Soup's Ready! My Submission For Chicken Soup for the Soul

Another Bucket List Check!

As some have heard, I have been working on yet another bucket list check. From the first time I picked up my first Chicken Soup for the Soul book, I wanted to be a contributor. I love them! I finally answered a call for submissions for an upcoming volume. We are allowed to post our entries on our personal blog. Here is what they were looking for:

How stepping outside my comfort zone changed me

The deadline for submissions is JULY 31, 2022.

We all have a tendency to get in a rut. We start to say no to new things, and that can only lead to a narrower and narrower life. When we try new things, we end up feeling energized and pleased with ourselves. There is tremendous power in saying “yes” to new things, new places, and new experiences. It makes you feel more dynamic, younger, and more of a participant in the world. You’re not distancing yourself from change any more. Get ready to step outside your comfort zone!

Tell us your own stories about stepping outside your comfort zone and how that changed your life.

Here is my entry:

My long-haul truck driver dad gifted me the incurable traveling bone. He dreaded coming home to a harried wife and five kids, so he loaded us up (Grandpa, too) in the station wagon one summer. From Illinois to Pensacola and back, I felt like I had traveled to another country.

Soon thereafter, my friend Joy invited me along on their family RV vacation to Six Flags. I was hooked. My lower bunk bed with sheets hanging down on both sides became my RV, a stack of old encyclopedias and much-perused atlases, my road maps. Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants travel suited my gypsy father, and it stuck in my cap, too, and just barely hummed. Years of responsibility, and then devastating illness hushed it for a long while.

Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1999, and then lupus, scleroderma, Raynaud’s phenomenon, degenerative spine disorder, and more, I continued to work and attend college at night as a single parent until 2004. An emergency hysterectomy and a disastrous car accident changed everything.

My boss was afraid I would die in his office, so he fired me. Endless appointments with seven physicians, dozens of daily pills, weekly injections of caustic Methotrexate and monthly I.V. drips of disease-modifying, anti-rheumatic drugs had already been my reality for years. As I waited with no income for three-and-a-half years for a disability decision, my daughter Courtney left for college. I couldn’t contribute financially. My body and spirit broken, I went home to bed.

There, I researched both traditional and non-traditional remedies, eventually learning the practices of Reiki energy healing and meditation. I changed my diet. Shortly before my son Jon graduated, I slowly began reducing my medications without telling my doctors. Friends walked beside me as I built back muscle in atrophied legs. As tennies slapped pavement, something started to hum in the background. I thought it was cicadas or tree frogs. Friends heard the creature-noises, but they didn’t hear the hum.

It was faint at first, but I have super sharp hearing. A distant rattle, a vibration, a voice on the wind that whispered that there might be something more. It said, if you don't go now, you might not ever have the chance. Might not have the chance, it echoed, sadly, but you could trade bed life for what is behind door number two, if you are brave enough.

I chose door number two. I was struggling to make ends meet. I read about living a nomadic life, in a van. I was intrigued. I decided I would rather die rolling than in that bed. I summoned up my courage and took off on my biggest adventure to date, the life of a vandweller. Nine years later, I can say that the original story line took a few sharp but necessary detours, for my own good.

In 2015, two-and-a-half years into my big adventure, my rat terrier pup, Liberty, and I attended the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, a yearly nomadic gathering held in the desert near Quartzsite, Arizona. On the last morning of the gathering, a friend insisted that I shake fanny out of warm bedroll to meet a man who was purported to be “exactly” like me. With zero interest in romance, I balked. I was told he had coffee on the perk and would be leaving shortly thereafter. I agreed.

Dan was a friendly, but guarded part-time vandweller. Close to retirement, he was growing his big fro freak flag, a mass of blonde, mad-scientist curls under a well-worn, brown leather, Minnetonka hat in preparation for his upcoming flight to freedom. He had a matching, blue-eyed blonde coyote mix named Layla and a beige, G20 van. He seemed “married” to me but wasn’t. We were already virtually acquainted, so it was nice to put a face to a Facebook name.

After a pleasant conversation we stood stiffly beside each other, him with his arms around me in a polite side hug, and me, squinting into the glaring desert sunlight with Liberty in my arms. Healing from a fractured wrist, I was wearing a hard splint, but otherwise, showed no signs of illness or disability, as usual.

He rode off, back to his job in Kentucky, and Liberty and I hopped in my van and went off to chase the sun. A year went by, and Dan and I talked now and then. After helping someone through a medical emergency and neglecting my own health, I was stopped due to a lupus flare. Dan became my sounding board, gently reminding me that I couldn’t keep saving the world. I listened. We began to see each other through new eyes.

The truth is, I am not always well enough to roll freely about the country. I was wrestling with fever, fatigue, joint pain, and full-body hives at my friend Donna’s place in Arlington, Texas. Dan had plans to come to East Texas to see family for Thanksgiving, 40 miles from Donna's. After an 800-mile, 12-hour drive, he would have three days to visit. Instead, I offered to stop by on my way to Florida, because Kentucky is on the way to Florida, coming from Texas. (wink, wink)

I came, I saw, I fell madly in love. Within days, we packed up his van and fled south, enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with 30 of his family members in Florida instead. Clamshells of leftovers on the beach and the full moon over the Atlantic Ocean at St Augustine that evening sealed the bid. It was true. We were cut from the same cloth and flowed like honey.

We spent December and January in Florida together, using up the last of his vacation days. We each learned to love and be loved properly, finally. Then, a disc ruptured in my back. I was given a 50% chance of walking after surgery. I gave him the out. I didn’t want to slow him down. He said, “We will add a wheelchair ramp if need be, but if I go, you go.” My heart fully melted. I recovered, and away we went.

I realize now that the hum was the sound of wheels spinning smoothly on pavement. It was the ocean breeze on the farthest shore, the call of the hawk on the highest mountain. It was the sound of my soul settling into its most appropriate spot, which was not a place, but a feeling.

Over six years have passed since I stopped by Dan’s place for a quick visit. With our pups and repurposed community center transport van, we have traveled the country from coast to coast many times. In 2018, we were married.

This journey has been a defiant pushback against serious chronic illnesses that left me bed-bound for years, and sometimes still do. Making the choice to put wheels to pavement, share a cup of coffee with a stranger, and to ease on down the road, come what may, has made me resilient, resourceful, and open to change. Learning to live anyway, no matter where I am, has been the result of daily acts of bravery. Maybe the hum was the sound of two hearts entwining, or the bliss of two adventurers settling into jump seats and leaping into life, hand in hand.

I am not sure if this will be the actual cover, but one is allowed to download a cover from their website. I am excited at the possibility of my story being chosen! It may be months before I hear anything.

Thanks to all who listened to me whine as I worked to etch a huge story into 1200 teeny tiny words. I am proud to say that I sent it off early and got notice that it was received. Yipppeeeeee!! Now we wait.

Yes, soup for you!

Warmest wishes and tasty dishes,

Brenda Cordray

“The Desert Rose”

Buy Me a Coffee!