How Dare You!

Just about everyone who considers mold avoidance goes through a “how dare you!” phase. This happens when experienced mold avoiders describe mold avoidance to the new person. Some of the aspects of mold avoidance are a bit extreme and daunting, and the initial reaction of the new person is to say, “how dare you suggest that I should do that!”

Now, I am not pointing any fingers at new people. I personally had this “how dare you!” response for quite a long time and in quite an aggressive manner. I just couldn’t BELIEVE some of the things that people suggested I might need to do, in order to succeed with mold avoidance. They seemed downright PREPOSTEROUS. Especially things like becoming reactive to mold, possibly needing to leave a house / community / city, and not being able to live in conventional housing. And a few other things.

I just couldn’t BELIEVE that anyone would suggest these things to me. They seemed so… just, how dare you!

But here’s the thing. No one is trying to convince you to do mold avoidance. If people are happy in life and can get along just fine without mold avoidance, that’s fine too. No one is saying that anyone should do what they do not want to do.

Instead, what I am saying is simply that “here is how I have done mold avoidance, and here is how it has benefited my health.” That’s the thing about mold avoidance. It tends to be really factual. Most Lyme and CFS patients are kind of used to picking their course of treatment as a “choose your own adventure” story; a little bit of this, a little bit of that, until just the right philosophical goal is reached. “This should work. It makes sense to me, so it MUST help me.” The only problem is that this mish-mosh of modern medicine often DOESN’T help people. Or at least not enough. Which is why they consider mold avoidance.

Mold avoidance is what it is. It may be incredulous. It may be preposterous. It may be weird. It may or may not be something you want to do. But you don’t get to decide what the facts are. They kind of “are what they are.”

This blog post is not intended to make people feel bad about being blown out of the water. I was DEFINITELY blown out of the water. We all are. I’m just trying to share some perspective after having done mold avoidance for almost 2.5 years.

It has been a long road of acceptance, but I am FINALLY accepting that I don’t get to make up the rules, as I used to do by taking “a little bit of this herb and a little bit of that.” I think I might have been better off accepting things a little bit sooner.