Riding the Struggle Bus to Adult Summer Camp
Part one of my three part series on Campersand 2023, Amanda Palmer's patron retreat in the mountains of New York.
I’ve been stuck in a rut for a couple of months now. I had a catastrophic event happen in my business that took all of my accrued savings, and left me at square zero with very little heart left for the job.
I am the owner of a somewhat successful photography business, mother of a nearly three year old boy, wife of a husband who works 40 hours a week (who struggles with ADHD just about as much as I do), and caretaker to two dogs, three cats, and a variety of fish. I am tech support for my aging parents. I am on-call 24/7/365 and haven’t had a break since before the pandemic hit.
So, I’m your average American mother, and it fucking sucks sometimes.
I’ve hit the burnout wall several times over the past few years. We’re all coming out of a collective trauma with regards to the pandemic, and I think everyone is just worn out. Parents lost childcare, jobs, their community, their village. I am not unique in my stress, strife, nor struggle, but I discovered a unique opportunity to try to escape the madhouse and go slower, if just for a few days, for the first time in a very long time.
Campersand 2023. Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. Amanda Palmer, the woods of the Hudson Valley, and not even a vague idea of what our itinerary would be.
Sunday.
Our crew of 80+ campers descended upon Rhinebeck, New York on Sunday evening, staggering in on trains, planes, and automobiles at various times, assigned to various sorts of sleeping arrangements from your basic tent, all the way up to private cabins with air conditioning.
I arrived and unloaded all of the much needed creature comforts I had packed for the week. My chronic pain and autistic sensory issues lead me to having to bring multiple blankets and pillows of my own, a sound machine, and twice as many clothes as I would ever need as I never know what my sensory issues will be from day to day. Thankfully the Omega campus has a few golf carts and people employed daily to take the disabled and elderly to and from.
I made my way to the dining hall, preparing for some uneasiness surrounding the food. I had heard that it was a primarily vegetarian and somewhat vegan based diet on campus, but had been assured that there would be chicken and fish, and at least some basics. I was pleased to find that there was a variety of food that I not only could tolerate, but would enjoy! There was pizza! Later, I would find out, that this was only a false sense of food security for me for the rest of the week.
After a while, I found the Lake Theatre, the building we were lucky to call home base for our stay. I walked in a little late, everyone was pretty much already settled in and sitting in circles. Oh crud. Well, at least it seemed like I was right on time for the first community building activity. This was not torture, as you would think it might be for the neurodivergent. Knowing Amanda’s community, seeing a few familiar faces that I’ve seen over the past few months at both the Dresden Dolls and Amanda’s solo shows. I was ushered to one of the circles, and paired off with a friendly, familiar, and nice looking lad who I would soon find out was Michael McComiskey, Amanda’s friend and personal assistant.
Our topic of conversation was prompted: tell your partner the story of your last 3 years. Michael and I shared stories back and forth, found common ground in our experiences, and just as soon as I had started to relax into the task, we rejoined the group. I don’t remember if we did our first group share at that point, but that evening before being dismissed to our various beds, Manta (Shintaido master David Franklin, and long time friend of the community) led us in meditation before Amanda started playing the piano for what would become our first beddy-bye for the week.
“Whether you came from across town or across the world, you left your normal life back where you came from, and I just want you to think about yourself lying here in this weird room on a blanket, and that entire life you left behind, where it is, you basically pushed a pause button… so, its gonna be there when you get back, no doubt… but right now, right here, you’re away. You’re safe, and sound, and its good. You’ve landed to the shore at the other side. You’re going to spend the next five days taking care of yourself, getting out of your routine, getting some perspective, being kind to yourself, eating good food… and now you can rest.”
Amanda Palmer, night 1 of Campersand 2023
Monday.
I didn’t sleep very well the first night. I had neglected to wash the new sheets I had acquired for the trip and they had a horrible smell to them, didn’t bring -enough- of my pillows, and had a conflict with the HVAC in my dorm that randomly decided to stop working midway through the night. I missed my family, and the ache of mom-guilt started creeping in. I had nursed my son for the last time on Sunday morning, we went a lot longer than I ever anticipated going, but I loved the bond we shared with it. With him being nearly 3 years old, I had chosen this trip specifically to be the distraction I needed from the emotional turmoil I suspected would come with this transition in our journey.
I shook off the sleep-crud and made my way toward the communal bathroom for a shower. The wheelchair accessible shower looked promising as I turned the water on and waited for it to get warm. And waited. And waited. The hot water never came. Frustrated, I went down to the other two showers in our building and found one of those economical showers that aerates the water so well that it stings the skin like a miniature pressure washer.
That would not be my first fight with the three showers available to the residents of Elm.
Much more refreshed, I called for a ride from guest services so that I could get to our communal space for the week. We were having some vague conversations with Amanda about the rundown for the week, introductions to Manta, Liz, and Michael, and a picture of what the week would look like with regard to schedules. Everything was pretty loosely defined, purposefully, so that we didn’t have to rush around, think too much, or stress out. As Amanda put it, everyone needs a break from all of that right now, not more of it.
Eventually we switched gears into the first activity, which was Shintaido, led by Manta. I participated to the best of my abilities, until the exercise was led outdoors and across the street. We were paired up with individuals from our group and taught various ways to match our partners movements. As time went on, Manta led our smaller groups together to form several large groups leading each other around like multi-bodied centipedes. Much laughter erupted just about the same time my skin started flaring up in the sunlight.
One of my random issues right now is that my skin erupts into hives with even 10-20 minutes of sun exposure. Polymorphic light eruption. I still don’t know which of my various conditions causes it, but its an issue none the less. I left Shintaido early and made my way back to Lake Theater.
We broke for lunch and that was where I ran into my first problem with the food. Having texture & taste aversions kept me from trying what I figure were some lovely vegetarian dishes. I consumed a plate full of Spanish rice and ate a couple of hard boiled eggs. Not my favorite, but I figured there would be some better food at dinner.
Trying to pull from my memory about the afternoon, I can’t seem to focus on the specifics. Maybe it was hunger, maybe it was the poor sleep the night before, but I did not manage to retain a lot of it. The evening time rolled around and so did dinner… and my first autistic meltdown of the trip.
I entered the dining hall, eyed up the options, and my heart immediately sunk. It was curried something vegetarian, and the other option was a heavily scented tofu dish. I grabbed some of the rice pilaf available, another couple of hardboiled eggs, and feeling quite diminished from exerting energy during Shintaido, the heat and humidity of the area, and not having food available to me to cook for myself, I started to panic. A participant from another workshop looked at me and she asked me if I was okay, and then immediately figured out what was wrong from the look on my face: there wasn’t anything for me to eat.
She tried suggesting a peanut butter sandwich. I can’t stomach those. She suggested the rice. It was, well, just rice. I started to realize I was going to meltdown and I stood up from the table, gathered my items, and started heading away. I feel bad, in retrospect, because I think she thought she was bothering me, while I was just trying to practice “flight” instead of “fight”.
I asked someone with the golf cart if they could take me to my dorm and then to my car. I had no cell phone service and the wifi was spotty, so I drove in a general direction until my GPS picked up service and I was able to navigate to the center of Rhinebeck. When I got there, not finding any places I knew would have any of my ‘safe’ foods, reliably or with relative expediency. I was very hungry and starting to have a hard time thinking when I discovered a Chipotle about 13 minutes away in neighboring Kingston. I placed my order and drove there as fast as I legally and safely could.
When I arrived back on campus, I was carted up to the Main Hall. I stayed outside for a while, eating my food, while the Writing Workshop host, Chris Wells, entertained the audience with the help of our own Amanda Palmer. When I finally went inside, I quickly found a seat and started to feel like a human being again.
Amanda and Chris lit up the stage and gave us all a laugh riot, right before Angel Rosen read us one of her poems, a lovely person serenaded us on their ukulele, and then up on stage walked a man that a lot of you may be familiar with, and if you’re not, you need to check out his work.
I knew he would be joining us for at least a part of the week. Amanda announced sometime in the week or two prior to Campersand that Nathan would be leading his writing workshop for our group. I was elated when I found this out, as I have been following Nathan for about a year online, and had only in November really learned who Father Nathan Monk is and what he is about.
He read us a passage from some writing he worked on while en route to the retreat. I won’t spoil the contents, but it was good. He talked for a while and made his way back off of the stage to allow Chris and Amanda to close out the evening.
Back at Lake Theater, we all started settling in for night two of Beddy-Bye. Amanda had not planned for this to be a nightly activity, but as with the nature of a mostly unplanned retreat, it became our nightly sanctuary to wind down from the night. Chris Wells joined our group to gently tell us a story for bed.
I realized, the thing that I didn’t ever really understand about forgiveness, is that I could give my self the gift of forgiving myself. So, if you’re able and you want to, I invite you to put your hand on your heart… Today In my writing workshop I read this quote by [author note, I don’t remember who Chris attributed this quote to…] “its crucial, to make any work of art, or to have any semblance of a good life, to forgive yourself… for not really being able to achieve the greatness that is in your mind, and to be okay with the thing you do achieve”
Chris Wells, night 2 of Campersand 2023
That quote shredded me. Hello final cry of the night. I have always struggled with forgiving myself, and others, for what I perceive that I wasn’t able to attain in life. I grew up in Scientology, and while my parents did the best they could for me with the information they had available at the time, they didn’t have the tools necessary to help me cope with an extremely overwhelming learning disability, and with being autistic.
On top of that, the years of non-diagnosis and struggle to identify why I was in pain so much, the brain fog, and the ADHD, I had definitely not lived up to the potential that I had hoped for myself. I had never given myself the space to even think about forgiving myself.
This revelation was the start to why I ran away to the woods.
