Episode Details

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

Cara Benson spent years in active addiction before the Adirondack Mountains gave her something she’d been looking for in all the wrong places. She got sober. She hiked. She found a man named John who left rebus messages on the kitchen counter — hand-drawn symbols instead of words, rays of sunshine about the most pedestrian things.

Then John died by suicide. And the mountains that had carried her through addiction had to carry her through something else entirely.

This episode is about what she found on the other side of both.

In this episode:

• The addiction years — what Tuesday actually looked like
• The hidden struggle with body dysmorphic disorder she’d never told anyone
• Eight years sober and not wanting to live — the depression that had been there all along
• The day some coworkers asked if she wanted to go hiking, and something in her said yes
• John — the rebus messages, the ordinary days, what he gave her
• The six days, and the black SUV in the driveway
• Getting lost in the woods on purpose — howling, locating herself in the trees
• The converted church on the mountain, the beaver lodge in the storm, the fluorescent light that had to go
• What John’s birds gave back to her
• Why she committed to love anyway

Connect with Cara Benson:

Book — An Arms Full of Birds:  carabenson.com

Instagram:  instagram.com/carabensonwriter

Connect with Hiker Trash Radio:

Website:  hikertrashradio.com

Instagram:  instagram.com/hikertrashradio

Apply to be a Dark Miles guest:  hikertrashradio.com/dark-miles

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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