One year ago today, our family set off on an extraordinary bus trip in search of Wide Wonder.

In part, our travel was a way that Tim and I could extend our mental health advocacy efforts by traveling the country to talk about mental illness and addiction and help make such discussion become a part of an everyday conversation. With the help of our sponsor, Eating Recovery Center and Insight Behavioral Health, we completed over 20 events where we shared ways to end the stigma surrounding mental health and addiction.

However, this was not the full story of why we sold our home, converted a school bus and traveled the country. We did it for personal and family growth too. “46 percent of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their life, and half of those people will develop conditions by the age of 14.” Anxiety being the most common mental health issue. Women are twice as likely to be affected as men.

Although I have been a mental health advocate for years about the recovery from eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, I was struggling with anxiety that felt as if it was getting worse—even after all these years in recovery. I needed to find a way to raise my middle finger to anxiety, and reclaim the life I knew I was born to live. The bus trip would end up being one big exposure response prevention (ERP,) a behavioral therapy that has one exposing oneself to the very fears that crippled them.

For me, it was the fear of losing control, that I would later find, I could only recover from by letting go. 2019 was a road trip in a converted school bus, back to self. Thank you, Universe. Thank you, my darling, Tim. Thank you, Eating Recovery Center. And thank you, to our beautiful beast of a bus

Recovery is possible.