Just Walk Away

Our family story of walking away from tyranny.

In early 2020, my husband was making the best money of his career as a guitar luthier (precision repair)/independent contractor out of a local friend's guitar shop. The shop located in Salt Lake County, Utah had stayed open through the 2 weeks to flatten the curve. It seemed to be standing up for libertarian ideals or at least, for its own commercial interests as a small business. However, once the mask suggestions came, woke idealism seemed to plague the world of musicians. The shop started asking employees to wear masks, then pressed harder.

    As my husband was independent, he remained focused on his job. He wears a N-95 for protection from saw dust and other floating paint lacquer particles. He tells his coworkers often, "If you don't wear a mask, your lungs become the filter." But he also knew the dangers of wearing them all day and the need to remove the mask and get fresh air. He understood that the mask doesn't protect anyone from respiratory viruses. Wearing it perpetually was not healthy.

    So, it was disconcerting when a bunch of guys who smoked cigarettes, drank sodas all day and ate garbage, who wouldn't wear the N-95 when it was protecting them legitimately began insisting that my healthy husband (who works out, avoids sugary beverages, doesn't eat grains, never gets sick and doesn't smoke) was some sort of viral vector for people who don't take care of themselves simply because he wouldn't wear a cloth mask to fight a respiratory virus. Moreover, they insisted that my husband demand that his personal customers mask up when entering the shop. 

    My husband sent a message to the store owner relaying the research we had done on mask use. He explained that our family refuses to shop at and furthermore permanently boycotts any establishment that imposed senseless, pseudo scientific health interventions on our family. He personally refused to tell his customers to do something we understood was unhealthy and unscientific. The shop owner responded "you picked a strange hill to die on." Maybe he did. I'm sure that income could have put us in less strain to put food on the table for our kids. However, we saw it as a necessary measure to prevent future restrictions pertaining to a vaccine. If only more people like us took a stand with masks- with their employers, educating them on the values they hold dear: true health. We'd have never ended up in the world we are living in today with vaccine passports and children being forced to mask in various school districts across the country despite having zero evidence to bolster such practices.

Our family went on to participate in a "grocery store flash mob" organized locally for which our family became the poster children in the national news segment for the anti-mask movement starting to happen all over the country. The photo below is Aaron and our eldest son, Kimbel (age 7 at the time) pushing the shopping cart whilst I held Junah’s hand (age 5 at the time) walking into a grocery store that enforced mask use. I want to mention, I would respectfully leave if an employee asked us to go. We showed up to demonstrate in an almost empty grocery store that they were losing customers due to unscientific policies, and we were here to shop if they wanted our business. Turned out they did want our business. We showed the community, too, that it was safe and joyful to trash the masks and as now suggested by the CDC, to return to normal regardless of threat or vaccination status.

    We've been out of work since the pandemic, but God has provided us new avenues and opportunities including a rare windfall inheritance from a relative I don't ever see sending us $100k out of the blue last year when we were in dire need. On that note, I have a family history of not being accepted for my beliefs, so it's old hat for me to be helping people who are suffering and struggling with loss of relationships over Covid shenanigans. I decided to create a workshop after watching some of Tom Woods’ videos suggesting we become the solution to our problems. I'm going to help people find their tribe through shared values and common visions while improving their boundaries. It sounds counterintuitive, but in my vast experience, healthy boundaries actually attract more loving, harmonious, supportive and enduring relationships.

I'm launching that Find Your Tribe workshop while my husband, Aaron who has started picking up Fed Ex and Amazon delivery shifts in the interim has switched career focus to day trading Bitcoin and Euro. This is a completely different direction than our lives were headed prior to the pandemic. I think in so many ways, it is closer to our shared vision and values. This plan will ultimately be more scalable and bring us more success. It will make us better examples to our children and give us more freedom in our time with them as they have always been unschooled.

    Just thought I'd share our story. Standing up for what you believe in despite fear of loss can be the best decision you ever make. So, in this sharing of my story, I will be interviewing friends to share their success stories over the next few weeks about their walk away from Covid tyranny!

I hope you stay tuned for my workshop as well as this new series promoting the walk away from floundering to freedom!