Thank You for the First Gift

Someone made the first donation to this fundraiser this week. They chose to stay anonymous, so I can't thank them by name — but I want to say this publicly anyway, because it mattered more than a number on a page.

It took me weeks to work up the courage to ask for help publicly. Part of that was pride. A bigger part was watching how people who ask for help online tend to get treated — the trolling, the assumptions about who "deserves" support and who doesn't. That kind of compassion fatigue is real, and it's usually not about any one person asking. It's what happens after enough requests come through that it gets harder to tell which ones are genuine, until skepticism becomes the default response to all of them.

I understand that skepticism, even from this side of it now. But I also know this: people don't usually ask for help publicly unless there's a real reason behind it. Asking costs something — privacy, dignity, the risk of being misread — and most people would rather absorb the hard month quietly than pay that cost unless the alternative is worse.

So to whoever gave first: you didn't just give money. You were the first person to say, in a concrete way, that this was worth trusting. I don't take that lightly.

Thank you.