After the fire, a woman set up a fundraiser. We trusted her because of who she said she was.
My parents were both addicts. My father drank himself to death. My mother still struggles. I was raised by my grandparents, and I had my first child when I was 15.
I met my husband when he came through town with the rodeo. He was just passing through. He was making fifty dollars a week. We started out in a mobile home where you could feel the wind move through the walls. I have a video of pulling a snake out of the ceiling.
Our son was born with a genetic condition. He couldn’t gain weight no matter how much he ate. He had to be tube fed. I became a full time caregiver. I learned sign language. While I was doing that, my husband worked his way up. He got his first stable corporate job. We bought a house. We never thought we’d be able to do that.
On December 7, 2024, our house burned to the ground.
My husband woke up in the middle of the night feeling strange. He opened the bedroom door and the smoke came in. Our living room was already engulfed. We all got out a window with what we were wearing. He had sleep pants on and nothing else. The fire alarm never went off. We sleep with our bedroom door shut, which is what they tell you to do. We just didn’t know that on the other side of that door, everything was burning.
My sister and her kids had been staying with us. All ten of us escaped the house.
We made it to our neighbors in the middle of the night.
They told us later it was electrical. Wiring in the basement. The fire traveled across the carpet and through the entire house. The Christmas presents were gone by the time we were out the window.
There’s a lot of little things you don’t think about until the chaos dies down. My great grandmother’s rocking chair. The bench my grandfather made for us. My father’s ashes. The lock of hair from a first haircut. You don’t get those back. My son’s medical food burned too. There’s no store to pick up specialty medical supplies, let alone in the middle of the night. I was so grateful he was starting to eat on his own, or we’d have been back in the hospital that night.
But we were alive and we were together. We moved into a hotel. We were there for eight months.
The community stepped up in a big way. A family escaping a burning home right before Christmas is something most people can’t look away from. Nearly ten thousand dollars came in from across the Ozarks. In the end, we only received twenty percent of it.
I was filled with so much anger. We had barely escaped with our lives out of a window in the middle of winter in our pajamas. We lost everything. And then someone took the last of what people had given us to survive it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have driven her to do something like that. She just had a baby. She had children who needed her. Whatever crisis she was in felt overwhelming enough that taking this money seemed like the only way through. I think she thought she could pay it back. I know what it is to not have money. I know what it’s like to be driven to do things you never thought you would. We’ve dumpster dived. We’ve been in the trenches. I know what that place feels like.
When I stood in front of the judge I asked for mercy. I asked that she be given the grace to go back to her children. I only asked that she apologize to the community. She didn’t just take from our family. She took from every person who decided to give up a bit of their Christmas to help us.
That experience will always be a part of me and a part of what I do. I’m a family empowerment specialist at Missouri Empowerment Project. I work with families who are trying to keep everyone together. I go to court with them, to family support team meetings. I’m there with them in every room where decisions are being made about their lives. A lot of what I do is just translate. The child welfare world has a language of its own and most of the families I work with have never been exposed to it. They’ll nod in a meeting, even if they aren’t sure what’s going on, because they’re surrounded by people who do this work every day and they’re afraid. After a meeting I explain what just happened, what it means, and what they need to do next.
A lot of my work happens inside people’s homes. We talk about parenting, routines, supervision, communication, budgeting, and all the things that can feel overwhelming when you’re already trying to survive. Sometimes that means teaching a skill. Sometimes it means modeling it. Sometimes it means sitting at a kitchen table helping a parent figure out a plan for tomorrow. The goal isn’t to do things for families. The goal is to help them build the tools and confidence to do it themselves.
Both of my parents were addicts. I grew up inside the kind of life that these families are living. I know what feels normal when it isn’t. I know what it is to not have the tools and not know you’re missing them. When I walk into a home I don’t have to explain any of that. My families can feel it.
A lot of times the difference between them and someone walking down the street is that they got on someone’s radar. I keep that at the front of my mind all the time.
Last winter, a mother I was working with had nowhere to go. She was sleeping outside. I bought her a tent and a little heater with my own money. I thought it was possible she might sell it. I bought it anyway. I couldn’t go home to my warm house and my children while she was out there.
She called me after she got out of treatment. She said God showed her that where she was then wasn’t where her story ends. She’s doing ministry now. She’s leading youth services at her church.
I think about where I came from and I think about the families I sit with and I know there’s not much distance between us. I’m here by grace. That’s the only honest way I know to say it.
When I’m in a room with a family and everything feels like it’s closing in, I want them to know they have somebody. If they need to be mad at the system or angry with me, that’s alright. My shoulders are strong enough to carry it.
Shelby Snider
Family Empowerment Specialist, Missouri Empowerment Project
Founder, Destination Families Together Initiative
Voices of Hope
Every person in this community carries a story worth telling. Voices of Hope features the real people of the Missouri Ozarks who show up for children and families — foster parents, caseworkers, volunteers, survivors, and neighbors who simply refused to look away.
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