Freya Fox celebrated a birthday she won’t forget Saturday, thanks to a community that came together to give her a quick but special third birthday celebration at Pearsall Park.
It was the birthday Freya had never before had, said her mother, Fiona Fox: Pink birthday balloons, a Barbie-doll cake and numerous birthday gifts just for her.
At the park’s splash pads, she wore her favorite colors, pink and purple, a “BIRTHDAY GIRL” sash and a tiara between her two curly hair buns.
At her home on Thursday before her birthday party, Freya shared details about the gifts she received for her birthday, which was on Tuesday.
“It was my birthday and I got a cake,” said Freya. “Strawberry,” she said, adding it was her favorite. She put her hands behind her back, then said, “Her gave me that,” remembering the moment her mother presented her birthday cake. She didn’t know that someone else would gift her a second birthday cake on Saturday.
“They all gave that to me,” she said happily, looking at her birthday gifts spread across the living room floor. Her mom asked her how she felt on her birthday.
“Grateful,” she said.
Freya turned 3 weeks after moving with her family from Indiana to Texas. While the Foxes are still adjusting to life in San Antonio, the struggles they have recently faced made providing a birthday party or gifts for their youngest daughter a challenge for Fox and her husband, so Fox turned to her last resort: Asking the community for help.
“Tomorrow is my daughter’s third birthday. We just moved here,” Fox wrote to a private Facebook group, Buy Nothing-San Antonio, which has 14,500 members. “We honestly are living off donating plasma and doordashing.”
“I’m struggling and hustling so hard,” Fox wrote. “I’m looking for any girl toys or girl themed anything to give her.”
One by one, the messages and comments came rolling in for Freya. Twelve people donated toys and arts and crafts wrapped in pink birthday gift bags that made it an even more special experience for Freya. Fox said other group members who saw her post donated $70 to her personal CashApp.
Each time, Fox said, Freya squealed with joy and was surprised that strangers gave her gifts.
“The things they donated to my daughter are things that all my kids can do together and enjoy together,” Fox said. ”It wasn’t just one smile, it was four. That means more to me than any dollar signs, any nickels, anything on this earth. Knowing that they’re happy, that’s what I live for as a mom.”
Fox updated the post with a photo of Freya in the comments, sitting behind eight gift bags with a huge smile on her face.
In another post to the group, Fox said she was amazed by the gracious giving and grateful for making her daughter’s birthday special. She also extended a public invitation to Freya’s birthday party to parents who have children.
“I was like, ‘OK, Freya, it’s your birthday. What do you want?’ She said, ‘I just want to dance with my friends.’ I said OK,” Fox said.
“It really touched my heart that I was able to see that smile on my daughter’s face,” Fox said.
The family had been through difficult times before the move, including experiencing homelessness twice, Fox said. Fox, who is vocal about being a survivor of human trafficking, said she has suffered mental health traumas stemming from those experiences but said motherhood motivates her to be what her parents couldn’t.
“Help is not coming,” Fox said. “I learned that a long time ago, unfortunately. … My only hope is the help of someone else.”
She’s had 15 interviews in the last week, she said and has had trouble signing her family up for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In the meantime, she’s been as resourceful as she can be and has furnished her three-bedroom apartment by way of Facebook groups to turn it into a home. She also used Facebook to find someone willing to rent her vehicle to Fox for $100 a week.
Through it all, Freya is a bright and happy girl. She’s talkative and creative and has great communication skills for her age. On Thursday in her home, Freya played with a Barbie Little Dreamhouse set with two dolls in her hands. With a big smile on her face and inviting her siblings to play with her, Freya showed everything she could do: Change her dolls’ outfits and send them up and down an elevator and down a slide. On her wrists, she wore handmade beaded bracelets she made with the kits someone gave her for her birthday.
But her joy on Saturday was even greater: Excited and positively overwhelmed by the support she was seeing, Freya ran under water pads with her siblings at Pearsall Park, then with the child of a parent on Facebook who showed up to celebrate her birthday.
“I was new here once, too,” said Perfida Harralson, who met Fox on Facebook and has a daughter Freya’s age. “The most important thing is to show kids, get them involved, too. … If I was ever in that instance, I would want that, too. That makes it even better. San Antonio [was able] to do that for her.”
Izzy Berry, a San Antonio balloon artist, showed up with a handmade Barbie-doll cake and thousands of balloons in her kit, ready to put on a show and create whatever the children wanted.
Freya was surprised to see the cake and sat next to it closely after it arrived.
“The reason I got into this job was to make kids happy,” Berry said. “If I could give great childhood memories to other kids, that would be great.”
“There’s beauty in humanity,” Fox said. “There’s more than the everyday hustle and stress. No one is dealing with the same things. Everyone is in some struggle in some way, shape or form. It doesn’t have to be financially, there’s other things that go on in people’s lives. And it was just beautiful [that] a couple of people didn’t forget that and gave what they could give.”
At her party, Freya said she got to dance with her friends — just like she wanted.
