I want to be an adventurer. I always have been in a way. I “married” a 37 year old nonconformist when I had just turned 19, tried performing arts at Evergreen State College, a very liberal institution, and had many adventures there before settling in our post squatter house with pot plants in the basement and a crack filled apartment on the corner at the end of the block. I also continued to entertain wholesome and conforming ideas. I took two busses across town to work at a preschool, taking care of young children. It was a progressive school and we practiced the new philosophy called Reggio Emilia, a new school of thought invented in Italy post World War II that allowed children to form their own curriculum and was very heavy in the arts as a way of documenting and encouraging learning. Yet I wasn't ready to settle down. By day I would try to cover the smell of cigarettes on my clothes and scrape the dog hair from my long wool coat, smoking at the bus stop on my way home. By afternoon and night I would wear my shaggy overalls and torn leather coat with its puffy wool collar that came from my friend’s alcoholic father that fought in Vietnam and rented his apartments to strippers. I was floating in and out. At the age of twenty I got pregnant and being mentally unstable and on medications that were crucial to my survival that were proven to cause life threatening birth defects, I felt I had no choice. I was not suited to be a mother, and not able to risk going off of the meds, many of the issues can occur at conception as well. Steve held my hand, and the emotional pain was 100 times the physical. If only life had been different.

I worked many different jobs: at a curio shop in Mazama, Jamba Juice 40 hours a week, video store clerk, preschool teacher, summer program education leader, health club day care teacher, pizza delivery driver… I took many classes at community college, and started painting and writing to cleanse and heal my spirit as I was allergic to the mental health system and therapy, having been tossed and jerked around by many psychologists and counselors. The whole system seemed flawed.

So we rented house after house, moving every year, growing pot, going camping, scraping up pennies to buy packs of cigarettes. After moving around Washington State we settled back in south Seattle and I took some time off work. I worked my way from state disability to federal disability for mental health issues. I took art classes and focused on painting, gardening and writing my memoir. We made friends in the restaurant business and went to parties and bars. We had 'Sunday Fun-day' where a group of us would go to a bar after work. This was our church, and we shared our lives.

In total I have been hospitalized three times, each major psychotic episode leading to a longer stay. Many smaller episodes plagued my other months and years, and within and surrounding these times of struggle I also thrived; reading, studying and being creative. I knew that inside of me stilled lived a lot of potential. In the fox hole I had faith, and in life I had my paintings and my struggle to lean on. Through it all I had my dogs and my man. I borrowed Steve’s faith and he would assure me everything would be okay, and it was. I have often experienced that the worse things are in life, the more I know a sense of security, that even in the worst of times, we had each other and I could find joy in the little things.

So this has been my journey, some may say I was in the dark, and in many ways my life was full of grief and pain. I went off in the world to have adventure and to learn from the raw people in life. I found many brethren; people as lost and on the edge of sanity as I was. I have not forgotten that world. Seven years now on a quiet Island, learning good habits and healing from old wounds, two years in the loving arms of Jesus with a new found sense of God. I still know I have always been held and watched over. I don’t have any regrets, and Lord, there were many beautiful moments in your plan.