let us do better for each other right now, every moment
please support my life, there is still no one helping me
My GoFundMe - https://gofund.me/623e161a0
My Venmo - https://account.venmo.com/u/DaphneGarrido
Follow Of Darkness & Light on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Subject: A Disabled Mother's Plea: Can You Help Where Silence Has?
Dear Social Workers and Leaders Across Our Nation,
I write to you as a disabled trans parent living with schizophrenia. All I ever wanted was to reach out for help while my executive dysfunction made even the smallest steps feel impossible.
The woman I turned to for understanding, Mary Katherine Schmitz, holds a degree from the University of Washington School of Social Work and has years of professional experience caring for people living with schizophrenia. She knew my reality. She understood exactly how executive dysfunction affects a parent’s ability to function, to parent, to hold on to her life.
What followed was not the compassion her training would suggest. Instead came months of complete silence. That silence did not simply withhold help—it first created a crushing depression I had never known, then doubled down upon it day after day, and finally punished the very condition it had worsened. It became its own sustained harm: a wall of isolation that took my livelihood, my sense of safety, and most painfully, my ability to be the steady parent my daughter needs.
Even after I sent repeated explanations of the harm being done and asked only for the basic space to heal and stay close to my child, an order of protection was issued against me.
You who chose this profession did so because you believe in connection, restoration, and meeting vulnerability with care. You know what responsible understanding looks like. You know the difference between genuine protection and a choice that leaves a disabled parent in torturous isolation while her child grows up without her. And when someone with that exact training and direct experience with our community chooses prolonged silence in the face of known suffering, it carries a weight that speaks for itself.
In the broader climate of policies and attitudes meant to protect women from gender ideology, I have found myself inside a painful bubble where a trans disabled woman seeking help receives barriers instead of the accommodations every vulnerable adult deserves.
I was never asking for special treatment. I was simply asking for help getting the help that would let me be the loving, present parent every child deserves.
My daughter is growing up without me because of this silence. I am still here, fighting every day to be the parent she needs. I ask you now—with the compassion that first called you to this work—to see the human cost and step in where that training was set aside. Help me challenge what has been placed upon me. Help me secure the community supports that would allow me to stabilize, parent, and heal.
Please let your voices become the response that silence denied us both.
With a parent’s love and quiet determination,
Daphne Garrido (Iris)
Tukwila, WA
(206) 930-9028
illith.net
(I am unaware of the current location of this person. They filed their restraining order against me in Washington from Minnesota, and their family lives in Wisconsin)
