Who is Ms. Johnnie?

Ms. Johnnie is a saint. She has foregone a life of material abundance for a life of selfless giving. Over the years she has been a foster mother to numerous children, and she has worked with mentally and emotionally distressed children for over three decades. In other words, she has dedicated her life to helping heal children who have suffered.

These have been no ordinary children, not the happy-go-lucky ones found in the typical daycare or school. These are the hard-knock kids that society neglects and even rejects, the ones whose own parents have shunned, battered—or worse.

The abuse many of these children have endured can hardly be fathomed. Can you imagine being locked in a closet and beaten regularly? How about being prostituted out by your own crack-addicted mother? Or spending years of your childhood going from one austere residential facility to the next, without once receiving a single visitor or even a phone call from someone who truly cares about you?

Ms. Johnnie and I currently work together at a residential treatment facility for these very children. The work is very tough. We are cussed out regularly by kids who are full of rage—rage from the unspeakable things others have done to them. Occasionally we are even attacked with fists, feet, teeth, pencils, pens, spit, urine, blood—whatever an angry young body can throw at us. Our own bodies ache from the literal bumps and bruises of our work. But we continue to do our duty anyway, regardless of the risks, because if we don’t there aren’t many in our pampered society that aspire to fill our shoes. Somebody has to be on the front lines of compassion for the dispossessed. And we have found ourselves to be the ones.

Why does Ms. Johnnie need help?

But we continue to come to work in our second-hand clothes, and with accumulating bills weighing heavy in our minds. We continue because of—and in spite of—the children we serve. We’ve somehow taken an implicit vow of hardship to try to help those whom we affectionately call “our little angels”—although they as often stab you with their tridents as bless you with their halos.

But there’s only so much hardship—in whatever form—one can take. Our little angels know this fact as much as anyone on our vast planet. And we who help them intimately know this sad reality too. That’s why the turnover rate in our field is so excessive. Who wants to willingly live at the poverty level for long, for a job with little recognition from society at large and lots of maltreatment from your clients? It’s hard to help those who struggle when you yourself must struggle in the process. In order to survive and pay our bills, some of us work extreme hours of overtime. Some have second jobs or run a side business, such as I do (though I currently only break even with my business). And some seek assistance: I recently started receiving WIC vouchers to help feed my family—our income really is around the federal poverty level!

For Ms. Johnnie, however, the options are limited. Ms. Johnnie is not as young, energetic, and healthy as she once was. Although her figurative heart remains robust, her literal heart has become fragile: She has required two separate operations in recent years to embed stints in her arteries. I was working with her one night when we had to call 9-1-1 because she was experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath. She returned to work three weeks later, after her most recent heart operation. And she has missed work since due to health reasons.

Ms. Johnnie also suffers from asthma and allergies and is chronically inflicted with acute bouts of coughing. She also suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes, and glaucoma. Thus working a second job or overtime is not a plausible option for her, unless she really wants to burn her candle down and tempt the Reaper. She probably shouldn’t be working at all—but she can’t afford not to. Although she is old enough to retire, she unfortunately must continue to work.

Like all of us, Ms. Johnnie has the typical assortment of bills. But because of her assortment of health problems, she also must pay out a hefty portion of her monthly wages on prescription drugs to maintain some semblance of a productive life. Even with insurance, her out-of-pocket medical expenses exceed $300 per month. Consequently, she has struggled to pay her other bills and recently had to declare bankruptcy just to save her home. Isn't it a shame that someone so selfless (i.e., Saint) who has done so much for so many years for the benefit of tormented children faces a retirement—a delayed retirement at that—full of health problems and bills she really can't afford to pay? Can we just stand by and watch such a good person spend her golden years mired in harsh fiscal and medical suffering? No, no we really can't.

How can we help?