WHY I RIDE

"when i ride, all the chaos and noise in my head disappears and a calm settles upon me and i find total peace. on my bike i am liberated from the pathogens that wreak havoc on my body and my mind. my bike keeps me grounded yet makes me fly." ~s.

i ride because mountain biking is helping to heal me - mind, body, soul. that is the condensed version...however, the reasons behind riding are multi-faceted. i began writing this 'why i ride' piece several weeks ago. in the course of hammering out my thoughts on riding it morphed into 4 separate pieces on mountain biking. (all of which i'll be posting at some point.)

turns out there are many reasons that i ride. what led me to downhill/enduro riding is the anxiety disorder i have because of the post-strep auto-immune illness i developed in spring of 2014. (read about it here - this is my brave)

here's the thing... the strep thing and resulting mental health issues it caused - broke me mind, body, soul. it shattered my faith. it is something i am still grappling to come to terms with. there is something about being tossed over the edge sanity and plummeting into a rabbit hole of inescapable terror that unmercifully rips you apart and strips you to the core of your naked humanity. 

being blind-sided by intrusive thoughts that come out of thin air and are then accompanied by compulsions to follow through on is a terror i still can't quite find the words to explain. 

Riding is a flight from sadness...it also clears the head as does the hubster's photog skillz

anxiety is a mind trip and it tears down the core of who you are and what you believe yourself to be. at least it did for me. it made me feel weak. useless. unworthy. cowardly. ashamed. i blamed myself for it. i thought i sucked for not being able to suck it up. and i was pretty sure everyone around me thought so too. 

while i am a true, solidly INFJ introvert who needs copious amounts of alone time, being social is something i have always enjoyed. i like people. i like parties. i give speeches. i bare my soul on the internet. so to suddenly live in fear of social interactions has been confounding. painful. isolating. destructive. demoralizing. social anxiety makes you ruminate over every conversation until the words of it - of what you should have said and the dumb things you did say - swirl though your head as a mind-bending tornado of cascading self-doubt and self-hate. 

living with all-consuming fears and a sense of impending doom that i could identify as irrational but still become completely consumed by (despite using all sorts of psychological tools to combat it and prayerfully & fervently pleading for deliverance from it) left me feeling fatally flawed and spiritually defective. 


so that is bit of an insight into my brain on strep... 

i've worked hard in therapy to heal from that and to overcome the residual anxiety that lingers... and the resulting emotional fall out that comes from having your brain, body and life hijacked by multiple chronic, invisible illnesses. i've put in hours and hours and hours of extensive brain re-wiring, trauma work and many other methodologies of healing body, mind and soul - (there are several fundamental processes - as related to lyme -  that i have struggled to integrate as well...but more details about that another day) and they have all been valuable tools in my recovery but no matter how hard i've worked at it, i've struggled with putting the pieces of myself back together and finding peace...until i started biking.

i started single-track trail riding just shortly after my strep diagnosis in spring 2014. when the hubster (who as been riding for his entire life) suggested we try downhill at silver star bike park in vernon, bc this past summer (2015), i was not so sure about that. i googled it. ack. it looked pretty extreme and scary to me...and about the last thing i wanted to do was expose myself to any sort of fear stimulus. after all, i was recovering from another bout of strep throat that had caused a relapse of intense neuro-psych symptoms. i had already been on antibiotic treatment for a few weeks by that time which had brought the worst of the symptoms down to a dull roar but i was still contending with a higher than normal level of anxiety and intrusive, cycling thoughts. i really enjoyed single-track and knew it helped alleviate some of the chaos in my brain but downhill was a whole other world of biking. somehow the thought of barreling down a mountain on 2 wheels didn't seem exactly like a calming activity but i sure as hek did NOT want to get left behind. i knew that would mean spending the day alone with my endless, cycling thoughts. nope. nada. not going to happen. 

i figured being left on my own was scarier than anything any mountain could throw at me.

Up, up and away...on the chair lift at silver star

here's the bottom line:

when your brain is on fire seeking relief over-rides everything...even the physical limitations that lyme holds over my body and the fear of fear itself can motivate you to try something you never in a million years would have tried before ...and maybe that is the silver lining in all of this. after all, fear is what brought me to silver star mountain that day. and that day was a revolutionary, life-changing day for me and it also birthed in me an absolute passion for riding.

you would think that barreling down a mountain as fast as i can go, riding over logs, dropping off of rocks, sling-shooting out of berms and getting airborne would contribute to anxiety but for me it does the opposite. 

riding is my ativan. it is the ONLY thing that relieves my anxiety.

on that first downhill adventure i rode for 6 hours. i took jumps. i did drops. i rode blue. i rode black. i rode as fast as i could go. i hung on for dear life. i had unintentional dismounts. i even face planted. let's be honest - i looked ridiculous...but what i lacked in technique and skill, i made up for with loud enthusiasm.

My first downhill adventure. lol.
i was not trying to look like a flying bandit - the bandana was to help keep the dust out of my face

i whooped. i hollered. i laughed with unbridled joy after every.single.run. just recalling it makes me giddy. my unadulterated enthusiasm totally embarrassed the hubster and sparky but i didn't care... because i had no fear. no anxiety. no cycling thoughts. all the noise in my head just ceased to be. i was free and that was intoxicating.

i was fully present and fully free for the first time in a very long time. i felt strong. wild. free. brave. fierce. capable. independent. happy. bad-ass. i felt all the things i thought i no longer was. and that changed me.

i ride because riding brought me back to me.  

THE HAT STORY

hats. specs. thrift. these are a few of my favorite things! (bikes too, but that's a whole other story and crows! and coffee!)

if you've been a blog reader for awhile now, you probably know of my love for finding bargains at retail stores - my long standing faves being ross dress-for-less and target. even though most of my blog is about our family's journey with lyme, i've  been known to write about some of my ross shopping adventures. (read about my travelling pants adventure here). despite my honed bargain shopping skills even these stores now exceed our tight budget... so for the past 2 years, i have tried to exclusively shop at thrift stores. no more ross or target for me! (mind blowing, i know!) 

there are a few retail exceptions though... Zenni Optical for my specs, Forever 21 & Ardene for funky jewelry...and then there is this hat i recently bought from the hudson bay company. however, it was sort of a thrifty purchase as i did use a gift certificate to help purchase it. i found the gift certificate in a dresser i inherited from my nana (grandma) many years ago!

my nana's dresser

 the gift certificate was from 1995... which, in my daughter's opinion, makes it so old it's practically vintage. lol. indeed, it was so old that i was actually worried about trying to purchase the hat with it. in fact, it took me nearly two weeks from the time i saw the hat in the store until i went back and purchased it. 

i currently live with a social anxiety disorder that has been triggered by a post-strep autoimmune illness. (read "this is my brave" here), so going into a store and making a purchase can produce anxiety for me. add to that, a vintage gift certificate that may or may not still be valid and i was worried i'd get arrested or questioned - like they'd somehow think i was printing fake vintage gift certificates! i know it's so irrational but these are the types of thoughts that were running through my mind.

yet, the hat was calling my name! i was imagining all the looks i could create with it and the bonus of not having to spend time and energy on styling my hair, well, the allure of that finally trumped my quirky anxiety. 

off i went to the bay. before going though, i took the time to do my hair and create a look that i hoped made me look trustworthy and un-scammer like. when i finally showed up at the cash register, i nervously presented my gift certificate and breathlessly murmured, "i have this gift certificate. i have noooooo (insert high pitched squeak) idea if its still valid."

the sales lady took it from my shaking hand. she lifted it to the light and inspected it. then she asked the clerk next to her if she'd ever seen anything like it.

i tried my best to look nonchalant and legit. 

then the other clerk said, "oh i've never seen anything like that. you need to call management and have them come take a look."

i nearly vomited.

5 heart stopping minutes passed before the manager appeared. i could feel my heart pounding in my throat as i saw her approach. the first sales clerk waved the certificate under her nose. 

"what do you make of this? have you ever seen one of these?"


the manager grabbed the certificate and turned it over and over and over in her hands. then she held it up to the light.

i suddenly felt woozy. fearing i may topple over, i grabbed at the counter to steady myself. in doing so, i dropped my purse which clattered noisily to the floor. the manager's eyeballs left the certificate and gave me and the purse at my feet an appraising once over. then she returned her gaze to my face with one eyebrow raised.  i stopped breathing. i knew with absolute certainty she was sizing me up as a counterfeiter.

then she exclaimed, "oh wow! i haven't see one of these in 20 YEARS!"

it took me a full minute to start breathing again. 

then she called over another manager. and they began excitedly exclaiming over my gift certificate and they wanted to hear where on earth i'd found it! so i started to tell them my story. before i knew it, there was a total of 4 sales clerks and two elderly customers milling around and listening to my story. then suddenly everyone was reminiscing about the good old glory days of the hudson bay company.

oh my word. it was a total hoot but by the end of it all, i was more than happy to pull that hat on low over my brows and flee the store. no more retail for me. 

there's a bit more i'd like to add to this little hat story...as my love of hats has been born out of suffering. i wasn't a hat person until i became profoundly ill with neurological Lyme Disease 10 years ago.

during my sickest years, hats became a way for me to still feel styled & put together when my body was falling apart. being someone who finds creative inspiration & joy from putting looks together this was important to me. in essence, hats helped me feel like me when the symptoms of Chronic Lyme left me with a body that felt foreign, uncomfortable & unrecognizable.

more thoughts on hats, thrifting, chronic illness (& biking) coming to my blog soon. as well as an update about the LDI/LDA Immunotherapy that sparky and i have been undergoing for almost a year now. (i've had a number of inquiries about this specific treatment and i'm sorry the update is taking so long!) 

i'm beginning to write again and it feels good. really good. yet, as good as it feels to be able to start blogging again, i have to admit, i am still having FB anxiety. psshtt! this social anxiety thing is a real beast to contend with but i am just allowing myself to be okay with that. having never been anxiety prone, it's weird to suddenly live with it but that is just the way it is right now. i am wanting to be as real about it as i can and not not feel silly or less than or beat myself up over it. that's just where things are at for me. 

FB weirdness aside, i have recently activated both mine and our dog harrison's instagram accounts again. (as if posting as a dog isn't weird or anything.) i am comfortable hanging out on there and am enjoying creating mini posts. i don't always feel that what i post there is blog 'worthy' so please feel free to find me on instagram under @ticksandtrust. and the dog can be found @worldaccordingtoharrison

thanks for reading my little hat story!

LEAN IN & LOVE EACH OTHER

our pastor and his family lost their dog, ringo star, last week. his life cut short by sudden illness. (sharing with their permission)

their dog was one of a kind. even harrison agrees with that. we are fairly new to the church but i think it is safe to say that ringo was the "church's dog". he was often at the front door, greeting folks each sunday morning.

upon learning of his passing, my girl wept and wept and wept. i held her and as my shirt grew wet under the weight of her grief, my own tears slipped out to fall silent on her head pressed tight in to my chest. 

grief is hard. there are often really no words. the best thing we can do is just lean in and love each other.

so my girl, she leaned in to me and i just held her. and i ached for her and for this precious family who just lost their one of a kind fur member.

tears slip down my cheeks as i write this now. and i'm finding i have to pause now and then and wait until i can see the screen thru the blurring of my tears. i've asked the hubster if it is weird that i feel compelled to blog about this - but this post, well, it sorta just effortlessly tumbled into my brain as i lay awake last nite. the thoughts were still with me this morning, so i sat down to type them out. it isn't often that my writing comes easy, so i've decided to just go with it. maybe it is a little melodramatic to be so emotional about the loss of a dog that i have only known for a little time. but melodramatic or not,  that is me. i am a feeling person. i feel things really intensely. it is hard to be a feeling person. really hard. i ache for my tender-hearted girl because she inherited her momster's super ultra sensitive gene. at 41, i'm still learning to live with a heart that bruises and bleeds easily... and be okay with that. and not be scared of raising a girl that has one too. and not try to toughen us up. but rather learn to embrace these tender hearts that God has entrusted us with. after all, there is a purpose and plan in how and why he creates each of us.

i didn't want to tell avery about ringo. i knew her tender heart would break and break hard. i wanted to spare her the sorrow but i knew that i could trust God to be with her in her sorrow

after all, isn't that what Christmas is about?
Emmanuel.
God with us.
in our sorrow.
in our pain.
in our world.

as i tucked avery into bed last nite, her pillow was once again wet with fresh shed tears. and i knew her heart was busting up inside her. she lay on her side, tears trickling out from behind tightly shut eyelids. as i stroked her head, she sputtered,

"ringo was my first friend at reality church."

"oh baby girl." i leaned in and kissed her furrowed brow and wished that i could ease her pain. and i found myself welling up again too.

and it got me thinking about my first time meeting ringo...and how when we started at this new-to-us church, i was still very much dealing with active PANDAS symptoms...(read about PANDAS at "This is my brave" post.) getting the diagnosis just a few short weeks after we began attending reality church. this, after a 9 month journey that had quite frankly taken me to hell and back. i had lost a lot of myself during my decent into madness and in the process, my self esteem had been obliterated. i was (am) in the process of healing and rebuilding my damaged brain. some of me is changed - and i was trying to figure out this new me and learn to live with those changes. among the multiple brain issues caused by the pandas, i was suffering with a major social anxiety disorder. and having full blown panic attacks in church. 
just ask the hubster. 

and i didn't want people to know i was sick....whether it be about the pandas or the lyme - not because i was ashamed but because i have lived with the 'sick girl' label for 8 years now. and i wanted to shake it because sick scares people. 

yet, at the same time, i felt like i should come with a warning label. after all, we weren't just 'attending' a new church - the hubster had been approached by church leadership and asked to help run the church youth group. even tho', we very strongly felt that God's calling was upon our lives and that he had led us to this ministry opportunity at reality, i still felt very broken and like i was a total mess.

"i think you should tell them i am defective." i wailed to the hubster on more than one occasion.

after all, i figured it wouldn't take long for them to figure that out. like, that graham guy is great but is wife, well, woowee me, she's a hot mess.

yet, every sunday, despite sweating and fretting my way thru each service and struggling to focus - the message preached came across loud and clear. about truth, love, and grace. boundless grace. amazing grace. Jesus' grace. and even tho' my brain was still misfiring and riddled with anxiety, i could see that grace and feel it lived out by the people around me. and somehow i knew, God had us exactly where we needed to be.

"But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end." Rom 5:21 (MSG)

all is grace. 
Jesus is grace.
i could feel it in that place.

then enter ringo.

he was a big dog. his head was waist level on me. he would just sidle up to you and press his head into your side. then he would turn his big brown eyes up to you and LEAN in to you. hard. he LEANED IN HARD and without hesitation.

and that leaning in thing? it made you feel special and loved and like somehow you were the one person in the world that he was choosing to lean in to. 

we could all use a little bit of ringo in our lives. i don't mean walk up to someone and press your head into their waist. no. that would be weird. and awkward. there are some things that are only appropriate for a dog to do.

i'm talking about just bravely leaning in and loving each other right where we are at, right in the midst of our broken, messy lives, because the grace of Jesus is more than enough to cover it all. because we all NEED to feel loved and special because every single one of us IS loved and special - its just that life can make it hard to remember that sometimes. 

so, thanks ringo, thanks for leaning in and loving on me and my girl. and the many folks at reality church. thanks for being such a stellar church dog.

peace out, big guy. 

and thanks Jesus for using ringo to remind us how something as simple as leaning in to people right where they are at can make them feel special and loved.

and thanks Jesus for being the ultimate example of leaning in and loving people right where they are at. thanks for coming head long into a dank, dark and musty stable in order to lean in to our pain, our sorrow and our messiness.

because that is just awesome and awe-inspiring.

Emmanuel. God with us. 
Let us lean in and love each other without hesitation. 
All is grace.

POSTSCRIPT:
i wrote this post last week but delayed posting it until my pastor and family could have the opportunity to read it and give me their blessing to publish it. here's the thing...at the time i wrote it, i had no idea that (literally) within hours of writing, i would be heading into a pandas relapse. the official relapse diagnosis coming 2 days later - after a positive test result for acute strep infection.

my lyme docs have caught it quickly this time and i am already undergoing treatment for it. i am thankful that it has been caught early and we are hopeful that this attack will be mild...but it is still scary to live in "PANDAS land" again. i am also sick with a bacterial lung infection which is complicating matters.

so, this is not so awesome at all but what IS awesome is the outpouring of love and support i am experiencing since sharing news of my relapse. who would have thought that the very thing that this post became about - leaning in and loving each other - is the very thing that i would be in need of within 72 hours of writing about it.

but God knew.
He's leaning in to us. all the time.
even before we know we will be in need of it.
His love never fails.

Emmanuel.
God IS with US. without hesitation.

so thank you for leaning in and loving me.
your prayers and expressed thoughts have been a great comfort and encouragement to me.

and
please lean in and love on my pastor and his family thru their season of grief. remember, the miracle of leaning in is that it doesn't require speech to be effective and you don't need to know the right words to say to bring comfort... after all, ringo never spoke, not a word...but his leaning in to you, well, it spoke volumes. 

THESE TWO THINGS

i have spent the last 3 months in a desperate and lonely struggle for my body and mind. it is as if the ground opened up and swallowed me whole...and i have had no desire, inclination or ability to claw my way out of the pit. and i'm not out of it yet. not.even.close.

there have been no postings since november 4 because it has been bad. very bad. it all got a lot worse immediately following that last post.

it all just feels impossible to explain.

november and december passed by in a blur 
both sparky and i came down with pneumonia
that stretched on for 6 weeks

followed closely 
by a 4 week bout of strep 

my tremor and twitching attacks that i blogged about in my last post (started in october) are still ongoing
and
so is the never ending bouts of daily vomiting.

the bout of pneumonia exacerbated and significantly increased my vomiting and even though the pneumonia has now resolved, the vomiting has not decreased.

there appears to be no end in sight. 

my medical team is trying to figure it all out.

i have lost 11 pounds. i have adrenal and thyroid issues, soaring ACTH levels, hypoglycemia, anemia, blistering sores and rashes, hormonal imbalances, sound sensitivity, head pressure, nerve pain, insomnia, nausea, nutritional deficiencies, anxiety and panic attacks
and
the dog is pooping out my hair.

say what?

the dog is pooping out my hair.
yes. you read that correctly.

(my hair began its mass exodus in december. every where i go, i leave a trail of it behind me. the dog is swiffer-like and is always tailing me...you can use your imagination to fill in the rest of the details.)

like i said its all sort of unexplainable.

that's not even the worst of it
that's just the tip of the iceberg
but 
i don't currently have the words or the where with all to explain what lies submerged beneath the icy surface

to see me no one would ever know all that is going on
which complicates matters.
i look fine
maybe a bit thinner
but 
more or less, i look healthy

and
that just makes everything all the more difficult to explain

so i don't even try to explain it anymore

unless someone knows what to look for or sincerely wants to see it, i am invisible and so is my pain and struggle. and i suspect i'm not the only one who feels that way.
in fact, i am acutely aware that there are others that are hurting and fighting their own private battles. 

this week, i came across two things 
and i felt compelled to share them.

so i am crawling out of my cave of the unexplainable to share them.

the first is this letter that my daughter avery penned a few years back

and
the second is a post that was penned by my friend and fellow blogger, Michelle at My Lyme Symphony. reading it left me blessed me and weeping all in one breath. 

Please visit Michelle's blog, My Lyme Symphony to read the entire post.

Here's an excerpt from Michelle's post, to get you started - 

I understand you.

I understand the depth of what you go through. I understand the undercurrent of emotions. I understand that you've lost so much along the way. I understand not everybody can see it.

I understand how very different life is now. I understand your uncertainty. I understand those moments of despair. I understand the limitations and how frustrating they are. I understand the loneliness. I understand the brokenness. I understand the words that are often left unspoken.

click here to go directly to the rest of her post

may each of you somehow find comfort and peace amid the heartaches and heaviness in your life.