*Introduction by Rowan, my friend and a beloved teacher/pillar of the community*

Our friend Áine/Anja/Pony needs our support right now. She has recently been in the hospital with crisis-level hypertension due to severe chronic anemia, after months of being denied treatment due to shortages in the medical system. She had tried to avoid emergency services because of the expense ($7600 for one infusion), but with nowhere else to receive treatment, she utilized them to address life-threatening cardiac symptoms.

This week she finally gained access to regular infusions that will help her survive. These still require significant expense and effort to access. Even with insurance, bills have mounted up quickly as she sought care. Áine is currently recovering at home but requires several trips to Seattle for double iron infusions. She needs at least three infusions. It is too dangerous for her to drive this distance in her current medical condition, and infusions leave her exhausted.

Throughout all this, Áine has been a key member of South Sound-based activism groups that organize massive peaceful protests and radical mutual care. She's made flyers, worked on logistics, loaded and unloaded 3000 lbs of metal folding chairs from her trailer, and helped plan and run the sensory support tent for neurodivergent humans. She says, "my focus is on accessibility and making sure that anyone who wants to be there, feels as supported and safe as possible." 

Áine is passionate about fighting for those who are currently silenced. This fall, she brought chalk art and hundreds of flowers to highlight the atrocities committed at the NWDC. In Olympia, she performed one of her poems at a large event dressed as Rosie the Riveter - which is also how she spent her birthday this year, protesting with the community. 

On the community care front, Àine collected and helped distribute thousands of pounds of masks, sanitizer, and COVID tests this summer. She has helped with supply and fundraising drives for immigrants, unhoused folks, and others in need. Recently she has been a primary organizer for the Absolutely Free Sharing Markets, where over 1,000 local people shared resources and skills for free. She even brought her delightful pet goats, where they greeted families and showed off their cozy winter sweaters.

Àine has a giant heart for animals and has been involved in Puget Sound animal rescue for over 15 years. But she’s also offered emergency shelter at her home for unhoused trans youth, a family of five with pets, and is currently sheltering another unhoused person. In August she was instrumental in helping me, a disabled trans person, dismantle and sell my estate to escape the US. The work she does to connect people and animals with care and resources is true medicine for the community at a time that we desperately need it.

She did all this while experiencing an extended and difficult medical crisis and caring for a delightful assortment of rescue animals at her homestead. However, because of her medical crisis and the time and energy she has put into essential community organizing, she hasn't been able to work as much at her very physical landscaping and gardening business. 

We are asking for help covering the following costs:

$3,480 will cover Áine’s minimum medical costs.

$5,000 will cover medical costs and a few essential living costs while she receives treatment and continues medically-ordered (and very essential) rest.

$10,000 will pay for her medical costs and give this courageous, strong, and caring community member some breathing room to rest and heal so she can live to fight another day.

Donations can come here on Freefunder, or:

Venmo @woodward-anja

Paypal @anjagrows

***

Note from Áine:

Hi friends. First, I want to share my gratitude for all the support and care you have already shown. People have dropped off food, driven me to Seattle, taken me to ER urgently (in lieu of ambulance because I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford one), walked my dogs, sat with me in the hospital, and so much else I couldn’t begin to list it all. 

Thank you. Community care has already saved my life. I have no family west of the Rockies and do not qualify for Medicaid because this is only a recent development. I really would not have had many other options. And over twenty animals, most of them rescues, depend on me being well enough to at least coordinate their care.

I was initially very hesitant about the idea of a fundraiser. It is a time of intense need for so many people. I don’t feel that I “deserve” this any more than anyone else. I do what I do because I passionately believe that we all deserve access to safety and care.

I truly never intended to wind up working 60+ hours a week on unpaid activism, any more than I meant to find myself in this dire financial/medical situation. In June I began feeling weak and sometimes passing out when doing tree or weeding work. I knew that anemia was the problem. But I was repeatedly informed that the IV infusions I had been prescribed were either fully unavailable or prohibitively expensive due to medicine shortages. 

By July I had my first emergency infusion at ER due to chest palpitations and pain, and I was informed by multiple doctors that it would be dangerous for me to keep working. I tried to balance that directive with financial pressures, homestead/animal chores, and community needs. I took a step back from physical tasks and focused more on coordination and logistics. 

I thought that the medication shortages would resolve and I would be able to work again. For a while I even thought I was improving, but in fact my body had begun to compensate for the lack of oxygen in my blood by working (really) overtime. Two weeks ago my BP tipped into crisis zone, and I became extremely ill. 

As the emergency department infusion worked, I watched my BP drop by over sixty points and felt like I could breathe for the first time in months. Unfortunately it didn’t last for long because I’m so depleted. Also unfortunately, the treatments must be spaced out, so it’s not feasible to take care of it all at once in the hospital. 

Some wonderful news here: regular infusions finally are available to me now! However, it’ll still be anywhere from a few weeks to months before I am fully recovered.

I have been thinking about what I would do with vs without community financial support at the moment. The “without” is just chugging along and accepting that I am on the same path towards disastrous medical debt that has ruined so many Americans’ lives. I am no different or better than any of them. Again, that’s why I do this work.

But this year has taught me so much about the importance of community care. I wholeheartedly believe that it is the medicine our very unwell society needs right now. And I’ve learned that care is a dance of reciprocity: you can’t just give; you can’t just ask. It is an ever-moving, responsive dance that could never be replicated by any corporate structure. It saves lives, and it changes hearts.

I have come to believe that asking for help is a way of being in community too - just as much as giving it. Of course, for the request to be honorable, one must be okay with any answer. And I truly am. I am already so thankful for all the gifts this community has offered. 

But if we were to meet the money goals that Rowan (probably wisely, as always with him!) insists I should have, I would want to respond to this gift too. Another step in the dance. 

First I intend to offer some DLCs or stickers of my original, community-care themed art. A tiny “thank you” to folks who donate, in any amount at all.

Second, since I no longer anticipate being able to return to my landscape/gardening job soon, I will do all I can to resume my Master of Environmental Studies degree, which I paused a couple years back. I have 1-2 years until completion and will be using student loans and applying for grants, scholarships, etc. there. 

If this works out, I also plan to shift the focus of my thesis. It was going to be silvopasture, which I still love, but I have a new idea lately. The sharing markets have been so loved that I want to assess and describe their impact, from both a sustainability perspective and as a driver a warm, encouraging nudger of social change. 

I plan to continue helping run them, but this type of research would quantify the benefits. And it would allow us to keep magnifying those benefits by spreading the word and attracting new supporters. All while keeping everything absolutely free to absolutely everyone.

Okay, last thing. It has been such a gift and a joy to get to know my community better this year. In October, a wise friend gave me a birthday card that read simply, “Sometimes in hard times, we make good friends.” 

Amidst all the terrible suffering and cruelty in the world right now, something different is taking form. Something both new and very familiar. Perhaps a little lost. It reminds me of something my fire ecology teacher used to say about Indigenous knowledge. Although it’s not my ancestry, Indigenous knowledge has nurtured and shaped my values, so I am especially grateful for this truth. 

My professor would say, “It was never lost. It was just dormant.”

And sometimes a horrific fire is what is needed to stir a new wave of seeds to open. It is messy and traumatic. But without this process, we’d have no giant sequoia groves. As I watch the little sprouts rising all around me in Olympia, I feel so deeply grateful just to be part of it.

Wishing everyone a beautiful solstice and longer, brighter days ahead!

💛 Áine