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Archive for March 25th, 2015

PLEASE READ: Our community members need our help.

March 25th, 2015 2 comments

L-R: W, Jade, Ad

L-R: W, Jade, Ad

I’m writing to ask you for help. I usually save my “give these folks money” posts for Christmas time, but I figure since I skipped it last Christmas, I can make up for it now.

Two stories from some really great people in the sex positive community have seriously hit a nerve for me. Both are about families ripped apart, and both need our help with legal fees.

I’m still not feeling well (was up most of the night with a migraine), so I’m going to keep this short. Other people have told their stories better than I could, anyway. So I’ll link to where you can donate, and you can find more detailed descriptions of their stories there.

Please, please, please read and help if you can, even if all you can do is share the information linked here.

Val and Crista Anne Orenda

You may or may not know @pinkness and @Protospect. I wrote about the awesomeness that is Crista Anne recently, when she pioneered the hashtag (movement on the rise?) #OrgasmQuest.

Val is Crista’s amazing partner and the biological father of most of her children.

Since the beginning of their relationship, Crista and Val have been put through hell by the third parent to their children. Val’s ex-wife, April Ni’mary, is an abuser, and has used everything in her power to hurt and control them, including the children she shares with Val. They finally found the courage to take their stand on a family camping trip ten hours from home, and April packed up the two children she shares with Val and left, taking all of Val’s and Crista’s resources for getting home with her, and leaving a toddler and a newborn with no way home.

When Crista and Val finally made it home, and after a few nights’ sleep, they discovered that April had poured poison on all of their beds, including the newborn’s, and then replaced the sheets.

You can read Crista’s telling of their story here. If you need more convincing, you can read about what’s currently going on with Val’s 6-year-old here.

April has once again absconded with Val’s children, and has filed for sole legal custody with supervised visitation.

Crista and Val need $5000 for a retainer for a family court attorney to keep their family together. At the time of this writing, they’ve managed to raise $3,597. If you’re inclined to donate, you can find some of Val’s story and a place to donate here.

Donating to this cause is a double-edged sword. It will help keep the Orenda family together, but it will also give other families that are in this situation (custody hearings between an abuser and his/her victim[s]) a little more ammo for their arsenal.

Jade Melisande/@piecesofjade, W, and Ad

If you haven’t met Jade, either online or in person, you’re missing out. She’s one of the sweetest women I’ve had the pleasure of talking to. She has two partners, W and Ad, who she adores equally. They all just recently bought a house together and were in the process of rehabbing it, when W suddenly took ill and was admitted to ICU. He’s had strokes and heart attacks, and is currently unable to communicate his wishes to his family.

Jade spent every day at W’s side, doting over him as you’d expect a loving partner to do, until W’s family coldly and without warning cut Jade, Ad, and all of their friends out of W’s life. Then they moved W and are refusing to give Jade updates on his health or tell her where he is. And now they’re trying to evict Jade from their home.

From what I can gather from what I’ve read thus far, this is due mostly to their unusual relationship dynamic.

According to everyone who knows W (and I believe this to be true), this is not what he would want.

Jade and Ad need help with legal fees, as you might expect. It very well may be that Jade is fighting for the simple right to be able to say goodbye to her love. I can’t even begin to imagine what the three of them are going through.

This could happen to any one of us in polyamorous relationships who have families who don’t understand. Not only will donating to their legal fund help them get back in W’s life, giving him the love and support he so desperately needs, but it will help set a precedent in case something like this happens to someone else in our community.

You can read their story and donate to their legal fund here.

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