It's a start... but it's gonna be a journey

The sun is always shining on Maple Park. Maple Park, IL is where my parents, Farmer Dick and Princess Di, happily and lovingly reside. Their single story brick home on Thatcher Rd is warm and efficient. Momma keeps her pantry and her wine rack full, ready and welcome to any stray visitor. Pops rarely lets his heart rate fall or the grass grow around his boots; if the sun is up, there is something that he should be doing, even if it's just sorting the day's recyclables. Farmer Dick calls his little corner of the world "God's Country" and I have challenged that title for years. All my life I have wondered what I did to deserve two such amazing people as parents. They say you actually "hand-pick" your parents before your life begins, so I don't know how I was able to pluck two angels from God's posse without His knowledge. These two reverent beings raised me and my two younger brothers to believe we could be whatever we damn well wanted to be AND told us they would support us every step of the way.

I'm sure they now look back on that decision with humor and long for their young blissful ignorance.

Farmer Dick told me shortly before he dropped me off in front of Thompson Hall for my freshman year of college that I should write a book. I knew that I never had any reason to disagree with him, life has a way of coming at me from extraordinary angles, even *I* find it hard to ignore. And then there was the fact that I was the only kid at W.I.U. unloading all of my worthy possessions from the brown and orange family motorhome (Dad likes to find many uses for his recreational belongings...). I didn't know it at the time, but that aging Leprechaun Coachmen was soon to see it's last bonding Biddle family cross-country adventure and my next big college relocation would be made from Dad's red cattle trailer. I have always walked a colorful path.

What you are currently reading is a manifestation of said book idea. I, in no way, think that my life is so incredibly interesting that it simply must be published. I do not intend to teach you big important stuff or use really big words so you think I'm smart. I have, however, met many MANY incredible people who have joined me in my life's journey that will be included in the stories that are to follow. I haven't decided how this will be organized, if at all. I haven't decided how deep I will delve into my utterly fascinating personal life. But this new journey is exactly that... new. I encourage your ideas, statements, memories, and anecdotes.

So many of you deserve my return correspondence, and I find myself having difficulty coming up with the strength and courage to respond to everyone individually while still protecting myself. I started writing different little stories to different people and trying to come to the same conclusion at the end. I realized how much I was shape-shifting to everyone's personality. Soon the pressure became too tremendous and the letters became a source of exhaustion. It has recently hit me like a brick that many of you don't know who I really am and for some reason I felt the need to protect myself. I wear a condom so thick that I have managed to shade myself from everyone I have ever met, over the years becoming timid around my own opinions, and even worse around the opinions of everyone else. So in order to do this correctly I guess I need to peel back the layers of my own onion. Let the stories begin...

More of this will come out as it needs to, but I needed to find a starting point before I could even engineer my outline. What very few of you know is that I'm like a spiritual hippie throw-back tree hugger freak, and I have tromped around for the last half of my 35 years shielding almost all of myself from the world. And from you. Until now...

Momma raised us on garden grown vegetables and homemade bread. We were denied white sugar at an early age, unless it was in the form of a cube, a cube stored wayyyyy back in the cupboard and only brought out as a special treat for my pony. My brothers and I snacked on celery filled with peanut butter and raisins. We didn't have loads of stupid toys and dolls. We had die cast John Deere pedal tractors and sandboxes, huge snow piles, books, hollowed out trees, and plenty of chores. My momma would never label herself as a "flower child", she was a farmer's wife, but she raised us as close to the earth as she knew how. We were infants when we experienced our first ride through the snow. She had to be outside if the sun was out, and she HAD to take us with her, so she used bailing twine to tie an orange crate to an old rusty sled with runners. She bundled us in every blanket she had and stuck us in that box and then pulled us all over the farm. And all the while my pops was smiling happily from his combine or his tractor or his grain cart, pleased his kids were growing up dirty on the farm.

Except I ended up a little different. I didn't want to be in 4-H and I didn't want to spend all my time in the barn. I liked to draw. I drew my way through high school and painted my way through college. And I was good at it (I could guess this is the part where ol' Dick & Di started to second guess their "unconditional support" plan). I was so good at it that it wasn't a challenge anymore, so I figured the rest of my life would be a breeze. I wore black combat boots with miniskirts, I pulled espresso at the local coffee shop, I thought my shit didn't stink, and I wanted to learn everything I could about everything I came into contact with. I loved everyone and wanted MORE of everything. My roots were still on the farm and I think that gave me the little balance I possessed, but I soon started to run around the country looking for answers. I pushed my body daily, both at the gym and after classes. I learned that I believed in God but also in the way of the Divine. I read, respected, and adored anything I could get my hands on written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but also by Charles Bukowski, Robert Pirsig, Ken Kesey, and Richard Brautigan. I remember thinking that Benjamin Hoff's 'The Tao of Pooh' was one of the most profound books of it's time (and yes, that's Winnie the Pooh). I studied Buddhism, devoured beat poetry, worked daily on balancing my chakras, and practiced prana yoga. I LOVED to work out, I loved the body that I was in. I ate meat at that time. I recycled everything I used and frequently went to teachings or seminars being held on how to make our beautiful earth a greener place. I thought Earth Day and Arbor Day were extremely relevant holidays. I played in the mountains and meditated on the beach. When all of this caught up with me, I would restore my chi with beer. Lots of beer. I loved to party. I was good at that too...

I soon needed more answers, but I had infinite more questions. I was an art major, and a good one DAMMIT, but I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do about it. I was losing my spirit and gaining a beer belly. I graduated, moved to Boulder, CO and landed a job as the traffic manager/managing editor for a spiritual spoken-word multi-media publishing company called Sounds True. Now I had it all at my fingertips: I studied Caroline Myss and her healing archetypes, Jack Kornfield and his way to meditation, and Eckhart Tolle and finding life's purpose. I waddled my fat ass as far up the mountain as I could and prayed for God's light to show me the way. I poured myself into Rumi, Sufi, and Hafiz. I was entranced by Kamasutra (which I could use a LOT of right now) and I dated boys with stars in their eyes. I never believed in modern medicine or pharmaceutical drugs, I learned how to heal using crystals, essential oils, herbs, and homeopathic medicine. I went to Reiki sessions, hundreds of massage therapists, and the meditation bell always went off at 11am. I was writing poetry, keeping a sketch book, BUT never missing my appointments at the local tavern. Somehow, no matter how much I daydreamed about bathing in the Ganges or hanging prayer flags in the Himalayas, I still couldn't ditch the alcohol induced social life. And it soon caught up with me. My spirit wasn't flowering on the bar stool, and neither was my pocketbook. I left the only job that had given me the most incredible potential to become the person my spirit thought I was, and I came back to IL. "God's Country"................

The downward spiral had begun. I started bartending and I loved it. Being behind the bar was mindless and I got to meet everyone in town. I put down my sketchbook and my book of Rumi. The numbers on the scale started to rise even higher. I left behind the person that I wanted to be and closed my eyes, thinking that if I stopped working on finding "it", "it" certainly would have to find me. And I needed the comfort of my family to do it. I dated a number of swell enough guys, telling myself every single time that they were wonderful and perfect. Only to admit to myself much later that it would never have worked anyway because I was always hiding somewhere. They were all sweet and simple, but I had wayyyy too much going on. I didn't want them to know that I really wanted to go to Tibet someday instead of Hawaii, I didn't want to explain my theories about why we should recycle to save our planet, I just didn't want to share those inner jewels of myself. Or anything about myself actually. I thought it would be too taxing to explain who I was and what I had really done. Instead, I became a socialite. The party girl who's territory was only west of Route 47. I didn't need to think anymore, I didn't need answers and I didn't need to explain anything. Answers took too much effort. I fell into a government job at the county level and I felt the stamp on my forehead burn. I was really a number now. I had benefits. Wow. I went to the bar everyday after work. My "friends" were there and I didn't have to think about what I was doing to myself. The money sucked so I pursued my fruitful government career even further and got hired at the Division of Transportation. Ooooh, NOW I got to punch the time clock using my fingerprint. My dreams had come true.

The story is quickly getting out of hand, and OBVIOUSLY, I have left out about 99.5% of the details. We all fall into patterns and patterns quickly evolve without us even noticing. My last long term relationship left me without a home of my own and I found myself residing in Mom & Dad's Maple Park basement. It was an eye opener. Single, 34 years old, and wondering why I lost control. I poured myself into YET ANOTHER physical lifestyle change as a means of finding a little corner of my spirit again. I started working out just as often as I had before. I changed my diet and was at the gym at 5:00AM AND 4:00PM EVERY SINGLE DAY. I was working on uplifting my mind to the place where I thought I used to be. Even the drinking slowed down, a little. I went back to practicing yoga twice a week and had started talking to trainers at the gym about training for a triathlon this summer. By the second week of January 2010 I was running 3x per week, spinning 2x per week, and swimming 3x per week. Plus the yoga, plus a vegetarian diet, plus a push up and weights regimen. I was getting stronger, but my mind wasn't at ease. And I wasn't losing ANY weight. I also felt like shit.

Finally, I had enough, I wanted to excel this time so I needed to find out what was wrong with me. I went to our family doctor (momma works there and got me in at the last minute) on Thursday January 28th because I was ready to confront whatever obstacle was in my way before I continued on this rigorous training schedule. My bloating just wasn't going away and it was difficult to get into some of the yoga poses that were normally easy for me: those were my two complaints when the doctor asked me why I was there. She was concerned, unusually concerned I thought. And then she sent me to the hospital for a CT scan. Not the next day, not the next week, I was to be in radiology at the hospital in a half hour. Naturally, I was pissed because it was girls night and I was looking forward to drinking copious amounts of wine with ladies I hadn't seen in weeks. Apparently it wasn't gonna happen because I had to drink a cup of water-flavored dye and they wanted to make sure it got everywhere it needed to be so I had to sit there for an hour. Anyway, that hour turned into two, the procedure took a while and then I learned that my doctor wanted me to sit in the waiting room until my results came back. Girls night never happened.

I was wearing my fluorescent yellow/green highway maintainer winter jacket and my steel toed winter work boots. I was toasty warm as I was laying on my back taking up four chairs watching TV in the radiology waiting room, looked a little funny, but felt just fine. As I type this my blood has started to run just as cold as it did that night. It was about 9PM and the waiting room attendant informed me that a transporter with a wheelchair would be arriving any second to take me to my room and that I should probably make arrangements with my boss with regards to not showing up to work the next day. I was being admitted because "they" wanted to run more tests. My blood felt like it stopped running, my hands were cold. I thought I was just waiting to hear from my doctor. Apparently, my doctor was already waiting for me in my hospital room. As the events of Thursday January 28th, 2010 unfolded, my personality began to change. As I took my first humiliating and mandatory ride in a wheelchair down the corridors of Delnor Hospital, I was conscious of a thick wave of calm that came over me from my head down. I took off my familiar highway maintainer outfit, changed into hospital scrub pants, and sat for the first time ever in my own hospital bed. I no longer felt tough, strong, or courageous; I needed my mommy. And my daddy. With the doctor standing over me I dialed momma's number. When she answered I was surprisingly calm, not even shaking.

"Momma" I said, "I'm at Delnor. I need you to come here. They admitted me after my CT scan. They want to run lots of tests tonight. They say I probably have cancer."