From 2001 to the present, I have continued
to explore more strategies for eliminating mold threats. Unfortunately,
I have to say that the road has been torturous and painful,
but the lessons are still important and need to be shared. It
goes without saying that had anyone told me in 2001 what
I would face, I would have skipped ship, but it has always
felt like the end was in sight . . . but the truth is,
it has been very much like mountain climbing: beyond
each "summit" there is another mountain, just
as steep as the last.
Much of the time between the flood and expiry
of the statute of limitations was spent trying to get the
insurance company to remediate the mold. As time was
running out, I retained a lawyer to represent my interests. I
do not want to go into these details, at least not at this
time, but it goes without saying that the process has not
been even slightly fun.
I do not know if it is true that the world
is divided between realists and idealists. If so, I
am definitely not only an idealist but a reformer. I
would like to do my part to make this world a better place
and it might start with some serious changes in the way things
are presently done.
2001 was not a good year, not
for me and not for many others on Planet Earth. My
Kitsap adventure that began with whales was followed by the
flood and then an earthquake. Next, the house across
the street burned down in the middle of the night; and then
we had 9/11 and the year was not even over.
I had been working on a super
herbal immune formula for a long time and decided to put
it into production. I named it Whale's
Tears because I really grieve for the loss of consciousness
of our primordial selves and the rapacious blindness of our
egos.
In October, I attended the Bioneers
Conference where a year earlier I had been a speaker. This
time, I was simply a guest and could take time to reflect. There
was an extraordinary lecture by a man named Paul
Stamets. Paul lives near, well near as near is
in this part of the world, 45 minutes south of me. He
is the mushroom king of this Planet and is on a first name
basis with a few million mushrooms. At some point
in his talk, I realized that fungi will have the last laugh. We
may have the world divided into various kingdoms of nature
with ludicrous notions of superiority and complexity, but
when it is all said and done, to dust shall we all return
and mold will speed the return.
Thanks to Paul, I got a perspective
on fungi that is clear, and I acquired a new understanding
of my allergy to mushrooms (and mold) as well as the threat
to existence that we face and how our adrenal function reflects
our stress. My personal crisis began to take on a global
perspective involving not just economics and politics but
also belief systems and psychology and instincts, including
the pervasive urge to survive that is expressed by all life
forms.
At the Bioneers Conference
that year, I also accepted that "alternative" is,
in fact, the right word. I had resisted it for years. I
tried to define my own work as holistic and encouraged MDs
to explore "integrative" and "complementary" to
see if they could find a comfort zone where their science
and technology could interface with systems that are more
in harmony with sustainability, the approach that I believe
is critical to surviving this era.
Perhaps the Bush administration,
through its intolerance and extremism, pushed the envelope;
but I began to relax once I "got it" that we already
have an alternative that is ready to be implemented. I
saw that all of us who have worked for the last 25-40 years
to forge a philosophy of cooperation and co-existence were
prepared with our alternatives to replace the divisive society
that is moving towards its own black hole.
It was hard to stay steady
with these thoughts as bombs were falling on Afghanistan,
a country I have visited many times and which is a favorite
of mine. It was harder yet as contempt for world opinion
brought chaos and suffering to Iraq and its people; but throughout
all this, I was seeing a turning of the tides. Everything
we need to live in peace and everything we need to be in
harmony with Mother Earth already exists, and we are mature
enough to create a society that respects Nature. I
knew the world would start becoming the place I know to be
possible once the pendulum swung too far.
Swing too far it did. I
was in Switzerland in August this year. It was pouring
rain north of the Alps. I watched a little Swiss and
Italian television and saw cows being lifted by helicopter
to dryer ground. Then, there would be a little warning
about hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. On the flight
on the way home, I was tired and reflective. I kept
hearing a voice inside my head saying it was time to awaken. Just
as the world changed dramatically after 9/11, it changed
again after the Asian tsunami and hurricanes Katrina and
Rita.
I believe this and I believe
it is time to share my journey because I think that despite
the sadness of the incidents, there is a story here; there
is also a perspective worthy of profound assessment, not
because it is "my" perspective but because a new
view, forged out of the agony of many losses, comes when
we reach higher ground.
2001-2005
One of the highlights of this
Puget Sound phase of my life was that I gave a talk on music
therapy at a conference in Seattle hosted by someone I had
known from our days in Santa Fé, Dietrich Klinghardt,
MD. As often happens in my life, the moment I walked
into the room, two patients approached me. One gave
me an enormous hug. She had read my book and
wanted to meet me. She invited me to her home for a
gathering with Dietrich and some of the other speakers. Hearing
my cough, she asked about it and immediately gave me some jatobá,
a rain forest herb that not only fights mold but supports
stamina. This is important because anyone with constant
allergic responses is exhausted. I felt like I had
a new lease on life . . . and two new friends.
I had been profoundly tired. I
felt like I had lost a year of my life with flooding, the
chaos of construction in my living space, the mold invasion
of my home and health, and total financial upheaval from
expenses that have not been reimbursed and negative cash
flow from low productivity. I needed to focus. My book was
being translated into German and I had to cooperate with
the editors. I wrote emails to the insurance company,
but I had yet to realize that adjustors are a special subspecies
of humanoids who accept money in exchange for stonewalling
and burying facts.
The other person I met at the
conference gently guided me through a process of awakening
to the reality that nothing would get off the dime without
a law suit. I am grateful that the Universe brought
these people into my life.
Meanwhile, Helena died. I
was in shock and also deeply moved by the account of her
transition. She was surely one of the loveliest souls
ever to share her grace with humanity. This was, however,
a reality check.
I was still surfing the net. I
stumbled on a book called How
You Rust and Rot. I bought two copies and sent
one to my best friend. It's sort of homemade but there
were ideas that spoke to me. It's basically about the
mechanisms of degeneration, and I began to see healing as
something bridging a spectrum between degeneration and regeneration.
My
book came out in German and I was invited to give a seminar
in Bavaria and then to consult over some cases the doctor
was seeing. He invited me back so after feeling wingless
since 9/11, I began traveling again. On the second
trip to Germany, my Akita died. She hemorrhaged; I
knew it was mold-related and the guilt was tearing me to
pieces. At the same time, my determination to find
a successful treatment for mold was amplified, exactly to
the same degree as my grief.
Meanwhile, I met someone who
told me that mold is not really activated by moisture but
by the smell of ammonia so I started thinking of ammonia
and oxygen as another spectrum. Then, I met a Bulgarian
who introduced me to a lot of research from Eastern Europe;
I wondered if we were wrong about oxygen and whether or not
we should really be looking at hydrogen. The sources
to which he directed me were all sure that every cell in
our body is designed for immortality . . . and I had another
spectrum: mold and immortality.
With blessings!
Ingrid Naiman
8 October 2005
Approaching
the Statute of Limitations 
