Spirited Woman Blogger Team

Guest Blogger - Doreen Orion - Discovering the Importance of Letting It All Hang Out

Although as a psychiatrist, my husband is very much in tune with unconscious drives, hidden meanings, and deep-seated motivations, he is also a typical guy. And, typical guys want to go to nudist resorts. Not being any type of a guy myself, I had always informed him I would never, ever, EVER, not in a million . . .   Oh, what’s the use?  I had clearly lost any semblance of free will. Tim had, after all, convinced me to live in a bus for a year. So, I was the one who found the nudist RV park in California.

Yes, the very first time we “let it all hang out” was a bit daunting, but you know what? You have not lived until you’ve tried naked karaoke. The real fun of a nudist park though, is that everything is stripped down, so to speak. There’s no pretense, no posturing. You are just you – for everyone to see. It’s not the being nude that’s important, it’s the feeling that way. And this Spirited Woman discovered that it felt just great.

With everyone in the park walking around in their birthday suits (even the maintenance guy – although he also wore his tool belt), it was actually a bit odd getting dressed to leave the place when we went into town. In fact, our biggest fear became that we would simply forget to done our clothing, and be arrested at Safeway for public indecency. Even in the park there was an adjustment we hadn’t expected: One night, Tim started closing all the curtains in the bus. I wondered why – we’d been nude all the time, after all. He explained that he was about to start cooking and for his own safety needed to put on clothes. He didn’t want to offend anybody.

Being “exposed” all the time underscored the resolve that led to “the bus thing” in the first place: to do what was right for us (ie, taking a year off, part of it, as it turned out, naked) versus what was expected of us (continuing on our career paths, albeit fully clothed). And, isn’t that the very definition of a Spirited Woman?

Here is my video re-enactment of the nudist RV park (now, I have your attention!):

- Doreen Orion, www.QueenOfTheRoadTheBook.com

Doreen's book, QUEEN OF THE ROAD: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own was a Borders Featured Book Club Pick. She is a triple-boarded psychiatrist and award-winning author. Still, she considers her greatest accomplishment to be that her bus was featured as the centerfold of Bus Conversions Magazine, thus fulfilling a life-long ambition of becoming a Miss September. 

Guest Blogger - Doreen Orion - The Bus Ride That Changed Her Life

Doreen Orion is the author of the very funny travel memoir, QUEEN OF THE ROAD: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own 

When my husband Tim announced he wanted to travel around the country in a converted bus for a year and leave our home in Boulder, Colorado, I gave this profound and potentially life-altering notion all the thoughtful consideration it deserved.

“Why can’t you be like a normal husband with a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?  I will never, ever, EVER, not in a million years, live on a bus.”

We’re both shrinks, but Tim’s obviously the better one, because something less than a million years later, I shocked us both and agreed to set forth with our two cats who hate each other, a sixty-pound dog who loves licking us all, my 200 shoes – and no agenda.

My inner Spirited Woman awakened on that year long trip. Sure, we had our share of misadventures (fire, flood, armed robbery and finding ourselves in a nudist RV park, to name a few), but through it all, we not only survived, we thrived. Not only that, our marriage became stronger than ever.

(And, by the way, here’s re-enactment of our very first disaster which occurred a mere ten minutes after leaving our home).

Everyone always says the most important thing in life is to spend time with the people you love, but I don’t think they really live that way. Certainly, Tim and I were guilty of that, as well. It was only when we so drastically downsized that we realized we had been spending most of our time supporting a lifestyle and things – not each other.

That’s why – deep breath in… deep breath out – when we returned from our trip, I was the one who suggested, “You know what? Instead of selling the bus, let’s fix up the house and sell it, instead, so we can live in the bus full time.” And, that’s exactly what we’re doing now.  

So, Tim got not only a converted bus, but a converted wife as well. I am now a proud "busnut." And, I get to live the life of a Spirited Woman every single day.

Doreen will be posting more through the week.

- Doreen Orion, www.QueenOfTheRoadTheBook.com

Doreen's book was a Borders Featured Book Club Pick. She is a triple-boarded psychiatrist and award-winning author. Still, she considers her greatest accomplishment to be that her bus was featured as the centerfold of Bus Conversions Magazine, thus fulfilling a life-long ambition of becoming a Miss September.