Today, I have a wonderful story of hope for you! A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a wonderfully resilient lady named Marcia. She is a young mother of two who was diagnosed with cancer less than 8 months ago. Over the past several months she has had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Through it all she has kept her smile in place and stayed positive knowing that it was important for her to get better for her children who are 3 and 7 years old. As you can imagine, Marcia has missed a lot of work while she was in treatment and the bills started to pile up in the past month especially. While she deals with how it is to live after cancer and navigate going back to work and waiting for her hair to grow back, she is also faced with a lot of new medical bills. Because of the generosity of our community, several local organizations have stepped forward to help with her rent. She had a good amount of savings that had been able to sustain her for when she couldn’t go to work. Luckily, her job is being held for her to go back when she is ready.

When her utility bill came due this month, she had to make a choice between paying the bill or buying food. This is a difficult choice for anyone to make with young children in the home. A friend suggested she give Good Neighbors a call and when she did we were able to make an appointment for her to come in to speak with a coach. The coach talked to her about several community resources that were available to her including information on community food resources and our Budget Course. Marica was very happy to learn of these resources and as it turned out she was going to be able to leave the office and go straight to a local food pantry in time for some assistance before she had to pick up her daughter from school. GNBC helped pay part of the utility bill and bring down the balance to what was affordable for her now that she was going to be able to supplement her groceries with food from the pantry.

Marcia is a very special lady and admirable for her dedication to her family and her health. With support from our community she is now able to look forward to a brighter future!