Community Support for the Willems Family

Hey y'all this is Cre'shea! I'm setting up this page for Annie + her family. We know so many of you are wanting to help but don't know how...

Meet the Willems, a family brought together by biology and a beautiful, but complicated thing called adoption. Annie, Steve, and their children are no strangers to trauma or doing hard things. For those of you lucky enough to know these parents, you would agree that there are no better advocates for their younger children than the two of them.

What you might not know...(or maybe you've been following along)

Over the past two years, the Willems family has navigated some incredibly difficult and life changing mental health crises with their son. There's an anticipated 30 day notice for Kaden to leave the group home where he currently resides. Any parent or person who has struggled with mental health and substance abuse issues know that obtaining services is like wishing for a glass of ice in the desert. You can wish all you want, but it doesn't change accessibility in the slightest. Kaden's circumstances are very nuanced and he needs a very precise level of treatment. The crises have impacted the entire family to a level that will be hard to imagine, but it’s a level that means they can’t all live together anymore in order to keep everyone safe. The trauma from the past two years runs deep.

Now imagine...

The school calls because you daughter is having an emotional meltdown.

The other school calls because your older child needs medical attention.

You, being the caregiver of these humans, have to get yourself to your own mental health appointments on top of all of that.

You have to grocery shop, care for the home, care for the marriage, care for all of things that must go on whether active addiction or mental health crises are happening or not.

You need to work on top of everything that is happening throughout each day.

Imagine trying to feel any sense of stability...hard right?

What you need to know...

Annie's Google calendar is packed with IEP meetings, wraparound meetings, therapy for the adults + children, trauma informed services for the child that lives at home...This doesn't reflect the countless phone calls, emails/, and texts put together on a daily basis or the full time work that either she or Steve do. The amount of mental load and space it takes up leaves little to no emotional real estate left for the three of them to find their own stability, which matters too. There is a crime victims grant in place for their family to use, but it's not something that can apply to any of things that they can use at this time.

People say if you're struggling in life you should just ask for help, but what do you do when you don't know exactly what to ask for?

Most people can do hard things, but even we can admit when we're maxed on resources. This ask for help when we don't know exactly what we may be asking for feels incredibly vulnerable and scary. But here's where we know some of this funding will benefit their family in helping to make those harder days feel as normal as possible: