By Jezmarie Allen

I had a pleasure meeting and spending some time with the lovely Ms. Barbara Simota,  she is a retired AISD teacher. She began a garden landscape company called Barbara Butterfly. She designed gardens for butterflies and bees, and had to refrain from landscaping full time due to her progressing disability, which has caused her to be wheelchair bound. Ms. Simota has been in her home since 1972. She loves spending time in her yard. Her most cherished memory in her home is when Meals On Wheels came and remodeled her kitchen and bathroom to make her home safer and more accessible since she is in a wheelchair. Her favorite people are her siblings, and her power-of-attorney, who she has been really good friends with,  for many years. She feels so blessed to know there are so many people with big hearts that have helped her throughout the years and continue to receive support from. She said as she gets older she feared feeling alone since  

Her happiest moment when she was a teacher, she loved her students. Her proudest moment is when she started her own garden landscaping business. Her saddest moment was when she retired from school, because she was overworked, and underpaid. She is a survivor has overcome many obstacles, with her disability and at one time was feeling alienated from people. She is very proud of partnering with an organization for blind people to receive support and they taught her to be more self-sufficient, so that she can live independently. She was able to reach out to old friends from high school and college, and learned she had a lot more people in her life that cared about her then she realized.  

One thing Ms. Simota said she would say to the younger generation, and encourage them to put down the electronics, and go outside to enjoy nature, and the sunlight. The way she learned about Hands on Housing was through the foreman of meals on wheels who gave her over forty resources that can help her, and iACT was the only organization that responded. She is very grateful that we are willing to work with her to make her home even better and more cozy. She adores her home, and calls it a dream house, saying there is nothing she would change about her home, except maybe paint it a copper color with golf blue trimming, because white, according to her, is so common and boring. She looks forward every day to wake up with a heart full of gratitude for the life she has, the people in her life, and her health.  

We at Hands On Housing look forward to working with Ms. Simota in home, and pray that we can help her make her home even more like the dream home she has always wanted.