Caleb Dardick, Author, Leadership Coach, and Storyteller
Caleb Dardick was born in St. Louis in 1965 and came of age inside the upheavals of the American counterculture. In 1970, at five years old, he traveled overland from Amsterdam to India with his disabled parents and two younger siblings, joining the stream of seekers on the Hippie Trail. His father, a paraplegic professor who used a wheelchair, and his mother, a charismatic feminist later understood to have bipolar disorder, had sold everything and “dropped out” in search of freedom, belonging, and a different way to raise a family. Dardick writes from the vantage point of the child he was — observant, loyal, improvisational — and from the adult who has spent decades reckoning with that inheritance. His work explores attachment and abandonment, disability and independence, and the complicated legacy of a generation that believed it could reinvent the world. A lifelong storyteller, Dardick has performed at the Sierra Storytelling Festival and at Beyond Borders in San Francisco. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Caleb is also a leadership coach. He lives in Northern California with his wife. The Adventures of Superfreak: My Childhood on the Hippie Trail is his first book.
Episode 157: The Adventures of Superfreak: My Childhood on the Hippie Trail with My Disabled Parents