Re-opening Vardo For Two

Comings and goings

Many things have happened since I began blogging in 2008: blogs and bloggers have come and gone, I have a lot more gray hair today, and my love affair with blogging has grown to epic proportions. I've learned a lot about blogging and opened and shut dozens of them (really!) Vardo For Two was the first blog I started. It started as a way to chronicle the process of building a two wheeled moveable Gypsy-style home that was 'safe enough for us.' We needed to invest in the belief that we could rebuild our lives after I became increasingly ill from multiple chemical sensitivities and could no longer live, or be, in most enclosed spaces (houses were a no-go!) We, my husband Pete and I were part of the early stages of the Tiny Home enthusiasm thanks in part to Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny Homes fame. We drove to California in the fall of 2007, met and participated in one of Shafer's first workshops and as they say in the Twelve Step Rooms "took what we liked and left the rest." Vardo For Two did become the record-keeping journal of the process and the experiences of two old dears investing in a new beginning.


I closed this blog in 2011 when I felt the details of our lives and the direction of my healing was leading to new ground. I was healing. I was getting better, and at the time I believed it best to close the blog; leave diasposa and struggle behind. If I didn't call myself "ill" and retell the story of being so my brain would be retrained and recovering my health would come. I believed that. I don't believe it all the time today, and so I'm retracing old ground. The details and review of VardoForTwo, so much effort pictured in these blog pages, led me to believe  others could be helped. We offered lots of help, but found that few people would pay for our help even when we asked. Resentment built in. There's really not enough time to live with resentment.

Route 66

I turned 66 a couple weeks ago, and have begun what I'm calling My personal Route 66. The signposts and destinations for this journey aren't on a map, and it seems I need to reopen certain doors in order to move more surely forward. The quirky thing about this door opening thing is in the description to Vardo For Two "Stories Five Years Later ... life on the borders where myth-making and magic are the remedy" What does that mean? It means that sometimes the life you rebuild is one that becomes infused with the magic of myth that space and place that is no longer logical and uni-brain rational. The life rebuilt for me is one that does not re-enter the world at all the same way before I was homeless. It is a life that grows from the medicine of stories that are mythic and metaphors, whimsical and deeply connected with ancient Earth-based practices. Vardo For Two both the blog and the two wheeled moveable Gypsy-style safe place is a border crossing world from which I notice Nature at her unadulterated and live from that place.

Five years later ... myth and magic the remedies

"Stories Five Years Later ..." reopens the blog Vardo For Two so the process of rebuilding two lives might serve as a place for others to do a similar thing. It's very possible many many people will be doing that in this century. The stories that came before 2013 are true for us. The process and materials we used then are still working for us five years later. What has changed are the links to sites and resources on this blog, I'll be cleaning them up as best I can in the days to come.

The stories that I write and link to from this point forward are equally true. They are the mythic memoirs of an old woman who has found her ancestry of birds and storyteller. Both genealogies allow me to live on the borders where truth and lies become myth. Anyone who has rebuilt her life will tell you the process is out of this world. With the reopening of Vardo For Two I feel it's important to share the medicine stories living forward with magic. Maybe the journey and purpose all along was: forget what no longer works and find the magic that does.

Rima Staines, a sister traveller, storyteller and artist says if you don't look for magic you will never find it. I believe her.