Phoenix Rising: A Vermont Woman's Journey To Freedom
When your writing about your life its hard to know where to start. When your trying to write for grants on a life changing project its even harder to know where to start.
First I guess I will start with what I'm trying to get a grant for and then go from there. Since 2018 I have been working on a way that will guarantee myself a home and work. I have been trying to think of a way that I can combine my passion for photography to coincide with my living situation. Then the tiny house nation started to rev up and now I have found my solution that in turn is going to help out so many more people.
I'm currently looking into getting grants and crowdfunding for a Mobile Photography Studio. I have almost all of the camera equipment I need and I have been spending $20 to $50 a month for tiny home/camper needs. I have been downsizing all of my belongings and saving money where I can. I'm currently on Social Security because I have many medical issues. I DO NOT let my illnesses define who I am or what I can do unless my body says enough is enough.
I'm living in an apartment right now, but I can't afford to live here. I make $800 on Social Security and $200 with SNAP. So that is $1000 a month that I have to try and live on with myself, dog and cat. I pay $700 in rent, $64.00 on internet and the rest goes to food and house goods and I still end up going to the food shelf a couple times a month. I'm tired of living like this. I needed to find a way where I could afford to have a place, be mobile and still have money to survive. That is when the tiny home conversion became an idea.
I have lived in the state of Vermont my whole life until 2014. Up to this point I was taking care of my father (for 17 years) and my mother on and off. They were divorced and lived 30 miles from each other. I lived in the town between their towns. I was also a single mother. I had an animal training business and worked 3 farms all while I was battling Hashimoto's disease, Grave's Disease, bi polar 2 (which was later ruled as a misdiagnosed and now they say I have Asperger's Syndrome), fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, beta thalassemia trait, anemia and I think that is it.
This all happened in the summer of 2014. Oh! I forgot to tell you that while doing all of this the truck I had literally split in two. Thankfully it didn't happen while I was going down the road, but that truck turned a point in my life I didn't think would happen.
I was pretty burnt out at this point. I had no vehicle and I ended up putting my dad in a nursing home. Because my sister called one day and told me that she was getting a divorce. She lived in Havelock, North Carolina. She has 2 sons. Her oldest boy is on the lower to mid part of the autism spectrum. She was all alone with NO family. So I decided I needed a break from Vermont. My health was going downhill very fast and I thought going to a bigger city I would get better answers. So I packed everything and she came and got me that mid August. Living in North Carolina was bittersweet. I will never live there again, but I will visit. I stayed there until 2018. I managed to get married for the 1st time while I was down there. I got married in 2016 and in November 2018 right after my family and I survived Hurricane Florence my husband decided that he couldn't handle my health issues anymore then on November 7, 2018 he abandoned myself and my biological daughter. No word, No clue that he was going to do something like this. Not until it happened did I realize how many red flags I saw before it happened. I was now homeless. My daughter was seeing a young man here in Vermont. He came right down and grabbed us and we brought what we could in the car. Which was small. We traveled with 4 cats and 2 retrievers. I also had gallbladder attacks all the way home. It was horrible.
The only place we could turn to when we got back up to Vermont was with an old friend of mine, but her health and mental health were not the best. We stayed there from November to February. Right after I had my gallbladder removed she had a breakdown and kicked us out. So my daughter left to go live with her boyfriend and I was homeless. I had to rehome all of my cats and my dog I had to find a foster situation for her. We had never been apart, my dog and I. My daughter was safe with her dog and cat.
The very day I was to be homeless I went to the local shelter and found out real quick that my hometown is NOT the place to come if your homeless because they have no real set up for homelessness here. I luckily was able to bump into a friend who let me sublet her apartment. I couldn't believe my luck. I was able to finally relax and rest my whole self. I got my dog back and I set my mind on my future.
I needed to create a project for myself and get myself reacquainted with my community. Leaving Vermont and living the way I lived in Vermont made me grow up considerably. It also gave me a wide open door to explore. When I got back home. My father had passed in 2017. My mother moved to southern Vermont and my brother doesn't speak to me at all. My daughter was flourishing since she returned home and continues to do so. My sister still lives in North Carolina and I no longer speak to her either. I'm the black sheep of the family. I didn't roll with my mother's way of the world so to the outside of the family I went and am still there today. Which has actually made my future even more open.
With a new found freedom and trying to manage all of these new aliments I had to keep going and I knew that my living situation wasn't going to last. But first I had to get back on my feet literally! I could barely move. My body was so sick. All of my organs were 3x bigger than they should be and no one could figure out why. They still haven't figured it out. I believe I have MS, Multiple Scoliosis. But that is for another day.
I have been doing photography for 11 years now. I'm nowhere near being a professional though I have been called one. I consider myself a student. I don't ever want to be an expert at anything. I love to keep myself wide open to learning. And with all of that open mind and heart I have learned and met some amazing people. I have learned through my photography journey that everyone loves to have their photo taken, even when they say they hate it! Keeping your word and meeting the deadline is so important. Living in Vermont I have seen some wonders and in North Carolina I got to see things I only saw on tv. I have been able to share my photography and stories with millions of people. I have enough photographs to write books on birds, places, tractors and oh so much more.
I definitely am a nature photographer. I'm not much of a portrait photographer, BUT it is growing on me.
That beautiful young woman is my daughter Shoshoni. She's going to be 23 this year. What an amazing woman is turning out to be. I love photographing her. She has such a light. That is another reason I started to work with portraits. I have this knack for micro expressions. I always seem to be able to get that emotion before the staged emotion. This was a fun day photographing her. She had gotten hippie costume stuff for Halloween that year and she wanted a photoshoot. It was a great day.
I realize that I'm off subject. I'm sorry for that. So back to the project I made for myself.
I started my project in March of 2019. I began walking my dog about 6x's a day at that point and I needed to give myself something to do and something to create. I walked over to one of our many churches in my hometown and saw that the first of a bud was starting to show up on a lilac bush. Then I decided that I would keep track of the growth of the flowers at this church and I decided that I would present said church a nice little video of their flower gardens from start to finish. Well that turned into me doing that for the street. I catagorized all the flower gardens at the Court house, Library, dentist office and our 1800's style homes. It kept me busy.
I also started with a program called Vocational Rehabilitation of Vermont. This program help people who are on welfare get job experience and you can get grant money to help you start a business or help with clothing or car repairs. You get paid for the work experience you get. So the formula is that you get paid $10 and hour for 4 hours and $20 for 8. You make $100 a week. So at the end of the work training you could have a potential of $800 at the end of the 8 week training session. You then have the opportunity to work for additional 8 weeks. You don't get a lot, but it gets you work experience and extra money you can use to buy clothes for you new job or to fix a broken car.
The job that I got was working with Northeast Kingdom Counsel on Aging. I became their photographer. I was able to do all sorts of photography that was well out of my comfort zone. I do mostly nature and wildlife photography so people was very outside of my comfort zone.
I should also probably tell you that I'm an introvert, but I also found out that I'm an extremely sensitive empath, thus my need for quite and calm.
I stayed with my flower project all year. I also worked for our local paper, but I didn't get along with the editor because he is wicked into politics and I am Not. So that didn't last long. I entered 12 photos in the local fair and 9 of them placed. 5 were blue ribbons, 3 red and 1 white. That helped get my name spread too.
Working with the Counsel on Aging really helped me see what was really going on with my community. The newspapers don't do any real stories. I don't like our local newspaper. I never have. I don't agree with what they put in there and its so political. But that is for another time on another blog!
2019 I was really pulling some steam forward with my goal. I could see that every single non profit was struggling to find photographers to come and do things for them and they were relying on staff to take photos with their phones most times.
They also would run into problems being able to move product around or customers. I saw a real need for the elderly that had NO family what so ever and 2020 was going to be a very busy year for me.
I had to stop doing the VocRehab because of my health in the fall, but I continued to work with the Counsel on Aging. In the beginning of 2020 I was able to buy a car. From there several elderly people began falling into my lap. I ended up taking care of 5 elderly people on my own with my own money because they didn't qualify for funding or services for one reason or the other. I found that many elderly people are extremely lonely and have a hard time getting to the store or to even have someone come and visit them or pop their heads in to get checked on. I had 4 homebound elderly people I was working with under the radar. I would go a do their shopping, clean their house, take them clothes shopping or fishing. I would gather a couple of them up at a time and we would do a picnic and fishing depending who I grabbed that day. I also have a Golden Retriever named Caera. Caera is my therapy dog and she goes everywhere with me. I had one gentlemen that didn't want me around, but wanted my dog. So I would drop her off at his house for an hour and I would go do some road photography. After my hour on the road I would go back and make the gentlemen some lunch. He passed that fall of unrelated Covid illnesses. I worked with a woman who had a rare lung disease and she became one of my best friends. She passed away last fall of unrelated Covid illness. Two of my other elderly folks moved out of town and I currently have 1 left. I go and make her breakfast every morning. She has Alzheimer's and its getting worse, but slowly. I miss them every single day and I didn't realize how much I needed them as much as they needed me. I love seeing the pure happiness on their faces when I walk through the door. Its a wonderful feeling knowing that I'm making a person life a little happier or a little less stressful. Once a I get a vehicle again I will be able to help out more elderly folks. I have several I could be helping now, but without a car I have no way to get to them.
This is another reason why I want to get my mobile photography studio and home up and running. Living this way I will be able to visit and help out so many people. I can create my own hours so if I have a fibromyalgia flair up I can say No and every one understands. It has been an amazing couple of years. I didn't stop becoming active until October of 2020, My car that I bought died and I haven't been able to get another one yet.
Now that I'm back with VocRehab I'm back in the running for the $3000 grant. I'm almost done my business plan and my worker is so impressed with everything that I have done. He told me the other day that he gets thousands of people coming to him with get rich quick schemes and self employment ideas, but my business idea is the only self employment business that he is pushing through because he believes in my idea and knows that I'm serious about it and it will not only benefit me, but my community as well.
Hashimoto's Disease
Hypothyroidism
Hyperthyroidism
Grave's Disease
Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Fibromyalgia
Chronic Fatigue
Asperger's Syndrome
Empathic
Beta Thalassemia Trait (anemia)
Chronic Insomina
Chronic Pain
And that is it. That's what I'm dealing with on a daily basis. I live with high chronic pain on a daily basis. I get no pain medicine at all. The only medicine I can take is my thyroid medicine.
I love helping people and rescuing animals and doing photography. I finally worked out a solution to all of my needs and was able to help out my community and animals in need. I live to do this work, this is what my purpose in life is, but I can't do it alone.
The only program that can help me is VocRehab. They keep telling me that I eligible for the $3000 grant, but I'm not guarenteed the whole amount. First they tell me that they can help me get a car then they tell me they can't. So like all government operations they can't be relied on. So again I must go out of my comfort zone and ask help from strangers. People, who will hopefully see that I'm here to help, that I want to help, that I'm working on a goal to get the help I need to make this reality.
Thanks for Sharing ,I have always admired your work without even meeting you or knowing your story. LOVE YOUR LOVE, Please keep on.
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