There are two anniversaries to my brother’s death. One is Thanksgiving Day, and the other is November 23, when Thanksgiving fell that year. This year marks the 15th year since he left us. This event and the time of year that it happened are imprinted in the cells of my body. I usually start feeling more depressed than usual in November because of this fact, along with the cold and darkness, as well as the onset of the holiday season that magnifies loneliness.
This November, my depression seems to be tempered. Maybe it is due to my prolonged largely catatonic state, or maybe the inflammation is beginning to ease in my brain and thereby putting depression at bay. Maybe I am starting to learn some lessons from my illness about releasing myself from my past and stepping more fully into my present.
I have been on the Autoimmune Paleo diet for almost six weeks now, but unfortunately, it has not touched my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. My energy remains non-existent and somehow even worse than October, which has been frustrating to say the least. My digestive tract is also still troubled. Days where I must get up early are particularly hard on it, as has happened for the last two years. In addition, I have been losing sight in my right eye. I feel like my retina is detaching!
Lately, I have been hearing stories about people who are following the AIP diet who are not only not improving, but are being diagnosed with additional autoimmune disorders! I have heard that once you have an autoimmune disorder, it is common for another one to develop every 3-5 years (multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s, etc) . These stories and statistics are extremely alarming! I have also been hearing about people who have strictly followed this diet for more than a year and then discovered (through the Cyrex Array 10 testing) that they are sensitive to many of the foods on the AIP approved list! By following this diet, foods (such as lettuce and carrots, for example) are causing inflammation, which allows disease to persist! Many people have to backtrack and continue to remove foods from their diet with the end goal of eating the AIP approved foods that work with their particular bodies for the rest of their lives. I have also heard of people who became allergic to foods that they later reintroduced, such as almonds! Once your body starts producing antibodies to food particles that have leaked into the bloodstream (now foreign invaders to the body), they will always illicit an immune response to these foods. Gut problems and autoimmune diseases are no joke. They will affect you in one way or another for the rest of your life. Nothing will ever be the same.
In some ways, this is a good thing. Illness wakes you up to areas of your life that need attention. The key is to make this fact work in your favor. I am learning that I have been a ticking time bomb all along. The childhood trauma and stress that I experienced on a daily basis, the non-ability to feel safe or loved or worthy, and the poor nutrition I received did not allow my genes to be expressed the way they were meant to be expressed. My adrenal glands have been worn out from remaining on high alert for too many consecutive years. My gut flora was probably always out of balance (its population actually changes to match the people you are living with: entrainment in the microbiome!), but I didn’t know it. The events that happened on the PCT were too much for my body to handle. They have produced catastrophic effects.
Diet and supplements are not working. If I want to know what foods are still causing inflammation in my body, I will have to find a new doctor who will order the tests for me and pay thousands of dollars for them, myself. At this point, it seems like this would be the best route to take. I have started the process of having my medical records transferred to a Doctor of Osteopath, whom I have never met. I am hoping she will be more receptive to my physiology and problems than the primary care doctor I saw this summer.
I am learning a lot these days. I am learning about the molecules that act as keys to open up the tight junctions in the intestines, I am learning that probiotics won’t do anything unless you have a specific bacterial strain in your gut that acts as a seed for the others, and that probiotics need their own food to work. I am learning that brain inflammation (stemming from gut inflammation) inhibits the signalling pathway to the adrenal glands. Even more importantly than the science (which is all still in very early stages), however, I am learning that what is happening OUTSIDE of your body is equally, if not more important that what is happening inside of it. Family and psychic ancestral pain affects your DNA and the resilience of your body to rid itself of parasites and heal. I have been under the effect of psychic ancestral dysfunction and pain my entire life. I need to free myself from these chains in order to be able to live. Now is my opportunity to make some big changes in my life. This forced period of sitting is giving me the opportunity to change my belief system and thereby change my gene expression. Underneath it all, this illness is asking me 1) if I really want to be alive and 2) what will I do with my life if I get my health back (and even if I don’t!). It is also giving me the opportunity to learn the most important thing of all- to start loving myself.
I still have moments when I question the reason I should be alive if I must remain in this state for years, but these days, these kinds of thoughts pass much more quickly than they did in the summer. The last time I felt very depressed was in October when I tried to take a yoga class at my studio in Boston. Not only is the drive a nightmare in rush hour traffic, but the parking is equally tough. A new restaurant just opened on the street that I usually park on, making even less space available. On this particular night, I parked in the only spot I could and hurried in to class. When I walked back to my car after my enjoyable hour and a half, I discovered that it was gone! Its location was unknown to me, and I didn’t have a way to get to it. It was also pitch black out. It cost me $100 to get my car back, and then I found a parking ticket on the windshield when I finally got home for another $55! This was not a pleasant experience- especially for a girl with no income! For the next three days, I felt extremely depressed and didn’t do much other than sleep. I guess it was another way for the universe to tell me to stay home and rest. Don’t try to do the things you used to do, Wendy!
Something else that I am learning is that gratefulness reduces inflammation in the body. As one of my teachers, Jacqui Bonwell said, “Thanksgiving is a state of mind.”
Tomorrow, I will not do anything I haven’t been already doing for these last few months. I will stay home and rest and eat the foods I have been eating for the past 5.5 weeks. I may treat myself to my first coffee in that amount of time with coconut milk creamer that I will make myself. And I will enjoy it with the first Autoimmune Paleo baked dessert that I made- pumpkin bars! Maybe I will one again start a formal written gratitude practice. I am hoping that I will remain free of my usual deep depression from being alone on this holiday. If I can do that, I will feel like I am improving in at least some way. If I don’t manage that, I will simply allow what is and what comes.

I wish you all a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving! Special thoughts for all who are struggling on this day. Remember that you are loved.

And for anyone needing a little relief or humor, here you go! (I love dramatic musical life interpretations!)

This is an extraordinarily beautiful and thoughtful piece by Lara Dotson-Renta, found on the ‘On Being’ website. I highly recommend listening to the recorded version in the link, where you can hear the nostalgic music that accompanies it. I listened to it in the dark just before I fell asleep one night a couple of weeks ago and found it extremely enjoyable, comforting and wise.

Living Through Death: Love at the End of Marriage

“The sound drifts over to our bedroom like clockwork. Every night the piano plays a jaunty tune next door. It is usually the piano’s keys dancing in turn, but sometimes it is a record from the ’50s, a swaying, big-band sort of music that somehow brings our little corner of the neighborhood back several decades to when these homes were built, and a marriage was just beginning. Time rewinds and restarts with each change in key.

I stop and sit each time, pulled to the window. I pause to listen and imagine the scene as the music sweeps into each corner of their home — over the graying couch in the sitting room, over the mounted family photos, over the beautiful open Bible on a wooden stand. Our elderly neighbor plays faithfully, the notes an affirmation of presence, a victory of joy, a connection maintained.

Our neighbors have been married for over 50 years. The husband attended our alma mater, Dartmouth College, where my husband and I met. When we moved into our home, the one we are raising our babies in as we sweep into our mid thirties, our neighbor, my husband, and I traded stories of young lives in rural New Hampshire experienced five decades apart. It is impossible to not see some mirror of one another, an inversion of life stages just next door. Time has a funny way of crossing your path with those you need to meet, with those that have something to teach you.

Our neighbors raised five children together, and have grieved the loss of an adult child. Rather than sink into their grief, they remained aloft, holding on to one another like defiant petals in the wind. The creases in their eyes remember, but don’t tell. Their hands are soft and worn with time; their soft bodies such a contrast from the small and fast bodies of the children I hug and care for each day, the babies that give my days rhythm and purpose. I feed, I bathe, I sing, and I comfort. So does my neighbor. He and I spend our days caring and loving, and preparing different goodbyes: My children are growing, changing, preparing for adulthood, when they will leave me and begin to craft lives of their own. Every day they are close to my chest they are also a day closer to leaving, to letting go. I will mourn this, but it is the way of life. My neighbor’s wife is changing, and preparing to leave him as well. With much grace and kindness, he is loving her through what remains, tending to her body as it gives in and gives way, preparing a gentle path for her death. This too is the circle of being, but a way of knowing and understanding that I have not experienced yet, that I can only hope to live up to if put to the test.

I watched her body deteriorate from the window or my doorstep, in short visits and morning hellos. I saw the energy present just a few short years ago fade a little — in the crook of a missed step, in a word forgotten, and then nearly lost entirely, eyes adrift. She is present in vibrant sparks and spurts, usually when my children come by — there is something about a small child that awakens something in a mother. Nevertheless, I have watched her fade from the world bit by bit, remaining in it but not quite of it.

Except for when she is with him.

When she is with her husband, she is here. After more decades together than not, and as her mind and body slowly erode, it is clear that her husband is the axis upon which things can still make sense for her, the security she needs to navigate this final gray space between life and death. I see the sparkle in his eye when he looks at her still, and it is both heartbreaking and inspiring. There is no measuring, no holding back, no keeping score or negotiating there. There is no use for pretense at this place in the journey, and he is all here, all in, with her.

It is rare to see the promises of love lived out fully, to watch people supported by family and friends in late life in such a way that such may be realized. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a village to guide someone to their end: I see their daughters come by, their grandson mowing their lawn every week, a local nun’s order helping with adult care. I grapple very much with the idea of God in this broken world, with the idea of a divine something that I cannot quite grasp or logically explain — but if such a thing exists, the devotion I see in my neighbors would embody and affirm it. His simultaneous acceptance of letting the love of his life go, and his commitment to being there and loving her through it, of bearing witness and being a part of a process that must be immensely difficult in its labor and finality, is the stuff of legend. Getting married is easy. Loving anyone this way, for this long, is hard and messy, miraculous and graceful. Accepting and facing death, stopping treatments when it is evident they are of no further use, choosing to live what is left simply rather than prolong, is quietly courageous and brave in a culture ill at ease with death and dying, uncomfortable with what it all looks like. There is no glamor in the smells and textures of death, in gradual decline. But it is here where life is at its most palpable, its most raw, its most layered.

As often as I can, I stop in and visit, and bring over a treat or a reminder that we are here should they need anything, anything at all. I have been told that I am a kind neighbor, and that this is very nice of me. I reject this. The truth is I am the lucky one to have been privileged enough to witness both the simplicity and intricate nuance that is enduring love, to see firsthand what end-of-life care is and means, to consider that each day of marriage is a step on a very long walk, a walk that must end as all do.

Their melody plays in my head each night, making me pause amid the frenzy of laundry and toddler bedtime and remember that it all comes full circle. We are all in some way preparing for endings. Some day the music will stop next door, and everything will change. But for now, the music keeps playing. Life is being lived, completely and honestly. I will keep listening. I will keep remembering that the most extraordinary lives are often the ones lived most quietly, most remarkably, by one’s neighbors and loved ones, if we just pay attention. If you just listen, everyone has a song.”

Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass.
But this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again.
There wasn’t a single one on the grass.
How, I wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?

Geraldine Largay disappeared from the Appalachian Trail in Maine on July 22, 2013. She had planned on meeting her husband at a road crossing the next day. Two years later, her remains were still not found. I had planned on posting this article on a significant piece of information pertaining to her disappearance last July, but did not manage to do so before I was hit with my tremendous fatigue. Here is the article: http://thebollard.com/2015/06/30/m-i-a-on-the-a-t/
Although it is long, it is well worth the read. It goes into depth about the Navy SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training school which is located on a large section of property adjacent to the Appalachian Trail for approximately a mile to the north and south of the shelter Gerry was last seen at. (Interestingly, there is also one on the west coast, very close to the PCT in Warner Springs, CA). This school employs psychological and physical torture tactics on its students to prepare them for war scenarios. Participants role play escape, capture, and torture scenarios in the wilderness. Brown writes, “David J. Morris said he underwent SERE training as a lieutenant in 1995. ‘I was hooded, beaten, starved, stripped naked, and hosed down in the December air until I became hypothermic,’ he wrote. ‘When I forgot my prison number, I was strapped to a gurney and made to watch as a fellow prisoner was water-boarded a foot away from me. I will never forget the sound of that young sailor choking, seemingly near death, paying for my mistake’.” Many participants are deprived of sleep, tortured, and confused by the reality of the situation. I do not believe that I was aware of this school or its property during my thru-hike, and after reading this article, I am thankful that I did not know about it then.
The article also mentions that a call was placed to the owner of the Stratton Motel, where Gerry and her husband planned to stay on Wednesday night. The unidentified caller said that Gerry would be late. This call is hugely suspicious to me, No other hiker on the AT had seen Gerry after she left the shelter that Monday morning. The previous night and that morning, she was in very high spirits. She had only 8 miles to hike on Monday, and 13.5 on Tuesday. Only someone that played a part in her disappearance would have known that she would not arrive on time (or at all). It is even more suspicious that the Maine Warden Service stated that they knew who the unidentified caller was and then backtracked when pressed. Hutch Brown wrote, “When I asked Lt. Kevin Adam of the Maine Warden Service about this, he said, ‘We’re sure we know who made the phone call, but the verbiage was screwed up.’ After I expressed surprise that they’d identified the caller, Lt. Adam backtracked a bit. ‘I believe we know who made the call,’ he said. ‘A little got lost in translation.’ The caller was reported to have been a female by the Stratton Motel owner.
After reading this article, I felt that the answers concerning Gerry’s disappearance and death could be found within the borders of the SERE school. It seems highly likely to me that a sensory deprived participant in this mock escape and capture scenario came upon Largay as she hiked this section of the AT that practically touches the SERE property and confused her as an “enemy”. However, this scenario was not even questioned nor were searches conducted on much of the SERE property! Clearly, the SERE school holds great power over all of the search and rescue groups and state departments and was not willing to cooperate with search efforts. I do not understand why more pressure was/could not have been exerted upon them.
Brown writes, “When I first called Lt. Adam, a lead investigator and spokesperson for the Warden Service, I asked him about the SERE School. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he said. He wasn’t sure whether there had been a SERE course in progress the week Largay vanished or not. (At the end of that week, helicopter pilots spotted campfires inside the facility and initially thought they were a sign of Largay; they later determined SERE students had set them.)”
“The staff and students of the SERE School aren’t just inclined to be secretive about what goes on there; they’re legally bound to keep it classified. But according to Prosser, neither he nor his staff have even been questioned by state authorities about Largay’s case. ‘I was never interviewed,’ he told my editor, ‘and I don’t recall any interviews with members of my staff.’

On October 14, a “contractor” discovered the skeletal remains of Largay. It was no surprise to me that they were located on the SERE property about 2-3 miles from the Appalachian Trail. The case was dismissed and many people commented on the fact that her family now at least has closure. To me, and to the author of this article, this finding would bring anything but closure! http://chrisbusby.bangordailynews.com/2015/10/22/politics/case-of-missing-a-t-hiker-far-from-closed/
Her family declined to comment until they could process the information.

Many hikers have commented that the section of the trail she was on was very well marked. In order to get to where she was found on her own, she would have had to bushwack through tough terrain for 2-3 miles! This was a very happy woman who was fulfilling a dream of hers, scheduled to meet her loving husband the next day. She also had a whistle on her backpack strap. If something had happened to her in which she felt in danger, she would have blown the whistle if she could have.

At the end of October, her case was officially declared closed. An article in the Portland Press Herald reported, “The skeletal remains of Largay were found Oct. 14 in a wooded area about 3,000 yards off the trail, two or three miles from where she was last seen in July 2013, authorities said.

‘These findings now bring closure to one of Maine’s most unique and challenging search and rescue incidents,’ Cpl. John MacDonald of the Maine Warden Service said in a statement.
Appalachian Trail thru-hiker Geraldine Largay died of exposure and lack of food and water, according to an autopsy by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

The Maine Warden Service announced the results of the state medical examiner’s inquiry, which also used DNA to confirm Largay’s identity.

A cellphone found with the remains was examined by the Maine State Police Computer Crime Lab.

‘Information found on the cellphone concluded that Gerry reached Orbeton Stream and the discontinued railroad bed crossing in the late morning of July 22, 2013. Shortly after reaching that intersection, she continued north on the Appalachian Trail and at some point left the trail and became lost,’ MacDonald’s statement said. ‘After examination of the remains and working in conjunction with information from investigators on the case, the Chief Medical Examiner determined this was an accidental death due to lack of food and water and environmental exposure’.”

This report is an injustice to Gerry and to her family. She did not become lost and bushwack 2-3 miles off the trail. The AT is well blazed, and any long distance hiker who has not seen a white blaze in awhile and thinks they are lost knows to turn around and backtrack until they find one again.  She did not remain silent while teams of searchers and dogs and helicopters were scouring the area trying to find her. She did not lie down and wait weeks to die from starvation without searching for water or for help.  She had a cell phone that she texted her husband from that morning. Even if she was out of range, she would have kept walking until she found reception. She did not die from “exposure”. She was well equipped to survive cold temperatures for long periods of time (and this was July!).  If she was incapacitated by a medical event, she would not have been able to get to the place she was found. Gerry’s family deserves real answers. They, at the very least, deserve to know what actually caused her disappearance and death. There are many questions that still need to be answered and I hope that pressure will be exerted on the officials at the SERE school to cooperate and provide much more information. This could have happened (and might still happen) to any one of us hiking the Appalachian Trail!

Each of these powerful videos was brought to my attention today. The first is one of the most beautiful, strong, and touching wedding scenes that I have ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=bUFgYjKz70o

The second is one example of an incredible miracle and a reminder that much of what occurs in the world can not be seen by us.

And the third is a strong reminder from a six year old girl of what we all must keep remembering in order to change the world around us. When we each steadily and consistently act out of our hearts toward the people around us, a ripple effect will be created that will alter mass consciousness. Here, she schools her divorced parents on the importance of becoming friends and acting from a place of groundedness.

“My heart is something. Everyone’s heart is something, too.”

http://www.faithtap.com/4195/little-girl-pleads-with-mom-to-be-friends-with-her-daddy/

When we change and act from love, the world changes for the better, too.

THE JOURNEY
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

This is how I have been feeling for the past 8 weeks. It feels like I have used up my lifetime supply of energy and am now approaching my death. I have become so depleted of energy that I have become completely unfunctional and essentially bedridden. I remember leaving a yin yoga class on July 9 (this type of yoga is where you sit and hold poses for 3 minutes- it is not active). I felt so tired that I could not speak, which greatly worried me. I could tell that something was very wrong with me physically. In the previous few weeks, I would feel so tired before class began that I didn’t know if I could actually do anything. Before my last class, I told my teacher that “something is really wrong with me.” I started to sleep until 1pm. The following week, I was too tired to drive into Boston. I stopped doing yoga. I didn’t even want to do it because I was too tired. I had a hard time even walking into the building I had to give my talk in during the third week of July. I started sleeping more and more deeply and for more hours. I was even sleeping through construction that was going on next door to me! When I went for a walk, I would press my fingernails into my arm to see if I could feel anything. It felt like there was nothing alive in me. And I felt unbearably alone. I questioned the meaning of being alive if I could not make a living for myself because I had no energy to do so and if I had no people in my life. I couldn’t get the thought that it would be weeks before anyone would even start looking for me if I died out of my head. By the time my surgery came, I thought I might not wake up from the anesthesia.
My surgery was not a pleasant experience. The one goal the nurses had was to get me out of there as quickly as possible for a reason I don’t know. I was the only afternoon patient. Immediately upon getting into the cot, a nurse was unsuccessfully jabbing a needle into my hand while the anesthesiologist was reading the list of dangers and wanting me to sign forms. The nurse went right through my vein. I wanted to ask the anesthesiologist if he could do it. The nurse came around behind me and without warning, stuck another needle into my right arm. It hurt SO badly! I finally complained. The anesthesiologist said there was no needle in there (that it was the tape that was hurting!). The tube was hurting me, likely because she didn’t place it correctly! My surgeon came in and told me that I looked anxious. I wondered what the rush was. I told her that something else was causing the depth of fatigue I was experiencing. She said I should see an endocrinologist, but this would be step one.
I woke up crying and curled up to one side. Deep into several layers of dreams, three people were yelling at me to wake up. Why couldn’t anyone relax for a moment? I was asked to transfer to the chair, my ride was called, and I was told to get dressed. As I ate my toast, a nurse looked at me and asked, “Are you crying again?”. No other patients were there. At home, I kept taking pain medicine and went to sleep. I never received a call from the nurses or from my surgeons office for a follow-up.
Over the next few weeks, I did not regain any energy. A week after my surgery, it took me 3 entire days to gather enough energy to go grocery shopping. That is the only thing I did in those 3 days and I had to go right back to bed after I put the groceries away. I have been sleeping 15-20 hours per day. I don’t have energy to write or even to read. I have tried doing a little bit of yoga at home (up to 2 hours per week), but have found that even that amount completely depletes me for the following few days to the point where I can’t do anything. This is terrifying to me. I’ve always had low energy, but I was able to access some strength in yoga classes and hiking. I used to be able to take two 90 minute vinyasa classes back to back. Now, I can’t imagine even being able to do one 90 minute class. Two years ago, I was hiking over 20 miles a day for 5 months in a very sick state. Now, I can’t imagine being able to climb a single mountain. I have lost a great deal of strength and flexibility in these last two months. This illness is not psychological. It is not depression (although that is a part of it). I have suffered from severe, prolonged depression several times during my life, and although that also depletes you, it comes with a very distinct, awful feeling. This is also not a lack of motivation. It is not laziness. It is not an attitude problem. It is physical illness. I am unable to do the things that make me feel better.
I finally collected enough energy to call and get to my PCP. She was extremely unhelpful. All she seems able to do is make me answer questions about how depressed I am, tells me I must call an ambulance and get to an ER if I am suicidal (not helpful!), and tries to scare me into thinking I have breast cancer! When I asked her what the point of me being alive is if I can’t do anything and can’t earn any income, she just stared at her computer screen. She refused to test me for the thyroid antibodies that I asked for. Next, I saw an endocrinologist. After having seven vials of blood taken and visiting a full array of hospitals in my area, the doctors have nothing to offer me. All they say is that my numbers are normal. Not only are they unhelpful, but they lack compassion, as well. I don’t understand this. I left that office in tears.
It has now been 8 weeks of being constantly depleted and essentially bedridden. I have the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which means that no amount of sleep replenishes me and any energy that I expend further depletes me in the following days. A fellow hiker wrote to me and told me her own experience of going through this illness and urged me not to attempt to do any exercise (even short walks or stretching) for the next six months. She said I will never be the same. I have already gained a good 8-9 pounds in these last months (at least three following my surgery), and it is not stopping. I fear I will turn into a giant blob if I can no longer move.
I have no idea what the future holds for me. I don’t know how I will be able to support myself, or if I will ever get to hike again. Some people never recover from this illness. Others recover to a certain degree after a long period of time (years), but often relapse or get sick in other ways.
Right now, I am trying to view this as a spiritual exercise.

Please, please be grateful if you have your health, if you have energy, and if you have a support system. Many people do not.

There is another part to this story, which I have been wanting to write about for five weeks, but have been too depleted to do so. (Right now, I am forcing myself to write this, even though I feel awful!). On the other side of the country in Arizona, at the same time of my last surgery, a fellow 2013 PCT thruhiker (27 years old) was preparing for his own death…

I don’t have enough energy to write about this now, but I will add to this entry in the coming days when I can collect a little pocket of energy or two.

Okay… Here is the story. Two days after my last surgery, on Friday, July 31, I saw a post from a fellow thru-hiker who I had not communicated at all with since the PCT. It said, “Please don’t blame anyone. It was no one’s fault.” I read this and didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t make any sense to me. As I thought about it later that day, I thought it could possibly be referring to the killer of Cecil the lion, as at that time, a lot of people in the yoga world were imploring others not to put all of the blame on one person. I assumed it was either about that or was a cryptic message that I could not understand. The next afternoon, a missing poster of this hiker appeared in my feed. I read through it and noticed that it said he was missing from the Grand Canyon area for one day. I had a hard time understanding how someone could be reported missing from one day ago. He could have been out camping or out of reception range. As the day progressed (I was in a state of complete fatigue and mere days out of surgery), I started thinking about it more and more and realized there must be a good reason why this missing sign had been posted by those who knew him. I started going back through his “timeline” and came across his cryptic post again. By this time, it seemed like I had read that weeks ago! I had lost all concept of time. And this time, I read it completely differently. Oh my God!!! That was his last message to everyone! No!!!! I immediately wrote to his friend that he had hiked the majority of the PCT with (who I had also not communicated with since) and asked him what was going on. “Was he depressed?!” He of all people must have known, I thought. While I waited for an answer, I read through his timeline again and again to see what people were saying. It didn’t seem like much at all, which was very upsetting to me. Why weren’t more people showing concern? [I had been in a similar state myself and had been thinking about asking people if they cared about me or what they liked about me, but I did not. The lack of people responding to him was mirroring how I thought people thought about me]. I wanted to contact his family and ask them to let me know what was happening. I NEEDED to know. I was going crazy. This information hit me extremely hard for several reasons. One was simply because of who he was. This was an EXTREMELY kind and VERY talented YOUNG person who (in my opinion) had every possibility in front of him. I quickly recalled every time that I saw him on the PCT. (At the Anderson’s, much later on a switchback below me, pausing to take in the surroundings with a calm smile on his face, him in the back of the car on the way to Trout Lake, talking to the little girl about her art). NO!! There was NO way that we were all going to lose HIM of all people. I could not face that possibility. It also hit me hard because I suffered from my first intense (-ly long and severe) period of depression my senior year of college and my plan was to buy a one way ticket to the Grand Canyon when the semester was over and jump off. I thought about it a lot that year. It was my way out. The fact that this person that I knew was now in the same situation was overwhelming to me. I posted the missing sign on my timeline thinking that he was already dead by then. And I was incredulous that no one was responding to my post! At this point, I needed comfort! Maybe they didn’t realize the severity of the situation. I wondered why he and I only had 5 “friends” in common in the first place! Why weren’t any PCT people responding and why weren’t my yoga people responding for me? I was mad. And I was going crazy that no one was doing anything. Finally, Connie (the section hiker in Oregon) responded! She said he was so generous to her. I immediately wrote her back and asked her what he did. I needed to hear how he had affected other people. (I still hadn’t heard back from his friend). I told her I was going to meditate for a few minutes so that I could sit and be with him for a bit. When I did, tears just streamed down my face. I was deeply, deeply upset. I thought that if was now gone, I would probably go, too, and be with him and my brother. Before I went to sleep, I asked him to visit me to let me know if he was okay. (Sometimes, I ask my brother or another presence to let me know they are there by touching a part of me and I feel a tingling in my hand or foot). This time, I didn’t feel anything so I couldn’t tell if he was in spirit form or not…
The next day, there was still no news. I did read that someone had said he had turned on his cell phone twice in the last day, but I did not know what to make of that. I told a girl I thought would empathize with me at the coffee shop. She asked if I was close to him and only said, “Well, at least he is in peace”. That made me even more mad. People in our society don’t know how to respond to a person who is suffering from depression and they don’t know how to respond to someone who has lost someone to suicide. (At this point, I needed comfort myself). These are both huge problems!!
After I returned to my apartment, I felt like I needed to DO something. I still hadn’t heard back from anyone that I had messaged. I decided to write him a message directly in the event he was still alive (knowing that his spirit could read it if he was not). I asked him to please reach out to me or anyone else who loved him, told him that we can help each other, and said that I loved him.
Then, for the first time in weeks, I did a little bit of yoga. Immediately after I finished, I saw that his friend had written me back saying that he hadn’t known anything was happening until I told him, that he was scared, and still was. It also said something about him being found!
News was slow to come after that. It was an emotional few days. His mother posted a picture with him several days later that made me cry and cry whenever I thought about it. It is clear that she loves him so much and I can’t imagine what his loss would do to her. That Thursday, he finally posted something himself. I consider it one of the bravest acts I have ever witnessed. He wrote, “As many of you are aware I attempted to end my life last weekend on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I was both literally and figuratively on the edge. In the literal sense I was nestled on the Canyons edge waiting for the perfect sunset. There was a darkness that wouldn’t subside and I thought the only way to end it was to be amongst the stars. In a figurative sense I had already fallen, and happened to fall amongst the love and support of all of you. It is difficult for me to express my thanks to everyone involved. I am incredibly grateful and fortunate to have all of you in my life, for it is my life that you have saved. I’m uncertain what the future has in store, but I am hopeful for new adventures, lots of laughs and many perfect sunsets. So thank you all for reminding me that life is worth it, and to wake up everyday with a smile.”
This post also made me cry a lot.
Several days later, he responded to my message and I wrote him this entire story, letting him know how much it had affected me (a person who had briefly crossed paths with him two years ago). His experience allowed me to be on the other side of this situation and helped me understand how much we are all so connected to one another, even though it often does not feel that way. Finally, people started responding to his post. Over three hundred of his friends “liked” it and over one hundred responded. I felt like they were supporting me, as well.
He later openly and honestly shared his story with me, explaining where his depression was coming from, how long he had been suffering from it, his detailed plan to exit the world (it had nothing to do with jumping), and how he was found and his plan thwarted. He told me he has experienced days where he is grateful to be alive, and others where he still wishes he was on the ledge with only hours to go, which I completely understand. I haven’t heard from him in over a month, despite several attempts at trying to contact him. I hope he is doing okay.

I tell everyone that the hardest part of a thru-hike is returning home. If you know a thru-hiker (or anyone who suffers from depression in general), please look after them closely and keep checking in with them. We need to know that we are loved.
Thank you.

#thestruggleisreal