A year of questioning

19

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July 15, 1998

Dear Charlie,

The last four years I’ve been on auto-pilot, following the required academic steps to live out dad’s legacy. It’s still the plan. I think. But I feel a growing restlessness—an anxious, synaptic splintering that threatens to derail me. I’ve chosen a career path to feel close to dad, but will this really bring him closer?

The summer after graduation, I moved to Boulder, Colorado to share a rental with Eric and his girlfriend Kirsten. I worked at a Montessori school and weekends at a flower shop. I prepared half-heartedly for the Medical College Admission Test and sat through the grueling exam last August but my first sips of life outside the health sciences were intoxicating. I fantasized about opening my own flower shop. I explored new career possibilities in ethnobotany. I researched early childhood education programs around the world and made a wishlist of schools to visit.

Four densely packed years of pre-medical sciences with a random sociology and dance class thrown in, I was ready to liberate my liberal arts education. As soon as I had saved enough money, I bought a one-way ticket to Europe with one goal—to travel Europe, north to south, in a year.

For the first three months, I lived in northern Scotland, working the organic gardens at Findhorn Foundation. In the 1970’s cabbages the size of basketballs grew in their sandy, nutrient-deficient soil because reportedly a woman talked to fairies. I never saw any fairies but boy, did I try. I also began meditating at sunrise with founder Eileen Caddy, falling into line with the simple routine of candle, cushion, breath. Meditation became a welcome, albeit temporary, respite from my noisy head.

I lived at a Rudolf Steiner education center for a brief stint, and now I’m at a Taoist retreat nestled in Switzerland’s Jungfrau mountains. Here, I wash bed linens and dishes in trade for room and board and continue my meditation studies with the retreat director. On my first day he looked at me and said, “Think about nothing but your feet on the ground while you’re here. That will be enough.” Probably the best advice I’ve ever received. I am a tall willow tree who thinks she’s an air plant — roots thirsty for the ground as they dangle six feet above.

On weekends, I hike mountain trails, buy blocks of goat cheese from local farms and spend quiet evenings doodling in my journal. But don’t be fooled by the serenity these scenes conjure. While the outer landscape is filled with adventure, my inner life is restless, unsatisfied, always searching. Looping thoughts poke at a pervasive sense of uncertainty. What’s my purpose? Was that a sign? What does this mean?

My questioning is obnoxiously loud under the silent, assured gaze of the Alps.

Soon, I’ll head further south. Will I ever find what I so desperately seek?

Hello? Fairies? Do you have a fax for me?

After ten months in Europe, I returned to Colorado. I aborted my travels earlier than planned because, while living at a monastery in southern France, I overheard my neighbor, a French Chinese Tibetan Buddhist monk, casually singing the John Denver tune “Take Me Home, Country Roads”—a flashing, neon arrow pointing me home. Finally! A sign! I returned home because the “universe” gave me permission.

Lulled by familiar territory, I begin researching medical schools and exploring a growing interest in naturopathy. Dad would’ve loved naturopathic school and had even planted seeds to form an alternative medicine retreat center someday. Now, you can find them everywhere, but at the time his ideas were radical, perhaps even quixotic. I am inspired by his vision.

But my body has different plans. My heart starts to race. I become ravenous, eating four, five, six meals a day, but fail to dampen the sharp cry in my gut. Anxiety pokes holes in my sleep and what little I get, I awaken in pools of sweat. When I visit mom, she’s alarmed by my dramatic weight loss and insatiable appetite and takes me to the family doctor. After some Chernobyl-esque labwork involving a radioactive pill, I am diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and Grave’s Disease—my thyroid is producing way too much hormone and my immune system is attacking it. The doc offers one option: irradiate my thyroid and supplement the hormone synthetically.

Growing up on tofu, Celestial Seasonings tea and country air, this treatment plan frightens me. So instead, I take things into my own hands. I flip through a well-loved reference guide on mom’s bookshelf, The Encyclopedia of Natural Remedies by Louise Tenney, and read about the thyroid. Louise makes it sound easy. Supplement with selenium and zinc. Fresh air and walks in the morning. Leafy greens. Brassicas. I can do this. I will fix myself.

That night, on a corner of mom’s sofa, Gray’s Anatomy, Andrew Weil, Christian Northrup and Louise Hay share my lap as I research everything I can about thyroid disease. My takeaway: hyperthyroidism can be caused by the following: allergy, liver imbalance, low adrenals, stress, genes or unresolved grief.

Wait. Did I read unresolved grief? Do I have Grave’s disease because of dad’s death? Why is my body attacking itself? I went to therapy after he died. I journaled. I still talk to him daily. If I grieve the right way or for long enough, will my thyroid heal?

I lay awake at night pleading with dad. Sweat drips disquieted thoughts down my chest. Fits of anger surface when I drop my bowl of yoghurt on the floor or when the hammock breaks and I slam into the hardwood floor. Where are you dad? Why aren’t you helping me?

A few months and too much broccoli later, I see a physician known for his non-conventional approach with patients. I’m tired of being “wired and tired.” He starts me on hormone therapy and suggests I remove gluten from my diet to address the autoimmune issue and candida overgrowth in my gut. Temporarily, my thyroid levels out. I stop sweating all the time, my heart rate normalizes. Let me remind you, this is 1998. Gluten-free diets are not a trend. This diet takes time, research and effort. My thoughts are consumed with what to consume. Once a fun, pleasurable part of existence, now meals fill me with the dread of relapse. I trade cream cheese bagels for dry rice cakes. PB&J for buckwheat mash with peanut-butter. Black licorice for anti-fungal pills. While an honest attempt to heal my thyroid, a gluten-free diet becomes my find-control-du-jour. Once upon a time, I traded pliés for Clearasil. Then Clearasil for magical thinking and meditation. And now, meditation for food hyper-vigilance and a gluten-free doughnut.

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