Greetings Steemers! We are Caroline, Josh and Shiloh.

...a little family who has finally decided to plan our escape and seek out the life of our dreams; to travel and make our own living as writers and artists, with our six month old daughter Shiloh. We have wanted to live this life for as long as either of us can remember, and now that our daughter has come along - it's high time to make it happen.

No more excuses. No more fear.

We want her to believe and experience that anything is possible. We want her to see the world, believe in magic, and most of all https://i.imgsafe.org/22/229fae7dcd.png Our new journey is about breaking free from the norm, the nine to five, consumerism, waste, and the shackles of being someone's employee. It's about deciding to live life on our own terms - and to hell with living a mundane life ruled by societies expectations. We will be using all of our resources all of our heart and tons of hard work and dedication to make this happen.

Our goals are broken down into six categories: - To live nomadically - Get in shape (exercise and eat healthy) - Cut down on waste - Create art and work for ourselves - Earn enough income to eat, live, work and play comfortably - Incorporate spirituality in all of the above https://i.imgsafe.org/23/239cdd415f.png I met Josh about fifteen years ago. There was an instant and intense, indescribable spark felt by both of us - but we never seemed to be in the right place or ready for a relationship together. We were on again, off again for years. (We were/are/can both be a little hard headed at times.)

...that is until our best friend passed away a few years ago of a very sudden and heartbreaking drug overdose. Josh and I both attended our mutual friend's funeral. As soon as our eyes met, Josh walked over and gave me one amazing hug. The kind of hug that says everything that needs to be said without saying a word at all. The love we had for each other all those years came flooding to the surface. Josh was deathly pale and weak at the time - weighing a scant 120 lbs. I knew immediately that his poor health was due to a kidney disease he had been diagnosed with years back. When Josh was diagnosed at the age of twenty four, the doctors chalked it up to bad luck. His disease is called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis - which for everyone's sake, is mostly refereed to as FSGS. This rare autoimmune disease causes scarring of the kidneys, which for Josh meant an eventual necessity for dialysis and to be put on the kidney transplant list. Josh struggled with this news for years, and even got to the point where he had decided to let the disease run it's course without any intervention.

When we saw each other at our friend's funeral.

https://i.imgsafe.org/21/216a27023a.png In fact, it's easy to believe that our recently deceased friend had a major hand in bringing us together and the coming events, which as they unfolded, would eventually prevent Josh from accepting his fate as death, return his health to him and bring beautiful Shiloh into this world. If you believe in that sort of thing...
Josh allowed me to speak with his doctors and get him on the medication he needed. With the help of our wonderful community of family, artists and friends, I held a fundraiser and benefit show to raise money for him to pay rent and bills until I was able to get him on disability. He decided to begin dialysis at a center three times a week while we were able to get trained to run these sessions at home. Meanwhile I decided to get tested to see if by chance I could donate my kidney to him.

I moved in with Josh, became his care partner and we ran his dialysis sessions together five times a week for a little over a year. During this time, we were given the news that not only was our blood type a match, but the tissue antigen tests were also a match (extremely rare for non blood relatives.) In couples, this is something like a 2% chance. It was so exciting! We went ahead with the transplant which was a success and thankfully, miraculously, serendipitously - the transplanted kidney is functioning beautifully.

Unfortunately, Josh does still technically have recurrent FSGS, which means the disease is still circulating throughout his plasma. However, it does not run our life. He has treatments only once every three weeks, and for the most part - leads a normal, healthy life. He suffers with lethargy sometimes - but we don't know if that is due to the disease somehow or just a simple lack of exercise and a somewhat, but not terribly unhealthy diet. We're working on it. We do pretty well except when it comes to hash browns, tater tots, pomme frites, patatas frites, no matter the shape, form - or language - fried potatoes are delicious. Ok, ok Mexican food too...(another shared love) His care team at University Nebraska Medical Center has been nothing short of extraordinary and has made it a priority to keep Josh's levels within range to keep damage to the transplanted kidney to a minimum if anything at all. **Side note, I recently found a correlation between FSGS and exposure to black mold. Josh just so happened to live in an apartment complex in Denver that has been accusedof housing and neglecting a black mold issue. Digging further, I uncovered that going on a gluten free diet has helped many people with autoimmune diseases, including FSGS. The doctors discount this, which is really no surprise - but I believe his going gluten free has helped tremendously with his creatinine levels. We have watched the progress for ourselves - even when he was on a five to six week break from the treatments. For this reason, gluten free is the diet he continues to follow. ** Fast forward to today - we have our miracle baby Shiloh. Neither of us thought we would ever be a parent, neither of us necessarily ever wanted a child, years ago, Joshua was faced with, and choosing death...yet here we are. Shiloh is now six months old and the center of our world.

Josh and I currently work together at a local bakery …and we're not happy where we work. That's such a drastic understatement. It's not the work that's appalling. Baking is a somewhat creative position, but honestly - 80% of the people we work for and with are toxic, negative and angry. Despite our efforts, the environment is purely draining to our bodies, minds and souls! I have been in this kind of situation at work more times than I can shake a friggin stick at and I am over it. Which leads me to the point of this intro... with our total distaste in working for people we don't respect in addition to the state of the world we're in now as a whole it just makes good sense to be mobile. I fear for Shiloh's future and need to teach her how to be self sufficient. Feel free to subscribe and follow us on facebook and instagram @shilohsgreatescape, and on our blog at shilohsgreatescape.com Please understand all of these accounts are brand new and very much under construction, but we promise to have lots more content soon. We are planning on starting a YouTube channel as well, so I'll let you all know when that's up and running. Thanks so much for reading and for joining us on our https://i.imgsafe.org/23/23545d91f5.png

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