Thank you Letter for my donating to AARDA from my eBay sales

Here is a letter that I was sent and am very proud to know I am making a difference for people with Autoimmune related diseases. Every little bit makes a difference.

September 11, 2017

Dear Donor, Artist Denise Fletcher 

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) and myself personally, I am writing this letter of appreciation. We thank you for your financial support during this past year, whether through your online giving or your payroll campaign participation. 

Over the past year, we have been hard at work on behalf of the over 50 Million Americans living with autoimmune diseases. We could not have done any of it without your generosity. AARDA has;

• Redesigned our website www.aarda.org. We have now included a resource list for patients seeking financial help and other services.
• Focused on federal and state level advocacy issues surrounding patient-doctor-insurance communication, step therapy, non-medical switching, the AHCA, among other issues.
• Worked with others to have PDUFA (Prescription Drug User Free Act) pass both the house and senate (www.aarda.org/pdufa).
• Officially launched ARNet, the Autoimmune Research Network. This patient-powered database will connect patients and researchers in helping to better understand and create innovative treatments for autoimmune diseases.
• Continued our long-term programming including; funding the young investigators' research grant, providing patients with information and resources, holding two scientific colloquiums per year, and increasing public awareness about autoimmune diseases.

You are an important part of this AARDA mission that works to improve the lives of the 50 Million Americans and their families affected by autoimmune disease.  Your donor dollars have positioned AARDA to advocate for improved-therapies and additional research and have enabled us to support scientists of the future. Your dollars have been stretched even further through the valuable assistance of dedicated volunteers and contributed in-kind services. This has enabled us to hold our combined administrative and fundraising costs to only 8 percent of our revenues!

Again, thank you. Your kindness does not go unnoticed.  Your help does, indeed, make a difference.

With appreciation,

Virginia Ladd
President/Executive Director

Get great gifts for anyone

Just click on the link below. Beautiful paintings, prints, much more for your home.
Art Prints of my originals many sizes to pick from

Making and effort to increase my income retirement sucks without enough money

Beautiful paintings from Michigan artist by clicking this link it will take you to FineArtAmerica

I am privileged to be able to share my artwork with other talented artists from Michigan.

Woke up being beaten

Woke hours ago somebody was beating me with a club and throwing very hot water on me making my skin to burn. I was trying to get away my body froze up with stiffness, couldn't get out of the way of this violent attack.
Then I woke for real. Its was just a dream but the pain was real.
Just what it's like to have fibromyalgia.

When your child dies, Oh how I miss her

I guess this is how I have dealt with my daughter's death on her birthday and the day she left.

 I do have sad times but mostly I can laugh at the little stupid things that Kathy and I would laugh at. I talk to her and express how she would have enjoyed the experience with me. Then we laugh together, she hears me that's all that matters. I don't celebrate her death or birthday because she wouldn't want me to glorify her death. Instead, we talk every day, just like when she was alive.
I am selfish I don't want to share my special time I have with her of a spiritual nature.

I was by myself when I gave birth to her at 15, there was no family just hospital staff. When she went to a better place for her, not me, it was only her and I. No family, no friends, just my daughter and I. Yes I am crying as I write this, just because I don't often express my pain of losing my best friend doesn't mean it hurts less, it means I am selfish about all the special times we had. RIP Kathryn Martin

Many shade's of abuse

Abuse doesn't have a color, religion, gender, age, or financial amount of income.

The little blond, blue eyed child is always happy in school. Yet on the way home, this child becomes solemn and slower in the child's step towards home.

The brown hair, brown eye child is always getting into fights. Why? Could it be that at home someone is always picking on this child?

Two or more children are playing sex games and showing their private parts to others? This is a sign they are being taught this at home or somewhere? Could be church, neighbor, sibling, childrens club, and on and on.

You see these children in the store and their eyes have this pleding or blank stare. The signs are there, you just have to look. It is better to be wrong than say nothing at all, instead in the news later on you hear of a child missing or dead. 

Road blocks, I see away, then another road block, Just call me lucky

A year ago I was stressing over where I would live this year.  In August 2015, I found a house to rent in October, felt safe again. Worried about having a place to live, food on the table and medical insurance to cover my medical needs.

Here it is Jan. 2017 I get a check in the mail from a lawsuit against the mortgage company Chase

$55,000,000 settlement against them And I received Cha-Ching a grand total of $8.93. Well, just call me lucky. 

February 2016 I found out my medical insurance is being canceled, now I have insurance that doesn't cover my medical needs. They cut food budget down to $16 a month, so no more healthy food that is low calorie. Instead, it is high in carbs to make the dollar go further.

I am not asking for a lot just a place to live that is mine and no-one can kick me out. That I can afford to heat and keep in good condition.  Just would like to feel safe in my old age since I have not felt safe most of my life. No vacations, fancy car or jewelry.  Just a safe, warm place I can call home.

I have no fine jewelry left, had to sell two years ago to buy food January 2014.  That was the winter I got sick and could not run my truck the way it should have been to produce enough money to support the truck and drivers that were driving it. Instead, they stole fuel money from me and blew tires on the truck. Each tire cost $500. Face it, I just make lousy decisions should have kicked the drivers out of the truck then.

In May 2014, I sold my truck paid off what I could. Took three months off to grieve all my losses over the previous seven years.

Last year (2014) I gave up the fight to save my house, overpriced because of the financial crisis that everyone went through.  I fought the mortgage company a little over two years. Sometimes you just have to give up a battle to win the war.

I have a steady income, better off than others, but not enough to get where I need to be. Safe.

Now to where I am going with this story is I recently tried to do a Fund-me page and because of sexual assault and child abuse they have it on hold. I am trying to raise money to get 3 Novellas written.  Because of the topics I have anxiety attacks and have to stop writing. It is taking me a long time, and to tell the truth, it is very uncomfortable to relive the violence I went through.

I keep trying to no avail, to publish the books so I can generate more income. So I can buy me a little house to live out my days on this earth without feeling in constant fear.

Well, I haven't achieved as much as I would have liked by now, Jan 2017. I am painting which is soothing to the soul.

I do have a small house I call home now; it is not mine but I feel safe here.

One to many speed bumps

Chapter One

She sitting on a wooden chair in the bathroom of a shabby apartment. She had lost her house, she lost her job and now she is thinking is this all there is to life. She looks up at the cracked plaster walls with water stains running down the walls from years of steaming baths that had taken place over the years. Wonders how many other lost soul have been there in her state.

The table wobbles so she places a book of matches under one leg to stabilize it, the table sits under the window with a water-stained window shade, and it has yellowed from age. The edges are torn. The bathtub claws hadn't been painted in some time, now it’s peeling away from neglect. Denise feels just like the bathtub claws, from years of neglect.   She looks at the colorful pills she had poured onto the table and started to sort them into piles by color. She thinks what a contrast from the beautiful colors of the pills to the state of her mind and the dreary room she sits in.  Is this all there is, is this the only solution.

Chapter Two

The car comes to a stop behind the house and Brad wakes her up to tell her she is home. He tells her goodbye, then his sister and he laugh. Denise gets out of the car and watches as they leave, she goes into the house. The hell hole. She is 7 months pregnant and 15 years old, still lives at home. Her mother wanted her to have an abortion but, Denise wouldn't have anything to do with that. She loved Brad and they were going to raise the baby. She had been working by taking care of 3 children and cleaning their house 50 hours a week. She had bought a baby crib, high chair and redone them to look like new. She had bought baby clothes, bottles, diapers, she was going to name her Christine Marie if a girl and Bradley Jay if it was a boy.

She didn't know that the day Brad dropped her off at home was going to be the last day she was going to see or hear from him again. He never even kissed her goodbye. The only thing she remembers from that day was the laughter coming from the car as they drove away.

In September she started homeschooling, because of her condition, this was in 1971 pregnant girls did go to public school and her family was too poor to send her away to one of those boarding schools.

By now she realizes that Brad was never going to be there for her and the baby, so she decided to give the baby up for adoption, so the baby would have a better life than she could give it. Denise did not want the baby to grow up in the hell hole she was living in.

When she was 14 years old her father made her leave home, because her mother had made her older sister leave, her sister was 18 and had graduated from high school. But Darlene would not work or go to college so their mother said she had to leave. Denise's father said, "If she has to go, so do you." Denise cried and begged her mother not to make her go. She was going to school and babysitting, she was a good girl. She was only 14. 

Chapter Three

Denise ended up at her brother’s one-bedroom trailer in a trailer park in Farmington Hills Michigan. He was married to Patty, they did not have any children. She got a job right away babysitting another couple’s child in the park. That was for the summer, then they moved to a house in Redford Township Michigan in September. Denise started school and she had chores to do around the house for her keep. Her bedroom, kitchen, living room, and bathroom. She had to have those rooms cleaned and homework done before she could go out with her friends and be home by 6 pm. she got out of school at 3:30. It was a sad time for her, she felt like a prisoner. Then one night her brother-in-law Sherman showed up at the house drunk, he tried to rape her. She screamed and her brother threw Sherman out of the house. The next day her sister-in-law and her went shopping for supplies, paint for the wooden floor and burlap to staple to the rafters, to fix up the attic space so she would feel safe. She wanted to go home so bad, but her parents wouldn't let her. This went on for a few more months until she just couldn't take any more of the abuse from her sister-in-law. She called her mother and begged her to let her come home. Finally, her father said she could come back. By now they were living in Howell Michigan and her sister Darlene was already back living there too.

Denise had met Brad two years before while they lived in Onaway Michigan, Brad was now living in Jackson Michigan, not too far from Howell. Denise's father was still being verbally abusive to her, they got into a fight one day and she ran away to Jackson to find Brad.

Denise hitchhiked down there, but on the way three guys pick her up and threaten to rape her, she fought them off until she jumped from the car, she ran to a payphone to call Brad to come get her. She was terrified of what could have happened to her by those three men.