Support Brittany ASMR and Family
Donation protected
One of the things I’ve always had difficulty with is asking for help. I take pride in showing others that I am capable and that my efforts can match the passions that I have for creativity, work, and life. I have this need to prove myself worthy not only to others, but to myself, because of the time I have spent out of the working world, as someone feeling pathetic and useless due to my own mental and physical illness. I do not want to appear lazy even though my condition can occasionally be crippling. I always wanted to do my best, but I felt like I had a lot of making up to do.
I slowly built my own business in 2013 and have survived on that until now. It’s 4 a.m. and I’m awake, wondering how I’ll be able to cover the bills for my family this month, and the month after that, as the only person in my family that can. I’m wondering if starting this campaign is too selfish or unrealistic, because I look around at the other campaigns for the sick and the injured, families in emergencies, people with cancer, and then I feel nauseated that I’m even penning this story. Their cancer makes my Lyme disease seem like more of a blessing. Things can always be so much worse.
For the past five years I’ve been able to take care of myself, which may not seem like any great task to most people who do the same with ease, though for me, a sufferer of Lyme disease and agoraphobia, it has been nothing short of amazing.
But with each passing year I find that capability, as my responsibility multiplies, is again less so. What was easy to do to support the individual is not as easy to do when stretched thin. And now that I have a newborn son and husband, my family of me has grown times three, and what I was able to once do to support myself no longer is able to accommodate a larger family, so I find myself boxed in.
I have been disabled by my agoraphobia and Lyme disease since before finishing college and grad school (by the skin of my teeth). I was hit suddenly with crippling anxiety and ill health, and my life, which was fairly together at that point, fell out from under me. Due to compassionate professors, I was able to finish my final semester of undergraduate and earn my degree, eventually my Masters at a low-residency campus, but from there I saw my fate as bleak. I was suddenly a single woman with a huge student loan, no longer able to work a public job with no way to provide for myself to pay off what I owed, an expensive education that I could no longer put to any use. My agoraphobia, already a severe anxiety disorder, turned into depression. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and so I began to waste away. Friendships and relationships suffered to the point of no repair. The only solace I could find was from ASMR channels on YouTube, and from there, I was slowly able to put my life back together, for a time.
I decided to join the ASMR community, which was close-knit and intimate back then, a small gathering of folks sharing a common purpose. We made videos on YouTube to help each other sleep and relax, two things I badly needed to feel sane again. As I contributed to the community in this way, I found purpose. I was eventually able to provide a service to others and give back to them in a small way for what they’d given me, and that gift was the feeling that I had a place in the world again. I could help someone feel a little less alone, a little less tired in a world that, for many, can feel so hopeless. By helping others, I helped myself. I was able to sleep again, eat again. I crawled out from being severely underweight, and was on the road to better general health. Over time, this venture became a sort of gainful self-employment, thanks to YouTube Adsense which then allowed me to work and earn money from my videos. Though it took a year of making videos for me to decide to turn on ads and gain money from my work, it did end up supporting me enough to land on my feet and finally crawl into the world of self sufficiency as a person with a mental and physical disability. I was elated. I could pay for my own board, I could pay for my own health insurance and average personal bills. I was doing what I thought was impossible; supporting myself. You know, normal stuff that most people are able to do. But the Adsense didn’t last, so I found other ways to support myself, pairing my relaxing content with sponsored ads, which a portion of my viewers resented. Again, I felt trapped. I didn’t know how to do both; support myself and do what I loved, so I sacrificed and hoped that some of my audience would understand so I could keep creating content and stay financially afloat.
I also met my husband through my work on YouTube, which was something else I thought was an impossibility. When you’re chronically ill, love seems like a far-fetched notion, something reserved for able-bodied folks who could go on frequent public dates, but I finally met someone patient enough and crazy enough to want to be with a homebody-by-necessity; a funny, animal-loving Canadian guy with a warm heart. Perfect.
We married in December 2016, and because he was from Canada, this posed a new challenge: US Immigration, a nearly $3,000 process that takes years to get through. Thanks again to the ability to support myself from home, I had some savings, and I eagerly paid the fees and filled out the paperwork and hoped for months that Uncle Sam would allow my loving husband to live and work in the good old US of A. All the while, I continued working and earning, though my ASMR income began to slowly taper off, which is something that can happen in the world of competitive internet business. You can grow and grow and grow, or you can grow and hit a plateau. I couldn’t complain though, because I was happy; I had a roof over my head and a fulfilling job. Some people have neither. Some people in my line of work never grew at all. I was grateful I had the chance.
In 2017 I got pregnant, another thing that I thought was impossible due to my ill health. At this time, my husband and I were still waiting for our application to be processed and for permanent residency to be granted. Though terrified at first, we welcomed the notion of growing our family. I was still healthy enough to work in my first two trimesters and having little trouble providing for our family of two, getting the occasional sponsored videos to make the transition from family of one to family of two a little easier. My husband was even granted work status and was able to earn some income for a time, but that didn’t last either.
By my third trimester of pregnancy, things got more difficult. We had finally been scheduled to go to our marriage interview, which was set in Memphis, 9 hours from our home. At that time, I was in and out of the ER for dehydration due to intense vomiting and a difficult pregnancy, and so I called the national service center to request that our date rescheduled, as travel (which must be medicated due to my agoraphobia) in my condition was unsafe for my unborn baby. We were assured that this would be doable, and so we waited for our new interview date.
On an average Monday quite near my delivery day, I got a letter in the mail noting the rejection of my request to reschedule, and in the letter we were advised to keep our original appointment. We were not given reason for the decision, despite having sent documents upon documents of medical information to back up my reason for the request. The original date had already passed before the denial letter had even been written to us, and the following day, more mail arrived: a denial of our case. We were officially out of status and officially out of hope.
Our $3000 dollars could not be recouped, and so we were at a total loss, not only of past income but of future income, too. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and unsure of how to proceed. I had been too sick to work during the final months of my pregnancy, and so my ASMR channel suffered. Our income began to dry up, and my husband was stripped of his ability to provide for us in this country. We were told to start again.
We sought out lawyers and legal help, but we didn’t even have money to do that. We paid $100 to speak briefly to a lawyer about our case, and were informed that there were few options once a case was denied that didn’t involve spending a lot of money up front, or to start the $3000 journey over again. It just wasn’t possible for us, and I don’t know how it could be possible for anyone in a similar situation. We are at a complete loss.
We do not have the money to restart the immigration process, and what was once a normal income of two became, again, an income of one, me supporting my husband on my modest salary, which was swiftly dwindling. Still, I thought I could support us as the sole breadwinner, and keep us afloat and raise money to kickstart the process for a second time, so I went back to work in my final month of pregnancy and made some videos, some audio tracks, and started hunting for a second job.
Two weeks later, I gave birth to my beautiful son. Bonding came slowly because healing came slowly, and the weeks were hard, but by the time he was a month old, I had bonded with him and felt comfortable with again returning to work, so I found a more traditional second job as a transcriptionist. I moved to this full-time, though the pay is utterly pitiful. But it was pay, and I now supported a family of three on my own. I had little time to dedicate to my ASMR channel that I missed.
Whether it be my history of poor health or just bad luck, my breast milk production never grew to more than three ounces a day, and while that, along with supplementation, supported my son in his first days, it didn’t sustain him long-term, so we were forced to move to formula full time. Since the delivery of my son, I have been dealing with moderate to severe anemia and hypertension, which leaves me even more tired than my Lyme disease and anxiety does. Yet, there are no other options other than for me to work, since my husband can’t. Each week I saw my bank account getting smaller and smaller, my savings quickly being sapped and not replenished at nearly the same rate, even with two jobs. The way I see it, at this moment, I have a $70,000 student loan debt I’m slowly managing, and two months left before the situation becomes extremely dire and we lose the ability to pay our mortgage.
I am grateful to have gotten here. While this seems to be more of an ending, it was still a beginning at one point, and I was able to not only provide for myself but for my family, something I thought as a sick person was a complete impossibility. Now, I ask for your help. I don’t want to take without giving back, but I do not know what to give. I don’t have the financial security to return to ASMR full time like I was once able, and I miss those days with every breath. If the situation wasn’t so severe, I would have more ability to jump back in, but with my husband and my son, and of course, myself needing to be supported, I don’t know what move to make from here.
I would accept any help available, whether financial or advisory. I would like to give back with some form of special ASMR content, and I’d like to return to regular content creating, even if it’s fewer videos per month. I miss creating and wish I had more time to dedicate to it, but every waking moment I’m worrying about how I’ll pay my mortgage and feed my family. If I lived alone it would be less of a struggle, but I wouldn’t trade my family for the world and all the money in it. I just have to find a way that I can support us all, as I’m the only one who can.
Right now I have two jobs, and I’m looking for a third, but if any support can be donated, I will find a way to truly earn it. I am thinking about creating an exclusive ASMR album that I can give out in conjunction with this GoFundMe, and I am going to further brainstorm and figure that out. But for now I’m just going to set this up and continue to hope for the best while working towards a better opportunity for my family and myself.
I did not know where to reasonably set my goal. In any form, $5000 would get us to the end of the year, and then we’d have to likely prepare to sell our house unless our situation changes, which is my biggest hope. But selling is better than losing, though after that we’d still need to figure out what comes next. Realistically we need much more, though we could stretch and get by on less. Any donation will help, even $1. That dollar can go towards buying formula for my son, and thus is appreciated. Thank you for even reading this. Please feel free to share this campaign with others.
Other ways you can help:
Instead of donating, you can sign up for BetterHelp and help yourself (if you have the need). BetterHelp is a virtual mental health support site, and by using it you can receive same-day, convenient therapy from licensed therapists all over the country. Each sign-up does benefit me and my family on a sponsorship basis, and you can do so by using this link -
www.tryonlinetherapy.com/brittanyasmr
You can get a fun psychic reading on Keen.com! Keen has sponsored me, and signups directly benefit my family ($50 per signup commission). They start at $1.99 for your first 10 minutes! -
http://onlinepsychicreadings.org/brittany
You can listen to my tracks for free on Spotify, or download them on Amazon or even iTunes, by clicking here -
https://open.spotify.com/artist/54e128VOeX36Uk97QjjhJY
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/brittany-asmr/895479496
You can donate formula, kitty litter, and cat food. We have been fostering cats for years and will continue to do so, so even a bag of cheap litter or donated food is helpful to us. Nico happily eats both Little Journey formula and Enfamil -
http://www.amazon.com/registry/baby/99L79KJVBYL
Additionally, if you know of any extra work that I could do from home, I would be happy to look into that. My husband can work Canadian-based jobs, but we haven’t found any opportunities to that end in our current position which is why I have taken on extra work. I am happy to take on as much as I am able, and I do have a decent resume that I can share with anyone who has options.
What will be done with your donations?
Your donations will go directly to paying bills and caring for my son, Nico. The money will be put towards buying his formula and care products, baby wipes, and cleansing supplies. Beyond this, it will be primarily used towards our mortgage, electric bills and insurances, as well as vet bills and student loan payments. We do not pay for unnecessary services or entertainment packages. If we don’t need it, we already don’t have it. We live a very simple life. We don’t travel or spend money lavishly and wouldn’t even if we had money to spend, so you can rest assured that your donations would only be used where they are needed.
I slowly built my own business in 2013 and have survived on that until now. It’s 4 a.m. and I’m awake, wondering how I’ll be able to cover the bills for my family this month, and the month after that, as the only person in my family that can. I’m wondering if starting this campaign is too selfish or unrealistic, because I look around at the other campaigns for the sick and the injured, families in emergencies, people with cancer, and then I feel nauseated that I’m even penning this story. Their cancer makes my Lyme disease seem like more of a blessing. Things can always be so much worse.
For the past five years I’ve been able to take care of myself, which may not seem like any great task to most people who do the same with ease, though for me, a sufferer of Lyme disease and agoraphobia, it has been nothing short of amazing.
But with each passing year I find that capability, as my responsibility multiplies, is again less so. What was easy to do to support the individual is not as easy to do when stretched thin. And now that I have a newborn son and husband, my family of me has grown times three, and what I was able to once do to support myself no longer is able to accommodate a larger family, so I find myself boxed in.
I have been disabled by my agoraphobia and Lyme disease since before finishing college and grad school (by the skin of my teeth). I was hit suddenly with crippling anxiety and ill health, and my life, which was fairly together at that point, fell out from under me. Due to compassionate professors, I was able to finish my final semester of undergraduate and earn my degree, eventually my Masters at a low-residency campus, but from there I saw my fate as bleak. I was suddenly a single woman with a huge student loan, no longer able to work a public job with no way to provide for myself to pay off what I owed, an expensive education that I could no longer put to any use. My agoraphobia, already a severe anxiety disorder, turned into depression. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and so I began to waste away. Friendships and relationships suffered to the point of no repair. The only solace I could find was from ASMR channels on YouTube, and from there, I was slowly able to put my life back together, for a time.
I decided to join the ASMR community, which was close-knit and intimate back then, a small gathering of folks sharing a common purpose. We made videos on YouTube to help each other sleep and relax, two things I badly needed to feel sane again. As I contributed to the community in this way, I found purpose. I was eventually able to provide a service to others and give back to them in a small way for what they’d given me, and that gift was the feeling that I had a place in the world again. I could help someone feel a little less alone, a little less tired in a world that, for many, can feel so hopeless. By helping others, I helped myself. I was able to sleep again, eat again. I crawled out from being severely underweight, and was on the road to better general health. Over time, this venture became a sort of gainful self-employment, thanks to YouTube Adsense which then allowed me to work and earn money from my videos. Though it took a year of making videos for me to decide to turn on ads and gain money from my work, it did end up supporting me enough to land on my feet and finally crawl into the world of self sufficiency as a person with a mental and physical disability. I was elated. I could pay for my own board, I could pay for my own health insurance and average personal bills. I was doing what I thought was impossible; supporting myself. You know, normal stuff that most people are able to do. But the Adsense didn’t last, so I found other ways to support myself, pairing my relaxing content with sponsored ads, which a portion of my viewers resented. Again, I felt trapped. I didn’t know how to do both; support myself and do what I loved, so I sacrificed and hoped that some of my audience would understand so I could keep creating content and stay financially afloat.
I also met my husband through my work on YouTube, which was something else I thought was an impossibility. When you’re chronically ill, love seems like a far-fetched notion, something reserved for able-bodied folks who could go on frequent public dates, but I finally met someone patient enough and crazy enough to want to be with a homebody-by-necessity; a funny, animal-loving Canadian guy with a warm heart. Perfect.
We married in December 2016, and because he was from Canada, this posed a new challenge: US Immigration, a nearly $3,000 process that takes years to get through. Thanks again to the ability to support myself from home, I had some savings, and I eagerly paid the fees and filled out the paperwork and hoped for months that Uncle Sam would allow my loving husband to live and work in the good old US of A. All the while, I continued working and earning, though my ASMR income began to slowly taper off, which is something that can happen in the world of competitive internet business. You can grow and grow and grow, or you can grow and hit a plateau. I couldn’t complain though, because I was happy; I had a roof over my head and a fulfilling job. Some people have neither. Some people in my line of work never grew at all. I was grateful I had the chance.
In 2017 I got pregnant, another thing that I thought was impossible due to my ill health. At this time, my husband and I were still waiting for our application to be processed and for permanent residency to be granted. Though terrified at first, we welcomed the notion of growing our family. I was still healthy enough to work in my first two trimesters and having little trouble providing for our family of two, getting the occasional sponsored videos to make the transition from family of one to family of two a little easier. My husband was even granted work status and was able to earn some income for a time, but that didn’t last either.
By my third trimester of pregnancy, things got more difficult. We had finally been scheduled to go to our marriage interview, which was set in Memphis, 9 hours from our home. At that time, I was in and out of the ER for dehydration due to intense vomiting and a difficult pregnancy, and so I called the national service center to request that our date rescheduled, as travel (which must be medicated due to my agoraphobia) in my condition was unsafe for my unborn baby. We were assured that this would be doable, and so we waited for our new interview date.
On an average Monday quite near my delivery day, I got a letter in the mail noting the rejection of my request to reschedule, and in the letter we were advised to keep our original appointment. We were not given reason for the decision, despite having sent documents upon documents of medical information to back up my reason for the request. The original date had already passed before the denial letter had even been written to us, and the following day, more mail arrived: a denial of our case. We were officially out of status and officially out of hope.
Our $3000 dollars could not be recouped, and so we were at a total loss, not only of past income but of future income, too. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and unsure of how to proceed. I had been too sick to work during the final months of my pregnancy, and so my ASMR channel suffered. Our income began to dry up, and my husband was stripped of his ability to provide for us in this country. We were told to start again.
We sought out lawyers and legal help, but we didn’t even have money to do that. We paid $100 to speak briefly to a lawyer about our case, and were informed that there were few options once a case was denied that didn’t involve spending a lot of money up front, or to start the $3000 journey over again. It just wasn’t possible for us, and I don’t know how it could be possible for anyone in a similar situation. We are at a complete loss.
We do not have the money to restart the immigration process, and what was once a normal income of two became, again, an income of one, me supporting my husband on my modest salary, which was swiftly dwindling. Still, I thought I could support us as the sole breadwinner, and keep us afloat and raise money to kickstart the process for a second time, so I went back to work in my final month of pregnancy and made some videos, some audio tracks, and started hunting for a second job.
Two weeks later, I gave birth to my beautiful son. Bonding came slowly because healing came slowly, and the weeks were hard, but by the time he was a month old, I had bonded with him and felt comfortable with again returning to work, so I found a more traditional second job as a transcriptionist. I moved to this full-time, though the pay is utterly pitiful. But it was pay, and I now supported a family of three on my own. I had little time to dedicate to my ASMR channel that I missed.
Whether it be my history of poor health or just bad luck, my breast milk production never grew to more than three ounces a day, and while that, along with supplementation, supported my son in his first days, it didn’t sustain him long-term, so we were forced to move to formula full time. Since the delivery of my son, I have been dealing with moderate to severe anemia and hypertension, which leaves me even more tired than my Lyme disease and anxiety does. Yet, there are no other options other than for me to work, since my husband can’t. Each week I saw my bank account getting smaller and smaller, my savings quickly being sapped and not replenished at nearly the same rate, even with two jobs. The way I see it, at this moment, I have a $70,000 student loan debt I’m slowly managing, and two months left before the situation becomes extremely dire and we lose the ability to pay our mortgage.
I am grateful to have gotten here. While this seems to be more of an ending, it was still a beginning at one point, and I was able to not only provide for myself but for my family, something I thought as a sick person was a complete impossibility. Now, I ask for your help. I don’t want to take without giving back, but I do not know what to give. I don’t have the financial security to return to ASMR full time like I was once able, and I miss those days with every breath. If the situation wasn’t so severe, I would have more ability to jump back in, but with my husband and my son, and of course, myself needing to be supported, I don’t know what move to make from here.
I would accept any help available, whether financial or advisory. I would like to give back with some form of special ASMR content, and I’d like to return to regular content creating, even if it’s fewer videos per month. I miss creating and wish I had more time to dedicate to it, but every waking moment I’m worrying about how I’ll pay my mortgage and feed my family. If I lived alone it would be less of a struggle, but I wouldn’t trade my family for the world and all the money in it. I just have to find a way that I can support us all, as I’m the only one who can.
Right now I have two jobs, and I’m looking for a third, but if any support can be donated, I will find a way to truly earn it. I am thinking about creating an exclusive ASMR album that I can give out in conjunction with this GoFundMe, and I am going to further brainstorm and figure that out. But for now I’m just going to set this up and continue to hope for the best while working towards a better opportunity for my family and myself.
I did not know where to reasonably set my goal. In any form, $5000 would get us to the end of the year, and then we’d have to likely prepare to sell our house unless our situation changes, which is my biggest hope. But selling is better than losing, though after that we’d still need to figure out what comes next. Realistically we need much more, though we could stretch and get by on less. Any donation will help, even $1. That dollar can go towards buying formula for my son, and thus is appreciated. Thank you for even reading this. Please feel free to share this campaign with others.
Other ways you can help:
Instead of donating, you can sign up for BetterHelp and help yourself (if you have the need). BetterHelp is a virtual mental health support site, and by using it you can receive same-day, convenient therapy from licensed therapists all over the country. Each sign-up does benefit me and my family on a sponsorship basis, and you can do so by using this link -
www.tryonlinetherapy.com/brittanyasmr
You can get a fun psychic reading on Keen.com! Keen has sponsored me, and signups directly benefit my family ($50 per signup commission). They start at $1.99 for your first 10 minutes! -
http://onlinepsychicreadings.org/brittany
You can listen to my tracks for free on Spotify, or download them on Amazon or even iTunes, by clicking here -
https://open.spotify.com/artist/54e128VOeX36Uk97QjjhJY
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/brittany-asmr/895479496
You can donate formula, kitty litter, and cat food. We have been fostering cats for years and will continue to do so, so even a bag of cheap litter or donated food is helpful to us. Nico happily eats both Little Journey formula and Enfamil -
http://www.amazon.com/registry/baby/99L79KJVBYL
Additionally, if you know of any extra work that I could do from home, I would be happy to look into that. My husband can work Canadian-based jobs, but we haven’t found any opportunities to that end in our current position which is why I have taken on extra work. I am happy to take on as much as I am able, and I do have a decent resume that I can share with anyone who has options.
What will be done with your donations?
Your donations will go directly to paying bills and caring for my son, Nico. The money will be put towards buying his formula and care products, baby wipes, and cleansing supplies. Beyond this, it will be primarily used towards our mortgage, electric bills and insurances, as well as vet bills and student loan payments. We do not pay for unnecessary services or entertainment packages. If we don’t need it, we already don’t have it. We live a very simple life. We don’t travel or spend money lavishly and wouldn’t even if we had money to spend, so you can rest assured that your donations would only be used where they are needed.
Organizer
Brittany Nicole
Organizer
Greeneville, TN