Vote for Pedro! I mean ME!

Today at 9:00, I will be part of a contest that launches to win $1,000 for AND a $15,000 add campaign to the charity of their choice.  I am here to share with you, my reason I picked Help Me Grow to receive this honor – when I win.

It won’t  be easy.  There are a total of “30 women to watch” being highlighted by Utah Business Magazine, going for the same thing.  They are all amazing, well connected, talented ladies.  They all really want their charity to get this chance.

To properly set the stage, I need to take you back about 16 years.

Jon and I had recently been married, and unlike many people that reflect on an easy going first year of marriage, ours just wasn’t.  It was hard.  I won’t have time to share it all now, in too much detail but I will say this.

We were married in March


We were served papers in May for our step daughter

Jon had back surgery in June

Through the summer Jon completed a huge retaining wall, and wasn’t paid for any of his time

Kinley, our first baby was born in August

Jon received a mis-filled prescription in November

after a month of wondering why my husband was crazy, I noticed him taking the last pill in his bottle, and asked him if that pill looked like the ones he was taking the previous months.  I asked because he rarely came home during that month, and when he did and I asked where he had been – he would say “If you are going to be mad at me, I will just leave.  I was tired, so I pulled over on the side of the road and slept.”

The truth is, not only was it not his correct prescription, it was opposite what it should have been and triple the dose.  Mix this together with the Lortab and Soma that were prescribed by his doctor for a bad back, and it was a recipe for disaster.  When he called the pharmacy and explained what the pill looked like, they said “Call poison control, you are in danger!”

Jon spent the next several months coming down off of the meds.  If he did it too fast, it could have killed him.  Like most people that go through such things, we were thrown into a law suit against the pharmacy to pay for lost wages, business, and vehicles he wrecked while on the meds.  We were over run by bill collectors, wanted the money that we owed them from our business that had failed.

They sat on my front porch and knocked while they called me on my phone.  I remember having up to four bill collectors at one time trying to get me to pay them money we didn’t have.  Another time, I had to cross the Provo River in my back yard to get the baby milk.  I was young.  I didn’t know they were harassing me.

Fast forward18 months.  Jon had been mostly laying in bed and not working.  I was due to have our second baby in May.  I was obviously young and naive and remember believing that babies are a happy thing and it wouldn’t be too hard to have another.  Two weeks after I have birth to Whitney, my niece Shauntyl came to live with us.  She didn’t have anywhere to go, and would have been turned over to state custody, unless we took her in.

So, if you’re doing the math, that’s four kids in two years and I was 22.   We needed help.

We needed food assistance

We needed medical assistance

We needed help with rent (Jon’s parents helped)

We needed support with my neice and we used Wasatch Mental Health two times a week for 4 years.

The list goes on and on.

I remember the first time I used food stamps, and how humiliating that was.  I will never forget the feeling of standing in the grocery store line with my food stamps.  It was hard enough to swallow the pain of being so reliant on others and then add someone yelling in the line,

“She has food stamps!  I don’t know how these work, would everyone waiting in this line move over to the next so we can figure it all out!?”

I am sure she didn’t mean to draw attention to me, but I wanted to melt.  We all need help sometimes.  it teaches us to be grateful.  I will never be the same person after having those experiences.  I feel blessed to have had this lesson.  Was it easy?  NO WAY.  Would I want to do it again?  Nope.  But as I reflect on the place I am in this world today and now, I know that I wouldn’t be the same person.

Together with Jon, our business RBM Services, United Way of Utah County, led by Bill Hulterstrom and driven by Barbara Leavitt – they have brought the Help Me Grow system to Utah.  What is Help me Grow you ask?  In the most simple terms, it connects resources to families.  We utilize the 211 Utah state line and provide help for any call we get.

If you know someone that needs help with food, autism, clothing, step parenting, grand parenting, or ANY OTHER RESOURCE THAT ALREADY EXISTS in your community (you’d be surprised to see that there is help for almost anything), you can call 211 and ask for Help Me Grow and they will CONNECT you.  Not only will they connect you, they will call back and make sure you found the services you needed.

I have SEVEN kids, and I never have all the answers.  You don’t have to be as down and out as I was my first years of marriage to utilize this service.  It is now STATE WIDE and United Way of Salt Lake has jumped on board because they see the need for it in Utah.  We also bring in the family care physicians and work with them to connect their families in, if they are worried about any delays in speech, physical development, mental development or anything else they can’t follow them home and take care of.

It is SO hard to wrap up the far reaching effects that Help Me Grow has.  It was founded by Dr. Paul Dworkin in Connecticut, and has been proven time and time again through out 22 states now.  If there is ANY state that needs it more than anyone, it’s Utah.  We have more children than any state. We NEED to support parents and give them the tools to help their children thrive.  WE BELIEVE that PARENTS are the ones that KNOW what their children need, and if we can only SUPPORT them through their journey, we will have happy and healthy children.

I wish I had Help Me Grow when I was younger.  I felt so alone.  I felt lost and didn’t know where to turn.  THIS my friends is my WHY.  This is why I press forward and share my story.  THIS is why I need your help voting for me every day over the next few weeks. Help me Grow is in half of the states now, and if you don’t live in Utah – it still helps to vote for me because we need this system in place everywhere!

Thank you Thank you for your support.  Here is the LINK

Please share it on your facebook wall, twitter it, instagram it, tell your families.  It is for them.  It is for the children.  We all need help, and the more we can meet the needs of young children – the better prepared for school they will be to read and succeed.

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    Hello! I am Camille, a wife, mother of four, Disney obsessed, certified teacher, and reality optimist. Motherhood comes with its ups and downs, and I hope while you're here you'll find something that makes your #momlife easier!

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