Unpopular Fact about Mold Avoidance

Unpopular Fact about Mold Avoidance:

(a long rant – was in a philosophical mood, so skip if you are short on time)

Many times we are asked by friends or family, “how could you have given up so much to do mold avoidance?”

It is true that a lot was given up.

But here’s the thing.

Everything I gave up was a house of cards anyway. It was vanishing as my vitality vanished. It’s so easy to look back on photos and memories of my old life and “forget” how sick I was. That I was living in a constant brain fog, dementia, and long-term panic attack that medication couldn’t control. That I couldn’t recognize my kids faces anymore. That I spent a whole winter basically in bed, and don’t remember most of it. That my head was often falling off my shoulders and collapsing and I had early M.S.-type symptoms. The list goes on and on.

I think about our lives now. It isn’t that it is “better or worse” than life before. It is just that it is LIFE. Before, the “life” was draining out fast.

There’s that saying “you only think about air if you aren’t getting any.” It’s easy to forget what it was like to not have any air, when air is abundant. But go under water for a minute and tell me how much you think about air.

I think about my problems now. It is easy to get caught up in daily challenges of mold avoidance. In particular right now, that a ton of my clothes have been wrecked by a recent family visit that included the dreaded “Tahoe Toxin” (which is my nemesis these days, still).

But one thing my mentor said to me a long time ago that has stuck with me, is “well you seem to be doing OK anyway.”

This one time maybe 3 years ago I was telling my mentor how hard things were with mold avoidance. Contamination, running around, never feeling “clear enough.” But her point was that my HEALTH was the best it had ever been. The brain fog, Lyme disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s, panic attacks, etc., had all but vanished. That in and of itself was miraculous REGARDLESS of mold avoidance drama.

See the thing is, our “reactions” to contamination and mold exposure isn’t a true “health problem.” Those reactions – and being unmasked – is what is PREVENTING true health problems. When we are in that state of reacting – feeling – being unmasked to – intensification (whatever you want to call it), THAT is when the body is winning the battle to regain equilibrium. So it was interesting that when I was complaining, my mentor didn’t talk about contamination or toxins or RV’s or mold avoidance drama. The only think they said was “well you seem to be doing OK” (health-wise). This was a ground-breaking paradigm shift for me.

I don’t think it was an accident that my mentor chose to focus on a SINGULAR variable, i.e., my “core health.” The experience of mold avoidance itself can be quite dramatic with a lot of wild and crazy toxins that do wild and crazy things. But we must not forget that the PURPOSE of doing all of this is to move the needle on the ONE THING that nothing else ever helped: our core health.

If you can make this needle budge, regardless of the cost, you’ve found a way to affect the one variable that can keep life going forward.

I’m not even saying that “regular life” is all that great. I mean, even for super healthy people, life can be hard. But we probably all agree that being alive is better than being dead. Lately, I have been realizing that one of the signs of being healthy and getting older as a “normal” person is to start seeing friends and family die all around you. I mean, that’s what being healthy means, right? It means that you start to “outlast” people. When I was extremely sick, I NEVER really noticed when people got sick or died around me, because my life was one giant panic and sickness and always just hanging on by a thread.

But now I just sort of sit around and watch the years march by, and my own life has very LITTLE drama. So it is much easier to see everyone else’s drama.

I’m afraid that to deal with this rather morbid and existential reality, you’re gonna need something else – for me, it is Christianity and my relationship with God. Mold avoidance won’t solve all your problems.

But let us not forget the miracle mold avoidance DID create: that we at least get to make it to that juncture where we are faced with those questions.

I’ll leave you with one final thought. For me, it is AMAZING how much I forget the level of sickness I endured. It is so easy to think, “well I’ll probably do OK if I go back and live in those toxins.” But if I REALLY hone in on how sick I was, it was such a massive disaster and failure to survive that there was nothing left of me back then. I was a ghost, a shell.

Another thing my mentor said to me that stuck with me is, “I just wanted to get my brain back.” I resonate with this so much. About 90% of my symptoms when I was my sickest, were brain symptoms. I could still go outside, shovel snow, make myself food, even go on a hike. But my BRAIN was toast. Not just brain processing power, but emotions and peace of mind – gone. Just a massive ball of panic attacks, memory loss, daily and minute by minute struggle to survive.

I am amazed at just how much my brain has recovered. I would say my brain is back to about 90% of optimal capacity. This has opened doors for me to capitalize on opportunities that I would never have even seen let alone been able to pursue, when I was sick.

Which is funny, because I think the NET financial cost of mold avoidance will actually be a profit. Despite the crazy financial burden of mold avoidance, I STILL think I’m financially ahead, compared to if I had remained an Alzheimer’s patient laying in a bed for the last 5 years. I mean that’s a no brainer, right?

So that’s the thought I leave you with. Unfortunately this is not a fairy tale and we don’t get to manufacture a fairy tale ending. If we are LUCKY, we MIGHT get to choose between Bad and Worse. I admit that there are some bad aspects of mold avoidance. But the only other alternative was Worse. All of this boils back down to “confronting the brutal facts.” All you have to do is look at a terminal cancer patient to remember that sometimes Bad and Worse are the reality for people.

So as I always say, Get Your Health Back First and THEN Decide What to Do Later. Not everyone gets that chance. And with some new toxins popping up like that new “CT” toxin, the days may be numbered; mold avoidance is getting harder not easier.

I follow quite a few really successful businesspeople on Twitter. Granted, luck definitely plays into success, no question about that. But one thing I notice CONSISTENTLY is that super-successful people are VERY smart. The best chance of gaining financial stability is to be smart. And the only way I know of to get a mold-sick person’s brain back to being as smart as possible, is to do mold avoidance. (Along with any supportive therapies that may be helpful). So if financial stability is the goal, mold avoidance is the hard road that leads to that goal, and the only alternative is winning the lottery.

Brain health is important. It’s a mistake to assume one can be happy with nice external circumstances if the brain is dying. I’ve seen people who make $20K per year in Tahoe as chairlift operators at ski resorts be some of the happiest people I know. They have their friends, their dog, and some recreation. But they probably also have GOOD BRAIN HEALTH if they are so happy. I remember being sick in Tahoe and longing for their lives. To just have a simple life but be able to enjoy a movie or laugh with friends.

On the other hand, you see celebrities like Bruce Willis who have dementia. You can be rich, famous, important, etc…. and without brain health your life is going to be really really hard and sad.

Brain health first! Everything else second. You can’t get around this truth no matter how hard you try to. It is a truth that will hound you and pursue you until you submit to it, sooner or later, you will submit. This is why people who used to “not take that mold thing seriously” will eventually be the same people “crawling out of their houses living in their cars.” Suffering eventually WILL push you to act like a wounded animal crawling around the woods looking for relief. That primitive, instinctive “animal spirit” WILL take over at some point. If you aren’t there yet, do something about it before you get there. Most of us got there first.

I know I’ve repeated this many times, but if someone says to me “I can’t afford mold avoidance” or “I can’t leave my house”, etc., I know they haven’t gotten to that point yet. Because most of us never made a “decision” to do mold avoidance – we just acted on instinct and a drive to survive.

That’s my post for today.