My family is busy, kind, and active - our days are full, long, filled with love. Adyleigh, my eleven year old daughter who I raised on my own, is a firecracker and second in command so to say. It was just the two of us against the world for some years. We overcame each struggle we faced together and celebrated our wins in the same way. She was what I had always needed, the part that made me, well…me. Shes natural born tinker with a can do attitude, a protective and diligent big sister, an honest companion to her friends, a well rounded sixth grader and shes courageous the bravest person I know and most days she has me in envy of her wanting to be more like her then even the other way around. And then there's Avery, self proclaimed tiny hulk, superhero to everyone he encounters, a smile that can make your heart melt, the truest empath of the family who's genuine overwhelmingly tangibly goodness has even been noted by strangers at the grocery store waiting net to us in line, a lover of life who joined our family three years ago unexpectedly but was welcomed with open arms. He arrived in a whirlwind by emergency C-section a month early and completed our family, he fit like a puzzle piece and like that we were a tribe three How I ever got to be so blessed with the two of them, well I just don't know I've always kind of had a bad luck cloud following me around my whole life if felt like - I never made the team, was always coming up short -but with them i hit the jackpot.
Both their dads, opted for other options and paths in life that sadly the kids didn't fit into but with hard work and compassion i was able to make them feel just as whole as any other kid with a traditional two parent structure did, by working two jobs and taking on side gigs I was able to provide a good home, things they needed, and things they wanted. That is until the pandemic, when the world got turned upside down for so many, and ours was not unlike the rest. In vivid color and detail I sometimes still replay the pivotal moments in our timeline that lead us here, to a place like limbo filled with worry, one that holds heavy eyelids, and hearts but also still holds a glimpse of hope, if you look in the right corners..
Back then, we'd been blessed to still be living in my parents home, my childhood nesting place. It quickly became my daughter's sanctuary. Covid-19 reared its ugly head and struck a fear in us, anyone and everyone should quarantine - especially those with preexisting conditions. We faced a truth, with my dad having Addison's disease and his severity of it and my daughter being in public school with high exposure still trickling from the start of quarantine - that we could no longer live there and that the need to leave as imminent or risk my dad getting sick and possibly the very worst as a consequence. We left almost our whole lives there, and moved into a hotel, my dad feeling guilty footing the monthly bill for as long as he could. No one tells you how hard it is to move out on your own with little to know credit history, a very basic menial income, and a few bad checks on your credit report but lemme tell you - it's tough.
We had hoped to be in hotels for maybe a month or two and then would have at that point found a new place, we had never imagined that we'd still be living homeless in hotels two years later. So there I was, on my own in a hotel room day by day with my eleven year old helper and my newborn son, regathering the life we had in disbelief that what was happening was actually happening. My job was soon after effected and hours reduced, the stress to keep the room we had grew and grew and boiled over, my daughters dad whose dad, up until then been only a ghost in her existence and who had luckily in the years while i had her been able to really focus on himself and built a comfy existence backed by support of his wealthy parents and sneaky in pocket attorney took my moment of weakness and ran with it. Six months after working so hard to make the kids comfortable where we were, sure we didn't have a lot but we had each other and I was tired but it was worth it - my daughter was removed from my care and temporary placement awarded to her dad pending my signing of a lease. The echo of my daughter calling for me as he took her away from me is one that haunts me. It took two weeks for me to come to the reality she was gone, Avery's sister stolen in a sense, overcome by dread, regret, guilt. Missing her was hard, and that's lightly expressing it - your kids are part of you and without them you don't feel whole and it's deepening. I did what I could, made sure he saw the effort and she felt my drive to have her back again, but his attack altered my big plans and that made things even harder to progress. It felt like two steps ahead and six giant leaps back. We had to relocate to where he lived in a hotel far from my family and their support to maintain the visit schedule I was given which was very very unfairly limited. Avery and I wanted to be there near her even despite the isolation we felt from everything else we loved. So at that point i was shouldering taking care of an infant, in a new town knowing only her dad who was by no means going to help me in any way, having to find a new job, still in a hotel and now required to pay him child support and somehow save for legal aid in the fight to get her back. Financially i was drowning, emotionally i was depleted - luckily my son was a very very well behaved, attentive listener and almost seemed to have an understanding of how full my hands where, and took it upon himself to provide me with a calm i so desperately needed at times to battle my worries to ease my consuming anxiety,
There were times when I couldn't make it happen, days I’d come up short, we bounced from the shelter to motels, to a park for a few days, and called a friend's car home. We had had our items stolen or lost more times then I can count: taken out of u-hauls, thrown away by shelter staff before our mandated two weeks to pick them back up had been allotted, discarded due to a paperwork error made by the storage facility. We were used to treating our things as just that, things. We could and always did replace things. We knew what mattered most, and it wasn't our stuff. My son was resilient and wise beyond his time and my god he was a tough little guy for only being a little over one year and he gave me strength when I couldn't find it. He had yet to have a real home and you'd have never even known by his temperament, his home was not a place but being with his mom and sister, he made his home in us. His laugh, the lullaby that soothed all my doubts, a combination of that and my daughter's cries to come back to who she felt like home was fueling me to do my best. I knew that even on the bad days that giving up was not an option.
No one tells you how hard it is to break out of the cycle of homelessness is - it's something you really only learn by living it. How it makes you cold, ages you, makes you resourceful, rely on your intuition, not scared anymore of the dark. Makes you realize what's important. Homelessness is losing your life over and over and restarting so many times it doesn't hurt anymore, you just get used to not needing ownership of things, it teaches you to hold people close to you as tight as you can.
It took me two full years to finally find a place that would rent to me, my son had grown up in hotels completely, my daughter's life was flying by 3rd, 4th and into 5th grade. By that time the amount of funds I earned and funneled into those rooms that gave us shelter but never gave us a feeling of home is unsettling and sickening. To think how far that could have carried us had we been in an actual apartment, well - I just try not to think about it. Point being - time was racing. Moments I couldn't get back, just out of my reach, I was starting to feel like we were going to be stuck in this cycle forever, it was almost making me complacent, I was starting to run out of steam and hope. We couldn't possibly be meant for this…. forever, could we? But then my kids would laugh in the background and i'd be reminded.. Our day will come. Good things happen to those who wait and work hard. My mantra remains, “hold on, don't give up.”
Then, like a breath of fresh air, like a present you’ve always wanted, finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I was finally given the approval I'd been praying for and we all cried tears of not sadness but joy. On October 1st or last year (20220 I signed a lease and just like that, it was ours. We, as a team, had done it. Finally..We moved in the next day, A small two bedroom apartment with a cute little loft space, on the edge of downtown in a kid safe neighborhood on the bus line and the extra plus it was inside my daughters elementary school zoning area. Sure it wasn't the Ritz, the mice problem was sickening (they have since been dealt with and we rarely see any now), the stove had no ventilation and the pilot was busted, the faucet head of the bath didn't work and half of the outlets shot so that was an annoying guessing game, but none of that mattered it was ours and we were all the happiest wed been in what seemed like years any work that needed to be done and we were gonna take it on together. We fell asleep that night on an air mattress, the rest of the place completely bare, a blank canvas that can be anything we dreamed. Peacefully, not a worry in the world.
And the cherry on top was that i had been approved for converge by the State of Wisconsin Home and Energy Assistance Program meaning the entirety of the rent plus utilities would be taken care of for eighteen months payments made in three month blocks directly to my landlord- no need for me to update, remember any due dates, it meant I could rebuild and get our feet off the ground while I was saving on the housing costs and we had a chance at normalcy again. Could it be possible that my bad luck cloud had found a new home on the tails of someone else's frayed split ends?
Our house was a sanctuary from the world, the kids' rooms quickly filled with colors, posters, comfy blankets, toys they loved, drawings they strung across the fridge, they were proud - of us, of myself - they, felt whole, their smiles radiating my heart overflowing, their laughter the new soundtrack to my days, no more comforting tears, no more worrying -everything was perfect.
Until 5 days ago when we woke up to a letter on our door. Two days after my daughter had started sixth grade and two days after my son started his early learning program, Head Start; new friends, new opportunities, all of us about to grow and prosper. Then A Letter hanging on my door barely attached by the edge of a sticker in the shape of a pretzel and another a smiling sun, almost making a joke of the seriousness of its contents. The letter that was quickly followed by a more demanding legal letter on business letterhead handed to me by an investigator for the state.
A letter that literally hurt to read, burned my eyes welled up tears, I could barely swallow.
The letter stating our funding was gone, the program had run out of money - months back to our utter dismay and surprise mind you - and not only that but the property rental company we rent through had irresponsibly let those two months ($1,100 per month pass and build up with not one mention if the disbandment of Coulee Cap, the group of people who were head facilitators of our local branch for the W.E.R.A. program and assistance related to it. Not one nod to the utter negligence on their behalf regarding their selfishness to hold onto that knowledge and not voice it, the absurdity to present a low income family relying on a low income program with a bill they couldn't possibly be able to pay, so casually. The letter coldly stating i was being taken to eviction court and sewed for the total backdated total of $2,200 plus the rent for September by the new owner who had just bought the apartment, a second fact that was never shared with us with that the building was even being shown, or on the market at all.
A bill of $3,300 with a deadline 5 days away.
So many things that would have been done to help us be in a better place than we are now - a payment plan when the funding was first announced it was no longer covering it that we could have managed and planned for, a list of resources we could reach out to now instead to aide us, just some simple notice of the issue, a slightly longer window to raise the necessary funds - so many things that would have just taken a phone call or little to know effort but instead were ignored, I just don't understand and it leaves me wondering - is happy really temporary fleeting feeling you only feel satisfies for so long but can't hold forever? Can people truly be so naive or cold to knowingly leaving a family to deal with a mess of this gravity and simply go home to their comfy lives still in place knowing ours is falling apart. Is this my curse to always fall back into the cycle I most fear, of homelessness even though I follow the rules, I work hard, I treat everyone kindly. Id learned the world can be cold that it, can easily and without a second blink turn a shoulder to those in need, experience and our time without permanent housing had forced us, my kids sadly at an early age and myself- to swallow that hard truth, but even so id held out hope that the good ones still existed because my heart had held true still, my kids and I even with nothing always helped when we could - that's the human side of humanity after all - but could good people really exist if events like this happen, and if so how do you find those people, where are they hiding.
That thought led me here, to a forum where that goodness may still exist in the form of strangers being genuinely willing to help those who really need it. With a prayer that this will reach someone who might find us a worthy cause.
So here I am, to update after all that information I just poured out: a struggling mom of two, having just got my daughter back 50% custody and placement and she's happy really happy and really balanced, just having rebuilt our lives filling these walls that are so much more than just walls for our family with new comforts, furniture, without any family to turn too, facing being homeless, losing our cherished belongings once again, but ultimately losing my custody of her - within mere days - of no fault of my own. The consequences of not adhering with the deadline are so severe I fear even facing them. Time ticking away to 9:30 am on the 13th when I go in front of a judge for our eviction.
I am terrified, I feel wronged, I am angry. I am distracted by disbelief, when I need to be focused, emotional instead of rational, I am honesty a mess trying to use my time wisely, make the right moves, no stone unturned, I am finding it in myself to ignore the shame and do something I never do, ask for help. I have been contacting any and all resources locally that I possibly can, I am calling distant family, reaching out to old friends, applying for loans I've yet to be approved for, selling my expensive belongings, working every shift I'm able, picking up gigs, looking for pennies in the couch. Even so, I fear I can't do this alone and the loss if I can't is so great. I just keep hugging my kids and hoping they believe me when I say it's gonna be alright, thinking maybe if I say it enough i'll believe it too.
To sum it up. What I'm requesting: Immediate funding to fight this unfair eviction and be able to meet this impossible amount of $3,300 deadline of Sept 12th, the day prior to court. All funds will go directly to ensuring our home stays ours. if we don't meet our goal and are indeed forced to leave or little slice of heaven then the funds gathered would be redirected to a storage facility with hopes the kids won't have to lose everything they love or all of us have to lose the things I worked tirelessly to have that made us feel…at home - and I hate even having to type these words, but it would also be used for a hotel while I seek other housing, applications to apply to those places and if need be security and first month's rent to secure one. Lord knows t was hard enough as is was to get this first place I have no idea how difficult that battle will be with an eviction under my name so I am potentially looking at another long hotel stay, sadly.
I am happy to provide any documents requested to show the validity of my cause such as pictures of our home, our lease, the letter regarding the eviction, the papers I was served with the court date, pay stubs, verification letter from my employer, to anyone considering helping. I wish it hadn't come to this and that some others may use sites such as this in vain or abuse them, I am happy to ease any worries or concerns that we indeed, are truly and authentically very much in need at this time.
Outside of funding any information on other resources that I may not have thought of would be appreciated, as you can imagine I've got a lot going on and the possibility of me missing something that could help us out is a very real one. While working tirelessly towards a solution I still do have my children relying on me to keep their spirits up and keep them busy outside of school so also any resources, that may help them emotionally to get through this or websites/games/activities/craft ideas etc. to help them to have fun and stay distracted fro the situation and my stress would also be appreciated.
I understand times are hard on everyone, that this may fall on deaf ears, but at minimum I hope someone sends a prayer, a joke, a funny story, even something to lighten the mood and be a distraction from the stress my kids will be feeling that's oozing from my pores. Sometimes it is the small things that hold the most gravity after all.
In closing, may you always feel grateful and humbled, life is a joy even when times are filled with dismay, holld strong better days are coming. And may you hold your loved ones tightly, and cherish each other always because that is the true purpose - to love and be loved. And remember humanity is tough, but you are part of the toughness. Thanks for reading, helping, anything is appreciated. Thank you, thank you an infinity of gratitude - from two little cubs and their mamma bear.
Links to donate:
Cash App >>
https://cash.app/$help4raincloudsunrae
Paypal >>
https://paypal.me/mommabearana4e
Donate Directly via Square >>
https://square.link/u/rUIZfOIs
Direct Contact Info:
Lynne Ward - opaldaydreamz.rcsr@gmail.com
All questions, thoughts, advice, requests for proof mentioned above, etc. please email with the subject line "continue the funding conversation" and a detailed message and I promise to promptly get back to you.
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