2020 In Hindsight : Part One

 I attempted to start telling parts of this story back in December of 2020. After I posted it, I had several people reach out and let me know they were worried about me. This made me feel I had done a very poor job of conveying the events. I have taken several months and two trips across the country to discern the narrative I want to share. I have worked and then waited for just the right time to finish this work, when my heart and head were in alignment with the message to be shared. The most important thing about this particular portion of my life is that this series of events helped me see just how connected everything in this world truly is and the balance that is the Universe.

 

I am going to be as honest as possible here, no information will be held back for the sake of ego or appearances. I am also going to share my battle with Long-haul Covid19 and Reactivated Epstein Barr Virus. I am not making any medical claims, but sharing my personal experience for entertainment and educational purposes only. This is lengthy, but I want to give you the full-circle story.

 

The story begins back in July of 2019. This was before the virus was in the US and before there was any kind of global pandemic. I was very much having my own microcosm meltdown pre-Rona. I had been working on the business alone for several years after trying (and failing) a few times to hire help in the rural area of Indiana where I lived. I started my business on Etsy, but it has been a fight from day one to keep my items from getting taken down for illicit material, just to send them my full ingredients and clear up that it is hemp seed oil. Etsy also wanted to distance themselves from CBD early on and targeted my hemp items via the algorithm.

 

The business (Bear’s Beauty Skincare) was born in Atlanta in 2013 but I moved back to Indiana with my family after a home invasion in Georgia. The home invasion itself was a case of confused identity. They believed I was Walter White making something illicit when they saw me through my window making deodorant. It got me out of Georgia and into Indiana back in 2015. I have learned that the universe gives you signs, gentle nudges, and then does the whole bird out of the nest shoving bit.

 

I was forever frustrated with the lack of internet in Indiana and the rural location (15 minutes to a grocery store and 30 to anything else.) I was pretty unhappy. I was struggling to get my shop in order after the move. I was always running behind. I had 280 or so items that I was hand-making, decanting into containers, printing labels for, shipping, and washing all the dishes for the next day. This translated to me working seven days a week about 365 days a year and having no social life. It was by choice but became taxing emotionally and physically. I was struggling with anxiety from the home invasion and isolated myself in Indiana in my little studio. I remember my best friend came to visit and I was driving, they were like “You have anxiety since when?” It was not something that I had always struggled with.  I threw myself into Bear’s Beauty, but it slowly stopped being creative and started becoming a “job.” It started to become something I had to do and not something that brought me the immense joy that it once had. It wasn’t the home invasion, so much as I became disillusioned.

 

I always wanted the business to take off and become sustainable for the family. I wanted my brothers, Mother, and friends to all never have to worry about money because the business was so successful it provided jobs for all of us. I dreamed of a giant farm where everyone could be a part of some part of the process they enjoyed. I wanted people to have their own little plots of land, but to have a commune of sorts, but a capitalist one where we worked towards profits. I was years in and struggling to pay my rent. I know now, I was working hard and not smart. I also understand that it is not my place to choose what my other family members or friends do with their lives. My job is to build it, invite them, and not worry about who comes to the table.

 

One day in July of 2019 I was in a particularly grumpy mood when my dogs were having a whiney day. Gunther is older and has a form of lymphoma. I started getting into alternative therapy, as far as herbalism, a lot more when he got sick. I had been sick for years when a naturopath in Georgia finally found my chronic Mono (Reactivated Epstein Barr Virus) in college. It was life changing for me. She didn’t treat me like I was making it up or numb the symptoms, but helped me find the cause. This was my introduction to how incredibly effective alternative medicine and herbs as well as diet could be. I watched my Grandpa have chemo and had a very clear picture of what that looked like. I found a lot of Gunther’s treatment via DuckDuckGo (search engine like Google, but more polite and less censorship.) I have links if you are interested (Cancer Smart Bomb), but he was on a daily herbal protocol to slow cancer and it was working. He has been on the protocol since December 2018. In all honesty, it’s June 2021 as I am finishing this, if it wasn’t for that dog I probably wouldn’t be here today. It was one of his herbs that helped me breathe when I had the virus in 2020. At the time, I was just grateful he was stable.

 

The dogs lived in a separate house (a tiny house that was unfinished on the property.) It allowed me to cuddle them and keep them cool/warm without having fur in the production studio. This particular day I was in a grumpy mood. It could have been too many things on my to-do list, a negative review, I was still vaping Nicotine, and in general I was putting myself under a lot of unnecessary stress and pressure. I was having almost daily chest pains. I was feeding my dogs. I was moving too fast because I was in a bad mood. Think of the prince in Beauty and the Beast; I was just very unaware of my privilege and spent a lot of time being irritated by little things.

 

I bent down quickly to grab a bowl and as I did smashed my right temple into the corner of the old wooden dresser. This seemed like just another silly move on my part. I cursed and went inside to lie down. It hurt and I was having trouble with my vision.. I had a headache and felt like I was going to throw up. My Mom is a nurse and we live on the same property as I care-take for my adult brother with epilepsy while she works. This really just entails checking in on him as he becomes more self-sufficient each day. I took a nap. It was a week or so later before I realized I had given myself a concussion.

 

I know what concussions look like from the outside. I have seen my brother’s brain re-boot like an old-school computer after he has a seizure or hits his head. I have seen him try to speak and struggle to use his legs more times than I can count post-seizure. Some symptoms of a concussion or long-term side effects can include; increased anxiety, memory, and cognitive issues, confusion, insomnia, headaches, paranoia, and a host of other lovely things. As I started informing myself, I started to understand why I had been struggling with certain things. I had some brain damage that went untreated and there was still some inflammation and nerve damage in that area.

 

I am a hypochondriac; call it the side effect of a mother who is a nurse and my analytical brain. I lost my Grandfather to unexplained cancer in 2007. He was a literal pillar of health, never smoking or drinking to excess and exercising into his last months. He did, however, work as a groundskeeper where he weeded and fertilized the course as well as doing the same almost religiously at his two homes. His Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and the following battle was the catalyst that eventually started Bear’s Beauty. It was also the start of me being afraid of every ache and pain, queen of the wiki diagnosis.

 

When I hit my head in July, I was not positive I had a concussion, but I was very aware that it was possible. By a few days after hitting my head, I was struggling with horrible headaches, fatigue, and anxiety with mood swings. I couldn’t focus on my work and was struggling to get orders filled at my usual speed. Before hitting my head I woke up at seven am and hit the ground running until around 9-10 pm. I took small breaks, but for the most part, worked through the day. The few days after hitting my head, I was just not able to focus for any length of time. I finally brought it up to my Mom a few days before my birthday. I sounded so stressed and my speech was so forced, I think she and I both thought I just needed a break.

 

It was a little over a week since I hit my head and Mom took me shopping for my birthday. We went to my favorite crystal shop. During the visit, someone at the shop commented on a stone. It was benign, a proprietor explaining the quality of their product, but I was instantly thrown into a panic attack. Yup, a thirty-three-year-old woman and I started crying in a shop with my Mom because the woman said “That is real Shungite.” For whatever reason the head injury was the final straw for my stress and anxiety, I felt like I was losing my mind. I was always able to hold it together. I had the occasional emotional moment, but overall I was not usually so moody. I had been talking about taking a week off for at least a year; this was to be the start of the death of my old life and preparing me to survive in 2020. At the time, it just felt like my life was falling apart. I felt betrayed by my body. I thought maybe I could spend the days in North Dakota updating my shop, that I could post better pictures or somehow entice more buyers, that it must be my “fault” there was a glass ceiling.

 

My best friend had a place in North Dakota and I took a train from Indiana to North Dakota to visit him for my birthday. This alone was a very strange move for me. Looking back, I know now that I had a concussion this whole time and that’s why things were so weird on the train. But, at the time, I could not understand why I felt so strange. I was stoked to take some time off and head more towards the west.

 

As a child, my Mom took a job on the Navajo reservation for 2-3 years. I spent my 5-7th grade years in the southwest living in a place most people never see. Tsaile, Arizona is at the heart of the Navajo Reservation. I was the minority and got some very unique perspectives on racial tension and acceptance. When we moved back to Indiana and my private Catholic school, I was most definitely the weird kid. The time on the reservation during my formative years made me look at things differently. That is a story for another day as well, but its plot exposition and had to go somewhere ;)

 

I spent most of the trip to North Dakota sleeping, watching Stranger Things, and attempting to learn chess. Funny enough my inability to learn chess, focus on work I brought, and inability to remember plot points and character names were my clues something was amiss with my brain. I am slightly on the Autism spectrum, I am just hyper-aware of certain things, and while I didn’t know what was up, I knew I felt strange. I explain this because head injuries are serious and you should always have them checked right after they happen, especially if you lose consciousness, get nauseated, or feel at all off. I am very lucky that there was not a bleed or some kind of serious damage that went untreated. Do not do what I did. If you hit your head, go get checked out.

 

I was so nervous about including this information, but it is a huge part of my life and I am not hiding it for the sake of sounding weird. During my trip to North Dakota I was introduced to practical alchemy. All my life I had a natural propensity for seeking, chemistry, and philosophy. There have been multiple occasions when I have intuitively done or had just the right medicine for a situation without actual knowledge of the subject. Something about Kymia Arts and the way the subject was presented just spoke to me. I knew there was something real there. It was about taking things (plants, animals, and minerals) and splitting them into their elements, purifying them, and recombining them into medicine that is elevated. I had been looking for this for as long as I knew about herbs. It always seemed wrong to just discard the plant material after making a tincture or infusion. In alchemy, you burn the plant to ash and add the mineral-rich ash back to the final solution, making a sort of “fuller spectrum tincture.” This same process can be done using different methods to all things, mineral, metal, animal, and people. I say people in more of a spiritual way, but there is both a physical and spiritual element to all healing (in my opinion) and in alchemy. I started researching alchemy all during the time I was recovering and into 2020.

 

I thought I knew about head injuries, but it’s different when you are the brain getting jogged. I didn’t have insurance, so I found a clinic with sliding scale fees and finally went in to get evaluated in September. I want to mention, these guys were so kind. I believe it is the Saint Thomas Moore clinic in Mooresville, Indiana. I felt very worried about going somewhere with no insurance, and they were great. They made me feel comfortable and like I was just another patient. They scheduled me for a ton of tests and scans to make sure broken bones healed ok and things like that. There was zero judgment and it was humbling. It also made me want to create an environment like that wherever I am. I was just able to talk openly and get all my needs met without any guilt or shame.

 

There was, of course, the time between the scheduling of the tests and the actual taking of and then results. I kind of muddled through the end of July, August, September, and it was October by the time I was getting some results from the doc.

 

I had always been able to depend on my intellect, so much so that the reduced capacity and foggy brain I was experiencing post-concussion were particularly humbling. I had also always felt a little weird about still living with my Mom, albeit in a separate living space and as a means to an end, but still. There is this idea in America that independence is strength, that being alone is the epitome of self-sufficient. The thing is, if I was alone, I cannot say I would have gotten help. I was just not self-aware enough to recognize that I needed more time to heal.

 

It’s October 2019 and I am waiting to hear from my doctor about the tests. This particular night was Halloween or the night before, I cannot remember the specifics, but it was a Halloween event at this place called Conner Prairie in Indiana. It is a reenactment village where you learn about settlers, making butter, pioneer living, and things of that nature. They do all kinds of little fairs and festivals. They also have a haunted hayride with the headless horseman (they literally play the Disney movie in the dark as part of the event), which is what I was there for. It is still weirdly terrifying, even in my thirties, knowing the guy has his head tucked in a jacket and is not a headless ghoul from beyond the grave. Or is he? I stick with might be demonic, just to keep my guard up.

 

It was Mom, my two brothers, and I. I had to be all but dragged out, as I tend to be a homebody, but was trying to branch out. While in line for something, I had a slight disagreement with my middle sibling. They called me out on something I did that made my youngest brother feel belittled. I did not like being called out, especially in line where there were strangers so close. This was pre-virus, so people were only 2-3 feet away and could hear the conversation. I felt trapped and called out, so I stomped off. I proceeded to spend the next two or so hours walking around alone, avoiding my family, like a brat. I was half upset I had made my brother feel that way and half upset it had been done to me. That left very little room for logic.

 

At the very end of the night, we had our scheduled haunted hayride slot. I finally met back up with the other three in line. Because I had been worried I would miss them (my phone was dead) I had been waiting to use the restroom. When we hopped in line, I saw a cut-through that looked like it led to the bathrooms. I went barreling down the path and found myself seeing stars on the ground with my foot in a roped-off hole. It is also at this time a small child in line yelled, “Hey lady, why did you go that way??!!!” At the top of his lungs, so everyone in line looked at me. From my vantage point on the ground, I could see it was a roped-off hole, not a path. I rushed to the bathroom nursing my ego and my ankle. The rest of my night was humbling. I had to perch between my brothers and be held up, wait in line for thirty minutes in said arrangement while creepy characters as part of the attraction skulked around in costume, and then throughout the hayride, I had to guard my ankle against scared children and my urge to jump like a child. As I waited in the parking lot, sitting on a little patch of wet grass wetting my bottom, with my youngest brother, I realized how incredibly lucky I was to be with them when this happened. Instead of being at the park or alone on the property where no one could hear me, I was literally with the people who love me most.

 

This was to be the start of a severe pumping of the breaks. I believe my products were down to 200 or so at this point and I bumped it down, altering some scent and size offerings until I could better keep up. The next day, after twisting my ankle, I made my way into the clinic to get all my test results. I ended up having a boot from a previous sprain and already had it on when I got to the clinic. I didn’t get it looked at and she assumed I had because of how it was immobilized. The doctor did tell me to come back when the swelling went down. All my tests were good! I had damage from at least two skull injuries, but neither cracked the bone. I had a ton of other tests and they were all clear. I had a new lease on life. When you have a chronic illness it gets tough to tell if this is just how your body is or if something is wrong or normal. All of this testing would turn out to be a blessing later on when I no longer lived where I had access to the clinic.

 

December is the busiest month of the year with Christmas and Halloween is the start of the upswing in sales. By November, I had it down to 180 items. Some of these things had several scents and sizes, so it was still 200+ (technically.) I spent November and December between crutches and the boot, scooting around in rolling chairs, and uing the scooters at grocery stores and Hobby Lobby especially was fun. Just like cruising through QVC in person. I entered 2020 feeling excited about finally being at a point I could get a place of my own. I was dabbling in alchemy studies, but kept finding a lot of the books creepy. One of which I actually left on the front porch rather than bring into my space. I was also doing some little experiments. I understand now that to assume to practice something you have never studied is very dangerous. Things like breaking down minerals with acids and metals should be studied for years before trying the experiment yourself.

 

There were rumors of the virus, but it was early, and other than stopping vaping, I wasn’t concerned. I had been humbled by my injuries and I realized how blessed I was in many ways. I was grateful for my family and especially my Mom. She had been so supportive for so long of the business. The business too, despite the inconsistent nature of the last few years, had flourished and grown, affording me a spot in Vogue and manufacturing for an amazing client from California, who became a dear friend.

 

I had an entire blog up about March 2020. I chose to take it down because I found I no longer resonated with the post. January into March went smoothly, with sales steadily increasing from my usual 100-150 orders per month to around 500!

 

My brother Patrick from Atlanta died on Saint Patrick’s Day 2020 in a motorcycle accident. He left behind his two sons, my god babies who are both under ten years of age. He is my brother from another mother, not blood, but beyond that, he is my brother. I knew the virus was becoming an issue in the US and am into zombie movies enough to know that a virus can spread quickly. I also knew that with my suppressed immune system, I was in the at-risk category. I was an emotional wreck. Pat was a light, just a good person with a kind heart. His girl called me and asked me to come to be with her and the babies. I was going to hop in the car that night but I was in no state to drive from Indiana to Atlanta. My Mom and brother offered to come with and she drove.

 

I had been using an herb common in Chinese medicine, rediscovered in the 1970s in an old manuscript to treat my dog’s cancer. In 2015 the Nobel Prize was awarded for Artemisinin, the herb I was using, for its impact on global disease (Malaria specifically). I only just found this link while researching for this post. I was aware Artemisinin and Ivermectin had similar properties, I was not aware that they were both awarded around the same time. Worth a read. 

 

“This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for the discovery of artemisinin and ivermectin, was divided between Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria" and William C. Campbell together with Satoshi Ōmura "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against roundworm infections" – IDPJournal

 

Before leaving for the funeral, we planned to isolate the whole trip and when we returned. Just in case, I brought a whole laundry basket of my supplements. I had so much success using herbal therapy for myself and my pup, that it just seemed smart to start researching the incoming virus. It turned out there was some research that showed Artemisinin (the herb I was using for my pup’s cancer protocol and also used to treat Malaria since 2015) could be useful against the virus.

 

Patrick’s Mom and Grandma were both showing some weird cold symptoms and so I made up a protocol for all three of us. Thankfully, there is a TON of info on toxicity and dosage for Artemisinin. Artemisinin comes from Artemisia Annua (known as Sweet Annie in the Midwest.) It is the only plant that makes the compound. With all this info in hand, I took the immune protocol and isolated as much as possible during the trip. We made it back to Indiana right before they started locking things down and stuff started to get a little crazy in April.

 

Once we got back to Indiana, we all isolated for two weeks. I spent the first week resting and catching up on some stuff around the house. Towards the start of the third week, we ran out of dog food and a few other things and had to make a run into town to get some supplies. A few days after this trip, Mom and I both started to have a runny nose, itchy eyes, and soon after I lost my sense of taste and smell, and we were both pretty sure we had the virus. This was very early on and testing was spotty. She was required to get a test for work and even though it showed negative, her temperature and other symptoms persuaded her employer to require her to stay home another two weeks.

 

These were the most terrifying few weeks of my life. Having just lost Patrick, I was keenly aware of the fragility of life and the scariness of a virus that was killing people all over the world without any kind of treatment or cure. Dr. Cameron Kyle Sidel in New York was one of the first doctors I saw who mentioned that it was an issue with the blood carrying oxygen, not the lungs. He explained that while working in his unit he noticed that the patients were being given oxygen but the body was not taking it in. As my symptoms progressed I started coming up with a more refined herbal protocol; balancing the effects and side effects of each herb in a more effective way. I am not a medical professional and this is just what worked for me. Mom and I both had pretty mild symptoms initially and for the first two weeks. We were taking the protocol and resting, just drinking lots of spring water with Immortal Minerals from Kymia Arts and eating good Organic food. We spent the time talking about how we wanted to be living and my mom brought up wanting to look at possibly moving back out to the Navajo reservation, in Arizona.

 

She applied for the job, knowing it would take months to hear back from them, as that was her experience in the past. Around this same time, Mom started to show improvement and was heading back to work. I was slowly improving, but my suppressed immune system and the weird nature of this virus made it slow. It was hard to know how to come at it. For example, there was debate about Elderberry and if it was good or would cause a “cytokine storm.” I just avoided it. I eventually honed a protocol and had minimal shortness of breath. The fatigue was pretty brutal and my Mom ended up helping me fill orders before she went back to work and while she was feeling better. She decided to stop taking the protocol a little less than two weeks into being sick.

 

The next morning I went over to her side of the house to check on her. I found her sitting in a chair, very confused and disoriented, blue-lipped and breathing quickly with blue nail beds. When I tell you I was freaking out, this woman never gets sick and had no prior symptoms other than fatigue and a temperature. There was some part of me that thought we were being dramatic with all the medicine and isolation. Nope.

 

I used a combination of canned climber’s oxygen, DMSO (Sulfur of Pine from Kymia Arts), and Artemisinin as quickly as possible. DMSO can pass through the blood brain barrier and helps deliver medicine through the skin. There is a great book / PDF online “Healing with DMSO.” The hospital was not an option because of the distance. They say necessity breeds invention. Within minutes her color started to improve. She was back on the protocol and continued to take it for several months. This was when she and I both had the validation of experiencing that the protocol was keeping the virus at bay. This is when she started sharing it with her friends and our family. I continued taking it and she returned to work. All was going well; even the shop was doing almost five times the usual sales. I was finally feeling better and getting back to work. Then, the next not so epic situation came to pass.

 

The farmers across the street sprayed weed killer all over their fields. I already knew I had asthmas and allergies directly related to glyphosate, what I did not know then but know now, is that sensitivity made me pre-disposed to have more issues post-virus. I don’t quite know how to explain the next two weeks, but I got sick. I went from improving to very quickly declining. I started having almost constant shortness of breath, chest pain, low oxygen, confusion, and nausea. I couldn’t taste or smell and only wanted to eat pickles. I went to urgent care three times and was kept for the day at one point because my heartbeat was irregular. It was like I was being poisoned. I watch a lot of true crime and genuinely, that is what I kept thinking. The protocol would keep some symptoms at bay, but something was wrong. My system couldn’t keep up. Mom was at a loss of what to do. I had racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills and was not able to make my skincare. She helped with what she could but then the hospital canceled my heart appointment. I was looking at the paperwork from that last visit last night. I have a lot of trouble acknowledging that I am sick, even then, it didn’t click that my heart was in trouble. It literally says “Urgent Irregular Heartbeat.” This was May 7^th.  My doctor had scheduled me with a specialist, but they closed because of the virus.

 

I was having weird episodes on a daily basis where I was getting into the shower fully dressed to breathe in the steam and then out into a frigid house where I had the AC cranked because I could only breathe cold air that was dry. I have no idea how to explain it other than a heart episode. It happened more times than I can remember. I never lost consciousness, but I was out of it. I know now this is a symptom of low oxygen.  

 

Then the universe and my family saved me again. I was bedridden. It is so surreal now, but I just couldn’t function. People died from Rona. People with pre-existing conditions, heart and lung damage, and reduced immune systems were heavy on that list. My body couldn’t handle the added stressor and it was at a point where I was also having shingles outbreaks from the viral load, and unable to keep food down. One day Mom came home from work to check on me and found me in bed, nothing in my house had moved. She told me that she got a job offer on the reservation but that we would need to move within the week. I had no desire to move. The thing is, I also was not in possession of my full mental faculties. I finally conceded defeat. I would go with her to the reservation and continue helping care-take for my youngest brother. I couldn’t support myself with skincare in this condition. I know now that Indiana was part of the problem for me. Moving was the only way to let my system recover.

 

My Mom and brothers packed everything I own and my two dogs in a truck and we drove across the US. I am already a carsick individual and the truck was doing a weird wobbly thing the whole drive. I was so miserable. I asked to be left multiple places along the way. By the time we got to Arizona I was exhausted and slightly sick but happy to be away from all the chemicals in Indy. I did already feel a little better but wasn’t sure the move was going to be the best for me in the long run.

 

This was the very start of the virus. The position my Mom took on the Navajo Reservation was meant to be temporary. We just passed the one year anniversary in May. This virus and the impact it had on the world has been far-reaching and changed all our lives. The Navajo Reservation in particular has been hit hard, losing a larger percentage of their population than the average loss of life. This also made it very clear to me how lucky I was to have access to the herbal therapy and to be able to move away so quickly. I was blessed to be alive. It’s been a little messy, there have been all kinds of conflicts trying to squeeze my whole business and life into the same space as other people, but we are doing it.

 

You may remember me mentioning that I had my largest sales month in the history of my business right before leaving Indiana. The move took only days, but getting unpacked and set up for manufacturing took almost three weeks. The first two weeks or so I unpacked slowly while also letting myself rest and quarantining. Learning to give myself time to rest has been an over-reaching theme out here. Where we moved is much higher elevation than Indiana, so there is already less oxygen in the air and with the virus my lungs lost capacity. The whole place just forces you to slow down. I had no idea it would take longer to get supplies on the reservation and no idea how difficult it would be to balance sharing the space with my family, and I for sure didn’t know there would be no internet. I moved from a pretty large two-bedroom studio with a bathroom of my own and a dedicated manufacturing space as well as a tiny house for my pups. The house we all moved into was almost the same size but now also was shared with Mom and my brother as well as all the stuff people need to live, dogs and cats in the garage, and a chinchilla in a hall closet.

 

They were so understaffed and had so many cases at the hospital that they needed Mom to start working the day she arrived before she even had a house. It was a reality check for me. Even as ill as I felt, I was on the upswing, just getting into drier air had helped my breathing. I had a feeling this virus was going to hit people a lot harder than expected, especially after my very personal experience. It had been kicking my butt for almost a month. I had no idea about the long haul or that I would continue to battle the virus for several months. In the same way my body held onto Mono, it encapsulated and continues to shed virus cells. I’m not contagious, but it’s like having Lupus or something along those lines. One can live with it and manage their symptoms with treatment, except there wasn’t much for this very new virus. I was adjusting my herbal protocol accordingly.  As I started to get into the swing of filling orders, I started to have issues with my store on Etsy.

 

I was using my phone to tether the internet to my computer to answer messages. I still am, a year later. June 2020 and I had 500 (five times my usual) orders. I was working through them, making products as I was able and as I got supplies. The house we were moved into was built in the ’70s and has been chilling the dessert for the last fifty years, so it had some…quirks. Like, when you flushed the toilet, it would sometimes come out of the bathtub and sink. Ewww. This went on for weeks and I got to know the very nice maintenance men who had to help with my plumbing. This was hilariously humbling as I have bathroom anxiety and can’t go in public. Well, the Universe said that was silly. It turns out, everybody poops and no one was judging me for the house not cooperating.

 

We had no washing machine or dryer and they were sold out in the two closest towns (within three hours drive.) I was washing my laundry in a bathtub, hanging them out to dry in the dusty hot heat, and I was in no way upset about it. I know that from the outside looking in, it just looks like I had a virus for a little over a month and moved cross country. The thing is, I see now, especially as I have become more aware; how many things had to align for me to not die.

Most people who had pre-existing conditions or who were sick early on had nothing. The doctor gave me freaking steroids when I was sick with the virus. The steroids made me think I was dying and gave me terrible anxiety. That was it. There was no approved therapy or anti-viral. I had Artemisinin and started to feel guilty, survivor’s guilt. People were dying around the world. It was only because of my privilege and access to alternative therapy and the internet that kept me from having a very different outcome. I shared the information with everyone, even people I don’t talk to anymore. I didn’t want anyone to go through what I had without at least the herbs.

 

I started to feel like I needed to find a way to tell more people about the series of events, hence this blog. I wanted to tell the whole story so that someone going through the darkest part of their story would see that there was hope…there is more going on here than we know. I literally stumbled, guided by love, onto several things that changed my life for the better. I didn’t know then what would come out of this, but I knew that I had been given a new lease on life. We finally managed to get a washing machine; it was like two or three months in. We hooked it up while celebrating. We run the first load of wash. Maaaan if that washing machine didn’t back up and flood the kitchen with water that was god only knows how old from the pipes. It smelled so bad. A week or so later and after several visits from maintenance, we ran the first load of laundry that we didn’t have to swim with. Those were the softest, fluffiest, sweetest smelling towels I have ever used in my life. I have never been so grateful for a washing machine and dryer in my life. I had never had to consider what it would be like. I decided I wanted to approach everything that way, just find the silver lining and let it go. The maintenance guy actually got approval to get a special in-line fiber-optic camera to look into the pipes as a direct result of our situation.

 

It took me longer than usual to ship my orders. What had initially been a huge boost to my business almost killed it. I wasn’t able to fill the orders quickly or answer messages so the shop was suspended by Etsy while I caught up. This completely removed my only source of income. I was in such an awkward space. I had spent the money on supplies to fill the orders and had a no refund policy for my shop, but with the shop closed I had no way to replenish supplies or cover costs. With minimal internet, I wasn’t able to answer messages, so customers got upset. There was a torrent of negative reviews…I was devastated. I felt like everything I had worked for was dying. The shop was closed for almost a month, costing me thousands in sales and causing many of my long-time customers to leave or send angry messages. It was heartbreaking for me. I felt like I was letting everyone down and that my body was not cooperating. I was working as much as I could but having a lot of trouble with fatigue. I now know about long haul, I had no clue then. I now take Artemisinin as part of a protocol and it keeps the symptoms at a minimum. It was like July / August of 2020 by now.

 

I was starting to get the hang of working from the desert and decided to make it a point to be better about taking time off. I was having a ton of supply delays. I caught up on all my work and planned to visit Atlanta. I decided to fly and was as careful as possible. The trip did not go as planned. I planned to drive from Arizona to Denver to get on the plane. I planned the route along a National Forest, thinking this would be flat and easy to drive. It was in fact a mountain drive and it was very dark. I was terrified and honestly traumatized by the time I made it to the top and then sped back down the other side of Wolf Pass. My brother Patrick who passed away used to drive a bike, weirdly just as I was about to pull over on a steep road, a bike pulled in front of me and I was able to follow it to safety. I arrived with just enough time to park my car, but got lost and had to park in a really expensive lot. I did get to see the godbabies but had a ton of issues with travel and the hotel and getting another rstrain of the virus. I had to switch hotels three times, there was a roach on my pillow, and I had no car, so I was constantly in an Uber. I had trouble with my immune system when I arrived home; pretty sure all the exposure to people at the airport was less than ideal. They are saying now you can get re-infected in as little as a month after recovery, especially with alternate strains. I am almost positive this is what happened, but I could also have been having a flare up. A long haul flare up for me involves chest pains, pain in my ribs and lymphatic system, increased allergy symptoms, shortness of breath, and anemia. All of this comes with fatigue and it’s the kind of thing you just have to ride out. I am hopeful one day I can eradicate it from my system.

 

I spent the rest of September and October 2020 just working and trying to find ways to get the business back up to capacity. I felt like I was constantly fighting with delays, weather, and issues unique to the reservation. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t manage to get things moving faster. Etsy had also deactivated all of my listings that had anything to do with inflammation, hyper-pigmentation, age spots, my cayenne salve, my helichrysum salve, my Vitamin C serums and anything the algorithm found nefarious. These were usually my best sellers. Every few weeks I was having little bouts of being sick and I would need extra rest. Finally, in December I was starting to see some upswing in sales and was hopeful things would be back to normal soon. The virus was ravaging the reservation and my Mom’s “temporary” position had ended up getting extended several times and then she was hired full time in September. This was the start of the next steps, now we knew that we needed to sell the house in Indiana and start looking for a place out in the Southwest. The four-Corner area is where four states meet, and looking at homes in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah at the same time is pretty typical. We drive two and a half hours and through I believe three states to get groceries, so it’s just a little different out here.

 

In December my Mom’s brother, Uncle Dave passed away suddenly of natural causes back in Indiana. She was already be headed up there to do some work on the house there so that we can put it on the market. Losing Uncle Dave was a huge blow. Uncle Dave had lived with us off and on since I was a baby. He was the family member, other than my Mom and brothers that I was closest with. We had minimal contact since the move to the reservation, but there were always plans to spend more time in the future. Days after finding out, Mom and my brother headed to Indiana and I stayed here in Arizona to watch the animals. There was not going to be a funeral right away due to several circumstances. I fell into a bout of depression and mourning. It seemed so strange to be alone, even more so that my family was going to have to deal with the loss without me. I knew I was doing the smart thing, as I couldn’t really be as helpful at packing as my seven foot tall brother, and that I needed to be here to take care of the animals.  

 

I knew in my mind that it was best I was at the house, but I was so sad about Uncle Dave. He was my buddy. We used to hang out in Georgia and he was there through so much of my life. The idea that I wouldn’t be able to go mourn with the family or attend the funeral later in the year was painful. In a strange way, it was kind of how Uncle Dave would have liked it. He and I both had social anxiety and he was forever coming to hang out with me at family events or parties, rather than be in the “crowd.” He always had a special relationship with my pups and even they seemed to know something was up. I didn’t get much done while Mom and my brother were gone. I was really struggling. This loss just felt heavy and changed the whole family dynamic, leaving my Gran worried about who would take care of her now. Uncle Dave was supposed to go stay with her if she needed. My Grandma is over eighty and lives in Florida and in December between the virus, Christmas upcoming, and the virus we just couldn’t have a funeral and get her there safely. Weirdly, it was the second person I lost in a year that I was not able to have a funeral for. It made it difficult to mourn and move on in a healthy way.

 

I was really struggling to get back to work. It had been days since Mom and Jake left for Indiana and I hadn’t done any work. I had seen some puppies on my trip to the post office. When I loved on the reservation as a child orphan dogs were a problem. There were puppies everywhere. This was not the case now. Gunther (my pup with lymphoma) had been stable for the last few years, but the move was hard on him. Living in a place where he is not able to move around as much and the stress of the loud noises has been hard on him. I adjust the protocol as I can, but there may come a time that we lose him. At the time, I was almost afraid that he was going to die too. It sounds a little crazy now, but I think I was just really struggling with all the change. My business was up in the air, I had to sell my car in Indiana, my tiny house, and I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up. My little two floofs were the only thing I had that was stable-ish. I decided I would just ask about a puppy when I dropped off the mail. It wasn’t that I wanted a puppy, exactly. Gunther is a year or two older than Hildi and they are inseparable. My plan was to get a puppy so that it would be the three of them and if something happened where Gunny had to go to the hospital or something she wouldn’t be alone. When I got to the gas station, I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew about the puppies outside and if they were for adoption. She told me that the lady didn’t want them and couldn’t keep them. I suppose you all see where this is going, there were three puppies. Weirdly, two of them looked like dogs me and Jake had that had passed away and the third had one brown eye and one blue eye. They were tiny, dirty, a little skinny, and I was instantly in love. In my head, I pictured giving Mom and Jake each a puppy, but instead I was unknowingly building my pack.

 

I don’t have kids and my dogs are as close as I have, for now. They eat basically Organic and Gluten-Free, live inside, and Gunther takes more vitamins than I do. These three little puppies were about to be a handful. Cut to the next several months of waking up throughout the night, poop all over the bathroom floor, lots and lots of training pads, me questioning my sanity multiple times, and someone trying to steal them out of the front yard so they had to be inside. They took all of my time. It ended up making more sense for the three of them to stay together, so rather than each puppy going to one of us; Bear, Freya, and Chloe were now three of my five dogs.

 

It’s funny; it was never my intention to have any dogs, especially not large ones. I always loved little Yorkies, but I fell in love with Gunther when I first saw him. In a way, animals helped me understand myself and my relationships with people better. Even raising the puppies, I was very aware of how stressful it would be to be a parent; the pressure to keep them safe, happy, and fed would be a full time job. Thankfully, these guys grow up way faster and are less expensive and far more forgiving than a child. I have always wanted to have children, but felt like I missed out not having babies when I was younger. The thing is, some of the lessons I am learning now, I wouldn’t have learned if I had children, or I would have learned along with them. I would much rather have or adopt a baby later in life and feel more stable and emotionally stable as a person, than to rush it. I know that my dogs aren’t children, but I try to look for the lesson in things. They are just dogs and it’s stressful, it helped me understand my own parents and even grandparents in a different light.

 

The puppies pulled my out of my depression, they forced me to find ways to start making more money and figuring out a way forward. I was really struggling with seeing that I needed to move, but it was easy to see that they did. During the pandemic, there were puppy shortages all over the world. I know this now having done some research since my own incidents. Twice people pulled up to our fence, into our yard and were calling the puppies over to them, when I came out they sped away. So…instead of being able to leave my three new pups outside to play, as was the plan, we now had three inside puppies who needed to be let out every few hours. I am a firm believer that life tries to teach us lessons with all situations, and not negative lessons. Sometimes it’s something really beautiful, like seeing how much growth you have had as a person and how differently you are handling a situation. For me, having the puppies in this small house and having to learn to not be so stressed out by every noise and mess has been life changing for me. I used to have trouble focusing here because of the noise outside, just regular neighborhood noises that I wasn’t used to. I was constantly on alert, every time our dogs barked, going to check. It was exhausting and stressful. As many of you who are parents know, you get to a point on month two of no sleep where things just start to matter less. You are more concerned with getting things done without anyone licking a light socket than you are if the shelf got dusted or if the dog is barking at the UPS guy. Learning to manage my anxiety, to start finding ways to grow the business from here, and learning to find joy again has been an interesting process, catalyzed by three rez dogs, one who is half coyote. I had to get to know myself, to really ask why I was doing the things that I was and what I wanted to do with my life. Having long haul Covid and learning to go with the flow of what my body needed, not feeling guilty or shaming myself for needing rest, was a whole new world.

 

I finally felt ready to venture out into the world again. I wanted to take back the reins and not be so scared. I caught my orders up and in March of 2021 packed up my car to drive from Arizona to Georgia for the anniversary of Pat’s passing and to see my friends and family. I had been managing my viral load with the protocol and had a negative test, so I was confident that I was safe as long as I minimized my contact. I was driving because I never had before. I had driven from Florida to Indiana, but never cross-country like this. I was planning on sleeping in the back of the HHR and a hotel only if I really needed it. I had plans to stay at my best friend’s and then my sister’s house. I didn’t have a set plan, but I was following my intuition. I knew I needed to take that trip, so off I went. The drive there was more eventful than planned; I managed to get stuck in Texas during a huge snow storm. It was so bad there was no gas almost the entire next day. When I finally got back on the road, there were cars off each side and multiple semis. I had pulled off to get gas just in time, if they had gas, or if I had stayed on the road, I would have been off the side. I started to see that if I just went with my gut instinct and didn’t dissect it or over think it, there was a really beautiful flow to my life. I just needed to keep following that.

 

I took the trip to Georgia slower after the storm. I made it a point to get there, but I wasn’t driving as fast. I honestly changed the way I drive after that storm. I wondered how many times I had rushed ahead into trouble I could have avoided. I spend a lot of time moving fast. Nothing on this trip went according to plan. I loved my friend’s place. It was on the top floor and looked out over huge trees. Despite being an apartment building, I felt comfortable. It was funny because I thought what I disliked about Chinle was how populated it was. I was in Atlanta and felt more peace than at my own house. The tightness in my chest dissipated and I started to feel like myself again. My friend was amazing, they stayed in town extra days to give me the space I needed to figure myself out. This person has forever been an almost grounding energy for me, and I am hopeful one day I can reciprocate. They opened their home to me and made sure I had what I needed to eat and be comfortable. It was incredibly kind, and it was the second time they had offered me a safe space. I unloaded my packed car into their front room, my weird witchy stuff, alchemy books, candles, and a lot of rocks. They didn’t bat an eye and despite it being their brand new apartment, they let me take up way too much space.

 

The god babies were sick with a non Rona issue when I arrived, so I couldn’t see them for the start of the visit. I ended up going up to Athens to visit an old roommate, despite the fact that my gut told me not to. Very long story short, this person ended up having changed very much since I knew them last. They were into things I was very much not into. I ended up having to leave quickly and very much felt I was in danger. They grabbed my face and screamed at me, they didn’t hit me or threaten me. But, the minute he put his hands on me and raised his voice, I was in the middle of a panic attack. I was hours away from anyone I knew, I had been drinking and was not ok to drive. This was the night, as a 33 year old woman, I understood that age doesn’t matter when you feel like you are in a vulnerable situation. The town of Athens warped from a cute college town to nefarious in an instant. I gave myself some time to compose myself and then drove back home. Not before calling my friend, sobbing. My friend, yet again was incredibly kind, saying nothing as they unlocked the door and I all but dove into the bathroom to cry. I felt stupid. After all these years, after all of my experiences, I put myself in a situation with someone who put their hands on me. I put myself in an unsafe situation, and I exposed myself to danger. I am not saying my roommate is a bad person, but knowing who someone is was vital lesson. There was a time I would have blamed myself, but this time, I understood that I should have asked more questions before drinking in a new place, and that I should always have a place of my own to end the night. I literally had a panic attack because someone yelled at me. I decided then and there that I was never going to put myself in a situation that doesn’t feel right again.

 

The next day, I realized I had been going about this all wrong. I was looking for something, trying to go out and find the reason I felt so drawn to take this trip. I decided to just ask for guidance. I asked to be shown the highest path, to be shown what I needed for growth. It sucked. Basically I had multiple conversations with my best friend, uncle, and sister about things I was doing to sabotage my own life. I had to face that I was coming from a really negative headspace and that was tinging every word out of my mouth. Someone told me that the last several times they had seen me, I was dumping all my negative stuff on them. It was tough to hear. It also was the thing I needed to hear the most. I had lost my joy for life somewhere along the last few years.

 

I wanted to say they were wrong, but I knew they weren’t. Everything had been so heavy. Losing Pat, the pandemic, being sick, almost losing Mom, my heart, moving, and struggling with the business was all I had focused on. I had spent every day since arriving on the reservation trying to get back to where I was before this all started. I was trying to un-become who I had been growing into. The last night with my friend was uncomfortable. I had never not run away after an unpleasant conversation. My usual coping mechanism was to start a fight, get myself kicked out, and then never talk to said person again. See two paragraphs ago. The thing is, when I called this friend sobbing and clearly tipsy, asking for an Uber an hour and a half away, they just said “What’s the address.” At my literal lowest and worst, they showed up. Seeing that I have people in my life who love me in spite of my many flaws was worth all the hurdles to get there.

 

The next part of my trip I spent alone in a tiny house I rented. I wasn’t quite ready to show up for the babies. Those boys deserved for their aunty to show up happy and whole. I spent a few days just thinking and reading. I hung out and did my makeup for no reason. I asked to be shown my next steps. I realized that rather than trying to move my tiny house from Indiana to Colorado, I could sell it and buy an RV or trailer instead…becoming mobile with a home base. This was the start of me figuring out what I wanted. The time I spent with the boys and my sisters was really special. Alicia and her sister made me feel like family instantly. I was able to just enjoy my time with the boys and them. I felt like I had a clarity that I had not had in a really long time.

 

While I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when I got back, I knew things were changing, finally. The drive back to the Southwest was also eventful. I hit a piece of steel on the road in the middle of New Mexico. It was a ladder for the side of an oil tanker. Thankfully I hit it going fast enough that I pushed it off the road rather than being stopped by it. It killed my headlight and I realized this fact right as it was getting dark in the Colorado Mountains. I ended up parking in Pagosa Springs right before dark. It was still pretty cold in the mountains and I planned on turning my car on throughout the night for heat. I had done so all during my road trip. I woke up at 12 am and had to use the restroom. I went to start the car and found it was dead. I was in a dead car in the mountains where everything was closed. I bundled up and went to find a porta-potty I had seen up the road. As I walked along the deserted streets in the middle of the night, freezing my butt off, I started laughing. I wasn’t stressed or even upset. I was finally at a point where I was just going with the flow, whatever that looked like. I was done resisting or fighting or being upset about the way things were going. I looked at my phone, still no signal. I happened to be in a town in Colorado where I had no signal, so I couldn’t call AAA or even my Mom to let her know I was ok. I just had to trust that I would figure it out in the morning. I made my way back to my car, lit a candle I had and left a window cracked in the front. I bundled up and used the candle to keep warm. It got so cold there was ice on the windows, but I was warm in my little air pocket. I had the epiphany that life was going to keep coming. Things were going to keep happening that were un-planned, people would change their minds, humans would eventually pass on the next stage, and I have zero control over any of it.

 

I woke up early and trekked to the little gas station that was finally opening. I arrived a little more frozen than I intended, unable to get my words out over my shivers at first. I am not a person who likes or handles cold well. I am also not a person who believes in doing anything prior to coffee in the morning, so I was very happy when she let me use the phone and gave me hot coffee. I was a little embarrassed at how I must look, in my Grandpa’s old winter coat, pajama pants, and hair all a mess. The woman was kind and didn’t even bat an eyelash, just pointing me towards the woodstove to warm up. The guy who came and jumped my car was also kind, giggling about my candle idea and complimenting my ingenuity. I messaged my family and let my Mom know I was ok. The drive up to Wolf pass was almost magical at sunrise. The colors in the mountains and the views were amazing and something I had missed when I drove this way months earlier, terrified in the dark. Now, it was magical. Funny what a little light can do.

 

 I got out at the top of Wolf Pass, feeling strangely proud that the Wolf side of my family is where much of my programmed anxiety came from. My Great Great Grandma Genevieve Wolf was a woman I never knew, but she raised my grandma when her Mom left. My Grandma’s father was an alcoholic and Genevieve made no qualms about sharing her opinions with my young Gran. The two of them would go sit at the mall while my Great Great Grandma would point out to my Grandma all the girls who were dressed like hussies, the ones wearing clothes like a “street walker,” the men who were scruffy and unkept…and the list goes on. She instilled a sense of judgment and shame in my Grandma. She taught her that people were always judging you, and so you must always appear to have it all together. She became the voice inside my grandma’s head and eventually my own.

 

For the last 100 years this is how the women in my family approached the world, unknowing that this was a perception of reality. When my Mom and Uncle were young, they were taught the same things. They were taught that nice families don’t have problems, and they certainly don’t share those problems with the world. I knew that I was breaking generational patterns of giving our power away, of making ourselves less than, and apologizing for who we are. This time, I had reached Wolf Pass in the light, sparkling snow sat atop the sign and as I dug my feet into the slush at the base, I grinned. I yelled and I danced like a crazy person at the top of that mountain. I had fucking done it. I had driven cross country, paid for it myself, took care of myself, my animals back home were fine, my brother was fine, and I finally knew what I wanted to do next. I finally had a handle on my anxiety and I knew it wouldn’t control me or impact my health as much moving forward.

 

I got back in the car, lit my legal-in-Colorado-celebratory-joint and started heading down the mountain and back to the reservation.