American Road Trip: How I Sketched America through Celiac Crisis and Found Myself

In 2015, I embarked on an ambitious project. Embedded in the riverside town of Memphis TN was an air of cultural preservation. Revamped old buildings and run down areas shone like diamonds pressed from coal. Projects like the now completed Concourse Center in the old Sears tower were underway. With the community’s passion for music, good food and good times, the heart of the town, the start of rock and roll, the merging of cultures was still very much alive. Young folks wearing vintage clothing as their daily gear at a vegan friendly diner in midtown was quite the norm. It was the perfect spot for a cool vintage and sustainable fashion store. I quit my job and purchased a vintage travel trailer that needed a full overhaul.

The day that I bit the bullet and quit my job to restore a travel trailer, was a travel day. My children and I traveled to Bayouland, Baton Rouge, Louisiana to visit my grandmother. We spent much needed restoration time with family, enjoying my birthplace with its motherly Oaks and muddy waters. We stuffed all of the creole culture we could carry for a quick weekend into our souls like packrats. Monday morning, we began our trip back up to Memphis.  

Driving a car full of children, I pondered the concept of home. When considering the concept of home as individuals, often we are wooed by childhood experiences. Is our home, our home town?  Is it where we reside? Is it the people we reside with? Memphis for my little family at the time felt like home; a place that felt comfortable. Memphis is culturally similar to Baton Rouge, a landscape on the edge of the river, but with gracious little mounds and less soupy marshes. The smells of the streets and the smiles of the folks in Memphis, Baton Rouge and New Orleans are inherently conjoined. However, Memphis was special as it is an ancient home of my bloodline. Even before my family ended up in South Louisiana, we came from ancient Choctaws that left the place called Chucalissa (named “abandoned home”), located in the Southern most part of what is now Memphis. My Choctaw family ended up integrating abandoned French soldiers (left in Mobile by France after Louisiana became Spanish).

The integration of the French into the Choctaw tribe was the gamble they took to hopefully keep their land.  We are unsure as to why the Choctaws abandoned Memphis, but we know why many of them left Mississippi. Forced to be wanderers, many of them died on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. As I drove the path from New Orleans to Memphis, I thought of my French Choctaw family. My family retained property, because my ancestor Greenwood Leflore was part of the elite ranks of the Choctaws French mixing. Leflore was a chief, a senator, a planter, and a bred leader.  He was never forced to wander, but he was instead bound to the land. His hands were tied. 

Passing rows and rows of trees, like ancestors waving me goodbye on my own journey, I knew that my life would change. Despite bracing for an existential earthquake, I was unprepared for the fallout. As the kids and I drove into Leflore county, we witnessed a fiery wreck. A red car was melted onto the top of a tractor trailer cab. The cause of the wreck was due to a earlier fiery wreck. I saw the plume of smoke from the first wreck for miles before we got to the trailer cab wreck The smoke signals called to me like an alarm. At the crash site, I pulled over. Shaken, I was thankful that we were not in that wreck. I considered a detour from the main road. I sought a different path on my phone, worried that passing the first wreck while it burned. As I searched the multitude of safe back roads, I was discouraged that the winding roads that would set us back hours. I realized that the worst wreck was behind us and the one in front of our path was in fact fading.  The main path was safe. It was safe for me to continue home. The signal sounded and I through the symbolic nature of the event, I instinctually knew that I must immediately quit my job. 

I hoped to save a little more money, but the urgency of change I felt from a visceral recognition as to the shortness of our time on Earth prompted my response. When I got home, I wrote an email to my boss giving my two weeks notice. It didn’t make sense to quit, in an economy which most struggle to stay afloat. One illness or one wreck could cause financial devastation. It wasn’t an impossible prospect, we made enough to get by on Brian's income. However, it was not the most prudent decision.  My decision to quit and buy an airstream was completely intuitive. My work schedule at the time had brutal consequences on my health, even still, it wasn’t like me to resign myself.  What I discovered was the resignation wasn’t of my job, but of rational myself to my intuitive SELF.  At that point, I stopped aiming to make sense of my path and to instead committed to a journey though the fire.  

October 30th, I hopped into a friend of a friend’s Ford F150 and began a journey marking the beginning of a new entrepreneurial endeavor. As we drove across the Mississippi River headed towards Little Rock to purchase the 1976 Airstream Sovereign Land Yacht, I told my contractor pal of my renovation plans. Since he had restored a couple of campers and was aiding in the restoration of another Airstream, I felt confident that he could help me achieve my design goals. We agreed that I would do some of the labor and all of the design work, and that I would pay him and his crew to pick up slack for things that I didn’t know how to do. With cash in hand, I set out to purchase a genuine piece of American history. 

At the time, my knowledge of camper trailers came from threads and groups about vintage travel trailers and mobile boutiques. I spent a year scrounging and saving toward a dream of my own tricked out trailer store. This passion kept me going each day as I fell ill tormented by chronic symptoms of celiac disease. I was determined to open an integrated sustainable fashion boutique and graphic design business with my ex-husband (husband at the time), no matter what challenges I faced.  I was fortunate that I had friends that helped lift me up, give me ideas, and introduce me to new people in the Memphis vintage community. Brian was supportive in collaborating on projects together both for my store and for personal projects. Little did we know we would have a personal project together that would spark big changes in our lives.

Airstreams were the creative lovechild of Wally Byam and his yearning to explore nature. He began creating how-to kits in 1920 and in 1936 began selling the “Clipper.” Airstreams were a beautiful and natural progression of road improvements, the development of National and State parks, and the American spirit of adventure. There are other very charming vintage campers on the market, but Airstreams have a certain nostalgic air that felt right and fit with the aesthetic I wanted for Service: Style & Design’s mobile boutique. I purchased my camper from a nice man who also had restoration dreams, but decided it was more hassle than he was able to invest. It was a little bit daunting and disconcerting to purchase a project camper that someone had given up on. However, I felt confident in our abilities to fix her up and create the atmosphere I wanted for my new boutique. 

I worked on the trailer in November 2015 in Memphis. With time to myself, I began each day with first meditation then writing.  I was outside with no power or water in the damp and frigid fall. The work was indeed grueling and most of it I did completely alone. Some of you who have followed my blog and know that I have suffered with health issues most of my life. To my surprise my path of camper restoration was an emotional restoration, a sorting. I fell ill after the bulk of my part of the restoration. I'm not sure if it began with a surgery in July 2015 or maybe before, but by fall 2015, my health was in a steady decline. All of the challenges that I felt cleaning and building the camper from the ground up was completely parallel to my emotional and spiritual experience. Removing the entirety of its insides, scrubbing and building it anew.

I am an aggressively competitive person. Being athletically minded, when my health declines, my attitude is usually either to try to ignore my symptoms the best I can (suck it up mode) or challenge accepted (warrior mode). I power through pain silently and secluded at home with my family. I try to avoid health related questions and attention from others. At that point in my life, I stood in denial of my illness morning after morning. I struggled to get out of bed. I felt constant pain when I hobbled around making coffee. I put on layer after layer of clothing to defend against the damp grey air. I looked in the mirror, but not into my own eyes hiding from myself to avoid admitting the truth.

After very tough morning, I went to work on the trailer in the afternoon. I found myself scrubbing away feelings of self doubt. I was forced to demo my identity. For the longest time, the way that I dealt with chronic illness was to hide from everyone. Mostly, I hid from myself. I covered mirrors like a superstition, like a wake. Despite being told that my conditions are long term, I never believed it. Or perhaps I believed it and never accepted it. However, the months of illnesses I experienced in the years leading up to this moment did not lead me to identify as an ill person. Instead, illness felt like a hibernation.  Or maybe I just thought that if I willed myself well hard enough then it would work, western autonomy at its best.  But, the illusion of autonomy is a self imposed blindness to our connectedness. We are all bound to the body just as the men of the literary Canon feared us to be. It isn’t just the womb that binds us the the body, it is also the grave and the steps that lead us to it.

My illness was as if someone hit the pause button on my life and my identity slept.  However, there is no pause button, is there?  I lived in the positive mindset of absolute denial for quite a few months. Each day my physical condition fell apart, I said to myself “it will be better by the end of the week, or maybe next week, or maybe by next month, but definitely it will be better eventually.”  However, that denial shattered after I finished my part of the trailer prep. I found myself unable to muster up the ability to accomplish more than one or two physical tasks a day, and some days, none…and then some weeks, none. To my own surprise, I was stuck in bed feeling terrible more often than feeling even just bad. In the depths of physical torture, I created beauty. If was in constant hibernation, that was my life. I felt my soul a wanderer weighted and burdened by a load of my own flesh. Meandering though the body, I gasped for the path to a new life. It was winter and easy to hide; everyone likes to hibernate in winter.  But looking in the mirror, I began to alter the face that was staring back at me.  I rearranged and redesigned who I was. I was the art. But the art was ugly, painful, freakish, longing, broken, and incomplete. I am not sure what made me do it, but I picked up my pen and paper and spent day after day drawing.  My swollen hands ached, but I drew none the less. I wrote and meditated and slept. I had not planned to be primarily an artist during this period of my life.  My plan was so strong, but it was not art. Art planned me. The days passed. I had no real concept of time. The bulk of the winter was probably much quicker than the slow blur of sickness. 

While in bed, I obsessed endlessly about my silver lining, my Airstream. I thought about all my favorite places to visit. Dancing in my mind were different places friends lived, places I had visited and places I had never visited. As I pulled the graphite across the page, I didn’t feel sufficient. The range of emotions I felt and confusion easily flying away from the page as I pressed the pencil to the sketchpad. Covered in what felt like the dust of my own creation, I put the pencil away.  What I wanted was a Sharpie, but the pain in my body heaved onto me so heavily that I had to settle for a ball point pen. I let out a sigh and laid back onto my pillow. I closed my eyes; the sand and sea, the beach and a boat floated in my mind.  I rested a minute and meditated on the image.

I realized how tightly I was holding my body from being wretched with pain and took in a deep breathe, a long inhale. My ribcage hurt from the deep breath and whatever was happening to my body. As I exhaled, I focused on the sea breeze and the waves. How much I longed to be in Florida where peacefulness felt just around the corner.  Instead, I was stuck inside on a damp and cloudy Memphis day, unable to get out of bed (again).  My mind wandered back to my body as I felt the pins of pain within. Again I mustered the strength to retrieve my mind from my body back to Florida. But where in Florida?  The days of my youth were spent in Fort Lauderdale, but I found true blissful peacefulness somewhere in the keys. 

I grabbed my phone and began Googling images of Key West for inspiration. Picking up the pen, it felt better than the pencil. The pen stuck to the page. My meditations of Key West came alive as I went to work. Alive on the page was my sweet little fantasy of favorite Florida flora and birds. I didn’t’ realize at the time that this creative outlet would be the gateway to my first truly exciting published art piece. Ironically this image was not included in that first project but in a subsequently (self)published.

The day I picked up the pen and drew Key West, I was only thinking of Key West. My body was  riddled with issues for years and I was in the midst of a sharp decline in health. Laying in my bed, the keys felt like a fantasy. The warm sun on my shoulders surrounded by islands of mangroves and rocking moored boats.  I closed my eyes again and thought of when I was young, being on the beach. I spent hours of my youth floating in the ocean on my back. Looking up at the sky with my ears underwater, hearing no sounds of anyone or anything other than the gentle bubbly noises of the ocean. Bringing my mind to that place, I created sketch for the Key West page. I sketched a crane and the famous mile marker. I made sure there was a bridge in it and a little island with a sailboat. Almost prophetically, partially demanding and certainly hopeful, I created a little sign that says “Move Here.”  My page included an RV.  My recent purchase of the airstream prompted the notion. I still had hope to travel with my vintage store.

When I was done with the Key West page I felt so good that I didn’t want to come down from the mountain.  I figured that I would create Memphis since that’s where I was. So, I continued with First, Memphis. Then, St. Louis. I drew New Orleans, which holds my heart. Then, Muscle Shoals, where took the boys camping the same day we gave them a Christmas Puppy. I drew Athens, GA because I lived there for seven years. My little boys were born there, and I opened my first business there. Part of my heart will always be in Athens. So on and on I drew in my bed from Portland, Maine to San Antonio, Texas, I sketched my way around the country. Dreaming and creating each page was a way for me to be productive even when I felt my worst. It was a self-inclined form of therapy. As young as I could remember, I have fallen to writing and art as my safest places. These artistic places are always available to me no matter the circumstance and always give me joy. 

After I had a little collection of cities, my ex, Brian, and I agreed to recreate the images as graphic illustrations for a retro camping travel themed coloring book. Without this most important step, the book would not have been born. Our collaborative process began just a few weeks after I began sketching. Brian began the painstaking process of building graphics from my art piece by piece. We made adjustments along the way. The pages truly became a newer better creation, not just a recreation of my original sketch. We filtered each page through each other’s’ interpretations and at some point…magic! After creating a number of pages together, like a dream we found and contracted with our amazing agent Kate at Howard Morhiem. She facilitated our publishing deal with the prestigious Little Brown and Co. I think that it is amazing how although life always throws you for a loop; it also seems to toss you a bone.

 I'm a very positive person, but even my generously positive outlook would have never guessed that anything as amazing as American Road Trip could be a part of our lives. The finished product was an interactive art form that I shared with people all over the world. I did finish the airstream with a lot of help from my contractor. I managed to put in weeks of my own sweat and overall I was satisfied. I did all the necessary work of building inventory while I was sick in bed too. Repurposed pieces with graphic designs printed on them, locally made jewelry were items sold in the shop after I opened it. I worked on fashion blogs and tips, photo shoots, and social media marketing. I did everything in my power to be in control of my life despite the betrayal of my body. I opened my store only to close it six months later due to the severity of my illness that prompted my move to Florida.

So many highs filled that time; a “real” book deal that actually closed after a three-day auction with several interested and highly acclaimed publishers, which was unheard of. Additionally I was high from the excitement of the creation of my boutique dream. Yet it was also marked by so many lows; the slow but certain crumbing of an over decade long marriage and devastating illness…an unrelenting number of blows to my body and my life. With each blow, though I stood strong and fought simply for the right to be myself, to feel like myself and to follow my dreams, even if they were daydreams of other places. 

I am honored to be an example of life's graces, because I am thankful for each moment of my life. Each second I was ill and hurting during the making of American Road Trip was an opportunity to grow and learn more about myself and others. Some people cower and attack people with “unseen” chronic illnesses. This happened not just toward me, but towards the many friends that I know who carry similar and even more challenging physical burdens. People expect those of us with chronic illness first to hide and then to do something about ourselves. They question our symptoms then question our sanity.  They ask if we are better when they know that there is no cure. Ultimately, there is no getting better, only varying degrees of good days and bad days and of doctor’s appointments and disease management. 

You experience a different perspective when you are viewing the world from your bed. As I stared at the blue walls and called my dogs onto my bed besides me, I looked at each blank page as an opportunity to escape the confines of by illness. Each page was a self-invention of playfulness and adventure. I longed to be everywhere all at once. The simple act of sketching little trailers in places I’d love to visit felt like an escape from the concurrent feeling of going nowhere. I spent a great amount of time in deep meditation. Meditative practice brought me out of my body and helped me separate what my body was feeling from a sense of mindfulness and peacefulness. I found that if you can do nothing else, then sitting quietly and resting your mind is the best thing to try. Yet, stillness that can be a challenge in the midst of physical pain and daily illness ironically even if you are bedridden. 

I felt a little better as spring rolled around.  By the beginning of summer or 2016 with my camper boutique having just opened, the beautiful boutique dream ended as suddenly as it began. The path I was on changed once again. The book deal, the collaborative art happened so unexpectedly and with great force. My next wild adventure and cross country move was ripe for me. The moment I convinced myself that I only experienced a wintertime bout of chronic aggravation, I fell ill again. And I fell busy!  The wheels of life churned and rolled. Like new pavement being pushed and flattened onto gravel, a new path was being formed for me.  A path of heat and roughness was being prepared; one that was hard and harshly necessary.  

 American Road Trip moves to Miami

This period time boiled over with so many components it was like a soup to full to rest in its vessel. From personal tragedies of loved ones to national tragedies, the Orlando shooting in particular. Three friends were in fatal accidents. Many were having a hard time. The country was in disarray with the historic 2016 presidential election platforms coming to a tipping point.  In the midst of it all, I did a whirlwind of traveling. The wanderer in me planned many paths. I brought my son to Atlanta. I went to Chattanooga to see my cousins. I went to Decatur to see my beautiful friend’s dance. I stopped by Birmingham to help a bestie move into her new apartment. Between my travels, I met new friends in Memphis and let go of some ones that were so toxic they turned out not to be friends at all. Then the big trip, the long drive for the family reunion. This trip involved several days of traveling and picking up my cousin, John, along the way. I drove Memphis to Birmingham to Pensacola to Tampa to Ft Lauderdale. I was again in denial of how sick I was. I believed that if I wished on a star hard enough that I would pep up. If only wishes could heal. I had many obligations. I pushed myself to the end of my abilities. The wealth of my desires brought me to the edge of my fears. By the time I crawled my way back to Memphis going back the same path I had arrived, I was devastatingly ill. Brian was mad at me for doing too much. I was mad at myself for being too little. Not that it was the trips, but the culmination of my energy deficit was a major component in the viciousness. 
 
I am just not one to go into a symptom run down or a doctor update.  It seems an unnecessary redundancy to repeat that to you right now.  However, my system, my vessel, was at great compromise and someone that was not me had to get to the bottom of it.  Things were not working properly and it needed care and attention Having a multitude of issues, I needed a multitude of help which I was not getting quickly enough in Memphis. The path was leading me further and further from Memphis. The path was sending me away from the ancient grounds, forcing me to dash as a wanderer into night. 

It was a rush to get me to the hospital. In early fall 2015, I became very ill resulting in the creation of American Road Trip. At this time, I noticed unexplained weight loss. I was remarkably smaller by November 2015 when I started working on the trailer. By spring, I was even smaller, by about 20 lbs. Finally, by the time I went to my family reunion in the summer of 2016, my health was in a very rapid and confusing decline. When I returned to Memphis, I was seriously ill. I dropped an additional 10 lbs and every part of me seemed to be going haywire. I felt like I was living out the Stephen King book Thinner in real life. I felt as if I was cursed and withering away. My body was spinning completely out of control. For the first time in my life, I felt very afraid. Despite everything I had gone through with my health, the multiple issues and surgeries, this time was different and truly terrifying. My normal calm collectivism and eagerness to conquer a challenge attitude was on fire and burning in the face of my reality. Unsure of my survival, I consulted with emergency doctors in Memphis. Sadly, immediate access to the specialists that I was extremely difficult there, especially since TN rejected Obamacare meaning most of the doctors rejected me as a patient, as well. Medical professionals advised me to seek out a large hospital system where I could be hospitalized for a week or so to get my body going on the right track. I needed a Mayo clinic or the like but the intake process for such facilities takes a long time and is costly. Time was not on my side.

My body betrayed me. My hair was falling out. I was in constant pain. Each day I was a pound or few smaller. Whatever was happening to me, I could not explain. Whatever was happening to me, I could not beat. Whatever was happening to me, I was going to have to get emergency help. My body was broken, dissolving right in front of my precious little family. We made the decision to seek out a place that better access to the type health care I required. We decided on Miami, because the UM research hospital had top-notch doctors and I was going straight into the hospital. Also, my family and friends were in South Florida as it has been a constant part of my life.

As quickly as that disastrous Mississippi wreck happened in front of my eyes, I was in the hospital. I turned over my vessel to a new captain and crew: doctors, nurses, head of the hospital, medications, tests, blood, piss, and shit. I was at their mercy now. I kissed my children goodbye in Memphis. I told them I was proud of them and loved them. I told them if I didn’t make it , they would ok. Their lights are so bright and strong, I had already done my job. Of course, I was going to get help and of course – of course – of course – but I was uncertain and afraid. Like an overnight flashing storm, I moved from Memphis to Miami. All of my secrecy, the walls I built around me, the armor of hiding, the safety of hibernation was destroyed by Brian’s desperation for anyone to help save me. And it did. It saved me. The move, the path, the calls, the help, the doctors, the friends, the hospital, led the way to health. It was slow and surreal. And I was left after all of that feeling better than ever. The mystery was solved. My thyroid medication was contaminated with gluten. I was injecting gluten every day without knowing it. I nearly died from this simple oversight by the drug company, a tragic simplicity.
 
Nothing is ever very simple. There is a price we pay for freedom. As I passed through the gates, each stop requested a part of my identity. I paid dues to pass through. The family that I thought I could rely on, turned a cold shoulder toward me in my time of deepest darkness. No one visited me in the hospital. No one aided me in any way. It was as if I lived though my own pandemic type isolation long before Covid overcame the world. I sat daily in my hospital room wondering why those I cherished as close family members chose to callously gossip behind my back. I wondered if I was gong to die completely alone without a hand to hold. As I formed and molded my new identity, parts of my old identity shed like wheat shaft in harvest. Loss of family, loss of friends, loss of certainty, loss of security, my spirit was buried like a turtle egg. I was expected to find the light, to journey beyond the structures toward the open sea.  But to everyone's surprise, I was not a slow grounded turtle but instead a Phoenix, screaming towards the sky.  

Gravel under the foot is rough; it cuts and bruises. Walking a rugged pathway is necessary if its the one you are already on and turning back is not an option. The path of my forced identity, the wanderer, pushed into me, to oppress me, to degrade me. I attempted to control a body out of control, a body that conversely controlled me. I was yelled at - quite literally called a fraud, a vagabond, likened to a leper sent to Carville, inauthentic and insane. But Southerners learn early, that we must discard the shaft because the wheat provides the sustenance. So I lingered in illness with an affixed label like a scarlet letter. Illness is not all black and white, instead it is like water as it ebbs and flows. As the tides of my illness grew more shallow, my strength rose high above the waterline. I shed excess.  I left doubt by the wayside. Belief and disbelief of others around me no longer burdened me. I found freedom of my SELFHOOD. The perspective I gained reformed my identity was another renovation. I was a project of my own making.

When you build a house room by room, you make a lot of adjustments along the way.  There was more growth ahead for me and more adjustments.  I survived and Brian survived, but our paths forked. Our marriage ended. The rules of life are never what we want them to be. Life doesn’t follow your plans; it cancels at the last minute. Life puts you on hold…hold on…hold my beer…hold my hair…hold up. And there we were, filing for divorce. So here I am, on a parallel path from the father of my children. As easily as it started for Brian and I, it ended. The beach beckoned us together in 2003 and when we came back to give thanks in 2016, the water flooded what we had left, washings us free. We untangled ourselves from one another. Our lines were slashed by an invisible force. The paths that were once joined, began to run along side of each other, ferrying across for trade and friendship. I bought Brian a trailer to live in. I traded my Airstream for a big boat. I began my life on the water, like a mermaid surrounded by the sea. I felt protected in my boat as it was as if I had my own castle with a moat. I lived, but my life died.

My path formed its own way, a meandering way. Living on a boat, a vessel, gave me a more expansive view of myself. The path, the way of the reluctant gypsy forced a broader landscape - a bigger world view than what I perceived before. My path is one only a wanderer would comprehend. My days are my own, the certainty of autonomy. Yet altruism is the choice that separates us from robots and barbarians. Our days are best spent giving our time away to the world. Why be on your own when the wind and the sea can be at your side?  
 
Growing up in Louisiana, I saw evidence of the Mississippi River changing on Highland Road. It is Baton Rouge’s only hilly spot. The hills, sometimes frighteningly steep were formed by the river when it once flowed though. The old mounds on the path are reminders of how easily courses change. Memphis was once overlaid by the ocean, yet it rose up. Shark’s teeth are still buried in its soil as a reminder of what it use to be. The paths that led my Choctaw ancestors away from Mississippi was devastatingly difficult but led to the alliances of the Great Nations in Oklahoma. It doesn’t matter if a different way would have been better or brighter, easier or clearer. It doesn’t matter, because the fantasy of difference is not the way of things. Its only the harshness of our histories that push us further to our destinies. The path to become a published artist and to gain a room of my own, to explore my creativity and my spirit caught me by surprise. Looking back, I am thankful for the experience. The sales of the coloring book were not record breaking and the entire coloring book trend took a huge decline since the 2016 publishing of American Road Trip and the 2018 self published sequel, Tropical Destinations. Yet, I am glad to inspire people with pages of art that others can participate in with me. I hope that my journey of strength shines through the pages of American Road Trip and Tropical Destinations. I am thankful for the hard work and time that I spent with Brian, our literary agent, Vice President of Morheim Literary Agency, Kate McKean and our publisher, Little Brown and Co. making the book accessible to others who need a journey at their fingertips.  I am thankful for the opportunity to grow, to learn everything that the world has to offer, to take that offering and mold it and present it to you. This has been my path for art and my path for writing. This is my current path. I am not sure what is around the river’s bend but I know that the flow of my life will lead me and all will be well.

I am thankfully doing better now. It was a very long road as the weeks turned into months. Celiac disease is serious and chronic. Eating a gluten free diet does not magically cure one the way we would like to think. I fall ill from it weekly. My body requires upkeep celiac is always a part my identity and my life. Nonetheless, life is about living. No matter the of state my body if I am here with you all, then I am in it all the way. I am so humbled and grateful to the people who helped me when I was in my celiac health crisis. Those sweet souls that came to my rescue when I needed it, who helped me, who sent me messages and phone calls. All of those who sent me many generous gifts, videos healing vibes and dances circles, those who transported me and my kids and our stuff over multiple trips…to all of you…thank you. It is true that when things are bad and you feel afraid, you can look for the helpers. They will always be there. I am eternally appreciative for the helpers. Almost dying of celiac turned into one of the most special times of my life. I will never forget that support and feeling of oneness with my extended spiritual brothers and sisters. Life is journey, never static and not meant to be. Moving, growing, learning, listening, creating…these moments lead to healing, thankfulness, gratitude.