A whole lot of things transpired to bring this site into being. If you believe that the Universe has order (as I do) then perhaps “conspired” is a better way to say it. On the stacycats site, there will be a more in-depth picture of who I am and where I come from, but for now, here’s the shorter version.

It started with over twenty years of hell. When I was about 14 years old, I started noticing that I felt badly a lot. Very badly. I didn’t fit in with other kids and I went through many bouts of depression. When I look back on diaries from that time, I was already showing signs of suicidal ideation. Over time, this condition worsened, and by the time I was a young adult, it had blown completely out of control. I spent at least 90% of my time feeling like life was not worth the trouble. I gained an enormous amount of weight, hurt myself (intentionally) on a daily basis, cried a whole lot and basically dropped out of life. I thought about dying a lot. A whole lot.

I tried every drug on the market, often in the form of “cocktails”. Many times, these “cocktails” made me sicker. I tried other, more dramatic treatments as well during inpatient visits. Nothing worked. Finally, upon the suggestion of friends and family, I asked my doctor to stop the medications. There was slight improvement in my physical health when I did this, but I still felt terrible most of the time.

It was during one of those really bad times that I ran a search on Ask Jeeves for the best way to kill myself. I had played with suicidal ideation incessantly for several years by this time and had concrete plans if I ever got my courage up. However, there were things that held me back. Still, it gave me a dark comfort to entertain the thoughts. When I ran this search, I got back two answers. The first one was a site that gave a bunch of ideas about how “bad people” could achieve death. At the time, I thought it was funny and I poked around there for a good half hour. Then I followed the other link. It was to a place called lollie.com.

It was this virtual visit that set into motion some changes in my thought processes that made all the difference. I learned that there were things I could do to be happy, and there were things I could do to be unhappy. This realization began a domino effect that taught me just how much control I have over my own mood and attitude. And, ultimately, my health.

Life got better. To this day, I still have unexplained bouts of depression that seem to come on for no good reason. But those bouts don’t last as long, and I have learned techniques to cope with them.

I vowed that I would create a website someday to help other people who suffered from depression. I promised myself I’d do this to make all the pain I and my family had gone through somehow worthwhile. I knew, even then, that the website would be called stacycats - a palindrome of my name that I found very cool. (I love cats, you see.) I bought the domain name, even created a logo, then set it aside until I could figure out what I would do with it.

Very soon after the birth of our son in 2002, my dad told me that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. The strange thing about this was that I had always had a deep fear that my dad would someday come down with a degenerative disease that would affect his mind and body. I had always admired his intellect, and PD was on the top-two list of diseases that I feared for him. Yet, when he told me the news, I felt very little, if any fear. Something inside of me told me that he was going to be okay, and I took the news remarkably well.

Soon after his announcement, he began an experimental program based on eastern medicine. It was called PD Recovery and it sounded crazy by his description. Still, I was happy that he was trying new things, and I supported this endeavor as much as I could.

After about a year (maybe a year and a half) in this program, Dad approached me to ask for help. Until that point, I had felt very helpless in regards to his illness. At his invitation, I read the practitioner’s handbook written by Janice-Walton Hadlock. It was (and still is) incomplete as she is publishing on the Net as the book is written. But the book was brilliant. I finished it in one (long) day. And by the time I was finished, I knew in my soul what needed to be done. I had never been so sure of anything.

I wrote to Dad and offered my assistance. He accepted and the Joy Immersion Project was born.

From the end of February 2005 until the end of the year, we worked the program together. I did my best to follow the assignments along with my dad because I felt it would facilitate a better approach that way. As the year went by, Dad started to get better. (Although he still does not see much improvement, those around him do.) I started feeling better as well. It seemed there was something very powerful about Joy Immersion therapy.

At some point, it dawned on me that this (Joy Immersion) would be the theme of stacycats. There were many people undergoing the PDR, and several of them had mentioned (on the message boards) that they wished they had some concrete methods to overcome years of habitual adrenaline usage. I knew my program might help those of them who were willing to follow it. However, I remained busy enough to stick with my first priority in this regard, which was helping my dad. In November of 2005, I had the honor and pleasure of going to Santa Cruz to meet several of the PDR team members who I’d been working with to help my dad recover. I learned a lot, and it was on that trip that I decided that stacycats.com would come to life in 2006.

Then, just before Christmas, I was thinking about what else I could do to better facilitate my dad’s recovery. He was having trouble immersing himself in these new thought-processes and habits that I had built for him. I had been following along with the program, but there were a couple of things I did not do. One of those things was keep a journal. I decided that I need to write a daily journal like he does.

Then something happened. I had what I can only describe as an epiphany. All at once, I realized that what I really needed to do was overcome my biggest challenge - and I needed to do it publicly through a blog.

Since the age of ten, I have been overweight. Sometime in my twenties, that turned to full-blown obesity. Now, as I type, I am morbidly obese and weigh in at a solid 272 pounds. It’s the one thing I’ve never been able to get a grip on.

In the course of a few days, I realized that I needed to use the program I’d written for my dad to publicly overcome this challenge for myself. This would serve several purposes.

First, it would demonstrate, in real time, my theory that Joy Immersion (if fully applied) really is a potential answer to “unsolvable” problems.

Second, it would give my dad (and others) a demonstration of how these principles are intended to be applied and a partner with whom to apply them.

Third, it would put me in a “no-fail” box that would assure success.

Fourth, it would prompt me to finally get off the dime and make this information available to all the people who might benefit from it.

With only two weeks to put this all together, I did well. I told enough people about it to have begun building that “box” from which there is no escape. The site is hosted and the blog is online and running. I began recording my eating and exercising practices (such as they were) in my FitDay account just before Christmas. Those records are public and you can go there and see how I’ve done in the past and how I am doing today.

Now that it’s here, I’m more excited than ever!

So that’s my story! (Remember, I said “shorter”, not “short”!) I hope you’ll find my excitement contagious and jump in with me.

Updated: 04 January, 2006