Hi my name is Dorothy and I am a 57 year old woman who has spent the last 4 years pulling her life together after 10 years of poverty, drugs and homelessness.
I haven’t always been homeless or on drugs and without any money. As a matter of fact I graduated from high school with honors and was my class valedictorian. I went to college for a while and then I went to a nanny school and became a professional nanny.
In my early 40s I moved from California to Arizona with my mother and I took care of her for 7 years. Then very unexpectedly and out of nowhere my sister who I was extremely close to passed away from lung cancer. Then shortly after that my mother passed away.
I didn’t know it at the time but since then have been diagnosed bipolar with severe chronic depression. With their passing I fell apart, I got into drugs and eventually everything got away from me and I found myself alone and homeless on the streets of Phoenix Arizona.
It took me a very long time to overcome the loss of my sister and my mother and of course the drugs didn’t help even though I thought they were at the time. Somehow by the grace of God I found myself after many years of homelessness and chaos, in Flagstaff Arizona.
I went to the shelter in Flagstaff called Hope Cottage and for the first time in a very long time that’s exactly what I started to have, Hope. The people there were wonderful and they helped me and loved me and healed my broken soul.
Now 4 years later I am clean and sober, I have a place of my own and am finally almost back on my feet. This is why I am asking for a little help. Because of my drug use and depression and bad choice’s I ended up crashing my car over 7 years ago. I had no insurance at the time so now I owe the courts 1200.00 in fees in order to get my driver’s license back. I am also in need of a cheap little used car so I can get to work.
I have had a few jobs here and there in the last 4 years but getting around on the bus has been difficult because of my weight and age.
I have taken Peer Support Training and want to pursue training and a career in mental health. My teachers think I have what it takes to be a very good therapist. The place that I trained at had wanted to hire me after my training to work for their company but the one thing that stopped me from getting the job was that I didn’t have a car.
To some people three or four thousand dollars may not sound like a lot of money but for me it would be life-altering it would change everything!! For me it would be the final step to getting back on my feet.
My ultimate goal is to pay it forward. I want to be a peer support specialist and go back to college and get the training I need to be a therapist. I know what it’s like to be on the street, to be alone and desperate. I want to be able to help people like I was helped.
I want to make the world a better place if I can in some small way. It’s taking me a long time to pull my life back together and I’ve worked hard but this last hurdle seems to be the most daunting of them all. If you can help me even with a little bit of money towards the goal of paying off my fines and getting a car I would be forever grateful and your kindness would go to someone who wants to make the world better, who has gratitude for all that she has and just wants to pay it forward.