|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Meet Gus. Gus is the mascot for The Naked Truth Project because he started the organization. Well, sort of. In the summer of 1997, when Gus was 6 months old, he was adopted from an animal shelter in Portland, Maine by a 19-year-old girl named Lora. Even though he lived with Lora’s whole family for a year, Gus always knew that he belonged to her. That’s why he didn’t complain too much a year later, when Lora took him on a very long plane ride to relocate to Seattle.
Life was pretty uneventful for the next two years. Lora was very busy double-majoring in art and psychology at the University of Washington and wasn’t around much, so Gus spent most of his time getting into mischief while she was gone. Most of the trouble that he got into was pretty harmless…until January of 2000. Despite being an indoor cat, Gus somehow found a way to sneak out of the apartment one day in December of 1999 and picked up a few fleas during his big outing. Lora thought about doing something to take care of the few fleas right away, but she was too busy studying for finals and preparing for her three-week break from school. She got on a plane a few days later, leaving Gus in Seattle with her roommate, and flew home to Maine for the holidays.
Lora returned to Seattle on January 3, 2000 to find an itchy and unhappy Gus, a very angry roommate with flea-bitten skin, and an apartment completely infested with the little insects. Needing to rectify the problem immediately, Lora did some quick thinking and planning. She made arrangements to board Gus at a kennel for a week and headed to the store to buy a flea fogger. Lora had always been pretty leery of exterminators –she thought the stuff that they were spraying couldn’t be all that safe if they had to wear full body gear to protect themselves. But a little can of spray that she could buy at your local grocery store and apply herself must be safe and fine to use, right? Unfortunately, like most people in this country, Lora was very wrong in her belief and assumption about this.
Lora meticulously followed every instruction on the label, didn’t see a warning on there (other than not to spray it in one’s eyes—Duh), and followed the advice of the vet and pet store who both told her to use all three cans that came in the package. “If a little works well, then a lot will work even better. And it’s not going to hurt you” is what they said to her. Famous last words.
Eight days later, Gus was home from the kennel and all cleaned up, Lora’s third roommate was back from her holiday break, and the apartment was all put back together. Everything had returned to normal…on the outside. On the inside, Lora was beginning to experience symptoms that both confused and terrified her. Her mind was racing. She felt anxious and panicky. She couldn’t sleep and was experiencing numbness and tingling throughout her body, heart palpitations, and trembling. She felt disoriented and couldn’t concentrate on anything. In short, she felt like she had been drugged.
On the eighth day, all of these symptoms peaked and Lora decided that it was time to go to the campus health center. After about 15 minutes of talking to a doctor, she was given a diagnosis of anxiety and panic disorder and sent on her way with a handy free sample of medication. She was a psychology major, so while she knew the symptoms of anxiety and understood why she was given that diagnosis, it didn’t totally feel right to her. But, she trusted their professional opinion, took the free sample, and followed their recommendations for treatment. She later learned that sometimes diagnoses that are based on symptoms alone miss the cause of the problem, and then the symptoms continue to get worse. And that’s exactly what happened to Lora.
Over the next seven months, Lora continued to follow the advice of the professionals treating her, while her health continued to worsen. She was exhausted, frustrated, and very sick. She knew that the time had come for her to move home so that she could have the time and support that she needed to fully focus on her health.
Gus was not at all pleased about having to take another long plane ride, but soon forgot all about that when he landed in Portland. He was happy to be back in his old house, and enjoyed having Lora around more now that she was no longer in school. But he was too busy tormenting Lora’s sister’s new cat to notice the one thing that had changed the most since leaving Seattle: Lora was feeling better. He didn’t know that Lora had miraculously come across a doctor who had a different theory about where her symptoms had originated. And he certainly didn’t know that that doctor traced those symptoms back to the fogger that Lora had used to get rid of his fleas. But when the test results came back, Lora learned that the flea fogger had in fact done damage to her nervous system, her liver, her immune system, and had left her sensitive to other chemicals that she had never been sensitive to before.
Gus also didn’t notice that by changing her cleaning and personal care products, eating organic and natural food, receiving weekly holistic medical treatments, and avoiding chemicals where she could, Lora was able to regain her health almost entirely. However, he definitely noticed when Lora left for College of the Atlantic in the fall of 2001 to put her new awareness of the world around her to use and pursue a degree in Human Ecology.
Over the next two years, Gus lived at Lora’s parent’s house, slept a lot, and tormented the new cat some more, while Lora learned an immense amount about how toxins and products in our personal environment can affect human health in so many ways. And she learned what people can do to protect themselves from getting sick from these toxins: learn the truth and use nontoxic alternatives.
Gus was happy when Lora returned to Portland and he got to live with her again in the fall of 2003, but she didn’t have much time to spend with him. She was too busy creating “The Naked Truth Project” – her multi-media senior thesis that incorporated personal stories and photos from people she had interviewed all over the country, a website, and scientific data designed to educate people about the link between everyday toxins and human health. While preparing for her one-time presentation that would occur in January of 2004 and mark the end of her thesis and her bachelor’s education, Lora realized that the information that she had collected needed to be heard far and wide…not just one time on an island in Maine. So, despite the fact that she had never taken a business class in her life, she decided to start a nonprofit organization.
Knowing that a person can’t start a nonprofit single-handedly, Lora asked several colleagues and professionals in Portland to join her on the adventure. The small group of passionate individuals began meeting monthly in January of 2004 to create the vision for The Naked Truth Project as an organization. In June of 2004 they officially incorporated as a nonprofit and the organization has grown continually since.
Today Gus remains a significant part of The Naked Truth Project, and he’ll often sit in the middle of the circle during board meetings. Sometimes when Lora starts to get annoyed with him for interrupting meetings because he’s hungry or sitting on top of her paperwork to get attention, she remembers that those meetings and her paperwork and everything else about The Naked Truth Project would not exist today if it weren’t for Gus and his fleas…and then she smiles and is reminded that things certainly have a funny way of working out in life, and sometimes even the most painful experiences can give rise to incredible things. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
