Disaster Relief and Moving Forward

Beginning April 27, 2022, our family experienced extensive physical, mental, and financial damage from several incidents including, but not limited to:

• Our entire family’s contraction of Covid-19.
• Hub’s Covid-related heart attack and ER admittance, start of multiple weekly and monthly doctor appointments to manage severe health issues.
• Our youngest’s admittance to the ER, then Primary Children’s Hospital for severe health issues, appendicitis, etc.
• Hub’s suspension of work, causing huge financial insecurity from which our family is still trying to recover.
• Near-complete isolation due to Hub’s diagnosis of Long Covid.
• Flooding and restoration of our basement which displaced our family from July to November 2022.
• My breast cancer scare, pregnancy, and severe illness September through December 2022.
• Continued financial insecurity, then Hub’s loss of work December 2022.
• My premature loss of baby, surgery, and recovery December 2022 through January 2023.
•  My returning to work in January due to Hub’s continued Long Covid symptoms and our now-severe economic insecurity.

All of these and more have caused a complete shift in our home and family structure. Disasters are defined by multiple sources as serious disruptions to the functioning of a family and/or community that exceeds its capacity to cope using its own resources.

Our family has been pushed past our capacity to cope over and over again.

There are several phases of disaster recovery and we’re taking steps in the process of becoming more stable again, adapting to our 'new normal'. But recovery takes time and resources, both of which our family doesn’t have a lot of right now.

We’re working on it. We’re moving forward. More details are soon to come, but meanwhile, we’re having an estate sale. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never even participated in a yard sale.

This lack of experience seems strange.

But this new adventure is super exciting. And exhausting. And I’m so grateful to those who’ve helped by donating their time, their water, their love, their trucks.

I’m looking forward to meeting new people and sharing with them things we love. Niche paintings created by Hubs and our Littles. Copper cups that are perfect for lounging outside during summer evenings.

I hope, in return, the people who visit our home can share stories and little pieces of their lives. The joys, the confusions, the disasters, the recoveries. Their own ways of moving forward. 

I love stories. More so now than ever. If you feel like sharing, I'd like to hear a little piece of yours in the comments below.