Friends with the Forest
Be Empowered to Live Your Best Life!
Dear Reader,
In 2020, my life partner and I left society to embrace a journey of solitude on the Appalachian Trail and to discover what it means to be alive. What we learned was beyond our wildest imagination. I have always felt that knowledge means nothing when it can’t be shared with others. And having learned that happiness is real when shared, I hope this book may serve as a guide for you to create your best life. Thank you for reading and helping to share the message that I have come to share with the world. We are spreading a contagion of compassion to wake up humanity and return to our nature as beings of kindness, mindfulness, and protectors of planet Earth.
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Love Always and All Ways,
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J Bird
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The Weight We Have Carried
An inspiring true story of two successful visionaries on a unique path to create healthy, compassionate, and regenerative lives, J Bird and Baby Bear meet serendipitously as if they have known each other across space and time. Becoming ridiculously ambitious together as entrepreneurs, they launch an educational non-profit organization to direct transformative lifestyle festivals, feeling destined to “change the world.”
But when the world changes before their eyes in 2020 and not in the ways they had hoped to see, the pair embark on an epic journey across the country to change the worlds within their minds. Embracing solitude in the woods, the two peel back layers of who they are underneath the masks they have worn, while letting go of the weight they carried…
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A little over a month into their 2,483-mile voyage, the two travelers encounter a serious financial crisis. Determined to never give up, they learn to forage and survive self-sufficiently in the wilderness, dancing the delicate fine line between life and death throughout their six month adventure. Putting their lives in the hands of the universe, nature reveals infinite lessons along the way. J Bird begins to become aware of entire other lives she remembers from her dreams, unlocking mystical secrets while hiking through the ancient Appalachian mountains.
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When supernatural events of J Bird’s dreams begin bleeding into their waking lives, the couple are faced with questioning reality. Struggling to recall which life they came from as if struck by a form of amnesia, J Bird and Baby Bear emerge back into society realizing no one can remember who they are the way they remember themselves. While Baby Bear accepts blending into a new life, J Bird struggles to let go and sets forth on a mission to discover what happened to her family and friends in her absence. Learning to navigate the universe, realities beyond her wildest dreams come to light while figuring out how to find her way back home to all those she has ever loved.
An adventure, drama, thriller, mystery, comedy, romance, horror, fantasy, and historical autobiographical nonfiction story, The Weight We Have Carried unites all elements and emotions of the human experience, wrapped up in the beautiful power of one being's unconditional love and limitless perspectives of everything that is.
