“But I had to live in my truck” (and it wasn’t that bad) (and actually, it was a blessing)

Succeeding with mold avoidance (and getting your life back) really requires a paradigm CHANGE. Not a paradigm “shift.”

Society says that someone who is homeless and living out of their vehicle should be really destitute and depressed. But what if doing so is the equivalent of a very low-cost, high-success, miraculous treatment program?

Cancer patients endure chemotherapy and radiation for just a possibility of recovering. I think that mold avoidance provides a much higher probability of having a good outcome, compared to cancer treatment.

The one summer I lived exclusively out of my truck (but for limited access to a contaminated RV for about 30 minutes per day), I actually didn’t find the experience all that bad. Except for the societal condemnation, of course.

I mean sure, it wasn’t that comfortable. But I was never too hot or too cold, on any serious level. And yeah, it wasn’t luxurious. But the biggest problem with it was really just that it didn’t match my expectation of what “life should be like.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying people should live in vehicles routinely. But if people pursuing mold avoidance need to do so for some period of time to continue their healing and investigate other housing options, what’s the big deal? It sure beats dying of chronic illness, or submitting one’s self like an abused dog to the many trickeries and false-hopes of “medicine.”

I can tell you that the many times I sat across the desk from doctors who I was relying on to help me, but who never came through for me, were much worse parts of my life. MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.

See, the thing about mold avoidance is that it puts the power back in YOUR hands. Even though living in my truck was kind of annoying, it was ME who got to take control of my destiny and do what I needed to do to heal my body. The absolute bliss and sense of self that I gained from this was really indescribable. I don’t regret any of it, and kind of consider it (shhh….) to be one of the most profound and amazing experiences of my life (yes, really).

So if someone tells me that they had to live out of their vehicle because mold made them homeless, I don’t really blink. It really isn’t that big of a deal. Now, of course, the typically accompanying financial and relational difficulties are a whole different story. Those are definitely serious things. But I also know mold avoiders who do have money, and still choose to live out of their vehicles for a time.

I just think that mold avoidance requires people to REALLY look at life objectively, from the perspective of tens of thousands of years of humanity. Humans have lived in all kinds of shelters at different periods of history. Astronauts sleep in very strange and uncomfortable quarters, and astronauts are considered to have a very sought-after and prestigious occupation. Rock climbers sleep in hanging nests hundreds of feet above the ground. People who actually go camping for fun, choose to sleep in trucks and tents and all kinds of little nooks. So long as a person has access to emergency medicine, food, water, and other necessities, it just doesn’t matter that much.

The reason my experience sleeping in my truck was so joyful was that for the first time in years, I had hope. A future. Another shot at life. Who cares (SERIOUSLY, who cares) where the hell I am sleeping. I would rather have gained the healing I achieved in my truck, than stayed sick and slept in the world’s most glorious mansion. In fact, I was – and still am – extremely grateful for my truck. It is one of my most joyous possessions, and those memories are my most joyful memories. The smiles I see on my kids faces now are only visible to me because my truck prevented me from dying in a moldy house. (No, my children never slept in a vehicle, only I did, of course).

So there you have it. My advice is to think of sleeping in a vehicle as a blessing. It is another shot at life that MANY people never get – the cancer patients, the terminally ill stroke patients, the car-accident patients. They would do ANYTHING to have the chance at taking back control of their destiny and sleeping in a vehicle in order to have high-probability odds of recovery. You should try on the same attitude.