When you're young and learning the letters of the alphabet, anything that starts with the same letter as your name becomes really special. Well, ever since I was a child and saw a Winnebago RV with the giant "W" on the side, I've been enchanted with the idea of one day owning one and traveling the world (at that age, I didn't realize I'd have to cross oceans to see everything).

If you've been following us for a while, you'll know that I was bringing that vision to life. It took years of convincing, but Jim was finally ready for such an adventure and together we began making plans. For more than two years we've been preparing to tour the country, while teaching about raw foods along the way. Our lives changed so dramatically when we found a way to heal our bodies (and more), a way that can also help others, and we just couldn't sit still. We feel called to spread the word about the raw food diet so others can at least hear that there's another way, that there's something different to try in their quest for health. I knew that crossing the country in an RV, planting the seeds about a raw food diet along the way, would be an efficient way of spreading the word.

All my life I've been studying about nutrition and health. Had I known the facts about how one can heal with a raw food diet, I would have become healthier at a younger age. KDcat would have been raised on a raw food diet, rather than a cooked vegan one. The pain, severe depression, helplessness, and much more that I felt would have all faded sooner had I been exposed to raw food information. I feel compelled to help others who are in the same state I was in before adopting a raw food lifestyle. What better way to do so than to meet people in person, allow them to feel how vibrantly alive I am, to hear from me first-hand about the healing that my body was able to do by simply not cooking my food anymore ! With Jim there beside me, sharing his own transformation story, imagine the lives we could touch -- the sparks of hope that could be ignited!

A lot had to go into bringing such a vision to life. Our entire way of living needed to change, and we needed KDcat to understand that the drastic changes we were going to be making would eventually bring about a happier life for her. We went to work on the hurdles that were easier to manage than convincing a child that leaving the only home she has ever known is a good thing. The biggest hurdle was our budget, which had no room for purchasing an RV or quitting our primary source of income. So, we started minimizing expenses, paying off our debt, donating unused household items, and selling off possessions that would no longer serve us in the future. We put money and time into reparing miscellaneous things throughout our home so we could sell it and use the equity for the tour and also for settling down in a location that is more in-line with our new lifestyle.

Everything was moving along well with the plan. Our vision was shaped and a logo was created for the tour, our debt was paid off, and KDcat finally accepted that the trip was going to happen. She wasn't thrilled about it, but we promised she'd be settled in a wonderful new location by the time she was old enough to begin ninth grade. She's unschooled, but she had been contemplating joining an alternative-type school so that she could be with other teens on a more regular basis.

We travelled in and out of Pennsylvania for a few months, visiting some RV dealerships, looking at different RV models (Winnebagos don't have the big "W" on the side anymore, so we were open to other manufacturers *wink*). We finally settled on an RV that has bunk beds for KDcat to use (so she has a small area to call her own) and enough counter space for our raw food appliances. Then we started the negotiation process -- looking for the best deal on the model that fit our needs.

All the while, our home has been up for sale. We created a fun web site to market the house: TheLuckHouse.com, and hired a realtor who was supposedly the best sales agent in our area. Well, after six months of only three individuals coming to see the house (who saw ads that we placed on the Net), we ended our contract with the realtor. We began marketing the house even more, pulling in a lot of interest. However, even though we've been showing the house to many individuals, it still hasn't sold. We've lowered the price by $10K, now making it the best home in the price range, while also being the cheapest home when compared to similar ones. And... we wait.

The problem has been the waiting. At first the waiting wasn't so difficult. We continued to declutter and make the house even more beautiful. As time went by, however, I began to feel slightly depressed. Here I was ready to follow my passion, to help others in a way that I wished someone would have helped me years ago, and I was stuck here -- held back from living my life's mission. That's what it seemed like to me, anyway, and as the months went by I found myself feeling less and less excited about life. There's nothing worse than sprouting the most beautiful wings only to find that you're living in a cage and can never fully use them, right?

Depression can be difficult to deal with, difficult to overcome. It's as though the darkness feeds on itself, in a way, making what was already dark become even darker. What's beautiful about the raw food lifestyle, however, is that there is so much life, so much energy and vitality in the foods that are eaten. That life and energy, I'm convinced, keeps the darkness from fully consuming the body, mind, spirit, and emotions. I was fully aware of my mild depression, conscious of how I was feeling and what it was doing to me. So, I asked myself what I could do to pull myself out of it. I questioned what I could do to make things less depressing as I waited for the house to sell.

Fun. That's what was missing. In all this waiting, I wasn't actively participating in life in a fun way. So, I started to come up with little ideas of things to do that would allow me to still enjoy my life, so that I wouldn't feel I was constantly on hold waiting for my next big adventure in life to finally begin.

That's when I realized something critical, something I would have seen much sooner had my life not been clouded over with mild depression. What I realized was that I wasn't the only one feeling the stress of living a life on hold. What had the past two years been doing to KDcat? For the first year she struggled with the fact that we'd be moving away, but moreso with the fact that we'd be living in an RV for about seven months as we slowly crossed the country. We planned some fun things for the tour that helped ease her mind about the trip, things that were specifically suited to her needs and desires. After about a year, she was ready for the trip. She never fully liked the idea, but the plans we made for her were thrilling enough to make it somewhat enjoyable to be with her family on their cross-country raw foods tour.

But this last year has been as hard on her as it has been on me. She packed up just about everything she loves, preparing for the trip. She donated items from her childhood, organized her room and office area in ways that would make it easy to just pick up and move into the RV. She stopped signing up for homeschool classes because she didn't want to meet new people that she'd one day move away from, and she started to feel lonely. She had told her friends that she'd be moving and some of them started distancing themselves. Jim and I saw all of this taking place, but we thought the trip would be starting soon and that everything would be okay.

Well, everything's not okay because we didn't leave soon. We've been finding ways to have fun, now that we realize we were living on hold for so long. But the biggest problem is that we promised KDcat that she'd be settled in a new location by this September. We won't ask her to put another year on hold for us to do this cross-country raw food tour, even though it would be an enriching experience for her. She's fourteen years old and she needs to be with other teens, finding her way in life and experiencing things that she wouldn't be able to experience while living in an RV with her parents, roaming the country.

At first, I cried a few tears. But, I know in my heart that it's not the right time anymore for the RV tour to take place. If we had been able to get on the road almost a year ago, things would have worked out well. For now, however, we need to postpone the trip until we are settled and KDcat is feeling a strong sense of community with some of her peers.

So, the tour is postponed. We still want to meet as many of you as possible in person someday, and we will still be doing that when it's a better time for the tour to take place. For now, however, we'll be moving forward with some of the other projects we have planned for ourselves and Pure Jeevan. And we'll be planning more fun times as we wait for our home to sell, because we're still moving to a location that will better suit our raw lifestyle. We'll be writing a bit about that next week and also asking for your help with something.

Yesterday I warned that today's post would probably be a long one. If you skimmed to the end for a summary, here it is: We're postponing the cross-country tour so that we can settle sooner in a location that better suits our lifestyle (more about this next week). And if you read this entire blog post, stand up and take a nice stretch, close your eyes to give them a rest, and know that we love and appreciate you so very much!

*blows kisses*