Los Ayudantes SWVA

06/09/2026

I don’t think I’ll ever forget today.

This morning, we picked up a mom and six of her seven children after they had to leave their apartment. Everything they had left in the world fit into a small pile of luggage.

Before we even pulled away, the oldest son broke down sobbing as he said goodbye to his younger siblings.

Not quiet tears.

Not the kind you try to hide.

The kind that come from loving someone so deeply that being separated from them feels unbearable.

I can still hear it.

I can still see it.

A child carrying a level of grief no child should ever have to carry.

They spent the day at our house before tonight’s flight back to Honduras. The kids jumped on the trampoline, played with our cats and dogs, took baths, ate good food, and laughed. For a few hours, they got to just be kids.

Before we left for the airport, one of the daughters handed my teenage daughter a drawing she had made.

Just a drawing.

But it felt like so much more.

A thank you.

A memory.

A goodbye.

All day, they thanked us for the food, the clothes, the luggage, the rides, the phone bills, and everything this community has done for them over the last few weeks.

But if I’m being honest, gratitude isn’t the emotion I’m sitting with tonight.

I’m angry. So deeply angry.

Angry that children have to carry burdens this heavy.

Angry that a family’s entire life can be reduced to a few suitcases.

Angry that a teenage boy had to stand in a parking lot and sob goodbye to the people he loves.

Today was beautiful. Full of laughter, kindness, and love.

But it was also a reminder that no amount of community support can undo the cruelty of the circumstances that brought us here.

Tonight they are on their way home.

And I’m left thinking about how unfair it is that children who should be worried about playgrounds, cartoons, and what’s for dinner instead have to learn about loss, separation, and survival.

This family entered our lives as strangers and left carrying a piece of our hearts with them.

I hope they find peace. I hope they find safety.

But tonight, more than anything, I wish they never had to go through this at all. 💔

06/08/2026

This morning, as I’m getting ready to bring a mom and her seven children to the airport so they can return to Honduras, I found myself thinking about this poem.

When I first read it years ago, just after losing my daughter, I wasn’t looking for wisdom. I wasn’t looking for growth. I was grieving.

The kind of grief that changes your DNA. The kind that splits your life into a before and an after. The kind that teaches you there are some losses you don’t move on from—you simply learn how to carry them.

Maybe it came back to me this morning because grief has a way of making you recognize it in other people.

Not because our losses are the same. They aren’t.

But pain teaches you to see pain. It teaches you what it feels like when life asks you to carry something impossible. When you’re forced to make decisions no one should ever have to make.

Losing her taught me that love and grief are not opposites. They are partners. Grief is just love with nowhere to go. The choice isn’t whether that pain changes you, it will. The choice is whether you build walls around your suffering, or use it to recognize suffering in others.

I think about my daughter often when I’m doing this work. About how deeply I love her. How much I miss her. All the moments that should have been but never will be.

That hurt never leaves.

But somehow, through LAS, I’ve watched it become something else too.

Meals delivered to families who don’t know where dinner is coming from. Passports for children who needed a way home. Diapers. Suitcases. Community fridges. A ride. A hand to hold when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

None of those things erase pain.

But they bring light into dark places.

Maybe that’s what compassion really is—not fixing someone’s suffering, but refusing to leave them alone in it.

I wish we lived in a world where families never had to make impossible choices. But today I’m grateful to live in a community willing to stand beside them while they do.

Grief brought me here. Love kept me here.

And every time this community shows up for a stranger, I’m reminded that even the deepest wounds can still grow something beautiful.

Because we chose to bring light into it. ❤️

06/07/2026

This is one of those moments where a few dollars can make a huge difference.

On Monday, the mother of 7 we’ve been supporting will board a flight back to Honduras with her children. The plan was already difficult enough. Then one of the children’s passports was lost in the mail.

Replacing it required an emergency trip to DC and additional fees that totaled nearly $485. LAS was able to help cover half of that cost, but the remaining expenses wiped out the last of the money she had. Meaning she’s going to Honduras with zero funds at all. This isn’t something she openly wanted to share with us, and it’s been a struggle to get her to express her needs. She’s been doing it on her own for so long, she really hates asking for help…so when she does, we know it’s serious.

Now we’re facing two urgent needs:

📱 Her phone will be disconnected tomorrow if her $91.78 bill isn’t paid. She absolutely needs the ability to use her phone while traveling.

🍔 She needs travel money so she can feed her children while navigating airports and a full day of travel across 3 layovers.

Many of you have followed this family’s journey from the beginning. You’ve helped provide clothing, luggage, transportation, and so much more. We’re asking for one final push to help them make it home safely.

If you’re able to contribute, no amount is too small. Five dollars. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars. It all adds up.

Let’s make sure this mom can stay connected and that these kids don’t spend their travel day hungry.

Today, you. Tomorrow, me. ❤️

https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/las-mother-and-baby-fund

05/26/2026

If you plan to come tonight, please fill this out ahead of time 💕

Los Ayudantes SWVA (The Helpers) is a grassroots volunteer mutual aid network providing support to our neighbors across the Roanoke Valley. We are not affiliated with any government agency. Participation is voluntary, and services are provided through community support and shared resources. Informat...

05/25/2026

Roanoke loves to call itself a “welcoming city.”

But a truly welcoming city does not leave people without access to food after business hours.

A truly welcoming city does not force families to choose between asking publicly for help or going hungry quietly.

And a truly welcoming city would already have 24/7, barrier-free food access in every part of the city…but here we are.

Right now, Roanoke has neighborhoods where people cannot access food at night without transportation, money, paperwork, or navigating systems that were never built with them in mind.

That is unacceptable. And we are not letting this issue go.

Because here’s the thing:
We’ve already done the hard part.

We have the refrigerators.
We have the Bodegas.
We have volunteers ready to help maintain and stock them.
We have community support.
And we have connections to local artists who can transform these spaces into something beautiful — something that becomes part of the culture and identity of each neighborhood instead of an eyesore hidden away.

This is not some impossible idea.
Other cities have done it.
And Roanoke can too.

So we will keep fighting.
We will keep pressuring.
We will keep organizing.
And we will keep rallying this community until every quadrant of this city has access to barrier-free food, that people can reach with dignity.

Our goal is simple:

❄️ At least 1 Community Fridge
🥫 At least 1 Bodega / Community Pantry

In each district:
• NW
• NE
• SE
• SW

No forms.
No gatekeeping.
No office hours.
Just neighbors making sure other neighbors survive.

If Roanoke wants to call itself welcoming, then it is time to build infrastructure that actually reflects that.

We prefer ACTION OVER WORDS…do you?

05/25/2026

This is what Roanoke needs, and LAS can make it happen. But…we need locations to set them up. Do us a solid pleaseeeee, and share our outreach post (the one with the white refrigerator or the one about our Bodegas) with your favorite local business, city council member, or organizations with a community space. It’s going to take all of us to set this in motion, and that may require a bit of public pressure 😅 Share, tag, like, phone a friend, repost, ALL THE THINGS…because while they may get annoyed, it puts us one step closer to ensuring folks are fed!

05/25/2026

Volunteer Potluck meeting tomorrow at 5:30pm! If you’ve been looking for a way to get involved with our work, come meet us! Dm for info.

05/25/2026

I needed a moment to decompress after this week.

Honestly, I don’t know how to fully process everything we witnessed over the last several days. Some of the stories I sat face to face with this week will stay with me for a very long time. There were moments where the weight of it all felt genuinely crushing.

But in the middle of all of that heartbreak…this community moved in ways I never expected.

I missed our weekly spotlight thanking local people and orgs doing the work, but truthfully? This week, all the flowers belong to you guys.

To put this into perspective — more than 50 people stepped up. People donated money. Dropped off luggage. Bought diapers. Sent clothes, iPads, phones, supplies, and so much more. Every single time I pulled into my driveway, there was another reminder that people still care deeply about strangers they may never meet.

I need you to understand how much that mattered.

During a week where I had a front row seat to fear, instability, loss, and the kind of cruelty that breaks something inside of you…you all became the light sitting in the middle of that darkness.

I’ve often wondered whether Los Ayudantes would ever be able to rally public support in the way other orgs can, because we are so limited in what we can safely share. We live in a time where vulnerable people are exploited for clicks, and where one post can place a target on the back of a neighbor already surviving impossible circumstances.

So we’ve tried to walk a very careful line: bringing awareness to these stories while still protecting the families living them.

But this week showed that maybe words are enough.
That people can still read between the lines.
That empathy doesn’t require spectacle.
That community can still recognize pain without demanding proof of it first.

Because of you, two separate families are able to reunite, travel safely, be cared for, and have their needs met during some of the hardest moments of their lives.

And honestly?
You all carried me through this week too.

Thank you for reminding me that even when the world feels unbearably heavy, there are still people willing to show up and help carry it.

05/22/2026

It’s been a long morning.

I got up at 3am, loaded suitcases into the car, packed sleepy kids into their seats, and drove to the airport before the sun came up. I walked the family to the security line and started quietly asking strangers nearby if anyone spoke Spanish and could help them navigate the trip.

By some miracle, we found a woman who said yes. Then another woman stepped in and offered to help them once they landed in Atlanta and needed to make it from Terminal D to Terminal E for their connecting flight to Honduras.

They made the first flight.
They found their gate.
And right now, they’re boarding their plane home.

I need people to really sit with what that means…

Imagine you’re a stay-at-home mom with a 1-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 4-year-old. Your husband is the sole provider for your family. Then one day, overnight, he’s just…gone.
No rent money. No grocery money. No childcare. No safety net. No plan.

Everything you built your life around disappears in an instant.

So you make the impossible decision to return to the country you once fled — because at least there, your children can have their father back.

You get two medium-sized suitcases.
That’s it.

Your husband has nothing with him in Honduras.
Your children have never even lived there.
The formula your baby drinks isn’t sold there.
So you’re packing for 6 people.

How do you decide what deserves space in those bags?
What pieces of your life are worth taking?
What do you leave behind forever?
How do you anticipate future needs?

Even after we managed to get them a third suitcase, watching a mother, three children, and their pre-teen niece fit their entire lives into three small bags absolutely shattered me.

I cried walking out of that airport.

Some of those tears were relief. Relief that these babies are going to see their dad again.

But most of it was grief.
Exhaustion.
Anger.
Heartbreak.

Because how are families being forced into impossible choices like this every single day?

And even harder to understand —
how can people look at stories like this and still support it?

After I got home, one of our volunteers called me.

She’s a nurse. A mom. The kind of person who naturally takes care of everyone around her.

Yesterday, she spent time with another mother we’re helping. She held the youngest baby and rocked her to sleep so mom could breathe for a minute. She took them to get groceries. Bought breakfast. Just showed up the way humans are supposed to show up for each other.

But this morning, she called asking me how I do this every day.

She said she couldn’t sleep last night.

She kept thinking about that mother.
About the children.
About the trauma they’ve survived.
About the uncertainty waiting for them.

She said it broke her heart watching this woman be so gentle, so polite, so unbelievably strong while carrying so much pain.

Then she asked me again:
“How do you do this every day?”

I could give a hundred different answers.

But honestly, none of them matter.

The better question is —
how could I not?