My name is Julie Gibson and I am raising money for myself and my puppy to complete Basic Obedience classes and attend Service Dog Medical Alert Task Training.
I am working with a non-profit to get the needed training for my puppy to be trained as a Service Dog. Participants of their "Woman Survivor" are required to be local to their training facilities in Utah and must create a fundraiser to contribute significantly to costs. They are making a policy exception for my case because I live out of state. They required me to purchase my own puppy rather than being matched, which I have done. I am currently between jobs, leaving me with no money for travel at the moment.
My goal of $20,000 is for basic obedience training here in CA and for the three-week trip to Utah for medical alert training. I also will use funds raised for raw food, healthcare, grooming, as well as ongoing training here in CA after the Utah trip to hone our skills as partners. Properly trained service dogs are expensive (almost as much as my two teenagers!), and I appreciate your consideration.
I just purchased a German Shepherd puppy named "Zeus Babylon von Nedelhaus". A big name for a little puppy. :) Zeus was bred to be a spectacular working dog.
My Primary Diagnosis (why I need a service dog)
I have been diagnosed with Complex PTSD, resulting from childhood neglect and abuse since birth, as well as many years of domestic violence during my marriage. My secondary diagnosis is Major Depressive Disorder.
From the Cleveland Clinic website:
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental health condition that results from chronic long-term trauma. It involves stress responses, such as:
- Anxiety
- Having flashbacks or nightmares.
- Avoiding situations, places and other things related to the traumatic event.
- Heightened emotional responses, such as impulsivity or aggressiveness.
- Persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships.
- Suicidal Ideations
How A Service Dog Will Help Me
My service dog will help with tasks specific to PTSD.
-Wake me from night terrors
-Ground me when I dissociate
-Help me manage panic attacks
-Buffer me from people in public so I am not startled
-Provide pressure therapy
-Distract me from destructive behaviors (cutting/suicidal behavior)
Zeus and I have already started basic training at home, and his drive to work is remarkable! This is a photo of him performing a "sitz!" and a "focus!" by looking up at me for a verbal or hand command. Zeus' commands are all in German, so we are both learning.
My Story
Asking for help is very difficult for me. Talking about what has happened to me is daunting and painful. Intense shame and sadness are woven into every year of my life. I am still unable to talk about the sexual abuse from my childhood. I’m not there yet. I am, however, able to write about it a bit. At the end of this letter is a poem I wrote about breaking generational curses.
The youngest of three girls, I was born into chaos. I sometimes think my mother gave birth to her own pain rather than a baby. The day I came home from the hospital, she put me out on the sunny porch in a diaper and promptly forgot about me. At two days old, I received my first injury from neglect- my new skin was badly burned all over my body. At about 18 months old, I was alone and unrestrained in a car that rolled down a hill and crashed into a tree. I still deal with injuries from this event. These early traumas set the stage for what was to come.
By 3 years old, I had begun ritualized self-harm. I would bang my head against walls and bite my arms. As I got older, I would often sew my fingers together with a needle and thread. I graduated to cutting by 5 years old. My tattoos cover gardens of scars on my body.
A desperate need for attention manifested in the development of an ability to make people laugh. I would literally perform on the carpet at dinnertime, making my parents howl. I learned to impersonate people, and accents, and how to feign a convincing seizure resulting in death with each eyeball pointing in a different direction. I can hold my breath for a ridiculous amount of time and am quick to crack a joke at a moment’s notice. My friends would all describe me as snarky and funny. The truth is that laughter masks my pain. It is a tool I developed to attract the attention of the people I needed to take care of me.
The neglect was constant. I was never taken to the doctor, was made to run for my food if my mother thought I was getting fat and I was beaten and sexually abused by those I needed to protect me. I developed a full-blown eating disorder, proudly weighing in at 72 lbs on my 16th birthday. I finally escaped when I went to college in Los Angeles.
As an adult, I endured years of domestic violence at the hands of my ex-husband. It was not a rare occurrence to find myself bound to a chair with an orange electrical cord, made to sit in the dark for hours while he taunted me from different rooms, sometimes holding a knife to my neck and asking “How does it feel to know you are going to die tonight?” He would drag me through the house by my hair, ripping pieces of my scalp out. I didn’t think I deserved better. In 2013, he beat me up for the last time in front of my kids. I took a baby on each hip and left the house in my bare feet. I never went back to him.
I have been sexually assaulted twice as an adult, one being a violent attack by a stranger as I was walking from my car to my front door. I feel unsafe in public and am easily startled into a panic attack. I get very anxious when people invade my personal space. I have constant, obscene night terrors that leave me almost completely dissociated from reality. I wake up drenched in sweat that soaks through my clothes and bed linens. These dreams are only stopped rarely by one of my kids who has been disturbed by my screams.
My therapist asked me last year what I would say to my 5-year-old self. My answer was immediate. “What is happening to you is not your fault, but it isn’t going to stop for many years. Find a way to die now.” I don’t want to feel like that anymore. That little girl deserves to live.
I lost my entire family in a span of 10 weeks in 2021. My father died of Parkinson’s in January, and only weeks later my oldest sister, Lynn, died of a drug overdose. When I refused to cooperate with a coverup of how my sister died, I was immediately and unceremoniously removed from the family Trust and disinherited from the will by my mother and surviving sister. Even my children’s college funds were taken away as punishment for “shaming the family”. I begged them for a year to speak to me, to have the fight, to talk about what happened. I have been met with deafening silence. Even the news that I have a tumor in my spine did not move them to respond to me. 2021 is marked with huge loss.
I have channeled my grief into helping combat the opioid crisis. I advocate for the use of Narcan and Fentanyl test strips and carry them with me everywhere I go. I speak to high school kids about the dangers of opiates, and I try to save lives without judgment or stigma. Helping addicts has given me a renewed purpose.
Partnered with my service dog, I look forward to living life rather than just surviving it.
Thank you for your consideration, and for helping me open the door to a new lease on life.
Julie and Zeus
The Curse
An infant wails, forgotten in the hot sunlight
Can you hear her?…
Her new skin bright with angry burns
Branding her with lessons, hers to learn
Her bedroom walls begin to groan
Shame tastes like the grit of a mouthful of stones
I hear it now…
Survival is the name of this game
As hope rolls down a bathtub drain
She sits in the tub, jealous of water that goes
Wishing escape, too
Sadly puts on her clothes
She blots out the hurt with acts of self-harm
Banging her head and biting her arms
Only 5 years old, there’s so much ahead
Frigid sadness and fear lie with her in bed
Self-hatred is rewarded by disapproving eyes
The girl is sent to run because of her size
Protecting secrets is her birthright
Quietly accepting the things that go thud in the night.
The shouting covers her, a blanket of blame
Muffled by the drone of an endless rain
And…
Raindrops patter
And blood drops spatter.
Boston sings an old familiar song
Of shredded wrists
And hidden wrongs
Her feet pound the course of the doomed race
Learning that there are teeth in every embrace
Love served two ways, be grateful you brat!
Some kids have nothing! Words coldly spat
A slap or a hug means the same thing
Someone cares, her ears left to ring
She runs away with a vomit-slicked mouth
Palm trees and sunshine
Line her escape route down south
What is she worth?…
Calculations and valuations
White lines inhaled in cold bus stations
The family curse has a long reach
Finding her in California
Holding a razor on the beach
She learns that…
Sometimes sisters get sick.
And stop breathing
After a needle’s prick
Somebody help her…
The girl’s skin begins to blister
The deafening silence
Of mute mothers and dead sisters
She makes a vow on a lonely night
To break the cycle
To make the wrongs right.
Refusal to carry the family torch
That was handed to her on that scorching hot porch
And…
This severance from cycles of women long dead
They scream that the curse is all in her head
And time rolls on…
The girl is older, stronger, and wise
Her children won’t be branded
There’s a fire in her eyes
Burning ties to stories never told
Gagged voices release
Heavy burdens of old
Wait…
Wait for a moment, don’t you see?
The curse has been broken
By the little girl that is me.
