“Awaken! Stay awake! Rise out of the depths of the underworld!” — The Secret Book of John
After a decade of steady weirdo fashion humor, you might (not have) noticed that I haven’t Cheeped in a year and a half. Because I almost died. Then wandered, dead-inside, through the sick-hued Valley of the Shadow of Death for over a year. So it’s not super funny. And I don’t really know how to explain it still, except in lyrics and verses.
It was spiritual and it was mental and it was existential. It was the worst of times. I have had so, so many bad times, but this went beyond even my most depressive imaginings.
“How long baby have I been away?
It feels like ages, though you say it’s only days.
There ain’t language for the things I’ve seen.
The truth is stranger than my own worst dreams.
The truth is stranger than all my dreams.”
— Lord Huron “Meet Me in the Woods”
The year before it all went down, I gradually lost my appetite and my sleep and my hair. It feels like losing what makes you human. All that fire inside. All those outward signs of life. Flaming out.
Then I lost my mind. Locked up for five days without human contact deep in possession or psychosis, whatever your worldview allows:
“I took a little journey to the unknown
And I’ve come back changed. I can feel it in my bones.
I fucked with forces that our eyes can’t see.
Now the darkness got a hold on me.
Oh the darkness got a hold on me.”
— Lord Huron “Meet Me in the Woods”
That’s when I lost all trust in myself. Then I lost my heart and soul and guts and nerve. Everything but my raw nerve endings.
My parents and closest friends refused to give up on me. Or even judge me. (I was…extreeemmmmeeely not fun to be around.) They showed me what unconditional love is. They showed me what faith is. They showed me who God really is. They saved my life and my soul.
When I was a child, I had a wooden oval painted with a sheep and shepherd and Psalm 23:4 on it hanging in my bedroom.
“Even though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
I will fear no Evil
For You are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Lo, how I made sacrilegious jokes about that rod and staff bit as an adult. “Ohhh, comfort me, Big Daddy.” But after I actually walked through that Valley, I finally got it. I was the lost sheep in the wilderness. God found me in the utter darkness, put me on his shoulders, and took me home.
My best friend Amanda Peacher — who kept me going almost hourly, guiding my way every day when I could not fathom anything but bleakness ahead — lives in Vienna, Austria now. It’s a miracle I’m here. Especially high up in the Alps, hiking from unreal mountain hut to unreal mountain hut. Among the living and the free.
“We can all be saved by a secret blooming.” — “The Strength of Fields,” James Dickey
Band of Gypsies floral jumpsuit, $6 – ReStyle thrift store | Pink polka dot silk scarf, gift from Danielle Cheatle – Singapore (if I had my life to do over again I would start a Patagonia-style outdoor brand based on silk fabric. It is the IDEAL outdoor fabric and I seem to be the only one showing this off out there) | Minnetonka native print moccasins, $7 – Idaho Youth Ranch
Cheep it ’til you rise again. And again. And again.
I found these frankly gut-wrenching photos on my camera from Jan. 2025. My last photoshoot before this one. There is no light in those eyes. And if that’s a goal weight, I don’t want it. That poor, poor girl. She had a long road ahead. But she had angels all around her.
