She woke up on the first day of her favorite month and wept. June used to be International Eleanor Month. Her birthday is smack in the middle, and it was when she and her kids would get their first taste of watermelon and first smell of saltwater.
But last Monday, when Eleanor Shell’s calendar flipped, all she could think about was that June morning from two years ago, and what it had taken from her.
On June 12, 2024, Shell started the day with a doctor’s appointment for her 7-month-old daughter. Blakely had been an unexpected gift, born when Eleanor was in her mid-40s, a girl to ground a house that hummed in the chaos of two boys. The parking lot at Tryon Medical SouthPark was quiet, Eleanor remembers, until she turned and saw a car streaking toward her hip.
Using her “mom juice,” as she calls it, she shoved the stroller forward. The SUV hit mom but not baby. Eleanor landed five feet in front of the car. Her shoes were two feet behind it. She remembers strangers pulling her up to a sitting position, and she remembers hearing Blakely crying.
“I want my baby,” Eleanor screamed on repeat. She didn’t know whether Blakely had been hurt, and remembers thinking it would be the last time she’d hear her daughter cry. Someone brought Blakely to her. Then Eleanor looked up at the driver, a young woman. Eleanor’s a pastor, and she instantly thought of all the teens she’s worked with over the years, and fragile their futures are. She also, in a quick flash, knew that her kids might one day make a similar mistake behind the wheel. And she thought about the saying her husband uses for tough times: “If you can write a check for it, it is a situation and not a crisis.”
In the emergency room, though, they learned they couldn’t write a check for it.
Doctors found that Eleanor had suffered a traumatic brain injury, the kind that sends about 31,000 North Carolinians to the hospital each year. She spent 12 weeks at an Atlanta concussion center, then another stretch in Pittsburgh, receiving care from the same concussion specialists who treated former Panther Luke Kuechly and NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. after their concussions.
Within a few months, her brain was at about 60 percent of its usual functioning, a devastating setback for a woman with three master’s degrees and three children. In September 2024, her husband, Blake, lost his job after juggling work and her care became untenable. They lived off savings while he tended to her and the kids and tried to find income.
Before the injury, they were what Eleanor describes as middle class. She was a Presbyterian minister who worked part-time at Sugaw Creek Presbyterian, while also serving as the director of development for Sugar Creek Charter School. Blake was in real estate. They had enough money to live in Stonehaven, to go to the beach once a year, and to splurge on a trip to Disney a few years ago. In other words, they made enough to not qualify for medical debt relief or other assistance programs, but not enough that paying for it all themselves wouldn’t break them.
By Christmas last year, she didn’t know how she’d pay for presents. During the late-January snowstorm that made kids throughout the Charlotte region giddy, Eleanor had a relapse. Too much noise. Too confined. Just … too much. Her nervous system, which is always in fight-or-flight mode since the accident, went haywire. Her neck seized up. Her skin felt prickly, and she landed in the ER again with post-traumatic stress.
Her husband’s picked up a job for income, but stays underemployed in order to be there for her. She still can’t drive for more than an hour by herself.
When she does have clear thoughts, though, the reality remains disorienting. One day she was a fast-moving mom with a full family, dreaming of zoo trips with her kids, living out her purpose of helping underprivileged children and communities in the Sugar Creek Road corridor … and the next she was bed-bound and needy, wondering how she would afford her own Christmas presents.
She started Borrowed Hope, which uses art to help people with mental health. And recently she decided to expand its mission to include supporting families who’ve faced an unexpected crisis that whacks their savings, but don’t qualify for assistance. People lost in the middle, she says.
The organization offers grants to families for Christmas, summer activities, and modest vacations to get away.
She writes a Substack about her recovery and struggles, and about her views on medical debt in America. She’s done public speaking to share her story. Both are therapeutic. Both help, until they don’t.
Probably the biggest help, she says, is doing things for others. She’s been working on gaining federal nonprofit status for Borrowed Hope. Earlier this year, she’d started mapping out a small program where the organization will fill baskets with snacks and gift cards for experiences around Charlotte — movie theaters, bowling alleys, the Whitewater Center — so that parents in her situation could give their kids a fun summer, even under the weight of debt. She planned to launch the baskets in summer 2027.
Then came June 1, and the tears. She couldn’t leave the bed. She was having another post-traumatic stress breakdown. She called a few close friends, who had an idea.
“My friends said, ‘Why don’t we just do (the baskets) this year? If you can do one basket, you can do one. Either way, that’s going to give you something to think about for the next 12 days,’” Eleanor told me last week.
So she’s going for it. She set up a form for people to nominate families like hers, ones that have endured a day that changed their lives and finances in a blink. She’s set up a donations page for people to give whatever they can to fill the baskets — snacks, gift cards, or money. The deadline to apply for a basket, or to nominate someone else, is this Wednesday, June 10.
She has a name for this space of her family’s life now: the long middle. It’s the months and years after the casseroles stop coming in the immediate wake of an accident, and your life is still in the shape the accident left it.
It’s also a phrase that suits Charlotte. Our city talks relentlessly about its future and who’ll benefit most from it — and who’ll be hurt most. The reality is most of us live in the middle. Families like the Shells are a reminder how fragile that place is, too. They’re in between the people the safety net is rightfully built for and those who’ll never need it.
Within two days of deciding to do the baskets this year, Shell had 19 families nominated. She sent out a press release in hopes of getting media coverage. The Charlotte Optimist receives lots of these sorts of emails now, from nonprofits and fundraisers and good causes, more than I could ever write about. For some reason, I didn’t archive this one. I guess what stuck with me is that here was someone who needs help herself, but instead she was asking for help helping strangers. So we set up a call.
“We’re in the thick of this, our crisis,” she told me. “We did nothing wrong. Our kids, they did nothing wrong. And life just happens. And when that happens, it’s hard to hold on to hope, and it’s hard to think about being able to bring joy into your kid’s life. Even if I’m only able to help one family, that’s worth doing. And on top of that, it helps me escape from our own reality.”
On Thursday, June 11, one day after the basket nominations close, she’s having a fundraiser and arts gathering at Divine Barrel. June 12 is the anniversary of her accident. June 15 is her birthday. Her favorite month and her worst memory now live on the same calendar page. But if she can help a few kids have better summers, well, that’s enough to get her out of bed.
How to help …
Nominate a family that could use a lift: By June 10, fill out this Google form to submit a family that’s experienced “a day that changed everything.”
Donate: To help Eleanor fill the baskets.
Thursday: Borrowed Hope event at Divine Barrel Brewing in NoDa.