AprilTara scribbled: Mr. & Mrs. Obama, Never in my 20 years of voting has a politician (and his wife!) moved me to tears. I was blown away last night by Michelle's speech and after watching you thank your wife and talk to your little girls via satellite, I said to my friends on Twitter "Now THAT'S family values!" Like Barack's mother, I am a single mom also. I am struggling just to stay afloat and every day when I wake up, I wonder "is this going to be the day I drown?" See, on top of being a single mom and trying to survive in this atrocious economy, I am also living with a mental illness. Life is difficult enough coping with a mental illness as it is but when you add gas prices, unemployment, and food prices on top of it, I don't know how much more I can take. But you give me hope, Mr. Obama. When you talk about your plans for change, I believe you! You have connected with the American people in a way that we have been starving and aching for. For the first time, we really feel like someone is listening. Earlier this week, I lost my job. Again. This is the second job I've lost this year. I was working at home because I could no longer afford to commute and now that I don't have any job at all, I can't afford the gas to go on interviews. I've tried starting my own business but no one can afford to hire me as a virtual legal assistant. Due to a vicious custody war my daughter's father has waged on me, I am being forced to take my daughter to a school 30 hours away from my home. That's 120 miles and 2 hours of driving every day. My attorney begged the court to let me enroll my child in the local school and when he refused, we asked the State to help me with transportation and they refused. The father is not paying child support either because DHHS interfered in that too. So what am I supposed to do? Get her to school and lose my house? Or pay my rent and lose my daughter because she's truant? On top of that, I have an ex-husband who got away with kidnapping my son and I went a year without seeing him because I couldn't find him and I couldn't afford to hire an attorney. I worked in a law firm for a while and one of the attorneys there helped me at least get visitation but when I lost that job, I lost my representation. So when I showed up in court to represent myself, I didn't get a chance to speak, the Judge signed off on the order the other attorney submitted and I was stuck with a child support order that is 50% of my income. PLUS my ex-husband slipped a clause in there making me pay for his transportation costs when HE'S the one that moved 3 hours away to another state. When I refused to pay him that, he used his connections as a probation officer to have my visits with my son suspended and I didn't see him for another 4 months. (See, after he took off with my son, my son went downhill fast and was admitted to the hospital for being suicidal and was later charged with a felony for breaking into a friend's house. His juvenile probation officer is a friend of my ex's.) I won't even begin to tell you the story of my 17 year old daughter and how, thanks to DHHS ignoring my cries for help, she ended up being a pregnant runaway and was living in a foster home with her boyfriend who isn't the child's father (he's the foster dad's son) but she plans to marry. So that's just a fraction of the disastrous experiences I have had to battle when it comes to our government and our courts. Trying to do all of this with no money and a mental illness is going to kill me. Literally and figuratively. I'm not stupid person, sir. I have a 143 IQ and I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was 7 years old but after being removed from an abusive, alcoholic father's home, my college plans were shot and I ended up being a mother at 19 so law school was no longer an option. I "settled" for being a paralegal but couldn't afford to finish my degree. Obviously, I really care about your plans for women and families. Our family is just one of millions that needs your help. We're counting on you for change. I am going with my gut and my heart (and against my racist father's ignorant rants) and I will be casting my vote for you. Please don't let my family down. But something tells me you won't.