That’s me — the small-town girl with a big-city life. My story is the all-American one:  have a dream; believe in yourself; use your brain; develop street smarts; and make it happen, no excuses. My mantra has always been: good things will come to me, if I follow these simple rules. They did come to me; many times, and this exhilarating trend continues today in my life.

Building an $11 million consumer-focused marketing business and three retail stores brought me to the attention of the folks at Victoria’s Secret. I was featured on the front page of the NYTimes Business section and in USA Today.

At age 45, I was on top of my game. My career at Victoria’s Secret was rich and rewarding. The world was my oyster, as I flew around the globe conducting business in one world capital after another. I’d lived for eight years with a handsome, sexy man, with two wonderful children, who I adored and vice versa.

If you met me on the road of life, you would say: “That woman has everything going for her.”

I did — in some respects.

Darkness in the Details of Everyday Life

When I first wrote this manuscript for this very rich man starting a new publishing company called True Courage Press, the next words to flow from my keyboard focused on a history of strange illnesses. Now those words bore me and take the focus off of you — the object of my desires.

Like many of you who read me here at Anne of Carversville, there is also a dark side to my story.

Today I understand why my immune system has malfunctioned three times over three decades. In each case, at 28, 32 and 45, I found myself dramatically ill with different symptoms that we now believe were part of the same “disease”.

Only in my last debilitating illness, did I finally discover the real reasons for my health emergencies. The diagnosis alone of my 1995 medical condition cost $32,000, It was only my last doctor, Thomas M. O’Dorisio MD, then at Ohio State University, who accurately understood the problem.

“Guilt and self-loathing, connected to the patient’s ongoing life pattern of paving over significant emotional and psychological potholes” are not words that doctors write on their diagnosis pad.