Putting family care and health first as an Instacart shopper
Sometimes we’re blessed to come across people that are pure inspiration. Life dealt them a very tough hand, yet they continue on fighting.
Steph P is one of those people.
To start, her eight-year-old daughter has a rare chromosomal abnormality. Steph says doctors — and there have been many — haven’t provide great answers. The condition causes her daughter to suffer from ADHD and debilitating muscle weakness. Many mornings, she can’t dress herself.
Add to this, that when Steph was in her 20s she had a small stroke, just shortly after moving to Austin, Texas, where she still lives. Her memory and motor functions were damaged to the point that she and the doctors wondered whether she’d ever work, much less lead the life she knew, again. After she left the hospital, Steph couldn’t walk around the block without forgetting how to return home.
But Steph is fighting to create a normal life for her kids and herself.
This is where she is emphatic that working with Instacart has been a blessing and not just because the money she earns helps cover expenses. Of her daughter Steph says, “Seeing her mom really sick was a really hard part for her.” Yet Steph has noticed that watching her mother go to work has actually helped relieve a lot of her daughter’s anxiety.
“She knows it’s okay because mom’s doing regular things.”
And the work has also been a sanctuary for Steph herself. “Outside of Instacart I’m at doctors and therapies with the rest of my time,” she says. “I cannot express how much Instacart brings piece of mind to me. I can just tune everything out.”
Steph also believes that the memory matrix of recalling a customer’s items, their specific requests and where to find everything in the store has been instrumental in re-strengthening some of the mental sharpness she’d lost. Medication and therapy are definitely major parts of the equation, but Steph believes that “Instacart has helped me profoundly with memory control, being self sufficient.”
But there are still those days where Steph doesn’t feel great and going to work is not an option. She previously managed fast food restaurants and taking time off to deal with health swings was not an option. “You say ‘I can only work two days this week’ and they say ‘Why?’ “ But Steph says that, as a Personal Shopper with Instacart, when she needs time off to collect her thoughts or be with her family, she just takes it — with no questions asked.
Impressively, Steph still looks brightly towards the future. She’s excited about what lies ahead as Instacart grows in Austin and opens in more cities.
At one point Steph had planned to be a veterinarian. She spent a lot of her life on ranches and wanted to specialize in treating horses. With kids and the cards she’s been dealt, she had to put that dream on hold. But as life settles again, she’s got her eye there too.
“It’s my real passion,” she says.
Learn more about becoming a shopper at Instacart.
