 
This is the story of one woman's journey through violence and trauma, exploring multiple routes out of her pain and disillusionment to find not just peace but a deeper understanding of the true gifts of life: that without challenges and struggles we would not discover the depths of our true nature, and that we are so much more than we think we are. After nearly dying when she was only 25 years old, following a near-fatal stabbing incident at the hands of a seriously traumatized war veteran, she spiraled down into a journey of despair as she discovered how unprepared society was to address the needs of an increasingly traumatized population. This journey of despair became the route to a deeper understanding of not just herself but of the needs of other trauma survivors, which led to a career in finding successful tools for not just recovering from trauma but transcending it to find the real gifts of life. Join her in this journey to help see yourself and your challenges in life as the gifts they truly are.

### Unwrapping the Gifts of Life

### By C. Grace

Everywhere Publications

Copyright 2019 C. Grace

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

_Thank you for downloading this ebook. You're welcome to share it with anyone you think might benefit from reading it. This book may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form._ _In exchange for receiving this free ebook, find a way to give to the world._ _One of the most profound gifts you can give is to become more whole and at peace yourself by healing what pains you and unwrapping the gifts life has offered you._

### Dedication

To David, a lost and confused Vietnam veteran.

And to all our war veterans who have been so wounded by our wars which have less to do with freedom and security for our citizens and more to do with corporate interests and profits.

And to all the casualties of the war at home in a culture full of violence, not just physical and sexual but violence to our whole beingness in a society that has lost its way and favors control and profits rather than people.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I- California

Part II- Colorado

Part III- Hawaii

Afterword

Resources

About the Author

### Preface

Trauma and abuse seem to be the theme of our times. Maybe not the existence of abuse itself, for that's gone on for centuries, but that its ugliest roots are finally coming to the surface for all to see. At the same time, our ability to help trauma survivors heal is advancing in leaps and bounds.

Humanity has been visiting harm against itself for what seems all of known history in the forms of war, genocide, child abuse, and all forms of psychological and spiritual abuse. What I know from experience is that there's always some purpose to our madness. We are the most amazing species. We can inflict the most horrific of traumas yet also perform some of the most precious acts of caring for one another.

I deeply hope that this massive uncovering of humanity's most horrific crimes against itself that we're hearing about today is the very powerful beginning of a collective healing like we've never seen before. What we're on the cusp of healing could usher in for all of us an evolution of the species, enlightened and emboldened by our past missteps along the way.

### Introduction

I guess looking back over your life is common, especially in your sixties, thinking about what you've done, what you still want to do, and feeling like you still have some contribution to make. At 61, I left behind my career, moved to a distant state, a new climate, and a new life yet to be discovered. Little did I know that my so-called retirement was offering me the chance to finally tell my story in writing. For me, it was just my life. I felt honored to have been given so many opportunities to know myself and what I was made of. And then, so many opportunities to be able to use my experience to help others.

The idea of retirement never made sense to me. At first, that was because I'd gotten such a late start in life that it just didn't seem financially feasible to stop working any time soon. But it was more than that. When your life experience and career neatly dovetail until you feel like you're on a mission to fulfill a soul purpose, that doesn't end until you die. That's actually true for all of us. We're all here for a purpose, and everything that happens to us is for a reason. The trick is to find out what that reason is, perhaps by listening to the quiet voice within.

Whenever I listened hard enough, little signs would emerge that showed me the next step, even if it was a baby step. Once I gained what I needed from that step, after a while my heart would tell me something was awry, and I'd have to listen again to find out what was next. Sometimes, the steps were big and I'd be dropping out of college or packing my things and moving across the country. At times, I felt so lost and confused and didn't have a clue what my life was about. Now, as I look back, it was all in perfect order. Every step, every experience, was neatly designed to make me who I am today.

I was settling into my latest step, a new home in Hawaii, without having any idea why I was here. The transition was one of the hardest I'd made. I ended my career, said goodbye to friends, and left my beloved Rocky Mountains behind for a tropical climate that didn't necessarily seem to entice me. But the call to be here was unmistakable and undoubtedly invited yet another life adventure. It made sense to friends and family that I was "retiring" in Hawaii, and many were envious of my new location. All I could think was that at least guidance hadn't led me to Alaska at this stage of my life.

### Part I: California

### Chapter 1

Like so many, I suffered abuse as a child. It started in my home. I was born to parents who were the children of immigrants and had grown up poor. Three of my grandparents were from Ireland, practicing members of the Catholic church which we now know has harbored unthinkable secrets of childhood abuse that range from the physical and sexual to profound spiritual abuse. I know very little about what my parents and grandparents experienced as children. To a discerning eye, one could see that they had their own pain.

I attended Catholic schools during the 1960s, and there were no laws then against hitting misbehaving children in school. I can vividly remember to this day when a little second grade boy was relentlessly acting out until the teacher finally lost her cool and bare-butt beat him with a paddle in front of the whole class. I spent much of my time in school after that terrified, staying as absolutely still as I could in class and fearful that I could be next. As I look back at that day now with wiser eyes, I see an overwhelmed young mother trying to manage almost 50 kids lined up in rows of desks all in alphabetical order, feeding them mostly useless, rote-memorized information that had nothing to do with real life or with the edification of a truly exquisite species desperately wanting to break out its shell. As awful as it was that day for all of us, and especially the boy and teacher, I see now that all the many similar inconceivably painful events in the world, that line up like endless repetitions of insanity, are our own collective unconscious creations conspiring to wake us up to what we no longer want to be.

I don't know if it was my dyslexia or my struggle to find a path that best fit me, but I was in and out of colleges and universities for years. Numbers and spatial relations came easier than words, so I studied math, science, and engineering. I did well in all my classes but nothing felt right and I was miserable. Then it was on to sociology and psychology, but I needed to carry a dictionary around to translate my textbooks. Finally, I finished a degree in psychology, took a couple of years off, and then decided to go to graduate school because there weren't many career options with a bachelor's degree in psychology. In graduate school, I tried sociology again, then statistics and experimental psychology. During these trying years, I was fortunate to be honing my ability to know what was right for me and what wasn't. It was a warm feeling in my heart that said yes and a heaviness in my gut that let me know when I was on the wrong path.

I had just dropped out of my latest school, again lost and confused but determined to find what it was the planet had in store for me. I needed a break. I wanted to do something totally different, something that felt free and unencumbered, something to clear my head and perhaps give me a fresh perspective. An opportunity arose when my cousin Mike came for a visit, and we decided to hitchhike around the northwest, camping along the way. I loved camping. It brought me back to myself and to a connection with the Earth.

### ****

### Chapter 2

It was the summer of 1981 and I was 25 years old. Loaded down with large backpacks, Mike and I headed out to the interstate, thumbs out, to begin our journey north. I was refreshed by our travels. We went from Northern California all the way to Vancouver in British Columbia, and we met incredible people along the way. Most memorable was a couple from Germany who had come to the United States to visit their exchange-student daughter. They had purchased a VW van to travel in, and they squeezed us into the back seat. We spent three days with them, sharing about US culture, visiting tourist traps, and singing as we went. One stranger after another picked us up, and we learned about their lives and their homes. My favorite part was setting up camp in the evening, cooking over an open fire, and then sleeping under the stars. It was a dream come true.

As the summer wound down, we found ourselves in Wyoming and it was time to go back to California. Mike had to return to college, and I needed to get back to figuring out whatever it was that I was meant to do next. For some reason, it seemed more difficult to get rides going back to the West Coast. We were about a two-day drive away when we hit pay dirt. A man in a white pickup pulled over and said he was headed right where we wanted to go. So we settled in for the long drive.

Occasionally, I helped with the driving since I knew how to drive a stick shift. By nightfall, we stopped somewhere in Utah and set up the tent. Our driver slept in the back of his truck. Up early the next morning, we headed for California. We pulled into a gas station in Reno Nevada as the sun was getting lower in the sky. Our driver suggested we camp out one more night and drive the last leg in the morning. We stopped for groceries, and then we directed him to a spot in the Sierras where Mike and I had camped just two months before. It was a bit of a hike from where we parked the truck and up a steep hill next to a running stream. It had been a long, dry summer, so the creek was barely trickling but provided us with enough water for cooking.

After dinner, Mike and I hiked to a clearing and set up our campsite. No rain was in the forecast, so we decided to sleep out under the stars. The cool mountain weather made for good sleeping, and the gentle trickle of the creek was hypnotizing. I easily fell asleep, safe and sound in my sleeping bag. I had no idea what time it was, though I later calculated that it was about 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. I was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. I was faced down in my sleeping bag and I felt something pounding on my back. A gamey smell wafted in the air and I immediately imagined that a deer was trampling me. In an effort to free myself, I attempted to turn over. It would be years before I would remember what I saw. My mind kept thinking it was deer hooves pounding my back and now smacking me in the face.

I can only imagine it was pure survival instinct that prompted me to roll in my sleeping bag until I tumbled down the bank to the edge of the creek. I landed half upright with my back resting on a large rock. Everything went quiet. I must have called for help because Mike woke up and made his way down the bank to my side. He helped me back to my camp spot. It quickly became apparent to him that I'd been severely injured. He could hear what is called a sucking chest wound. My left lung had been punctured and was collapsing.

Instinct drove him down to the highway to flag down a passing vehicle for help after he discovered that our driver and his truck were gone. Mike was wearing just a pair of gym shorts, and his chest was covered in my blood as he stood on the shoulder of the highway trying to wave down help. Car after car swerved to miss him and continued on down the highway.

Meanwhile, as I lay there, my sense of hearing was waning. I'm not sure to this day what that was. Perhaps my ears were filling with blood. I also felt like I was fading away into the dark. I looked up at the tall pine trees surrounding me. They were somehow pulling me up and keeping me afloat as my blood continued to spill out onto the ground. Then my vision started to go away. Again, it could have been blood in my eyes, or perhaps my consciousness was getting ready to check out of this life. I just know I was profoundly tired yet acutely aware of the moment. A funny thought crossed my mind. I'd left the Catholic Church years earlier. But in that moment, as I was facing my death, I thought that maybe I should get back my religion. Undoubtedly, it was some early programming about the perils of dying without religion.

Something profound happened to me that morning that continues to unfold to this day. Many have asked if I had a near-death experience. I was certainly near death. I have no recall of traveling down a tunnel to a light as many have described. Many years later, I attended a professional conference on treating post-traumatic stress disorder. During a video presentation of the treatment of a man who had almost died in a car wreck, he vividly recalled his own near-death experience. As he recounted that memory in detail, my heart leapt in my chest. It was shockingly familiar. Perhaps I did have a near-death experience and it was deeply buried in my unconscious.

### ****

### Chapter 3

So many things lined up that morning to save me. I guess it wasn't time for me to leave yet. Eventually, an off-duty Nevada sheriff who was headed to California for vacation with his family saw Mike on the highway and stopped. The two of them scrambled up to our campsite. I'd been laying there unaware of the time that had passed. I was floating in my own little world now, not being able to see or hear anything. All of a sudden, I heard a twig snap and I was wide awake and alert. I later realized that I'd become sensitized to the sound of a twig snapping because that's what I heard just before I was brutally attacked. This time, the snapping twig was my cousin and the sheriff coming to my side to render aid. It quickly became apparent that I needed a hospital. The sheriff instructed Mike to sit with me for a few minutes and then head down to the highway to wave in the ambulance. The sheriff quickly hiked out and drove down the highway to the next town where he phoned for help.

Shortly after Mike left, I again found myself alone as the life was draining out of me. I was getting so cold and I was really thirsty. Mike had helped me take some sips of water before he left but I was still so thirsty. To this day, I still remember the sensation of the trees lifting me and somehow keeping me alive. Years later, I learned the significance of that feeling when I went on to study shamanism. The shamans believe that everything is imbued with life-force energy. I believe those trees were feeding me that energy to keep me alive.

Another twig snap pulled me back. There was my cousin by my side with two paramedics. They had a board that they strapped me to and carried me down to the road. As disoriented and weakened as I was, I remember hearing that one of the paramedics had vertigo and was struggling to steady himself.

We were 20 miles from the nearest hospital, and during the ambulance ride I almost left this life. I remember it was like being really, really tired, and longing to let go into deep sleep. This time it would be a sleep I wouldn't wake up from. I later heard that they had called me in as a probable DOA or Dead on Arrival.

I was pulled back from the edge of that deep sleep when the ambulance sounded the siren as we entered town. I remember looking up and out the window as a plastic hospital sign flashed by. I thought we'd finally arrived at the hospital where help was available and I let go into that sleep that had been beckoning for so long. It was now about seven in the morning.

Suddenly, I was being shaken awake by two police detectives who had a camera and a recording device. They needed a statement from me before I died. They insisted that I'd been stabbed, even after I told them repeatedly that a deer had attacked me. My mind went blank. They kept asking me to describe the man who stabbed me. I couldn't conjure up that reality at all. I was baffled. They held the microphone close to my mouth as they asked again. I heard the words roll out of my mouth: "His name is David N, he's 27 years old, 6 foot 2 inches tall, weighs 220 pounds." I later realized I was reciting the information from his car registration that was clipped to the sun visor in his truck. Then I was rushed to surgery. Mike said he heard me scream once as they inserted a chest tube into my left side. That was the 27th scar I acquired that day.

While I was in surgery, Mike was questioned by the detectives. Based on the description of the gas station we stopped at in Reno, they were able to get identifying information from a sales receipt the station retained and began their investigation. A story emerged. David had been a medic in the Vietnam War and was still in the military. We later discovered that he'd burned the contents of his medic's bag in the fire we'd made to cook dinner just before he came down to our campsite to stab me.

The detectives located his sister in Texas and his father in northern Oregon. According to his sister, he had been attending a family barbecue just three days earlier. He'd disappeared for a while, a behavior they'd become used to since he returned from the war. It was later discovered that he'd gathered up all the hunting knives and guns she had in her house. After the family gathering, he set out in his truck, but instead of heading back to base he drove north. Somewhere in Northern Texas, he stopped at a rest stop and plunged a knife into the stomach of a woman as she came out of the restroom. She died hours later. A bloody hunting knife wrapped in paper towels was later retrieved from a trash can at the rest stop. From there, he continued to head north until he eventually picked us up and headed for California.

The detectives also spoke with his father in Oregon. It was later that day when David arrived on his father's doorstep. According to the police report, his father greeted him at the door and told him that he was wanted by the state of California. David went into the house, ate a sandwich for lunch, and then got back in his truck and drove all the way back to California to turn himself in at the local police station. He was immediately taken into custody.

I was later to receive a message from him relayed by one of the detectives. He said he did not recall stabbing me, but if he had done that, he wanted to say he was sorry. Shortly after that, he was extradited to Texas and convicted of murder after he confessed to killing the woman at the rest stop. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

### ****

### Chapter 4

I have a vague recollection of waking up in the hospital and still alive after being in surgery for four and a half hours. They had to stitch up 26 deep puncture wounds on my back, arms, and face. The knife had punctured and collapsed my left lung and had come within a quarter inch of my aorta. It had also just missed my right kidney by glancing off my ribs. And the knife had detached part of the deltoid muscle from my right shoulder.

The doctor could come up with no explanation for how I'd survived. He said that the arteries in my arms and legs had started collapsing to maintain some level of blood pressure in my torso which had helped keep my major organs functioning. But that alone could not explain my survival.

It was touch and go for a few days as I floated in and out of consciousness. I had to be half sitting up in bed because a machine was draining fluid from around my left lung. I couldn't pull myself up or reach for anything. Many of the stab wounds were across my back and down my arms. Periodically, two male nurses would come in and lift me up from where I had slipped down in the bed. One day, an alarm went off because something had gone wrong and my lung started collapsing again. Thanks to the work of the amazing nurses and respiratory therapists, I still have a wonderful, fully functional left lung today.

I also had a visit from a representative of what was then a brand new program called Victim Assistance. A young woman from their office, younger than me and new to the job, had gotten a call from the hospital the morning I was admitted. The hospital had requested that she find my next of kin because they didn't expect me to live through the day. When I did survive, she came to see me and signed me up for their benefit program.

My cousin was by my side every day. He had called my parents to let them know what happened. Their lives were already so complicated and alcohol had become their mainstay. I imagine the news of my state was way more than they were prepared to handle. I remember my father called and a nurse held the phone up to my ear. I was barely present because I'd been given strong painkillers. He kept asking me for the details like the meticulous accountant that he was. I didn't know what to say.

My mother and brother flew in the next night and came to see me after visiting hours. I'd been asleep most of the day because I knew inside that I must be as rested as possible to greet my mother. I didn't want to be a burden but it didn't work. She was horrified by the sight of my poor body. My face had been slashed several times and was extremely swollen and disfigured. A few drinks on the plane and a prescription for Valium from her doctor eased the blow, yet she was completely at a loss for what to do. She gave me a little money and flew home several days later. My brother stayed on a few more days and was there when I was discharged, but then he and my cousin had to get back to work and school.

My wounds were stitched up, each with a protruding drain tube. The knife he used had a large 8-inch hunting blade which left deep holes that drained for days. Bed sheets needed to be changed regularly. This is what that young Victim Assistance worker walked into. She later told me how shocking it was to see me, but she never backed away and helped me for months afterwards as I began dealing with the aftermath. She's a friend to this day. Trauma had been no stranger to her family. Both her parents had fled Czechoslovakia on foot, bullets flying behind them, while escaping the communist takeover following the Nazi occupation.

Despite the severity of my trauma, I was only hospitalized for a week. Part of the reason for my short stay had something to do with confusion around whether I had health insurance. I did but there was a delay in accessing my policy. I had apparently also recovered extremely rapidly. Even my Victim Assistance worker was stunned by my quick release. On a follow-up visit, when I was no longer in my room, she assumed I had died.

There are probably many reasons why I lived. I'd been training for a marathon that summer and was running about 50 miles a week, sometimes in mountainous regions. I'd also been carrying around a 50 lb backpack for weeks and felt young and strong. I was in prime condition. Later, I would often say that my prime ended that day. I also believe that it wasn't my time to go and higher forces got involved to make sure I survived. In the weeks, months, and years to come, I often pondered why my life had been spared. I struggled to find out what it was that I was here to accomplish and sometimes it weighed heavily on me.

### ****

### Chapter 5

It's hard to describe how radically life changes after an event like this. Before my brother and cousin left, we retrieved my car, a 1968 VW van that I'd set up as a camper. I'd given up my apartment because I wasn't working. So life began again living in my car. I started camping in my van which caused many a terrifying night when noises would trigger what I was later to learn was a post-traumatic stress reaction. Someone suggested that I drop by the woman's center because they had space for camping nearby. By then, my story have been covered extensively in the local paper so people knew of me. I'll never forget the reaction I got from a staff member at the woman's center. As I shared my story and need for help, she slowly backed her chair up until it hit the wall behind her. I'm sure I was frightening to look at. There was nothing they could do to help me with camping accommodations. I was turned away.

This was not an uncommon reaction, even after the swelling in my face had gone down. In fact, sometimes it was worse. I'd be told it was my own fault for being stabbed and be denied assistance. This phenomenon of blaming the victim was actually common. I later learned that the topic had received much academic attention. Research had discovered that, when faced with someone who's been raped or assaulted, any one of us feels our own vulnerability. As our fear rises, there's an impulse to find a way to assure ourselves that this couldn't happen to us. An almost knee-jerk reaction is to imagine that the victim is somehow to blame.

I remember being asked more than once if I thought he should receive the death penalty. The thought of that sickened me. I didn't believe anyone should be put to death that way. I was angry that he had so overturned my life but I certainly didn't want him dead. What did occupy my mind was that, although he was in prison for a 40-year sentence, he received housing, food, and other amenities such as legal assistance. I received none of the above. This began a long period of me carrying resentments, especially as my life seemed to be going nowhere.

A brief legal exploration into possible avenues for a lawsuit uncovered a few details. David had come back from Vietnam, like many soldiers, a troubled young man. He'd actually sought help from the military but reportedly didn't get his needs met. Ultimately, there was no option for any reparations from the military because they'd cleverly pre-dated discharge paperwork so it would look like he was not attached to the military when he committed the crimes. This completely freed them from any liability. The other road block was that, since he'd been convicted of the murder in Texas and was to serve time there, the DA saw no need to pursue criminal charges in California. So I had no legal recourse. He hadn't been convicted of any crime against me. That limited a lot of possible resources for me later. I also felt no desire to be tied up in the courts for years, trying to sue on a technicality. I just wanted my life back but that would prove to be elusive. In fact, I never did find my way back to the old me. That was in the end a great gift.

Victim Assistance was a new program with very little funding for victims of violent crime and their ongoing struggles with recovery. Although I had health insurance, it wasn't enough to cover all my hospital bills. Since I was new to the state of California, I hadn't yet qualified as a resident which was a requirement for some benefits of the Victim Assistance Program. My application for medical bill assistance was rejected, as well as any job retraining money. My hospital bills went into collection because I had no way of paying for them. As I became aware of the barriers I was to encounter on my way to recovery, I would actually say that the easy part was getting stabbed 26 times.

Because of the confusion around my health insurance, I had been denied physical therapy. I could barely lift my arms from my sides, never mind holding them over my head. I slowly began my own physical therapy, gently raising my arms a little bit at a time each day, and then eventually raising them while holding weighted objects. But my legs were working just fine. I'd been encouraged by the nurses to walk a bit each day in the hospital once I was able to get up out of bed. It would help my lung to recover if I had a little exercise each day. When I was released from the hospital, I continued to walk and soon it became a light trot. I had planned to run a marathon at the end of that summer and still had almost two months to prepare. My mind got obsessed with running that race. I needed to find normal again, to recover my strength, and find my confidence and my old self. I'd been stabbed 26 times on the night of the 26th, 26 days before my 26th birthday. Twenty-six days after my 26th birthday, I ran a 26 mile marathon. I guess that was my lucky number.

Actually, I lightly trotted 26 miles. It was a small race in a small town so not many people ran. By the time I made it to the finish line, most everyone had gone home. Traffic cones and barricades had been collected but friends ran with me through the last leg in town. One race official was still there at the finish line. Apparently, I was the only woman in my age category that finished the race so I won a medal. I still have it in a small box of keepsakes.

In retrospect, it seems insane to have taken this on so soon after the assault but no harm was done. My lung was perhaps a little stronger, and my spirits a bit higher, at least for a little while. Unbeknownst to me, much more difficult times were ahead. For years, I carried that medal around in my pocket to remind me I could keep going.

### ****

### Chapter 6

Life was moving on but I wasn't. I felt so strange, so not myself, and so confused. Nobody quite knew how to deal with me. Some were scared, some were angry and blamed me, others were just baffled and doing their best to be kind and helpful. In my struggle to understand what was going on with me, I decided to go to a university library to look up information on victims of violence. It would be a few more years before the syndrome called post-traumatic stress disorder would get applied to victims of violent crime or what I referred to as survivors of the war at home. However, I did discovered some articles in the nursing journals referring to something called rape trauma syndrome. I recognized so many of those symptoms in myself. It was very helpful to find out that I wasn't the only one going through such a hard time after the trauma was supposedly all over.

The Vietnam war had been over since 1973 and, much like in past wars, soldiers were having difficulties. What in World War I had been called shell shock, and in World War II was named combat fatigue, was now being recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, a condition to be published in the diagnostic manual in 1980. I'd come across some early research about Vietnam war veterans and their struggles, and I began reading anything I could get my hands on. It seemed to describe what I was going through.

Perhaps I was also trying to understand the man who'd tried to kill me. It had been so senseless. There was no provocation. His ritual of burning the contents of his medic's bag in the fire before coming to find me at my campsite was bizarre. A strange connection began to develop between what I was going through emotionally and what the man who stabbed me had undoubtedly experienced after the war. I never did find an answer for all the questions about why someone would do such a thing. But I did start learning about what trauma could do to a person. My research went on for years, and I later wrote a master's thesis on victims of violent crime.

I wandered around the country for over a year, staying for short periods with friends and family along the way. I didn't know where I belonged, and I couldn't seem to find me anymore. I remember telling my story over and over again, watching people's faces for some clue as to how I should feel since I couldn't feel much of anything anymore. I was numb and confused, feeling lost, and looking for answers.

One friend gave me a little bag of marijuana. I hadn't smoked a lot of pot before, but it seemed to take the edge off. I'm lucky I didn't fall into addictions, given my family history of alcoholism. I am also fortunate that my system had always been sensitive so a little bit went a long way. On pot, I would go off on long reveries to a place where all the solutions of the world seemed to exist. I wrote long entries in a journal. Later, these journal entries helped me realize that pot was just taking me in circles, but at least I got to escape from my reality for a little while.

I fell deeper and deeper into a place where I felt like I didn't fit in. Aloneness became my friend. On my trips cross country, I often would slowly drive through huge blizzards, glued to the windshield, trying to find the road. You might ask why I didn't just pull over. It wasn't like I had any deadlines. Somehow, struggling against the elements of nature made me feel alive. Even just being in nature, like with all the camping I did, brought me some solace. Perhaps I was also reconnecting with that experience I had with the trees the morning I almost died.

One night, I was driving across Utah in one of those blizzards and it was getting late. I found a rest stop and nestled into the bed in the back of the van. No one else was there. It was a bad snowstorm that night and people must have stayed home. The quiet was wonderful and I slept well. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up. It was really chilly out, but I was toasty warm wrapped in two down sleeping bags. I parted the curtains to look out at the snow. Rest areas were usually well lit so I could see clearly. There was still no one else there. It was dead quiet. When I had pulled in earlier, my car left tracks in the snow. The tracks were completely gone now, covered in the snow. There I was in the middle of a field of pure white snow. It was so quiet out. Snowflakes were still gently falling an there was no wind. Suddenly, a great sense of peace came over me. I hadn't felt so peaceful since this whole ordeal had started. There was no one for miles around. I was completely alone and that felt so safe. No one was around to hurt me. There was no one to tell about what had happened to me, no one to blame me, no one to be scared of me. Then the irony hit me. I found safety in being completely alone and isolated in a snow field, insulated from humanity. There was a certain sadness in that, but I was so grateful for some moments of peace.

### ****

### Chapter 7

During that first year, I started becoming aware of strange things happening to me. I certainly wasn't feeling like I was getting any better. In some ways, I was actually feeling worse. It was really hard to feel settled inside. Everything made me jumpy. I quickly learned that if I was out in a public setting around people, it was best to have my back to a wall, or a tree, or something to protect me from further harm. Sometimes, I'd have terrifying nightmares but they didn't seem to be about the stabbing. Those memories had become deeply buried inside my mind but my body seemed to know.

It became imperative that no one touch me from behind. I would totally freak out and go into a panic. Watching anything violent on TV or at the movies was absolutely devastating, and I would just seem to go deeply away inside. I soon learned that it was best not to be around big knives. When light would reflect off a knife in the kitchen, I would suddenly become terrified yet have no clear memory of what had happened to me that near-fatal morning. It was just best to not be near knives. A very small paring knife became my sharpest kitchen tool.

I began to believe that perhaps there was something really wrong with me. Maybe I thought I should be over it by now. I'd certainly heard that from other people. From the research I'd done, I knew that I definitely seemed to be having the same type of reactions as rape survivors and war veterans. Even knowing that, I felt like I was going crazy. I decided to get therapy. I called the local community mental health center in the town where I was staying and spoke with an intake counselor. When I said I'd been stabbed 26 times and wasn't doing well, he said he didn't understand what the problem was. I guess I thought it would be self-evident to a professional that such a trauma would have some psychological consequences, but the ramifications of trauma were still being researched and weren't very mainstream yet. I tried to explain more about why I thought I was having a problem. He continued to be unsure about what I needed. I tried harder to explain the loss of normalcy I felt in my life and started crying. This time, his reply was, "I hear you," a common response in an emerging person-centered therapy approach that was becoming popular at the time. He put me on a waiting list and said I'd receive a call in a couple of weeks. I never heard from that mental health center again.

Eventually, I heard about a social worker at a local hospital who was trained to work with victims of violence. I was elated to hear about her but also a little fearful. What would she say when she saw me? Was I actually becoming crazy? Meeting with her ended up being a perfect first step. She helped me understand that my reactions were totally in line with having been traumatized. More importantly, she made it very clear that I was not at all to blame for what had happened to me. They were words I hung onto but another part of me kept doubting. I was to learn later that victims of rape and assault often do blame themselves as a way to reclaim a sense of control over an out-of-control situation. This tendency to self-blame quickly drops away when the trauma is fully released from the mind and body, but such powerful therapies were still being developed.

That first therapy experience with the social worker was mostly educational because it helped me make sense of what was happening to me. But I was still not feeling at all recovered. I had learned that traumatic memories become submerged in our deep unconscious to protect us, and part of getting better was to try to remember what happened. During my wanderings around the country, whenever I was near the scene of the crime I would go back to my camping spot next to the stream. I would quietly hike around and try to reconstruct what had happened there or feel what it was like again. Ironically, about a year later a forest fire consumed most of the area and I never found the location again.

I started spending time, sometimes daily, trying to piece together a chronology. It didn't help that I had gone from deep sleep into a state of trauma rather rapidly that near-fatal morning. The conscious mind just isn't at its best in either circumstance. I would use mirrors to try to peer at the scars on my back, trying to recall in what order they had occurred. The flashes of light on the knife started coming back to me. I remember I'd been faced down when it started. I knew that because it was the pounding on my back that first woke me up. Instinctively, I had turned over to identify what was happening. That's when that glint of light off his knife became emblazoned in my traumatized mind. That became the trigger for more of the memories to slowly come leaking out.

I was stabbed three times in the face, twice in my throat, and when I instinctively threw up my left hand in defense, he almost sliced my thumb off. I can only imagine that an instinct for self-preservation kicked in because I quickly rolled back over on my stomach and kept rolling until I tumbled down the bank and landed next to the stream. The commotion must have scared him because he ran off and headed for his truck down by the highway.

I'd been to therapy and done my best to bring back the memories but I still wasn't at all back to normal. I couldn't even imagine going back to work, never mind deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to go back to school, especially since that would make me feel like I was at least moving forward toward some as yet undetermined future.

I was house sitting for some friends near the end of 1982. A huge blizzard hit that December, and I remember the snow banks were so high that I couldn't open the front door. Even though I couldn't imagine how anyone could break into the house, the feeling of being trapped inside and unable to easily escape threw me into a terror. I could not convince myself that I wasn't in danger. I remember calling a friend to help talk me down and that helped. That evening, I got a call from one of our mutual friends who needed to get to the airport, but the highway was barely traversable with all the snow. She needed me to help her drop off her truck at a nearby office where she worked. She'd spent the night with me and then head to the airport the next morning in a work truck. I was confused with the plan but more than willing to feel useful and have company in that scary house. Many years later, I found out these two friends had put together this vehicle shuffling scheme to distract me from my inconsolable fears. It worked - at least for a while. The next day the sun came out and I got busy shoveling snow. It was good to be outside.

I'd come across some literature on the army reserve in the house where I was staying and something about it attracted me. It would be something to do and somewhere to go. I'd have a place to stay, be fed regular meals, and make some money. I'd also be eligible for an educational stipend. It seemed to be the answer to a lot of my needs. I also felt like I was losing my momentum to keep moving forward in my life. The army would provide structure and motivation, although I knew that it probably wasn't going to be the most healing environment.

I found myself at an army recruitment office a few days later. I had already decided I would only accept being a medic, and I just wanted to serve in the reserves so I could go back to school once I was out instead of waiting to finish three years of an active duty commitment. The medical corps somehow seemed a less violent option, and being in a helping role was aligned more with my degree in psychology. I think there was also a part of me that felt the army owed me one after weaseling out of taking responsibility for one very disturbed soldier who had tried to get help from them after the war. I was surprised that I was eligible to enlist because my lung had been damaged in the attack, but regulation cited that a collapsed lung resulting from a puncture was medically clear after one year. It had been over a year at that point. Ironically, the very condition of PTSD, which was handicapping so many soldiers, was mostly unrecognized and not a deterrent to enlisting. A day after I was sworn in I had serious regrets. I went back to the recruitment office and spoke with a very understanding young woman officer who gently encouraged me to go through with my commitment. It would be two more months before I shipped out.

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### Chapter 8

It was very early on a crisp March morning when I reported in at the recruiting station. Friends were going to store my car and the few belongings I still had. The army didn't want you to have any personal items with you, not even a book except the Bible. Being a reader, I did bring a book and it was never confiscated. It was _The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness_ by German analyst Erich Fromm - a telling selection. I never got to read it but did lend it to a bunk mate to read.

From the recruitment station, a group of us was taken to the airport on a bus. It all seemed so civilized. I made a few new acquaintances and had a pleasant flight. Then the fun started later that afternoon when we landed in a small town in the Southeast where our basic training was to take place. As we deplaned, there were several camouflage-clad army sergeants shouting at us to hustle onto the waiting buses. Most of us had carry-on luggage so we were soon whisked away. After a short ride, we entered a well guarded army base. For the next two months we would see nothing but the confines of this base.

We soon were hurried off the bus by the same shouting sergeants. As we stood inside the receiving area, names were being shouted out by a new set of sergeants. Soon, I heard my name being badly mispronounced. I stepped forward and, as I'd always been told to do as a child, politely offered the correct pronunciation of my name. Suddenly, I had the edge of a flat-brimmed drill sergeant's hat almost touching my forehead as yet another angry man was now shouting at me that I was not to speak without permission. He then demanded that I drop to the floor and start doing push-ups. I was now well known as the first one in our group to drop and give ten. We were soon divided into platoons with men going in one direction while we women were sent in another. I followed the sergeant I'd just become abruptly acquainted with. Off we marched, a haphazard herd of undisciplined recruits. That was soon to change.

In a strange way, I felt a little better about my life. I was finally doing something to move forward. My days were filled with redundant and senseless activities like repeatedly rearranging my footlocker according to diagrams that were reissued regularly. According to the instructions, underpants were to be rolled like burritos and lined up in a row on the left side, then later the right side of the locker. Many years later, I learned that repetitive, compulsive behaviors like are common in OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) could have a calming effect on the brain. Perhaps that provided some benefit to me at the time.

Many of the training sergeants I was taught by, both in basic training and medic's school, were Vietnam veterans. Almost all the sergeants I encountered were gentle souls underneath their tough exteriors. The ones who'd done tours in Vietnam were often pretty subdued. I imagine they had seen some horrible things happen during the war. My flat-brimmed hat drill sergeant, who's face I'd encountered up close that first day, was one who'd been in Vietnam.

One evening after dinner, he sat us down on the grass behind the barracks. It was a few weeks after we got there, and we were starting to look a little more like a coordinated platoon. I'll never forget the talk he gave us. He was like a sweet favorite uncle, sharing with us the true method behind the madness of basic training. He recited a few of the pretty derogatory names he'd regularly shouted at us, like dim wit, dummy, stupid, or lazy. He said none of these things were really true. He was just trying to get us to do our best and succeed. He translated for us. If he called us a loser and not meant to be a US Army soldier, what he was really saying was that we would soon become a winner. It went on like that in very simple terms. He got the message across. He was on our side.

My platoon was one of only two in our company that had a female assistant drill sergeant. She was tough on us but looked after us like a mama bear. Yes, it's true that rapes happen all the time on the army bases. She forbid us from visiting the latrines when we were out at the shooting ranges unless we took a buddy along with us.

It felt very strange to me to start carrying a gun around. I'd never even seen a gun up close before. Now I was learning to take it apart, clean it, and put it back together. Out on the shooting ranges, we'd be instructed to shoot at these targets that looked like cutting boards that have a handle on one end, all carved out of a single piece of wood. They were hung by the handle end and had a bull's-eye painted on the cutting section of the board. It was a long time later, probably after I finish basic training, that I finally realized it was meant to be a human silhouette and not a cutting board. I guess I just couldn't bring myself to imagine that I was shooting at a human figure. Here I was, after almost being killed, learning how to kill. The irony had escaped me, but a traumatized brain can be a wonderful thing.

As much as I'd protected myself from realizing I was shooting at human forms, when we attended the demonstration of detonating mines, I was totally rattled. Fear gripped my chest and I could barely breathe. We were lined up on bleachers, overlooking a burned-out looking pit in the middle of the lush forest where our base was located. A few soldiers were down below setting up the mines. Soon, one after another, they detonated each one. The noise was deafening. I thought I just couldn't stand another explosion when it finally stopped. Even now, as I write about this decades later, I can still feel the horror. I dearly hope someday, perhaps very soon, that our species outgrows the need to kill each other.

Near the end of basic training we set up our bivouac. That's where we loaded up backpacks with a tent, sleeping gear, and our weapons, and camped out for two nights. I was sure that this would be the end of my sanity. There was no way I could camp out in a setting like this with so many people around. The first night I was off the hook. I volunteered for KP. That meant I'd have to be in the kitchen preparing food for the troops, driving it out to the bivouac site to be served, then going back to clean up. The volunteers spent the night in the barracks. But everyone had to spend at least one night in a tent.

I don't remember if I had a tent mate or not but I probably did. What I do remember is that sometime during the night, while I was huddled up on my side of the tent, my eyelashes brushed against the side of the tent. Only I could hear the scratching noise since it was right on my face. It must have sounded like the old snapping twig trigger because I freaked out, thinking somebody was trying to get into my tent. Even though I knew what had happened, and that it was just my eyelashes, I couldn't calm myself down. Some kind of programmed response had been triggered which undoubtedly was intending to protect me from harm. My logical mind knew I was safe but the rest of me went into high alert. I stayed awake for the rest of the night. When morning came, I went about my business as usual. No one ever knew I'd spent a terrifying night protecting myself from imagined dangers.

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### Chapter 9

It was almost time to graduate basic training and start medic classes at a new base. I'd spend a lot of time outdoors, crawling around in the mud, shooting at targets out in the rain, and then sleeping in a crowded barracks where everyone was suffering the effects. The flu was going around the platoon, and it was hard to avoid getting sick under such circumstances. All this took its toll on me. I came down with the flu but wasn't getting over it like everyone else. I kept getting weaker and I was always so tired. I avoided sick call because I could possibly be held on base past my transfer date. I'd made a couple of close friends who were also headed to train as medics. If I didn't ship out with them, I'd be assigned to a different class. That just wasn't acceptable to me.

The day to depart arrived. We were all packed up and saying goodbye to everyone. We headed out to the airport in another military bus. I'd been on that base for two months. Driving out into the surrounding community felt a little disorienting. We'd been secluded in this military culture where everything was so homogenized and regimented. We'd been cut off from any news and hadn't seen any television since we'd arrived. Driving past gas stations, stores, and fast-food restaurants was a little startling since I hadn't seen any for weeks.

This time, it was a night flight. It was almost midnight when we landed. Each of us now had a military duffel bag filled with uniforms and boots. We were required to travel in our class A uniforms. For women, that was a skirt and matching jacket. Fortunately, the military believed in flat shoes for women because, as soon as we retrieved our duffel bags off the airport carousel, we were ordered to wear them like backpacks and run to the bus. Once at the new base, we were again ordered to strap these cumbersome duffels onto our backs, run inside the barracks, and scramble up the stairs. After several weeks of being ill, I was out of energy. I collapsed on the stairs.

I was brought to the hospital that night. I had pneumonia in my left lung, the one that had been punctured. The doctor on the ER was very kind. He offered to discharge me from the army that night. It was a tempting offer but I'd come this far. If I completed training, not only would I get 2 1/2 more months of pay but also a stipend for school and ongoing checks for attending monthly reserve duty. I declined but told him I desperately needed to get some uninterrupted sleep. He didn't have grounds to admit me to the hospital, but he sent me back to the barracks with orders to be given the next day off. He also wrote me a prescription for Tylenol 3. I took one that night and fell deeply asleep. I later learned that the prescribed pain killer had codeine in it. It would keep me floating along in a pleasant state for the next few days.

At 3:30 AM, about two hours after I had finally gotten to bed, the lights in the barracks were snapped on and yet another sergeant was shouting at us to get up. Since I'd been the last one in the night before, I was left with the top bunk in the back corner. A blaring fluorescent light was just a couple of feet from my face. I pull the covers over my eyes. Despite assurances that I was excused from duty, and that a copy of the doctor's orders had been delivered to the main office at my barracks, I suddenly had a sergeant right next to my face, screaming at me to get up. I calmly let him know that I was on sick leave. Oh no, there would be no staying in bed. He ordered me to get up, get dressed, and be outside in five minutes. I was shocked. Several women in my barracks who had accompanied me from basic training knew I was sick. I quickly got dressed and two friends helped me down the stairs.

Once outside, we were expected to start calisthenics before sunrise and before it got too hot. We were in Texas and it was almost June. First, we were required to stand stiffly in formation while we were read the daily report. My head was just swimming. I was swaying there in line, trying to hold my body at attention. Then I started to see stars. I quickly told the two women on either side of me that I was going to pass out. As my body went limp, they each grabbed one of my arms to hold me up. I was at half-mast. Then I came to and was able to stand on my own again.

I have no idea what the sergeants thought was going on but I never got my bed rest. I got dragged along for a few days, occasionally being caught mid-fall as I started to pass out. I always revived fairly quickly. After that first few days of hard knocks from the sergeants, I learned that training as a medic had its rewards. Things here at this base were way more lax than basic training. Once classes were over, we were free to enjoy our evenings and often had the whole weekend off. That first week or so, I spent lots of time in bed and started getting stronger again.

These sergeants turned out to be a bunch of comedians, teaching us numerous first aid skills while always finding a way to make us laugh. We practiced on each other, simulating battlefield rescue scenarios, and really started to develop a camaraderie. I remember one day, a young man I'd been practicing with came over and told me he would go into battle any day with me because he could trust me to watch his back. I was so flattered. I guess that was true about me. Little did he know, I'd already had some battlefield experience in the war at home.

Near the very end of our training, we did our fully simulated battlefield finals. Several of us were selected and taken away in a truck to a building where we were put in full make-up to look like we had actual battlefield injuries. I was in that first group. Once we were all dressed up and in make-up, we were taken out to a wooded area and strategically placed on the ground. Then the medics-in-training were sent in. Soon I had several of my classmates attending to my injuries as a helicopter landed nearby. I was then carried on a stretcher to the chopper and locked into a rack specifically made to accommodate the stretcher. I was well strapped in. As the helicopter flew up above the trees, it banked steeply to the left to turn towards the destination landing pad. I'll never forget it. I turned my head left, looking out the open door and right down at the ground. It was thrilling.

I sometimes wonder why I wasn't scared or triggered that day. I felt so well taken care of by my classmates and it was my first ride in a helicopter. Perhaps I was finding a renewed trust in humanity. That day became the climax of my training as a medic. A few weeks later we all graduated, and I said goodbye to these fellow soldiers who had helped me take another step towards recovering from my trauma.

### ****

### Chapter 10

I began serving my army reserve weekend duty the month after being discharged from active duty. Ironically, I never ended up serving in the army hospital on base. Since I'd finished a college degree before joining the military, I already had an advanced rank three steps above private first class. I came to the attention of some of the commanding officers who reassigned me so that I could attend their meetings, take minutes, and type up reports. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise since I could have been re-traumatized by seeing real wounded patients in the hospital. I actually enjoyed spending time with the officers. Many of them, men and women included, had been in Vietnam. Somehow I felt a part of their culture, having been stabbed by a vet. I had PTSD, too.

The weather that winter was rainy and damp, and my health was becoming compromised. I also noticed that I still wasn't feeling myself. I continued to feel lost, unsure of myself, and I couldn't seem to find my way to a future that felt right. I was a little stronger after having completed military training, but the symptoms of trauma still weighed heavily on me.

The same lung, the one that had been punctured and collapsed, was continuing to give me trouble. I utilized the VA services and made several visits to their doctors. The topic of early discharge came up again. This time I took the opportunity and ended up serving just one year of a six-year commitment. Graciously, some doctor along the way gave me a general instead of a medical discharge which undoubtedly made it easier to get health insurance in the ensuing years.

I'd been renting a room in a house and needed money for rent and food, so I had taken a job as a cashier at a local gas station to supplement the money from the army. I'd sit in a glass box all day, collecting money for gas. Although I still felt like my life seemed to be going nowhere, I latched onto a cause. It was the Reagan era, and there was talk of nuclear war and a need to defend ourselves with the Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly known as "Star Wars." Horrified at the prospect of nuclear annihilation, I became very active in the anti-nuclear movement, attending rallies and reading everything I could find on the topic. Years later, I would realize that this was the way I was channeling my anger at what had happened to me. It was safely removed enough from my own situation that I could wholeheartedly embrace the cause. It also helped me feel like I was somehow contributing to the world or moving forward in life.

Still, I wasn't feeling at all normal anymore and it frightened me. It was getting harder to get out of bed. I would literally have to pull myself to the floor to get up. I would later learn that untreated PTSD could lead to a type of depression. It had often been suggested by well-meaning friends and even uninformed professionals, that I should be "over it" by now. It had been 2 1/2 years since the assault. I began to believe that there must be something really wrong with me that I couldn't shake this. I reasoned that if I was back in school and working towards a career again, maybe that would help. My landlady was attending a local state school and suggested I might enroll, especially since free counseling was included with the tuition. She even offered to take me to campus on the days she was going since my car wasn't always reliable. I took her up on it.

I applied for a student loan and began taking classes in sociology and statistics again, but I found the counseling psychology classes most interesting. I spent all my free time on campus at the library, checking out books on more alternative types of psychology, especially ones that embraced spirituality. It seemed to leave me with a spark of hope that I would find a way to recover from this.

I also signed up at the student counseling center and was soon assigned a psychologist. She was nice enough but seemed more traditionally trained. There was a certain lack of engagement on her part, and I felt like I was being observed rather than helped. I stuck with it because I knew I needed help and it seemed better than nothing. But she didn't seem to understand how desperate I had become to get back to being a normal twenty-something with a sense of direction in the world. PTSD, while gaining recognition as a condition experienced by war veterans, was still not being recognized as a condition that also applied to crime victims. I certainly had all the classic symptoms.

One day during a therapy session, I decided I needed to really let it all out - how helpless I felt, how lost, how terrified I was of ever being normal again. Halfway through that session, she calmly suggested that I needed to go away to a hospital for a while, and that perhaps I could ask my parents for money to do this. All my fears were confirmed. I had finally lost my mind and would need to be put away. It was several hours before my landlady would pick me up for my ride home. I found a secluded spot on campus in a semi-wooded area and sat down on a log. I was in shock. How could this be happening? Part of me was relieved. At least I knew now that I'd become mentally disabled. But another part of me was terrified. Would I ever lead a normal life? Was this it?

The psychologist had scheduled another session for me on the following day. She was deeply concerned about me. By that next day, I was back to my numb self. She changed her mind about me needing to be hospitalized since I seemed to be coping. I didn't continue counseling with her for much longer. It didn't seem to be helping.

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### Chapter 11

That summer, my landlady sold her house and moved. I'd been working at a local daycare center and a coworker let me park my van in her driveway. I slept in the car but shared the kitchen. It was going to be temporary.

I'll never forget it. One evening, it was already dark out. My roommates were out and I was in the kitchen. Suddenly, I heard a woman screaming out on the street. Soon, she was pounding on our door. I was sure a crime was in progress. I absolutely froze up. Part of me wanted to help her but I was too terrified. I moved closer to the door as she continue to pound and scream for help. I froze up again. I never opened the door and she soon left. I felt awful that I couldn't help her. I did call 911 to make a report but felt so guilty for weeks. I have no idea what happened that night. I only hope she was okay.

I was still taking classes at the state school and began seeing a psychiatrist on staff there. He was very understanding but as baffled as the other people I sought help from. It was obvious I was anxious so he wrote a prescription for Valium. I took one of the pills the next day. Wow, it was like all my feelings got lifted away. I was always sensitive to drugs and this was no different. I started taking one at bedtime which helped me to sleep. It was too helpful. I couldn't get up in the morning and eventually lost my job at the daycare center. I never finished the prescription.

Holding down a job, or even finding another one, was feeling overwhelming. It had been suggested that I could apply for welfare so I began going through the very involved application process. It looked like it was all a go until it was discovered that I lived in my car. Welfare was not available for the homeless but I did qualify for food stamps. At least I'd have money for food. I never went without food, but I did learn where all the good restaurant dumpsters were just in case.

One of my roommates knew a man in town who had received Social Security disability money based on his symptoms following his service in Vietnam. She thought I should meet with him. He might be able to show me how to get disability benefits myself. He lived in a room in a hotel. It was actually pretty spooky. He decorated the room to look like a bar he frequented in Saigon during the war. He seem so sad and so lost. He explained to me how to apply for Social Security disability and what to share that would help qualify me. I followed through with his suggestions, filled out all the paperwork, and showed up for my appointment. My worker was a late middle-age man, obviously burned out by his job. He flipped through the pages of my application, reading choice sections about my struggle loudly enough so that everyone in the large room could hear. I was mortified. Several weeks later I got a denial letter in the mail.

Even though I no longer took the Valium prescription, the psychiatrist at my school still saw me periodically. He continued to be very concerned and supportive. At one appointment, he shared that the school was offering a new program to match up students who needed housing with elders who needed help with minor chores around the house. It was perfect. I was soon placed in a home with a 90-year-old woman who was deaf but otherwise able to care for herself. I had my own room in a house with a very large and gorgeous garden. Nature fed me, made me feel alive, and I wanted to be in it as much as I could. Now it was right outside the door.

I continued to take classes, trying to decide what direction to take in finding a future career. My car was in disrepair a lot and I couldn't afford to have it fixed. I began to teach myself how to fix it myself. It was an old 1968 Volkswagen. I bought a copy of _Volkswagen Repair for the Complete Idiot_ and started practicing. It really wasn't that hard. I'd have to take a bus into town to get auto parts after I had the car apart. I'll never forget the day I was standing at the curb, waiting for my bus back home. A homeless man was coming down the line of waiting passengers asking for money. I was dressed in my car repair clothes and must have looked pretty shabby. He stopped in front of me, took a quick look, and moved on without requesting any money from me. I later had to laugh because I thought, "Oh boy, have I arrived."

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### Chapter 12

I'd understandably become very distrustful of counselors but my emotional struggles continued. Sometimes at night when I was really falling apart I'd call emergency hotlines. The phone counselors were always kind and very good listeners. They always offered various resources. One night, I was told that a psychiatrist in a local city was starting a group for crime victims. I was so excited. I'd heard that group therapy might be a good option. They were trying it with the Vietnam veterans with good success. I called the psychiatrist the next day. He was very open to hearing my story but he had a strange response. He suggested that part of the reason I was having trouble finding help was because people who get stabbed as many times as I did usually don't live to tell about it. It was such a strange thing to say but I could see that it was true. People just didn't know what to say to me. He did take my name and number and got back to me a few weeks later. He had found only one other possible participant so there would be no group.

Another night on a hotline, I was given the number of a psychologist whose daughter had been killed while hitchhiking. It sounded promising but I was losing hope and afraid of another rejection, or worse, to be told I needed to be on a psych ward. I finally made a call to the psychologist a couple of months later. At my first appointment, she let me know that everything I was going through was a normal response to being stabbed and I didn't need to be in a hospital. I was greatly relieved and began seeing her regularly. She generously charged me a very low fee which I was managing to come up with every week. She also began putting together another Social Security disability application for me. This one would include the latest research on PTSD and how it was being applied to victims of violent crime. My application was quickly approved.

I had stopped taking classes at the state school and because I was no longer enrolled, my student loans came due. I was now receiving disability checks which were hardly a living wage. There was no way I could make loan payments. After battling them for several months and having my credit rating trashed yet again, the harassing calls and letters ended. I guess they realized I really had no money to give them.

With a regular income now coming in from Social Security, it was time to find a place to live. There was a certain peace in knowing that I would soon have my own place. It took a long time to find an apartment I could afford. I'd also learned from experience that I had to have a place surrounded by concrete or asphalt. The sound of a snapping twig was still a trigger. Just a squirrel outside the window could make that noise, and I'd be ripped out of a sound sleep with my heart racing in my chest. Then it could be hours before I could feel safe enough again to fall back asleep. Finally, I found the perfect place. It was a tiny studio apartment the size of a garage. There was a duplex upstairs with garages downstairs, and my apartment was set up in one of the garage slots. I didn't have much in the way of furniture, but I was becoming very creative and handy. These were the days of cinderblock and board bed stands and bookshelves.

Finding a place in a safer neighborhood meant much of my disability check went to rent. Since my food budget was so meager, I started learning to cook everything from scratch. It was also healthier to do so. I remember going to the grocery store one day when I was stopped by a woman at a table out front who was doing a survey. The first question she asked was about how much money I spent per month on groceries. When I told her what I spent, she insisted my amount couldn't be right. But I was so conscious of my budget then that I knew it was an accurate figure.

I also had to ration my gas money. That meant doing a lot of walking at the end of the month if something unexpected had come up that required extra driving. Most everything was within a few miles of my place, so when the car broke down I could still function. I felt like I was settling into some normalcy again.

I'd been so drawn to the books I'd read on spiritual psychology when I was in school. I was only a few blocks from the library, so I began regularly taking out books on everything from alternative psychology and spirituality, to psychic prophesies about a better future for humanity. The vistas of our world were being opened up for me. The very constricted and dry reality that had been presented to us in school and in the media was a terribly narrow view of what really existed. This reading began opening me up to an excitement about life and the future.

I started thinking about attending school again and pursuing this spiritually-based counseling that had so completely intrigued me. I found another state school that offered a master's degree in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Humanistic psychology was a new approach that was taking a step away from the more analytic and detached traditional therapies by becoming more person-centered. The transpersonal approach was psychology's venture into the spiritual realm. It seemed like a match made in heaven. I applied and was accepted. I sold several of my belongings to use for tuition money. Having a regular income now through disability would make it possible for me to attend school full-time. I was feeling like life was moving forward again and that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

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### Chapter 13

My new school was wonderful. Its focus was on self-development which was exactly what I needed and wanted. I met a classmate who'd been badly beat up after accidentally walking into the middle of a drug deal. We bonded instantly and shared war stories about our struggles to recover.

Adding a spiritual aspect to psychology opened up a whole new world. Events in life happened for a reason. Searching for that reason was part of the adventure of life. We are here on the planet to learn about our true selves. We are ultimately spirits having a human experience. As spirits, we are eternal and part of everything and a beautiful expression of the Creator. There was something expansive about thinking in these terms. With this new perspective, I was beginning to look at my assault differently. It became the catalyst for beginning a much deeper look at my journey in life.

One of my favorite classes was called "Tools for Self-Discovery." It was taught by an Austrian-born woman whose father, at risk to his own life, aided Jews in escaping from Nazi Germany. She had a very unique outlook on life. During every class, we'd be given an exercise in writing or perhaps an art therapy exploration of our own inner self, and then we'd spend time in groups sharing our process with each other. I found great acceptance among my classmates. It was a very powerful time. Sometimes, it was also very challenging when fears came up around whether I'd be judged or misunderstood again.

I also took an elective in geology. Since I'd dabbled in science as a possible degree when I was an undergraduate, I had the prerequisites required. I was particularly interested in this class because it was on the geology of the Grand Canyon and included a school-sponsored trip to the Grand Canyon. I hadn't had a vacation in years. I felt like this qualified. About three-quarters into that semester, we took off on our geology field trip during spring break. Our professor and his assistant drove the two school vans. We arrived at a camping area just outside Grand Canyon National Park at dusk. I loved camping yet it was still a scary prospect for me. But I was surrounded by classmates, several of whom I had told my story. They checked in with me regularly to see how I was doing.

We were up bright and early on that first morning. I remember there was still some snow on the ground. We were up around 7000 feet in elevation. One more ride in the vans, and then we strapped on backpacks and started hiking into the Grand Canyon. Along the way, we stopped for mini lectures to learn more about the hundreds of thousands of years of geology we were passing by along the way. It was exhilarating both physically and mentally.

That first night, we all camped out along the Colorado River. The sound of the rushing river was intoxicating. Upon arriving that evening, everyone started unpacking food and stoves and the big cook-in began. The hike down had been extremely strenuous. Several of my classmates were reevaluating the amount of food that they were carrying. Soon, food was being given away. I think I ate three dinners that night.

We spent the next day hiking across part of the floor of the canyon. The weather was now completely different. We were in a desert. It was dry and hot and we heard the occasional rattlesnake. After two days of strenuous hiking, most of us were exhausted. After dinner, I found myself a quiet spot and went to bed early.

One of my classmates was a Vietnam veteran who had spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp. Stories had circulated through the group about how he'd often been confined during his imprisonment in a small bamboo-framed cage. He was a really wired guy who was always moving and kind of anxious. He was also always looking out for everyone's back which probably qualified him as another assistant to the professor because he helped everyone out so much.

I'm not sure how this unfolded but somehow he volunteered to wake up anyone the next morning who'd slept in. I was one of them. My two closest friends on the trip, knowing my story, were immediately concerned. I must have been exhausted because I was sound asleep and the sun was already high in the sky. He also knew of my story and took particular precautions in waking me. He didn't want to get too close so he started gently tapping my side with his foot. I didn't stir. He tapped a little harder. I'm not sure exactly what it was. Probably just being awakened while camping out was enough. I suddenly leaped awake and began screaming and swinging my arms in front of me. I still remember the look of shock on his face and his apologies. He quickly scurried away. I'm sure he was as traumatized as I was that morning.

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### Chapter 14

While attending school, I continued therapy with my psychologist. My childhood abuse became more of the focus because it was thought that it could complicate my trauma from the assault. It was also common at the time to make childhood a focus in therapy. I was in both individual and group therapy and was diligent in attending regularly, but I didn't seem to be improving much. The treatment of PTSD was in its infancy, and my psychologist was a pioneer in the field, having found her way there because of the brutal murder of her daughter.

Medication was also considered essential, although not as extensively as it is used today. At the urging of my psychologist, I began seeing a psychiatrist she trusted. Thus began almost 3 years of multiple failed trials of at least half a dozen antidepressants. I would sometimes think, just maybe, that it was helping. My psychologist said she'd see a difference. I tried to feel that it was helping but in the long run nothing changed.

The side effects were awful and resulted in the repeated medication changes. One would cause me to sleep 14 or 15 hours a day and barely be awake the rest of the day. Another caused my heart rate to become so elevated that I couldn't exercise. Being able to go out and run in nature was keeping my head above water psychologically - that med just wouldn't do. Another medication required such radical changes to my diet that I had to opt out. I was clearly frustrating my psychologist and psychiatrist. I'm sure I was being labeled as a "non-compliant patient."

I wanted to be able to know what was right for me. I was constantly questioning my own judgment. I wanted to trust the professionals but something didn't feel right. I finally ended up on a medication that I could tolerate enough to function and go to school. I don't remember how long I was on it. The pharmacist was giving me the big bottles now instead of the small trial prescriptions. Supposedly, I was now stable. Both the psychologist and psychiatrist assured me I was doing much better but I knew that I wasn't. Something about the prospect of receiving what was then state-of-the-art PTSD treatment and still not feeling much better put me in a tailspin. I started thinking about suicide. Having a garage presented an option. I'd heard dying of carbon monoxide poisoning was just like falling asleep. One night, feeling particularly desperate and depressed, I pulled the insert out of my big prescription bottle to look up what an overdose could accomplish.

I can't remember if it was that night or perhaps another one shortly after. I laid down on my bed feeling like I had completely given up. I wouldn't even have had enough energy to kill myself if I wanted to. I was in an altered state of sorts. I felt empty. I'd run out of solutions. As I laid there, I saw this barely visible tiny ball of light descend over me and enter my body just above my belly button. I wouldn't call myself clairvoyant. I'm certainly intuitive but I don't see things in other dimensions. Years later, I was told by a shaman that it was a higher aspect of myself that was coming in from another dimension to aid me. Others might have called it the arrival of an angel or some help from above. Whatever it was, it was just the booster shot I needed. Very slowly, things started to turn around.

As I became more engaged in having hope again, I progressed in school. Soon it was time to start writing a master's thesis. I'd already known I was going to write about victims of violent crime. One of the professors on my thesis committee had some concerns about me tackling a topic so close to home. But my thesis chairman was supportive of my journey through this. He was also open to me sharing some of my emotional process along the way. He was a real gem to find on my journey. He knew I was also in therapy and respected that. As I got to know him better, I shared a little bit about what was going on in my therapy. I clearly remember him expressing some concern for what I was experiencing.

I had also felt for a long time that something wasn't working in my therapy. I had been blaming myself for not progressing. There was a certain comfort in hearing from another professional that perhaps I wasn't in the right therapy. Maybe it wasn't just me. I continued writing my thesis and attending individual and group therapy but something had changed. I was starting to consider other options.

That spring, I graduated with a master's degree in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. I was 32 years old.

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### Chapter 15

By the end of that summer, it felt like I was at a dead end in therapy. There had also been some shake ups in the therapy group I was attending and it was disbanded. My therapist was on vacation for two weeks, so I had some time to really evaluate how I was doing outside of therapy. I'd been taking an art class at a local community college that summer where I met a new friend. She attended a self-help group called Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). I'd grown up in an alcoholic home and thought I'd give it a try.

It was a great group and I was feeling positive again. When my therapist returned from vacation, I shared with her my experience. She didn't approve. In more traditional therapy approaches, attending another therapy while in treatment was not advisable. Somehow it would dilute or distract the progress you could make. I can only imagine that that is why she didn't approve. Things were getting strained between us. I was terrified of ending my relationship with her because she'd been my anchor for so long. I think she must have sensed my growing discontent with our relationship. Before I could even bring it up, one day during session she suggested that my therapy wasn't going anywhere, attributing my lack of progress to the fact that I was obviously not ready to change.

I was devastated. Even though I probably needed to move on, I felt completely rejected and like a failure. It was all on me. She agreed to see me one more time to close out our four year relationship. I was a mess. I wanted her to let me know that I'd made some progress. She could offer little feedback to assure me. It was I who had failed. I learned later that skilled and professional practitioners would never cut loose a client so abruptly and with so little hope. In the end it was a blessing in disguise.

I was so lucky that I'd found ACA. I had a place to go with supportive people. I started attending two or three meetings a week and working their version of the 12 steps which had been adopted from the Alcoholics Anonymous program. The very last antidepressant I'd ended up on was Prozac. It had just come out and was being touted as a miracle drug. I started taking it that summer. I was feeling better. I don't know how much of that was because I was in a group that was working for me.

Since my therapy hadn't been helping, the psychiatrist suggested that I would need to be on this medication for the rest of my life. It was another blow to my hope of ever recovering. Later that year, I came down with the stomach flu and couldn't keep anything down. I went for several days without taking the medication. I didn't feel any worse. When I was over the flu, I decided to go a few more days without medication. There was still no difference. I never took it again.

I hadn't worked for several years. I still had my income from disability but I wanted a future and a career. I decided to contact the local county job rehabilitation center. I filled out the application and met with a worker. She was very encouraging. There was just one last step. I had to have a letter from a therapist saying I was capable of working. I gave her the name and address of my former psychologist and the request was sent out. A week or so later, I got a call from the rehabilitation office. I'd been denied assistance because my former therapist had reported that I was incapable of working. I was too disabled. I bottomed out again.

I was still attending ACA, but the rest of the time I was home feeling completely hopeless and the suicidal feelings came back. I knew the local county had a community mental health center. I hadn't had luck dealing with these centers in the past but that had been several years ago. This time, it wasn't so much a lack of understanding that I encountered as it was a lack of funding. The 80s were devastating for mental health funding. More and more of the severely mentally ill were becoming homeless or ending up in prison, and community mental health had to operate on very limited budgets.

I made an appointment for an intake and only waited a couple of weeks. To ration services, intakes were being done in groups of three. I was ushered into a small office with two other women. The social worker started with one woman while the other two of us listened. I don't even remember why the other two women were there. All I know was that I was becoming overwhelmed listening to their struggles. I felt awful for them, but I didn't have enough of my own resources to even be in the room. I quietly excused myself and waited out in the hallway. When the social worker was done, she called me in and I had my intake. Since I was still seeing the psychiatrist, even though it was only once every three months, I was considered to be receiving services elsewhere and was denied assistance.

I kept going to my ACA meetings and getting support. It became a lifesaver for me. My ACA friend that I'd met in art class was incredible. She kept boosting my spirits and assuring me something would come through for me. I was still spending a lot of time alone at my apartment, trying to put one foot in front of the other. I needed to keep taking care of myself and was grasping for hope any way I could. I was sleeping a lot. It was a great escape.

One morning the phone rang and woke me up. Out of the blue, an old friend from my master's program called. She knew I had some background in statistics. She had a job on campus doing surveys with students on their educational experience, and she wanted to know if I'd like a part-time job helping her tallying results and running statistical analyses. I immediately said yes. When I got off the phone, I thought, "Am I crazy? Can I work?" A mental health professional had told me I was incapable of working.

As I sat with that, the phone rang again. This time it was the community mental health center that had recently denied me services. They were starting an experimental program called PTSD group. A psychologist intern and a psychiatrist resident had put their heads together and decided that this was a needed program. They submitted a proposal and the director gave them the green light. I was scheduled for another intake, this time with the psychologist intern. I sat back down on my bed practically in shock. I thought about what my ACA friend had said. Something was certainly coming together for me.

My friend from graduate school needed me to start work the following week. After years of being on disability my wardrobe had dwindled, but I was able to piece together a few outfits. Off I went Monday morning. It was a long commute and my car was still in great disrepair. It was so rewarding to have my skills be valued. In addition to tallying results, much of which I was allowed to do at home, I attended meetings with the professor to discuss research strategies.

I guess it wasn't a big surprise, but a few weeks later my car started leaking oil on the way home. It would probably be more accurate to say it was gushing oil. Halfway home, I'd already used up the two cans of oil I always carried with me. I limped the car along to the nearest convenience store and bought two more cans of the extra thick oil. As the last bit of oil leaked out of the engine, sparks started spitting out the cooling vents. The whole engine was seizing up.

I know it sounds like a nightmare and it was. But that angel magic, or whatever you want to call it, was working for me again. I was literally two blocks from my apartment when the car finally died. I walked home and got a neighbor to tow the car home with his car. I was so sorry to disappoint my school friend. There was no Internet then, but she was able to give me a few more hours of work by mailing me data to tally.

Now I was really stuck with no car. I was accepted by the new PTSD group and it would start the next week. I called them and shared my dilemma. As it turned out, another participant in the group lived right nearby me and was able to give me rides.

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### Chapter 16

I'll never forget that first day in group. There were probably about eight or nine of us. We were quite a mix and match of stories. One by one, the therapists had us go around the circle and share our stories. One woman had been raped while her children stood by watching. Another woman had been in bed with her husband when a drunk driver on the street lost control of his car and came crashing through their bedroom wall. There was only one man in the group. He was African-American. While out fishing by himself, a group of white men found him and beat him up badly, just for being black. Another woman had been held up at gunpoint. Then there was me. We all had PTSD.

As it turned out, I was the last group member to share that day. When they got to me, I just burst out in tears. I told the group that this was the first time I felt like I could really tell my story without holding anything back. We began meeting every week for two hours to process our respective traumas by sharing our experiences. I was so ready that I usually ended up being the first to start talking in the group. I was apparently setting the stage for others to open the door to their emotions, so I was encouraged to jump in first every week to get the ball rolling.

I also started spending social time with some of these women, and we supported each other outside group. I was really starting to believe that I could find a future for myself without this monkey on my back. One of the women had a husband who worked repairing cars. Between his help getting cheap auto parts and my car repair manual, I started fixing my car again.

I also really wanted to get back to work. I contacted the Department of Rehabilitation again. Now I could get another therapist to fill out the form that would support me in returning to work. After the rehab worker heard how I'd gone back to work without their help, only to have my car die, she needed no more letters. First, she helped me put together a resume. I had two degrees in psychology now and felt like I wanted to work with the disabled. She also gave me an allowance for clothes so I could replenish my wardrobe. Every week, she would cut job ads out of the paper and mail them to me. She also set me up with a program through Social Security Disability which would help me save money for a new car. Generally, when you went back to work after being disabled, they would deduct a dollar from your check for every two dollars you earned. It was a way to ease you back into supporting yourself financially. In this program, there was no deduction in my check if I put the money aside for buying a car. Several months later, I had saved enough to put a down payment on a new car and got a loan for the balance.

With the help of the Department of Rehabilitation, I ended up with two part-time jobs. One was with the local Association for Retarded Citizens which provided resources for individuals with developmental disabilities. My job was to go out to the homes of disabled people who were attempting to live independently and assist them in learning basic skills such as cooking and money management. My other job was as an assistant to another newly hired person who had been hired to develop a therapeutic recreation program through the local county recreation department that would serve the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. Jim, my new co-designer of this program, had served in Vietnam with the army. He became a very close friend, and we developed a very successful and heart-centered program together.

After he had returned from Vietnam, disillusioned by the real agenda behind the war and traumatized by the horrors he'd seen, Jim found some solace in participating in a therapeutic recreation program for vets. So impressed was he with how it helped him that he went on to get a PhD in therapeutic recreation. There wasn't much money to be made in that profession, so he ended up doing business consulting for years to support his family. But the call to go back into therapeutic recreation caught up with him.

Neither one of us were fond of the behaviorally oriented programs in place for the disabled. We wanted to create a place where our clients could come and have fun. I remember being asked by a participant one day what the rules were as we were setting up for softball. Jim and I both looked at each other and had the same thought. We told her, "Fun! The rule is to have fun." When we played softball, people were running backwards and forwards around the bases. Jugs of drinking water along the sidelines were more likely to be splashed onto us than end up in our mouths. It was just a blast.

One of the classes I offered was early morning yoga. Some of my colleagues from the Association for Retarded Citizens who worked in the day treatment program would bring their groups to this morning activity. It was the same sort of atmosphere as our softball games. Touching your knee counted as touching your toe if that was as far as you could reach. The point was to do a little movement in the morning to get your day started and to have fun. Oh, and the staff got to play, too.

Befriending a Vietnam veteran was so wonderful. I had no animosity towards vets. Instead, I felt a camaraderie. We had both survived wars. Jim and I spent a lot of our free time together. We talked and talked about our experiences with seeing and experiencing horrors. It was a tremendously healing time for me. Plus, I was working and earning an income after many years of being on disability.

My different lives overlapped in funny ways. During the development of our program for the mentally ill, Jim and I were invited to attend a meeting at the very community mental health center where I was still attending my group. Of course, it would be scheduled the same day as my group and conveniently just minutes after the group concluded. By now, my confidence in myself was much higher. I was able to switch hats smoothly. After all, wouldn't somebody who had received mental health help be better able to help others in the same position. I also had the encouragement not just from my group but also from my work colleagues.

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### Chapter 17

I was starting to feel vital again and like I was making a contribution to society. My jobs were going great, my colleagues appreciated my work, I had graduated from my PTSD group, and I was less plagued with symptoms. Everything I had done up to then, even if it felt unhelpful or like a wrong turn, had contributed to who I was becoming.

While I had been attending my master's program, the state licensing board was revamping the law. My program wasn't considered rigorous enough because it focused on self-development, so it didn't qualify me to take the state licensing exam. A program that was designed to help us evolve as individuals was apparently inadequate preparation for becoming a therapist. It made no sense.

Meanwhile, I was starting to feel a pull towards becoming a licensed therapist. That meant that I needed to go back to school. I found a relatively affordable professional school nearby and was accepted into their program. My two jobs weren't providing enough income, so I started painting houses on the weekends to earn extra money. I don't know how I found the time to study but I did.

Being an approved school for state licensure, there was a lot of very traditional, old-school type theories to learn. Some of it seemed very outdated but there was also some real genius, especially in the newer versions of the theories. Humanistic psychology, which I had studied during my first master's, was geared towards providing the most supportive and authentic setting in therapy, believing that true healing would naturally unfold in a way that was most suited for each individual. Alternately, the theories in my new program delved deeply into the formation of personality and how mental and emotional problems evolved. This then offered possible avenues for finding a path to deep healing. They were discovering that very early childhood wounding could result in problems that many other approaches failed to resolve. I was also trained in family therapy in this program. It was fascinating to learn how many different avenues psychotherapy could take towards helping people.

After completing my first year of classes, I needed to begin an internship. The school had a binder full of information on potential internship sites. As I thumbed through the binder, there were several sites I felt I needed to eliminate because I had once contacted them as a client back when I had been seeking help. I had a good laugh as I saw my different lives overlapping again. I ended up having a wonderful interview with a local rape crisis center. They were very excited to have me on board after seeing my master's thesis on victims of violent crime and knowing my life experience in having been a victim. At the last minute, they realized that I was a first year, and not a second year intern, and regrettably had to find someone else because the position required a year of experience.

A helpful classmate gave me the number of her internship site which still had an opening. It was a much longer commute for me, but I didn't want to put this off and delay my graduation so I interviewed and was accepted. Again, things were unfolding in just the way they needed. This internship site was exactly where I needed to be.

My new internship was at a county-funded center that offered psychological assistance to people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse. I quickly learned that many people who developed addictions had been exposed to violence and abuse. I began offering individual therapy and assisting one of my supervisors in facilitating group therapy to women survivors of childhood sexual abuse. By this time, between my educational background and, more importantly, my ongoing journey recovering from my own traumas, I fell naturally into the role of counselor.

Very early on in my internship, I began encountering clients who'd been subjected to severe abuses, such as satanic ritual abuse, and had developed what was then being called multiple personality disorder. I would sit in my tiny intern office and listen to stories of the most horrifying abuse that had been inflicted upon these innocent people who'd courageously given up numbing themselves with substances to face their pain. Every bone in my body told me that they were telling me the truth. It profoundly affected my view of the world. I began attending workshops to learn more about these horrendous forms of abuse. I met many other interns and colleagues who were also encountering ritual and satanic abuse. I was shaken to the core by how entrenched this had become in our culture and how frequently it was perpetrated by leaders in the community.

During this time at my internship, I began learning that the treatment of trauma was different from other therapies. The field of trauma treatment was taking off. The depth of the more traditional analytically-based therapies and its focus on the effects that trauma had on human development was indispensable. However, the emotionally neutral stance taken by therapists in this more traditional approach seemed to re-evoke in survivors of violence a feeling of disconnection that they had originally experienced when subjected to trauma at the hands of a fellow human being.

The humanistic approach, which encouraged more emotional presence from the therapist, seemed a better fit. In addition, the trust it put in each individual to find his or her own path to recovery helped reinstate a sense of self-empowerment that often got ripped away by being traumatized. Humanistic psychology also welcomed the spiritual aspects of existence. I embraced aspects of all of these therapies that I'd learned. I also began letting my clients teach me because trauma impacts us in different ways that need to be acknowledged.

Many books started being published on the treatment of trauma. Abuse survivors seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. Research began showing that nearly every psychiatric problem had a component of trauma to it that, if it didn't actually create the condition, at least exacerbated it. It was like we had an epidemic on our hands.

It was during this time in my career that the notion of a false memory syndrome emerged. The concern was that certain types of therapy could invite fabricated memories of abuse that actually never occurred. Although that was certainly possible, it was also used as a cover for actual child abusers attempting to escape the legal ramifications of their actions. It was also undoubtedly a backlash to the recognition of the extent of abuse in our culture.

It was a really confusing time for me professionally. As I had been advised to do, I accepted the stories of the abuse shared by my clients as their truth, to the best of their recollection, and treated it accordingly. I was also instructed to avoid encouraging clients to take any kind of legal action associated with the abuse. Oftentimes, such lawsuits ended up backfiring horribly and did more harm than good to the victim. It was clear that the community of trauma therapists was feeling scrutinized and was being careful to not create false memories.

The backlash against the existence of satanic ritual abuse was even more volatile. Multiple personality disorder was deemed to be a made-up condition caused by the therapies being used. I had no sense that my clients were making anything up. Their reports, though chilling and upsetting, were consistent and came across as truthful. Fortunately, I had many colleagues who were trudging through the same controversy, and we were a wonderful support system for one another. In light of the explosion of child trafficking and pedophilia cases emerging in our news today, along with the horrors of clergy abuse, I would lean towards the notion that these crimes are very real and have been covered up for decades.

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### Chapter 18

I continued to attend numerous workshops on the treatment of trauma and abuse. It soon became clear that getting a certificate in hypnosis would facilitate my work with trauma. I was also beginning to believe that my education wouldn't end after this master's degree was completed. I had occasionally done research on possible doctoral programs. It couldn't be any of the traditional programs. I was looking for something cutting edge that would include many of the theories I'd already been exposed to, while also embracing the spiritual aspects of healing. One such school had stood out from the others, and it wasn't far from where I was living. It offered a degree in integrative and cross-cultural psychology. I wasn't ready to finance such a degree but the school offered a certificate in hypnosis. I thought it would be a good way to test out the program by obtaining my hypnosis certificate there.

I met with the Dean of Students, a gentle Indian man wearing a turban. This was no ordinary graduate program. I must have been there at least an hour or two, and I had the most lovely conversation about trauma work, hypnosis, and my future. I enrolled in their hypnosis certification program. What I didn't know then was that I'd also just interviewed for the doctoral program and was already accepted.

I also began taking more workshops, particularly in the use of hypnosis as a tool for easing and accelerating the treatment of trauma. Early trauma therapies had focused on reconstructing memories of what had happened and experiencing the emotions that came along with that. That entailed telling the story of your trauma repeatedly which often could be re-traumatizing.

Advances in hypnosis were offering ways to reduce this re-traumatization and also offered "emotionally corrective" elements to the treatment. Hypnotic suggestions could be used to reduce the intensity of the emotional release. Resources lacking during the abuse itself, such as the presence of a caring adult, could be inserted into the recalled memory. This would allow the mind and body to actually experience the imagined resource along with the traumatic memory which helped in recovery.

Meanwhile, I'd decided to move to a place midway between where my classes were held and where my internship was located. I longed to live somewhere away from the concrete jungle. I still loved nature in spite of it now being associated with my assault. I found an old trailer for rent located on some land and fell in love with it. By this time, when I'd hear a twig snap at night, my heart would still race and I'd break out in a sweat, but my mind was very clear that I was completely safe. This PTSD reaction was merely an annoyance now. I began to think that I could use hypnosis to get rid of it and I did exactly that. I worked with my unconscious mind during a self-hypnosis session, and once it understood that it was no longer keeping me safe by inducing unnecessary anxiety and panic, the symptom completely disappeared and never came back.

I began to wonder just how many aspects of PTSD could be healed. Would I have to live with some symptoms the rest of my life? I knew I'd never go back to being who I was, but already I seemed to be becoming more than I was before being stabbed. Of course, we all evolve and change as we grow older. Yet something more powerful was going on. Somehow, my assault had abruptly changed my life path and ultimately for the better. As much as it had pummeled me for years with doubts and fears, apathy, hopelessness, and depression, without those trials I'd never have gotten where I was now.

During this time, I was also noticing something in the treatment group for women survivors of sexual abuse that I was co-facilitating. Lots of good processing of trauma was happening. The group had become a safe place to unravel the ravages of the abuses these woman had lived through. Yet, there was also a sense of things standing still. What was the next step?

In life, we are always dealing with challenges and evolving and growing with each one. So to say there's ever an end to recovering doesn't make sense. But can we also get stuck in an identity such as a victim or survivor of abuse? When do we become more? Can we graduate from a treatment group in a way that feels safe and not premature and be given a boost into the next stage of our lives? Can we heal faster and more completely than we ever thought possible? Can we not only recover from our challenges but transcend them in a way where we become so much more than we thought we were? And if we can, then are not these challenges our greatest gifts in life? These were all thoughts I entertained as I evolved personally and professionally.

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### Chapter 19

I was feeling so embraced and accepted by my colleagues at my internship. I took every available opportunity to work with various members of the staff to learn everything I could. This was a very special setting. It had evolved in the 1960s when all sorts of experimentation was being used to invent state-of-the-art substance abuse treatment. In this setting, everyone was deserving of the same level of respect, whether they were clients who lived on the streets or staff members with multiple academic degrees.

The clerical staff was considered the first level of treatment, welcoming clients and helping them feel comfortable and at home. I felt at home. We all supported each other. Clients often became our teachers. Many of the staff had been there for decades, seeing the adult children of former clients they'd seen years ago. It was such a rich learning environment.

Since I was still taking classes and making tuition payments in my master's program, plus obtaining my hypnosis certificate, I continued to work my two jobs on the side. This limited the number of hours I could be at my internship which wasn't a problem because the state licensing board allowed lots of time to complete internship hours.

One Sunday morning, I was up on a ladder painting a house to supplement my income. I remember feeling a bit exhausted after working and going to school seven days a week for months. I actually felt a little woozy. I probably didn't belong on the ladder, but I was in my 30s and felt young and strong. Besides, I was on a mission to create a fantastic new future and nothing was going to stop me. I hardly noticed as the ladder slowly slipped out beneath me. I was working on a second-story window. Suddenly, I was free-falling down to the ground with the ladder ahead of me. As I landed, part of my right foot was still on a ladder rung. My right heel hit the pavement first and shattered.

Off I went in an ambulance. An MRI confirmed that I'd shattered my heel. Surgery was scheduled for the next day. I was to spend the next nine months on crutches. Painting houses was out as well as working in therapeutic recreation or doing home visits with the developmentally disabled. Fortunately, I was eligible to reinstate my disability without excessive paperwork because I was still in their grace period.

Part of me was relieved to stop working after burning the candle at both ends for so long. The classmate who connected me with my internship kindly offered to take me to and from school, so I was able to continue attending classes. My internship was in the opposite direction and there wasn't anyone who could get me there. Being young and feeling invincible, I figured out how to drive my car with casted foot and all. The staff at the internship was very accommodating, providing me with an extra chair on which to elevate my foot, and I continued seeing my clients.

I now had lots of time to study, but that wasn't enough to fill my time. It suddenly occurred to me that I could ask to increase my internship hours at the center to reach my licensing goals early. The staff welcomed me on full-time. Several months later, a paid full-time position opened up on the staff. I was about to have the surprise of my life. I put together my application for the position. Although I hadn't finished school yet, my first master's degree qualified me for the position. I had no idea what competition I was up against. I was stunned when I got the job! I found out later that the entire staff had signed a petition asking our director to hire me.

I can't tell you what a boost that was to my self-esteem. After all I'd been through, I'd often been fearful that I'd never measure up. I think it was the opposite. All I'd been through had provided me with the challenges and life experience to excel beyond my wildest dreams. For the first time in my life, I was receiving professional pay. Since I knew how to live on so little, I began saving money for my next school. I graduated with my second master's degree a few months later and began my doctorate the following fall.

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### Chapter 20

My doctoral program was everything I had dreamed of. We were studying all the different schools of psychology and looking at them within an integrated framework. We also incorporated views of psychology from other cultures, further broadening our perspective. Parapsychology, or the study of psychic phenomena, and studies in altered states of consciousness were also included in the curriculum. Altered states could be accessed through hypnosis, meditation, shamanic drumming, or particular breathing techniques, and these states of consciousness could help facilitate deeper healing. The campus was more of a spiritual community but without any one belief system or practice. It honored that we were all spiritual beings, offering healing to other spiritual beings. Studying psychology meant evolving yourself to be a better person and a better therapist.

I went to school part time while I continue to work at my now paid internship. I loved working there. After such a long history, the staff had acquired a sense of family and now I was a member. I gained some awesome colleagues and made some wonderful friends. Everything was going great. I was certainly feeling much more freed up from my past, but healing comes in layers and you're always given opportunities to take it further. Life always seems to have a reason for where it takes you.

I was craving spending time in the wilderness again. Some of my new friends from work did camping and backpacking trips and I joined in. On one particular trip, we were going to camp not too far from where I'd been stabbed. Over the years of healing, I slowly found that camping out no longer triggered my fear. In fact, it became an incredibly restful and renewing experience. It would be interesting to see how it would feel to camp so close to where I'd been assaulted. I never found out.

I'm not sure why I headed out early, planning to meet my friends later at the campsite. I know some of them were tied up working late. Maybe I also wanted some time alone in that setting to test the emotional waters for myself. I parked not far from the site of my stabbing and headed out on the trail. It was late spring so there was still some snow on the trail. As I climbed, the snow got deeper. At one point, I lost the trail in the snow. I got a little nervous but I kept looking ahead. Usually, you could see the trail come out from under the snow again.

All of a sudden, I lost my footing. Off to the left of the trail was a long snow-covered slope going straight down the mountain. I fell right on that slope and began sliding down the incline. I don't know how far I slid. I felt like a turtle with my backpack on, and I used my fingers to desperately claw at the snow to slow myself down. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. As I slid, I looked down the slope, wondering where I was going to land. Near the bottom there were several trees. It flashed through my mind that I could be killed or severely injured if I hit a tree. I wasn't ready to die. I had just gotten my life back.

I have to say that it seemed like I was being looked after again that day. You could call it a guardian angel or some other divine intervention. As I got closer to the trees, somehow I hit a small sapling feet first and it gently bent to slow me down. I only slipped a few feet more and then came to rest in the snow. Again, it seemed trees had come to my rescue.

I laid there for a few moments trying to feel if I'd been injured in any way. My hands were red and raw from scraping through so much snow. My legs and arms felt okay. I could move everything. The only pain was in one foot - the same foot that had the old heel injury. Slowly, I got up and tested the foot. It hurt but I could put partial weight on it. I was shaking like a leaf, thinking about what could have happened. I was also afraid that now I was really lost in the woods. I steadied myself, got my footing, and slowly started limping down the rest of the snow field. Then, about another 40 or 50 feet down I saw the trail clear as day. I headed towards it and followed it all the way back to my car.

I didn't know if my foot was broken or not so I kept my boot tightly laced to act as a kind of cast. I was able to drive all the way back to town and went directly to the home of a friend who was about to leave to join me at the campsite. The backpacking trip was canceled. I needed to have my foot x-rayed. After I took off my boot, my foot swelled up like a balloon.

First, we ate dinner because I was starving after all the hiking and my ordeal. Then my friend's wife went into the living room to fold out the sofa bed. I would spend the night there. Suddenly, we heard her scream in the other room. There was a broken piece of glass under the sofa bed, and she had stepped on it in bare feet. Her foot was bleeding like a stuck pig. I stayed at the house with my foot up while they went to the ER. By the time they got home, it was too late to go to the hospital that accepted my insurance. Instead, we sat up, feet elevated, and laughed for hours. Life is such a funny thing. As it turns out, I'd only sprained my ankle. I didn't even need a new pair of crutches since I still had a pair at home.

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### Chapter 21

I was getting closer to collecting all my internship hours required post-master's. Not that I was planning to leave this wonderful job - it just meant that I could sit for the licensing exam and then get a raise after I was licensed.

Something called managed-care was starting to take over all the insurance companies. The rationale was that medical and psychiatric care was getting too costly and needed to be "managed." If anything, psychotherapy was being underutilized, even when it was mostly paid for by insurance. It made no sense that outpatient psychotherapy was so hard hit by this "management." But in a world being overrun by corporations focused on profits, even at the cost of human health, it made sense at some level to minimize any service that encouraged people to be conscious and think for themselves because they might just notice something was wrong with setting up health care this way.

Reimbursement rates were being slashed, and therapists were losing half their income almost overnight. It didn't seem like the best time to be getting a psychotherapy license. I remember a couple of years later I read an article in the Wall Street Journal boasting that, in addition to six- or probably seven-figure incomes, the CEOs of managed-care companies were being rewarded with 200 and 300 million dollar bonuses. Something was very wrong here.

The following year, the county mental health division which oversaw my internship job hired a new director. In an effort to curb costs, they hired the candidate that had managed-care experience. After decades of service to the community, this wonderful center I was working at was deemed to be too wasteful and was to be closed. Both the staff and the community we served were in an uproar. Letters were written by current and former clients sharing the enormous impact the center had had on their lives. In the end, we were advised that we needed to learn to deal with change. The doors to the center were shut forever.

The new model had less to do with offering psychotherapy and more to do with "managing" people in need just enough to avoid further costs to the system. It was about finding a financial angle to minimize costs where treatment was only offered to keep people out of crisis. My colleagues and I were assigned to other divisions of the county mental health system to act as substance abuse specialists, offering advice and referrals to the existing staff of the various county divisions. There would be no more psychotherapy. I was assigned to adult protective services along with one of my supervisors. I felt blessed to have a familiar face at my new setting.

Although psychotherapy was to be phased out, it wasn't appropriate or ethical to just cut off all our clients. I was particularly concerned about some of the very severe and complicated abuse cases I had. After battling for appropriate office space to continue our therapy work, we were regularly pressured to close out all our cases. I was now required to report to another supervisor in the new setting, and her job was to keep after me to close my cases. Since we had been a public agency, fees for our clients were very low. It was next to impossible to find referrals our clients could afford, especially in the new managed-care environment.

Perhaps I was too reluctant to just end all these therapeutic relationships. But I was also well within my rights and responsibilities to continue offering psychotherapy until I had found referrals for each of my clients. I even contacted a former professor, who was both a psychologist and an attorney, to obtain guidance in closing my cases ethically and appropriately. It was clearly not okay to just cut people off with nowhere else to go.

Nevertheless, I continued to be pressured to end all psychotherapy clients. One day, I was escorted to the office of the director of adult protective services by my in-house supervisor. Both women were licensed psychotherapists, and I thought that they would surely understand my ethical and legal dilemma. Instead, the discussion became about my personal problems with abandonment, and some other psychobabble that made this all about me. It was clear that I had no choice.

I spent the next few months doing everything I could to find a place for each and every one of my clients and then quit my job. I also accessed much of the never-used sick time that I'd accumulated, taking time to nurture myself and sort all this out. It also felt like it was time to see a therapist again. A new layer of my recovery had emerged. I had become disillusioned. How could a profession so dedicated to helping others so easily succumb to the pressures of a system that only had profits and not people in mind. I was in an existential crisis regarding our world and what was important. How could something be wrong with me because I cared about people. I was falling apart.

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### Chapter 22

A crisis can be a time of setback, but it's also a time to re-organize, re-conceptualize, and come out the other side stronger and more resilient. I'd come to a much better place after my assault. One of the key components of that was receiving the help I needed and having a strong desire to offer that kind of help to others. The field of trauma therapy had grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade, and it was so needed in a society that was discovering just how much of an epidemic trauma had become. I don't think it was a coincidence that managed-care rose up in the midst of this.

I quickly began searching for a new job. I'd finished my internship hours but didn't have my license yet. That limited my opportunities. In my spare time, I started studying for the licensing exam. In some ways, it was perfect timing to be out of work so I could focus on licensing. One of my classmates at school worked at a private psychiatric hospital, and he got me on the schedule a couple of days a week working in the intake department. I got to interview people seeking hospitalization.

Private hospitals were being scrutinized by the managed-care industry because they were the most costly form of treatment. Many private hospitals were being shut down. Instead, people who were in need of hospitalization were given to the now underpaid psychotherapists in the community who were then required to carry extra malpractice insurance and hire an answering service so they could be available 24/7.

I knew my hours at the hospital were only guaranteed a week at a time, if that. One afternoon, I reported for work, looked at the schedule, and my name was nowhere to be found. Several layoffs happen that week. Then another friend from school hired me to help collect data for a research project. It was also part-time and intermittent, but I made myself available for any work available. I was also doing some volunteer work at a local church-funded walk-in center supervising lay counselors offering free services to the public. These types of settings were cropping up to fill the gap managed-care was leaving. Soon, they also began offering me a few clients to see at the church office and paid me hourly.

As soon as I got my license, I decided to start a private practice. I found an office where I could rent space by the hour and began making connections with a whole group of new colleagues. I hardly had any cases because I just couldn't bring myself to sign up with the managed-care companies. Instead, I attended workshops on how to create a practice outside of managed-care. I offered lower rates and could offer privacy to my clients because I didn't have to file reports with the insurance companies.

All through this time, I continued to take classes at school. That required that I make regular tuition payments. I'd also found a fantastic therapist that I was seeing weekly and paying out-of-pocket. The math was simple. I needed more money than I was spending. My credit score has been low for years, first because of my unpaid hospital bills, and later because I couldn't pay my student loan on time.

One day, I got an invitation for a credit card in the mail. I had been spared this barrage of offers of credit because of my poor rating. I counted the years and realized the magic seven years had passed so I could start my credit rating over. What a silly game credit had become. I filled out the application, citing my prior years income, and rounded up for good measure. Off it went in the mail. A few weeks later, a credit card arrived in the mail. Immediately, I began to take cash advances on my card so I could pay my bills. The system is so insane that if you carry a balance and don't pay the full amount due, you qualify for more credit. Soon I had four credit cards, all with balances.

Back in the 90s, credit card companies were competing with each other, offering lower interest rates and free balance transfers. I actually made flow charts indicating where balances were to go next and on which date. My balances flowed back and forth among the same four credit cards for years, taking advantage of the best rates. It was actually better than student loan rates at the time.

There were so many times that I'd thought of quitting school. I already had a license to practice - did I really need another one? But I loved my school and the community I had there. Something kept telling me to hang in there. I'm so glad I did.

Soon it was time to begin a doctoral internship. During my second master's program, I took a class in family therapy that really captured my interest. Family systems theory, as it was called, had much less focus on diagnosing people, a practice which I found could often do more damage than good but was necessary if you wanted to be paid by insurance companies. Instead, family therapy aimed to make adjustments in how the family functioned and communicated. Often, that would result in the disappearance of diagnosable behaviors exhibited by individual family members.

My family systems professor was a brilliant woman who brought the material alive. She was also the co-director of a family therapy center. When it came time to start applying for internships, that was the only place I wanted to work. I later learned that it was professional suicide to only apply to just one internship site because of the competition. At best, I'd have to delay graduation if I wasn't accepted at this internship and have to wait a year to apply again. I don't know what I was thinking at the time but I just knew what I wanted. This center was my next step - I was sure of it. Off I went to my interview with my prepared case presentation in hand. I sat in the middle of a circle of psychologists and senior interns who listened to my case and questioned me on my choice of strategies. I thought it went well and my gamble was rewarded. I was accepted into the program.

Again, I found myself in a setting with professionals I really admired. I loved working there and I was learning so much. About halfway through that internship, I got laid off a job at a local private hospital where I had been able to pick up some part-time work. I was seriously considering quitting this wonderful internship and leaving school. My credit cards were all loaded up, and I didn't know where my next tuition payment would come from. I let my fellow interns know that I might have to leave. A couple of days later, I found an envelope in my intern mailbox. One of my fellow interns, who had just acquired an inheritance, had written me a large check. I was shocked and so grateful. It was just enough to pull me through.

Soon, I found a job at yet another psychiatric hospital. This one was county funded. It was a rough environment to work in and turnover was high. There was a good chance I wouldn't get laid off again. The hospital could be a dangerous setting at times. With the most recent budget cut, a decision had been made to combine the various hospital units, and they had placed the chronically mentally ill and the criminally insane all on the same floor. In an effort to become more user-friendly, barred windows and Plexiglas barriers had been removed. I was once cornered by a tall patient with a blanket over his head trying to escape the unit as I was headed to the exit. Luckily, I was never hurt on the job.

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### Chapter 23

During the years of internship and school, I continued to see my therapist. I'd been very cautious to pick someone I could trust since I'd had my ups and downs with therapists in the past. In time, I found that I had made a good choice. As we dug deeper into my past, I still had layers of trauma to resolve, especially from childhood. It was grueling work, uncovering deeply buried emotions and processing them.

Before starting this therapy, I'd been doing well. I felt stronger and more confident. I would go for long periods feeling on top of the world. But then I'd fight it when I came off these high periods. Something was still underneath the surface. A lot of life is like that. We have our ups and downs. It's all about evolving as a person. Each down has a reason or a challenge to resolve and learn from. Eventually, I learned to not fight the "downs" so much, nor get too attached to the "ups." They were both just facts of life and riding them smoothly was the best approach.

It had taken the crisis of losing my first professional job to get me back in therapy, but it was good to be digging into another layer. I always made time in my busy schedule to see my therapist. I was using the money from my cash advances to pay her until I finally maxed out all of my credit cards. It was a dilemma but I didn't want to quit therapy. One day, it suddenly occurred to me that the victim assistance program offered money for therapy that I had been eligible for. Twelve years had passed since my assault. I was worried that there might be a statute of limitations. I picked up the phone and called them. A whole new staff was there now but they immediately remembered my case. In fact, they'd kept my file active all those years. I guess it was a fairly memorable case. My therapist filled out the required paperwork and they began paying for my therapy. It felt like some justice had been served and I was extremely grateful.

I completed my internship hours and was to receive another surprise. The internship director approached me about joining the center as junior staff. What that meant was that I could continue to see my clients, set my own fees, and pay rent to use the office space. I jumped on the opportunity.

I was still living in my trailer on the acreage. It continued to be a wonderful natural and safe haven for me. It was somewhat centrally located between all my jobs, school, and internship. There had been a minor burglary once that was interrupted when my landlady returned home and scared them off. Only my TV and VCR were taken, not that I had much time to watch TV. I was a little rattled but things seemed to return to normal quickly. I replaced the TV and VCR shortly afterwards.

The classes for my degree were now nearly complete. The next step would be to sit for what's called the advancement to candidacy exam. It was two days of testing on everything you'd studied during the years in school. I had spent several weeks preparing. We were given a day off between the two days of testing. I was sitting out on my deck studying that day. I heard a car coming up the dirt driveway and assumed it was my landlady. She and her husband lived on the top of the hill. Suddenly, the car backed out and took off. I didn't think much about it. Perhaps it was someone who had made a wrong turn.

That night, I recorded one of my favorite TV shows to watch the following night when I would be celebrating the end of my candidacy exam. I headed home after that second long day of exams, looking forward to a well-deserved night off. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw my door was wide open. That was strange. Then I saw a Styrofoam ice chest on my deck. It wasn't mine. When I walked into the trailer, I went into shock. The place had been ransacked. Anything of value was gone. The phone has been ripped off the wall. I had just bought my first computer which I needed to write my dissertation. It was gone. All my music, my sports equipment, and the new TV and VCR were gone.

I quickly ran up the hill to my landlady's house. She came right to the door. They'd been wiped out, too. There were big tire marks right up to her front door. The contents of her house were literally loaded right into a truck. The car I'd seen the previous day had probably come in to see if anyone was home.

The police arrive shortly afterwards. This was a common crime in the area because people lived on acreage and burglaries could be carried out uninterrupted, unless someone came home prematurely. The police said stolen items would be quickly re-sold at a flea market. There was little chance of ever getting your belongings back. One of the police officers suggested that the burglars might come back and suggested that I find somewhere else to stay for the night. I was terrified. I gathered some clothes and drove to a friend's house to spend the night. Shortly after that, we got a gate on the property. That helped a lot in making me feel safe again.

Not all that long ago, my car had also been broken into at one of my job sites. It felt like bad luck was following me. I was about to learn how the energies of trauma can attract more trauma. It was common for people who sustained a trauma to have more than one such incident. In traditional therapy, it was called the repetition compulsion - an unconscious and often ineffective way to attempt to master a past trauma. But there was another explanation.

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### Chapter 24

After sharing my string of bad luck with a friend and colleague, she gave me a referral to see a local shaman. Traditionally, a shaman was a person who journeyed from the visible world to the invisible spirit world to bring back messages, teaching, and healing. In tribal societies, they served the role of both priest and medicine person. Shamanic practices had been found all over the world in tribal cultures and dated back tens of thousands of years. Some anthropologists who had studied these cultures introduced shamanic practices to the modern world. The man I called for help had studied with one of these anthropologists and was a modern day shamanic practitioner.

I made an appointment and met with him. He took a journey to the spirit world on my behalf, using the sound of a beating drum to carry him over. When he returned, he had retrieved a couple of totem or power animals for me. He also returned several soul parts or lost parts of myself that had become disconnected from me due to past traumas. I was so intrigued that I signed up for a workshop with the same anthropologist who happened to be offering local classes. I was to learn that many shamans had become adept healers after going through some illness or trauma and finding their way through it to a new level of functioning.

To the tribal peoples of our planet, everything has a spirit: the animals, the plants and trees, and, of course, human beings. After someone dies, their spirit lives on. Some of these ancestor spirits could then be contacted for guidance. According to some shamanic lore, we each arrive in the world with two or three power animals that protect us. These protectors possess the collected energy and wisdom of their entire species rather than being separate animals. They're like a symbolic image that represents particular traits we're born with. Certain power animals might also come to us at times of need. The power they offer is aligned with the particular gifts and attributes of that species. For instance, a mountain goat might bring someone sure footedness, while a skunk could help with boundaries. Traumas sustained in life, poor self-care, illness, or addictions were said to drain our energy so much that sometimes we'd lose one or more of our power animals. A shaman could return that energy to you, bringing back enough energy for you to recover, providing that you did your part to address the things in your life that contributed to the loss.

It was the concept of soul retrieval that particularly captured my attention. Shamans believe that traumas to your mind, body, or spirit can result in a loss of part of your soul or energy body. I knew from my studies and experiences that many people who were traumatized dissociated a part of themselves. Wasn't this the same thing as soul loss? It seemed the ancient shamans knew quite a bit of psychology. When shamans went on a journey to discover a soul part, they often encountered a younger version of the person who held information about the trauma which may or may not be remembered. Once found, most parts were happy to come back. Occasionally, before they'd return, they might want the person to first make some changes. For instance, if drugs had been abused as a way to deal with the trauma, that might need to stop first so the soul part wouldn't be pushed out again.

Receiving back a power animal would reinstate protection, and a retrieved soul part was also a protection because you no longer had that blind spot that allowed traumas to repeat. I was never the victim of a crime or burglary again after my soul retrievals so something changed. I went back to see the shamanic practitioner several times and we worked with all my past traumas.

Even though I'd spent years processing my traumas at a psychological level, the shamanic healing seem to take it to the next level. I've since learned that healing is most thorough when it happens at the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. While I had processed traumas at the mental and emotional levels, and my physical injuries had healed, my energy field at the spiritual level still carried a scar of sorts. Once that was mended, it seemed my traumas reached a much deeper level of neutrality. They were now just memories that held no emotional charge.

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### Chapter 25

I was finally taking my last class in school and was ready to write my dissertation, the last step for graduation. I'd gathered a lot of research material on multiple personality disorder which was now being called dissociative identity disorder. I had planned to research some aspect of that for my dissertation and had collected many articles on the subject. All that material was in a briefcase in my car when it was broken into and had been stolen. I hope they enjoyed the reading!

More recently, since I'd been avoiding working for the managed-care companies, I'd become interested in investigating what people were looking for in therapy. I wanted to provide services more tailored to what people were wanting and would thus be more willing to pay for out-of-pocket. I changed my dissertation topic. It proved to be a fascinating exploration as I interviewed people to get their opinions.

Too much of traditional psychotherapy had been focused on diagnoses and the recommended treatments for each respective diagnosis. This trend, which was being further honed by the insurance industry, made it hard to accommodate the varieties of people's individuality. Many of my interviews were quite eye-opening, and I could see why many people refused to go to therapy. It pained me to know that there was so much untreated trauma out there when powerful and fast acting new therapies were becoming available.

I was also looking for any workshop that seemed to offer tools to rapidly and efficiently address the aftereffects of trauma. One of my therapist magazines ran a series of articles on a new trauma treatment called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). A lot of skepticism was being expressed about this technique because it seemed too good to be true. They claimed the effects of a traumatic event could be resolved in just a few sessions. The training was very expensive and I certainly didn't have surplus funds. I put it off but continue to read up on it.

One day, I got a flyer from my master's program. They were going to offer a 10-week class in EMDR. Traditionally, it was taught over long weekends. This class was to be an experiment in offering it in a university setting. The really good news was that they were only charging their usual tuition rate which was much less than the weekend workshops would have cost. In addition, as an alumnus I would get a 50% discount. I immediately signed up.

The professor was a Vietnam veteran. He was really enthusiastic about the technique and shared how it had helped him resolve many traumas from the war, even ones he thought he was done with. There was something about EMDR that could dig down and bring up memories you'd forgotten and then quickly bring them to a successful resolution. It was much less grueling than the old methods of talking through a trauma repeatedly until it finally started to lose its power over you. In addition, brain scans were showing that this new therapy was making clearly measurable changes.

The first two classes were about the background of the technique and how to set it up. On the third night, we began practicing on each other. We'd been warned that this could pull up old traumatic memories, so I was on guard and let my practice partners know this could happen with me. It never did. Perhaps all the therapy, plus the work with the shaman, had finally put my traumas to rest.

During breaks from school, I made road trips, often camping or backpacking with friends. After a recent trip to Colorado, where I had attended undergraduate school, I started feeling a strong pull to move back there. Once home, I went back to work and school but the notion of moving to Colorado kept coming up. Something else was also happening. Almost every time I thought about moving to Colorado, a car would suddenly pass me that had Colorado license plates. It was uncanny. I might be driving to work, or running along a remote road off the beaten path, and it would happen. How many cars from Colorado would be driving down these quiet roads just when I was thinking about Colorado?

This is what's called synchronicity - a seeming coincidence of events that are actually meaningful. While many might write off these coincidences, others believe they are messages to us, perhaps from the spirit realm, intended to steer us in a particular direction. Many will attest that following such a lead can offer a viable path towards our evolvement. This kept happening during that last year and a half that I was in school. I was in no place to make any decisions yet so I continued to focus on school and work.

While I worked away on my dissertation, I continued to see clients at both of my private offices, plus at the church office, and I was still working at the county hospital. I was slowly coming out of credit card debt now that my class work was done and tuition payments were lower. One day, the head administrator overseeing my church job called me. The director at the walk-in center was going to be stepping down, and she wanted to offer me the position as soon as I completed my doctorate. It was such an honor but I was torn.

The pull to go to Colorado was getting stronger. I continued to see the same signs crop up in the most unlikely places. Much was going so well for me in California. I was building practices in two towns, the church job was expanding, and the hospital had already let me know a promotion was possible after I finished school.

I was trying to be practical, so I planned a road trip to Colorado to investigate housing, employment, and transferring my therapy license. Deep down, I knew I would move there no matter what I found out. I connected with old college friends while I was there and collected some good information about the living and working environment. I also registered my car using a friend's address and returned to California with Colorado plates of my own. As I was commuting to work one day, shortly after I'd returned, I thought that I wouldn't be seeing any more Colorado plates on the road now that I'd heeded the call. Just then, a car passed me with Colorado plates.

My dissertation was nearing completion, and I would be eligible for graduation the coming spring. I'd made the commitment to move to Colorado, so I began to notify clients of the change and let my various jobs know of my plans. Everything was falling into place.

The last step before graduation was the dissertation defense. This is where the three professors you'd chosen to be on your committee, who had already read your dissertation and requested the required changes or additions, sat with you in a room and had you answer questions that allowed you to demonstrate that you'd mastered your topic. The community-oriented style of my school graciously allowed other students to sit in. All my closest friends were there. It was really more of a celebration than a test since all the work had already been completed. At the end, one of my friends broke out the champagne and we all drank a toast. Graduation was a week later.

My school, being the special and unique place it was, always held a very personal and intimate graduation ceremony that served as a true ritual initiation. Ours was no different. There were only six of us in our class since this was a very small campus. We were given the opportunity to join in planning the ceremony. Since the campus focused on cross-cultural psychology, the graduations often had a cultural theme. Ours incorporated music from Zimbabwe. One of the graduates was actually from Africa and another was African-American.

We had the usual few speakers at the ceremony. But the highlight was the opportunity each of us had to stand up in front of the crowd and offer our own speech, thanking family, friends, and faculty, and setting intention for our future. At the end, we all marched out to the traditional march, "Pomp and Circumstance," accompanied by our entire audience on kazoos. What an exit! A week later, I packed my life into a truck and drove to Colorado, not sure what was next.

### Part II: Colorado

### Chapter 26

I had found a place to live before I set out for Colorado. It was a small cottage on a few acres with a nice view of the Rocky Mountains. I gave myself a few weeks to settle in before I started looking for work. Little did I know that finding employment would be so hard. Funding for mental health had continued to be cut over the years.

Several months later, as I was running out of money and moving back into credit card debt, I made the decision to sign up with a temp agency. At least I'd have some money coming in. I was quickly sent out on a couple of temporary clerical jobs doing things like data entry and answering phones. Then, one position was more long-term. I was answering phones and handling customer complaints. It didn't bother me too much, and I did my best to understand their concerns and find the right staff member to call them back with solutions. At the end of the first week, my immediate supervisor came to me with the schedule for the following week. She told me I was the first temp who hadn't quit the first day. I had to laugh. I confessed that I actually had a doctorate in psychology which perhaps made me more qualified to handle upset customers. This was not exactly how I saw my career taking off. I continued to apply and interview for jobs. I started renting office space and began seeing a few clients. I was also networking with other psychotherapists and letting everyone I met know I was looking for work.

Socially, I joined a few clubs. One was a women's outdoors group that shared all sorts of activities, from hiking and skiing to backpacking and camping. It was exactly what I was looking for. I signed up for a weeklong backpacking trip to Canyonlands National Park in mid-March of that year. It was still a month away. I had a little guilt about taking a vacation when I had no full-time work but just couldn't pass up this opportunity.

Shortly after that, I got a call from one of my contacts and she gave me the number of a man supervising therapists doing emergency psychiatric assessments for a local hospital chain. They were looking for another member for their team. I had my interview and was hired just before my backpacking trip. I would start on the Monday after I got back. It was a great relief knowing I'd have a job when I returned.

I was still wondering why I was directed to come to Colorado. It was hard starting over and building a practice again. I had a job now but hospital work wasn't necessarily how I wanted to play out my career. I came across a book one night in a bookstore that caught my eye. It was a guide for creating your own vision quest by Denise Linn. I bought the book and dug in, carrying out the steps recommended to set the stage for the quest. It occurred to me that my backpacking trip would present the perfect setting for conducting such a quest.

A few days later, I packed into a car with my new outdoor friends and off we went to Canyonlands. What spectacular beauty surrounded us. The Colorado and Green rivers had carved into the surrounding terrain to reveal hundreds of multicolored layered sedimentary sentinels which towered above us as we hiked our way along the trails to our campsite. We had reservations for two campsites. We spent a few nights at one, making side trips during the day. Then we went into the local town to do laundry and stock up on food, heading out the next morning for the second campsite.

I decided to conduct my vision quest nearby the second campsite. There was a small mesa that was accessible down a short trail past our campsite. I hadn't told anyone about my plans, so I got some funny looks when I explained that I'd be gone for a couple of days, sitting up on the mesa, fasting and seeking guidance from the spirit beings. I still get teased about going away, just like that, for two days.

Off I went early one morning before it got too hot. All I had was a sleeping bag, a pad, and some water. Near the end of the trail, I found a steep path up the side of the mesa. It was a pretty short climb. Once on top, I looked for an fairly open level spot, set down my things, and began my preparations. According to the book, I was to carefully select stones that seemed to call to me and place one in each of the four directions to form a circle. Additional stones were then placed between the first four. Once I had my circle, I set up my campsite inside the perimeter.

In the weeks prior to the vision quest, I'd been instructed to write down as many memories as I could recall, going all the way back to childhood. I had the list with me. There was a ritual or technique recommended in the book that was to be used to address any unfinished business present in each memory. Instead, I decided to use my new EMDR tool. I spent the whole day working on this stage of clean out, releasing whatever I could and going as far back in my memory as possible. It always seemed like there was another layer to process and release. As the sun started setting, I was pretty exhausted. I'd been doing EMDR on myself for hours. I felt like I'd squeezed out everything I possibly could. The next day, the plan was to sit in silence and wait for a message or a sign or for something that would indicate the direction my life journey was to take next.

There wasn't much to do then but sit in the dark, so I decided to go to bed early. I climbed into my sleeping bag and settled in. That's when the terror hit. I'd finally become comfortable camping after years of recovery from my assault. I hadn't expected this. It was just pure terror flowing through me. It wasn't like I was sure someone would come and assault me there. I wasn't thinking anything like that. It was undoubtedly another piece of my trauma that was asking to be resolved. I patiently worked with it, trying to assure myself I was safe. Then I tried to ignore it and just go to sleep. That tactic totally failed. Finally, I just turned towards it and fully embraced it. In seconds, it was gone. That was it. I let it have full expression and it was gone in a flash. I've never encountered that level of terror again. I believe I was gifted another layer of healing that night.

The next morning, I woke up and began my watch, awaiting the message or sign that I longed for. I'd occasionally see a raven float by, riding the winds. As I examined a nearby rock face, I thought I saw the outline of a bear. That was it. No message from the spirit world. Or perhaps there was and I missed it. Sometimes, our answers come in ways we never expect. It's really not up to us. Maybe it was all about me meeting up with my terror and making friends with it.

Later that afternoon, I headed back to camp to join my friends for the remainder of the trip. At the end of the week, we sadly had to leave this wondrous setting and head back to civilization.

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### Chapter 27

A few days later, I began my new job. While I was being shown how to do the paperwork, a pager went off, and I followed my trainer onto the ER where we conducted an interview with someone to see if they needed to be hospitalized on our psych unit. After two weeks in training, I was given my own pager and put on the schedule. We were scheduled for 24 hour shifts but only worked when we were called. If it got too busy for one person, we could call in a back up.

There were actually four hospitals to cover in the area but they all belonged to the same chain. The managed-care environment was compelling hospitals to consolidate services to reduce costs. There were many more hospitals in this corporation but my team only covered a cluster of four, all within a 15 mile radius. As long as I could be at one of the four hospitals within an hour, it didn't matter what I did during the down hours of my shift. Often, I was at home sleeping. Sometimes, I'd wake up the next morning, never having been called. At other times, the pager would go off and I'd be seeing people, one after another, for hours. I hadn't pulled an all-nighter since college. Now, here I was in my early 40s staying up all night in an ER.

I'd been on the new job for about a month. I was also still seeing a few clients in my private office. I got home from my practice one evening, and there was a voicemail on my office phone asking for therapists with critical incident debriefing skills to offer their services to a local school. I didn't think much about it. I wasn't trained in critical incidents. I deleted the message.

I had the next day free and was scheduled for a massage. At the end of the massage, I glanced at a newspaper on the table as I was leaving. The headline said something about a school shooting. I had long ago given up newspapers and TV. There was just too much violence and sensationalized news stories to hear about, especially after a long day of working with traumatize people. It was April 21, 1999.

I was having a brief conversation with the massage therapist about the school shooting that had just occurred in Littleton when my phone rang. It was the hospital asking everyone on our team to report to work. Over the next two days, I did shifts in all four of our hospitals, getting only four hours of sleep in between. Most of the injured students were in our hospitals. More than that, the whole city had been traumatized by the event and ER visits were way up. Work stayed busy for weeks.

I couldn't stop thinking about the school shooting. I had accumulated so much experience treating trauma. Perhaps I could help. At the end of that summer, the students of Columbine High School, where the shooting had occurred, returned to their campus. They had finished the prior school year sharing space at another local high school. Meanwhile, the local community mental health organization was working to put together a center to serve the Littleton community with plans to open as the students were returning to their high school and to all the memories. I had a networking lunch scheduled with a woman I'd met through another therapist. She also did trauma work. Over lunch, I confided in her that I felt like I was supposed to be helping the Littleton community somehow. As it turned out, she was friends with the recently hired director of the new center being set up. She gave me a number where I could reach this woman.

I'd spent months interviewing for local jobs in the community mental health system without getting an offer in spite of my extensive training and experience. Perhaps that was meant to be because I was quickly hired at the new center in Littleton. Since we were attached to a community mental health system, the wages were low. I opted for a half-time position, giving me time to continue shifts at the hospital. I also found office space in Littleton where I could see my private clients and consolidate my commuting. Things at the new center started off slowly but soon became very busy. I was using EMDR numerous times a day, and it was proving to be hugely helpful.

The director arranged for our team to receive training in a new technique called Thought Field Therapy. I was excited to learn yet another alternative technique effective with trauma. Thought Field Therapy (TFT) was developed by a California psychologist named Roger Callahan who was searching for a more effective and efficient way to relieve psychological distress. He began incorporating kinesiology and acupressure into psychology, and discovered that tapping acupressure points in certain sequences could rapidly reduce emotional distress. I was fascinated with this new technique. While I was in and out of colleges as a young adult, I had studied some physics. The whole notion of energy being at the base of everything at the quantum level made so much sense to me. Now, psychology was using energy meridians in the body to quickly process emotional energy.

I carefully took notes and put together cheat sheets that I could use with my clients. There was one tapping sequence for anxiety, another for sadness, yet another for anger, and so on. I soon found out that one of Dr. Callahan's students named Gary Craig had concluded that since there were only 14 acupressure points used in TFT, why not just tap them all for anything you wanted to treat. He called it Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and it was a lot easier to use and teach to clients. What was great about both of these tapping therapies was that people could self-treat themselves for many things.

I was so excited about these new acupressure-based therapies. They were part of a new field called energy psychology. One day, I was reading one of my therapist magazines and found a full-page ad for an upcoming conference on energy therapies put on by the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP). I immediately signed up for it. A few weeks later, I flew out to San Diego to attend their annual conference. I was like a kid in a candy shop attending as many sessions as I could. I knew then that I would be back the following year and every year I could, studying many of the new modalities emerging from this new field.

These new therapies addressed psychological distress at a more foundational level. Modern physics had been discovering that we are mostly energy. In fact, some would say that energy is all there is and that matter is just densely packed energy. Numerous energy therapies were being developed that not only tapped on acupressure points but also addressed blockages and disruptions in our chakras and in the biofield or aura around us. Focusing on the underlying energy basis of emotional distress proved to be a powerful and efficient tool for relieving psychological pain. When I returned from the conference, I immediately began incorporating these new tools into my work with the Littleton community.

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### Chapter 28

I found that working with this traumatized community was extremely emotionally draining. Our director had arranged for local EMDR therapists who'd helped out after the Oklahoma City bombing to be available to our staff for therapy sessions. I took full advantage of that. I was also using EFT on myself to help clear lingering emotions at the end of each of my work days. I'd heard about a local Native American/Celtic shaman and decided to call for an appointment. I could use all the help I could get during this time. Although I'd already done a tremendous amount of healing work around my traumas, it was challenging to be facing so much of the trauma of others every day at my job. I started seeing this shaman monthly and enrolled in several of her workshops. This deepened not only my own healing but my understanding of yet another modality I could offer to clients.

During my monthly sessions with the shaman, we did a lot of soul retrievals. Generally, following a soul retrieval it would take a while to process the changes that could occur, and repressed memories would often bubble up. Because I'd already done a lot of memory retrieval work in therapy, it was the opposite for me. Lots of my soul aspects were lined up and ready to come home. This additional healing work started opening up a deep sense of freedom inside me.

Since modern shamanic practices have evolved from so many cultures, there are different versions today. One school of thought talks about the spirit world having levels. An "upper world" is identified where spirit guides, teachers, and ancestors reside. Spirit or totem animals could be found in a "lower world." The "middle world" is the spirit level that surrounds us here on earth. In the journey state, a shaman can quickly traverse hundreds of miles across middle world and even travel back in time. I also learned that middle world is not a place to access guidance since dispossessed spirits or ghosts who aren't ready to leave the earth plane reside on that level. There is a specific way to cross over a perceptible boundary during a journey to enter either upper or lower world. Intentionally crossing this membrane or barrier is essential to being certain that the guidance is truly higher guidance.

As I continued taking these shamanic workshops, I started accessing my spirit guides and animals. This became another tool I could use to continue healing and evolving myself. I had been taught that if I asked questions of my guides in a certain way, I could access really valuable insights that could aid me in making my own decisions. A true guide would never tell me what to do, predict the future, or suggest anything harmful to myself or another because that would interfere with my free will. These guides came from a place of pure unconditional love.

Perhaps our guides are just animated characters that represent our own intuition. They may even be parts of ourselves or our "higher self." Regardless of what or who they are, I soon learned that they could point my life in directions that would gain me the most self growth, even if it came with some pain and confusion along the way. I still to this day converse with the same cast of characters and have added some new ones along the way.

On my commutes home from Littleton, I would carefully search inside for how my day had triggered my own traumas. One night, about halfway home it suddenly hit me. Not all of these emotions I was feeling were mine. I had never considered such a possibility, but my studies in energy psychology were teaching me that emotions were energy and we could take on the emotional energy of another.

I'd learned during my shamanic studies that you could heal another by taking on their pain and then resolving it within yourself. That was a valid approach once upon a time, but with the emergence of all these new energy psychology tools it seemed unnecessary and could be a quick route to burnout. I was to later learn that taking on another's pain essentially robbed them of important lessons hidden in the pain, and often they would re-create a similar painful situation from which to learn.

Learning about energy from a psychological perspective opened up a whole new arena for healing. Energy could be felt and it had a vibration. Most of us have had the experience of walking into someone's home and just knowing an angry fight had recently occurred. Even though the hosts may have been smiling and cordial, time would reveal that there had indeed been an angry argument. I experienced that first-hand when visiting Columbine High School. I only visited the school a few times because I spent most of my time working at our offices nearby. I clearly remember each visit because of the strong energies I felt as I stepped inside the building. It was as if the collected emotions of so many terrified students and teachers left an energy signature behind.

Our offices were also affected by the energies of our clients recounting and reliving their traumas. It became palpable. One day during a staff meeting, I was suddenly hit from behind by what I can only describe as a wall of cold energy. I had just enough time to notify the colleague sitting beside me that I was about to hit the floor. She managed to grab me as I passed out. There was no medical reason why I should have passed out. I had just eaten lunch and my blood sugar was fine. Nor was I ill or overtired. I was later approached by a colleague who was highly sensitive to energy, and she told me she actually saw negative energy overtake me. I have no doubt she was right.

There were many stories about similar events that emerged over the years after the shootings. We were becoming more well-versed in how to clear and heal not just people but also locations by using energy-based techniques. I only wish I had understood more about clearing energies from our work space at the time.

At the end of the second school year, in June 2001, I decided to leave my job with the Columbine High School community. The center would stay open for one more year. That September, two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. I'd grown up in New York. Twenty-six people from my hometown were killed that day, including a young man I used to babysit. I remember going over to visit with my Columbine colleagues later that week. We'd all already shared so much community trauma together. The world was starting to feel like a very different place.

### ****

### Chapter 29

I'd long ago stop blaming everything that went wrong in my life on the stabbing. In fact, I'd begun to embrace the experience as a catalyst that had propelled me on a journey of self-discovery I never would have found otherwise. It was pivotal to everything I had become. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I had also developed a sense of appreciation for the man who had stabbed me. We'd both been victims of violence that had profoundly affected us. He was on a tough road, spending many years in prison after serving in a very controversial war. I hope he found his way. Perhaps we were destined to meet. Maybe we had a soul agreement, pre-arranged before we ever incarnated on earth. Many spiritual teachings tell us that our lives are planned out ahead of time and designed to challenge us to grow and evolve. Free will takes the wheel after we arrive here, allowing us to find a path through the challenges or, in some cases, avoiding them altogether.

I often wondered if I'd forgiven the man who had stabbed me. It felt like I had. Forgiveness is such a loaded word. What I learned personally and through my work with my clients was that when trauma could be resolved deeply through the use of these new alternative therapies, forgiveness would just emerge naturally. It wasn't a choice or a struggle. It was just the conclusion of trauma recovery or, more accurately, trauma transformation.

Traumatic memories are very loaded because the mind hangs onto them as an early warning system. If anything looks like, smells like, sounds like, or resembles the original trauma in any way, you're immediately triggered to go into a self-protective mode. This can really cramp your lifestyle. In addition, this preoccupation of the mind designed to protect you also overshadows good memories. I found, over and over again, that once a lot of traumatic memories were resolved, good memories bubbled to the surface. Suddenly, an abusive parent with seemingly no redeeming qualities was also remembered as caring at times, as a fun person, or as having some other quality you'd never noticed.

Every year, on the anniversary of the assault I'd be affected. This is pretty common and it's actually called the "anniversary effect." Most years I prepared for it. Sometimes memories of the event would come up again or my mood would just be off. During the preliminary trip I made to Colorado before moving there, it was a whirlwind tour that was squeezed in between finishing my dissertation and closing my offices. The day I arrived, I spent the night with good friends from college. Things were all falling into place and my excitement was growing. But a heavy mood hung over me that next morning. One of my stops was to a bank to open a new account. As I looked up at the calendar to date my check accurately, there it was - anniversary day. In all the rushing around, I'd completely forgotten. I'd been nearly stabbed to death 17 years ago to the day.

On the morning of the 20th anniversary, as I woke up I already knew this was anniversary day 2001. My immediate reaction before I even opened my eyes, or really came fully awake, was an outpouring of gratitude for everything this man had done for me. Tears of gratitude we're running down my face. I realized that all of the additional work I'd done on myself, using energy psychology and shamanic healing, had made a difference. My life had come together. I was happy and successful. I had a regular spiritual practice that had evolved along with my healing. Life was good. And so, I greeted this anniversary with the only logical response - to be grateful to the man who'd catalyzed my evolution. I guess that's pretty much full forgiveness. Interestingly, I never again had an anniversary effect.

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### Chapter 30

I continued to sign up for workshops on alternative therapies and attended the annual conferences put on by ACEP. That entailed traveling around the country. Being a lover of nature, I much preferred camping out to stuffy hotel rooms. I usually managed to find campgrounds nearby conference settings. Camping out, even by myself, no longer seemed to trigger my trauma.

I was thrilled to find that the topic of shamanism came up in the context of energy psychology. It was clear that the shamans had been the original energy healers. I kept getting drawn back into the study of shamanism. It seemed to speak to me. I even did a presentation at an ACEP conference discussing how modern energy psychology and ancient shamanism were connected. At the end of my presentation, three women approach me. The women were from Shakti Rising, an organization in California that had emerged from one woman's journey out of addiction and into finding a powerful way to show other women safe passage, not just into recovery but into thriving and becoming community leaders in their own right.

Shakti was also embracing trauma as a potentially transformational experience. They were adopting energy psychology techniques and incorporating them into their own unique and powerful model for recovery from addiction and abuse - two things which very often go hand-in-hand. Their success rate was remarkable. They went on to expand into multiple campuses around the country and also offered outreach and education to local schools and to the community at large. Every time I made a trip out to Southern California to take another energy psychology workshop, I made it a point to stop by and visit Shakti in San Diego.

One year, a past president of ACEP invited Sai Maa Lakshmi Devi to be a keynote speaker. Sai Maa is a spiritual master and energy healer who'd spent many years as a disciple of Sai Baba in India. An invitation was extended to the ACEP audience to attend her next retreat at half price. Reminded of this offer by an ACEP friend, I ended up attending. One of the offerings was a group healing facilitated by Sai Maa. I'd struggled with hypoglycemia my whole life. I had it well controlled with diet, but it still reared its head when I didn't have access to the food I needed or when I was under a lot of stress. I decided to make that the focus of this healing event. As we all sat in meditation, focusing on our intention for our healing, Sai Maa channeled a powerful energy into a room nearly 400 of us sat in. The energy was palpable. My friend and I called it the "baking" because you'd feel your whole body heat up. Since our days were a long series of meditations and chanting, interspersed with bathroom breaks and meals, by the end of the day I'd forgotten about the healing. The next day, my friend who shared a hotel room with me commented that my panicked food-seeking behavior had seemed to calm down.

Had I really been healed? This had been a lifelong struggle, and I had tried every kind of supplement or natural treatment without success. After I got home from the retreat and back to my regular schedule and eating habits, I did notice something had changed. I started watching for the symptoms, noting how long I went between meals, and looking for any signs of my hypoglycemia. Soon enough, it seemed to be there again. Perhaps I had fooled myself into thinking it was gone.

A year later, I decided to attend another retreat. Again, we were offered a group healing session. I thought it was worth trying again. As before, the symptoms seemed to disappear. This time, I found myself automatically thinking about my blood sugar issues in the past tense. In fact, it felt like I'd never really had hypoglycemia at all. It made no sense logically because I couldn't imagine that I had pretended to have these symptoms for decades. Nonetheless, I was clear that it didn't exist and never had. When I got home, I felt this tremendous sense of freedom because I could skip meals with absolutely no consequences. I felt great. I was enjoying my freedom so much that I lost quite a bit of a weight. Normally, losing weight would exacerbate my hypoglycemia. To this day, my blood sugar is no longer a problem.

I learned quite a bit about healing from that experience. Our minds are powerful things. We know from studies about the placebo effect that a sugar pill can cure a disease if we think it's a powerful medication. In fact, our collective mind is so powerful that it is said to create the reality we are surrounded by. Our reality is designed to teach us about ourselves. It also creates a stage for us to act out our lives. If it is true that we have co-created this world for our collective benefit, then in order to truly change our world, we first have to change ourselves and we can't leave any one of us behind.

I came to realize that, in a way, hypoglycemia protected me. Without it, I could have easily succumbed to my genetic predisposition for alcohol addiction, and my life would have taken an entirely different course. Instead, I found that alcohol in anything more than small quantities would make me feel sick and that was no fun. After all the years of healing work I'd done on myself, there was now very little that would have pushed me towards addictive behaviors. It was almost as if it was safe now to be without hypoglycemia.

I came to believe that, with the help of the energy offerings from Sai Maa, I was able to heal myself of this condition successfully at this stage of my journey. By re-creating the hypoglycemia, after being rid of it during the first retreat, I learned a powerful lesson. If I tried too hard to control or test the healing, I would be destined to re-create it. My ego would only get in the way, whether I was healing myself or another. It was enough to just set an intention to heal and then let the life force energy do the work.

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### Chapter 31

With more time freed up after I left my job helping the Columbine community, I started expanding my private practice. I moved into a new and bigger office in a building that had a lot of healers and small businesses. It would turn out to be the home of my practice for almost 15 years.

I'd never had any intention of working with kids but also had no objection to it. When I was working with the Columbine community I found that I just adored teenagers. They were so refreshingly open and honest, even if they were a bit in-your-face with blunt honesty at times. They were also very open to all the new-fangled therapies I kept introducing. Soon, my practice was filling up with teen clients although I still saw a lot of adults, often parents of the teen clients.

With each new therapy tool I acquired, I would somehow incorporate it into an integrated model that I was evolving. I never knew from session to session what I might pull out of the hat. That kept things interesting. It was becoming clear that intuition was guiding the way. The true healer was behind the scenes. I was just the channel. It worked great with kids who could easily get bored. They especially liked that these new therapies worked fast. The less time in the therapist's office, the more time they had with friends. I agreed with that.

One day, a woman called after finding me in the Yellow Pages. Her son had already been to see numerous therapists and psychiatrists, had received at least eight different psychiatric diagnoses, and been trialed on over 10 medications. He was now refusing to go to school or even leave the house. She wanted to know if I did house calls. What seemed like a terribly complicated situation eventually revealed itself as a hidden trauma that I was able to successfully treat. Not all traumas had to be due to violence. Being bullied or made fun of in public could be experienced as a trauma. Witnessing a traumatic event or even a TV show with violence could also leave symptoms of trauma.

This was not a unique experience. I repeatedly came across clients who carried all sorts of confusing diagnoses and were on multiple medications. Most were situations where a former trauma has been completely overlooked as a cause. Using my alternative therapies to treat the trauma, the need for the medications often fell away. There seemed to be some sort of denial going on among many doctors and therapists. I often found myself having to treat clients who had been traumatized by former therapies. This was especially true for clients who'd been hospitalized on psychiatric units.

Other horrifying traumas I came across were the result of abuses perpetrated by staff at residential programs which were often located in states with more lax laws or even across the border in Mexico. I heard stories of sexual abuse and solitary confinement during attendance at these so-called treatment programs for problem teens.

I was also attracting a lot of kids who I would call empathic or psychically sensitive. They were very sensitive to energy and easily picked up the emotions of those around them by drifting in and out of other people's energy fields all day. To some, this could look a little bipolar, but that didn't mean medication was in order. I was quickly learning to clear out foreign energy from a client's field before I made any conclusions about what was going on with them. Then I started teaching my clients to clear their own fields.

Hearing voices, I was fast learning, did not necessarily mean someone was psychotic when he or she was functioning normally in other aspects of life and was clearly in touch with reality. I was meeting kids who spoke with angels and other spirits. Others claimed to communicate with their pets and I had no doubt that they were. As I began to listen to what was really going on, I was able to distinguish between when a kid was accessing true spiritual guidance, say from what was believed to be an angel, versus one getting bad advice from some errant spirit interfering with free will. My job then became making sure that, if a kid was already making connection with the spirit world, they weren't being led astray. There was a big difference between psychic and psychotic, and I was quickly becoming proficient at distinguishing between the two.

To further my education, I enrolled at a local psychic institute and took a year of classes. It was there that I learned how much these dear children I was working with had found ways to tag along in my own energy field. They'd finally found someone who believed them, and they wanted to be with me long after their appointment was over. As hard as letting them go was, I learned that I was doing them more good by instead helping them to create a safety zone within their own energy field. I was certainly never bored at work.

I also took my personal healing to the next level. I began scheduling sessions for myself with psychic healers to clear out energies that didn't belong in my space. I also began finding out about my past lives. Columbia and Yale educated psychiatrist Brian Weiss introduced past-life regression to the field of psychotherapy in the 1980s after a client of his went back into another century during a hypnotic age regression. Although we not may not be able to irrefutably prove there are past lives, many people have found great benefit in learning about their own past lives. For Dr. Weiss's client, it meant finally being freed of paralyzing phobias when nothing else had worked. I found my past lives gave me new perspectives on my current life and clues about why my life had taken certain directions. It added another layer to the depth to my healing.

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### Chapter 32

Something remarkable was beginning to be revealed to me at work. These precious young people that I was working with seemed way ahead of most adults in their spiritual development. Once I helped them clear their traumas, they would very quickly move into states of forgiveness and many felt compelled to serve society in some very unselfish ways. My hopes for our world grew in leaps and bounds as I shared this intimate time with these young clients.

I remember one young girl who had been horribly abused, sometimes ritually and satanically. She was providing me with a reading list to bring me up to speed on the level of trauma she carried. It wasn't the first nor the last time I was to receive assignments from my young clients. One of the most terrifying of her memories involved witnessing the beyond horrifying ritual sacrifice killing of a young friend who was only three years old. At the time, my young client was five. We managed to clear a lot of the residual trauma she had carried for years. But then she drew the line. She had decided that it would dishonor the memory of her lost friend to be completely clear of the trauma. I understood her sentiment so we sat in silence for several moments to honor the young soul that was so brutally murdered that day.

I completely honored that these young people knew what they did and did not want when it came to their healing. That stance helped me win over many a very reluctant teen, especially if they'd had a bad experience with therapy before. It wasn't always easy. I was often met with silence or a stern lecture on the evils of psychotherapy. Luckily, my bag of tricks from energy psychology didn't look much like traditional therapy. I could artfully offer some cool options.

Many teens seem to thrive on drama as a result of the hormonal uptick that is helping to refine their emotional range. I remember one day facing a teen girl who had already run away several times, not just across town but across the country. It was a formidable expression of her discontent at home. She was having no part in my therapy, alternative or otherwise. I was trying every trick I could think of and feeling more hopeless by the minute. As this sense of defeat coursed through my body, I went with it. I slowly started slipping down in my chair as I begged, " please let me help you." Soon I was down on the floor, continuing my whining plea. I had won her over. I hadn't behaved like any therapist she ever knew. Several years later, when she was ready to acknowledge that she also had a drinking problem, she would call for help herself without a parent pushing her.

As I continued attending energy psychology conferences, a curious phenomenon emerged. In an effort to legitimize this new brand of psychology, controlled studies were being conducted. One group of people would be instructed to tap actual acupressure points, while another was instructed to tap on mock acupressure points. They were both experiencing relief from their psychological distress. It was becoming clear that the intention to get better seemed to have the upper hand. If you believed mock acupressure points could help you, then they would. Again, the mind was being shown to be very powerful. In fact, the placebo effect is so powerful that medication research has been attempting to manipulate it in a way to make their drugs seem more effective.

The more I studied, the more I came to realize that I was a very small part of the total formula for therapy. I could show the way, but my clients were accessing the energy and healing themselves in ways I couldn't always predict. Of course, the shamans and Native American healers had known this for centuries.

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### Chapter 33

With my practice established and a nice steady income, I decided to buy a house for the first time. I was almost 50 years old. A friend was a mortgage broker and referred me to a realtor. I decided I wanted to live in the Rocky Mountains. It would be a longer commute but I craved being surrounded by nature. I called and spoke with the realtor. She lived in the mountains herself and had a good feel for the area I'd chosen. She sent me an email with three listings. As I scrolled down, pictures of the first house came up. My heart leaped in my chest. In my mind I heard, "That's it, that's the house." The reaction startled me. I signed it off to being a first time buyer and continued to scroll down to see all three houses. That night, I had flying dreams about the first house. I woke up convinced that I'd found my new home. Perhaps I'd so clearly held out my heart's desire to the universe that I was truly presented with the perfect house, right off the bat. I felt silly asking the realtor to show me just one house and then buying it. So I chose to see one other house first. Nothing about that first house attracted me. Then we went to see the house that showed up in my dream.

Since it was the middle of winter and no one was living there, it was obvious that someone had recently dug a path up to the front door through the deep snow. We stepped in the door and heard an old furnace making a terrible racket. There was a weird smell that I later found out was due to a propane gas leak in the cook stove. The place was a mess. An old wood floor made of pine was terribly marred and splattered with paint here and there. One electric outlet was hanging out of the wall. There was a half-finished hearth that supported a huge woodstove. Windows were framed in bare wood moulding proudly displaying lumber stamps.

Yet, as we stepped out the back door, a huge forest of pine and aspen trees that swept up the hill behind the house took my breath away. I was home. Somehow, I overlooked all the ugliness. There was something unique about this place and the land was the perfect setting for a quiet, nature-filled life. A friend later commented that I must have had a vision for its potential because to everyone else it truly looked unlivable.

I spent the next few years upgrading and remodeling the house and making it just perfect. An outbuilding the size of a three-car garage, in addition to being a place to park my car, became a home office and a greenhouse. I'd had an interest in living in an environmentally sustainable way since I'd participated in air pollution studies in high school. With a whole house to experiment with, I began super-insulating it and added solar thermal heaters that drastically reduced my heating bills. I later added a completely solar-heated sunroom next to a small stream on the property where the sun reached it year round. I was finally realizing my dream of living sustainably.

During the week, I'd see my clients. Then on the weekends, I worked on the house until it was just the kind of setting I could flourish in. I remember how I used to just sit there in my living room, looking out at the forest and up at the sky through the skylight, and think to myself that I truly lived in heaven. Commuting to work became a fantastic trip, first up a pass, taking in spectacular views of the continental divide. It never looked the same twice, changing depending on the lighting at that time of day and the weather conditions. Then, from the top of the pass, a winding road took me down through a beautiful canyon with towering mountains on either side, displaying spectacular rock outcroppings. Once down the canyon, I then got to hug the foothills on the way south to my office.

My big office in town was comfy enough to spend the night when a big snowstorm would move in during the day. And my mountain home certainly got lots of snow. I'd see at least 12 or 13 feet a year and even got 17 feet of snow one year. I cherished the profound silence that surrounded me after a big snow. I could sit out in my hot tub, looking at the pine trees weighted down with big flocks of snow. I loved my life. I felt comfortable and safe, and I was making a difference in the world through my work.

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### Chapter 34

It was 2008. I was busy seeing lots of clients and still doing projects on the house. I survived a couple of huge blizzards over the years, and I actually kind of liked being stuck at home for a couple of days, sitting by the woodstove, looking out at the snow, and catching up on reading. Mountain living suited me.

That October the economic collapse occurred. I had been able to avoid working for the managed-care companies all these years. That meant I had to depend on people paying me out of pocket, although I did provide paperwork for out-of-network reimbursements for those who had such policies. Colorado's cost of living had been high in comparison to wages, affecting people's disposable income, so the economic crisis was strongly felt. Suddenly, many people were feeling fearful for their economic survival. Others were actually losing their jobs. By the end of the year, I'd lost 40% of my clients. The trend continued through 2010 until I was down 60% from where I'd been.

Meanwhile, I was starting to get requests from managed-care companies to submit confidential information about my clients to legitimize their payments for my services. I wasn't contracted with these companies but they had my name and tax ID number from the out-of-network forms I'd provided clients. This was a new trend in their encroaching control over the profession. If I didn't comply, the clients wouldn't receive reimbursement. In the financial climate, this didn't bode well for my practice. It was time to rethink what I was doing. I did the best I could for a few years, while borrowing from retirement money to keep up with bills. With the additional free time, I did more work beautifying my house. I also had tons of time to read.

While in graduate school, I'd been introduced to a technique called Ho'oponopono by a professor from Hawaii. It was presented in the context of family therapy and had to do with creating harmony in a conflicted family through the process of forgiveness. I'd recently picked up a book on Ho'oponopono and was thoroughly enjoying it until I lost it. Frustrated, I got online to buy another copy. For some reason, that particular edition of the book wasn't available. While searching for the book online, several other books discussing Hawaiian history and cultural practices caught my attention. Instead of obtaining another copy of the lost book, I ended up with six other books about Hawaii. I added them to the stack of books I had by my reading chair.

It was the summer of 2013. I would be 60 years old in two years. I had run out of projects on the house. My practice had always been slow in the summer because kids were out of school and families were off on vacations. But since the economy had tanked in 2008, my summers were more quiet than ever. I was catching up on my reading again when I wasn't playing in the Rockies, hiking, biking, and camping. My reading stack had worked its way down to my collection of books on Hawaii. What a rich and beautiful culture the Hawaiians have. It was heartbreaking to read how the colonization and exploitation of these islands had done so much damage. It was also uplifting and timely, given the state of our world, to learn that there's a revival of sorts happening where the old Hawaiian culture and values are finding a new voice.

I was thoroughly engrossed in these books on Hawaii and ordered some more. As I read, a feeling started creeping over me hinting that I needed to move there. I pushed that feeling aside. I'd created a beautiful life in the Rocky Mountains. That is where I belonged and where I would retire, although perhaps earlier than I intended due to the economy. As I continued reading my books on Hawaii, that feeling would come up again. I was meant to move there. No, that couldn't be so. One night, as I was reading, it hit me so deeply. Hawaii was to be my new home, and particularly the Big Island of Hawaii. But I'd never even been there! I had made a couple of trips to Oahu in the late 90s to visit an old friend from California. Then, in 2011 I'd spent a week on Kauai to help a friend celebrate her 60th birthday. Both islands were beautiful, but I was a Rocky Mountain woman. That's what fed my soul. Yet the pull to move to Hawaii persisted.

I reasoned that, if I was meant to move to the Big Island of Hawaii, I should at least make a trip to see and experience it. Many of the books I'd read had to do with the healing practices of the Hawaiian people. I decided to attend a workshop on Lomi Lomi and Ho'oponopono while I was there. I signed up for the workshop and booked a flight for early 2014.

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### Chapter 35

My flight arrived after dark. I picked up my rental car and headed out with directions in hand to find the campsite where I had reservations. It was so dark out. Hawaii Island has street lights that emit a low intensity yellow light to protect the effectiveness of the massive telescopes on Mauna Kea from light pollution. I loved it. It reminded me of being up in the Rockies where you could actually see the Milky Way band of light across the sky, especially on a moonless night. I managed to find my way off the main highway and left the street lights behind. I got lost on the smaller roads, one of which had only one lane at times. Fortunately, at that hour I wasn't dealing with oncoming traffic. I finally found the campground and proceeded to set up my tent in the pitch black of night. I could barely see 2 feet in front of me and it was well past midnight Colorado time. As I looked up at the velvety black sky, I could make out several familiar constellations amidst what seemed like millions of stars. The familiar constellations were all much closer to the horizon. It was clear that I was way further south than my Rocky Mountain home.

I didn't get much sleep that night because the sun was up early and it was getting hot in the tent. So I got up, made myself some breakfast, and then headed out to explore. I'd done some preliminary research online and planned to explore several local areas as possible new homes. But first, I stopped at the setting of the workshop and checked in. The woman who assisted me was originally from Utah. Her name was Katie, same as my sister's name. I shared with her that I was thinking of moving to the island. She immediately suggested a local community as a great place to live. I took note of the community she suggested but decided to first investigate the communities I'd found online. The further I got from the ocean, the less expensive was the land. Having more land was intriguing since my house in Colorado was on an acre which bordered the national forest, making it seem like an even bigger parcel. By mid-afternoon, I was getting hungry and also needed to buy groceries. None of the places I explored had grabbed my attention so far, but there was lots of variety both in communities and climate.

The Big Island has five separate volcanoes, three of which are still active. It also boasts having 10 out of the 14 climate zones on the planet. In a matter of a few of hours, you can go from tropical rain forest to snow atop Mauna Kea then down into dry desert. As you climb in elevation, temperatures drop so much that at the summit of Mauna Kea, 13,796 feet above sea level, snow can be found almost year-round. I loved elevation. I was living at 8200 feet in the Rockies where the air was thin but clear. It made me feel like I was living on top of the world. Knowing I could still visit high elevations and even see snow made the move even more inviting.

After buying groceries, I drove back down to my campground and set up to cook dinner. It was January so the sun set early. After dinner, I sat in the dark and gazed at the star-filled sky. The next morning, being a little less jet lagged, I got up earlier. I love boogie boarding and had picked up a board in town before I drove out to the campground. As I was finishing breakfast, I noticed a young man with a boogie board setting up a party tent nearby. I went over and asked him where was a good place was to go boogie boarding. He pointed out a spot nearby. I finished cleaning up breakfast dishes and headed out to the ocean with my board. There was a congregation of surfers and boogie boarders spread out, waiting for a good wave. I headed in that direction. When I arrived, I was warmly greeted by a smiling man on a surfboard. He introduced me to several of the others in the group.

I had so much fun talking that I never did catch a wave. I shared how I was on Hawaii for a workshop and also looking into moving to the area. The smiling man on the surfboard immediately suggested I look into the same community that was mentioned the day before by Katie, the woman at the workshop setting. His name was Johnny. My father's name had been John. Johnny gave me a referral to a realtor who lived in the same community. The realtor's name was John. I was running into quite a string of coincidences around people's names.

Later that day, a large group had gathered at the nearby party tent to celebrate a birthday. I was sitting at a picnic table next to my campsite reading a book when a man from the party approach me and invited me to join them. His name was Richard, the same name as my youngest brother. I follow him over to the party and introductions began. I met two women from Colorado, one whose name was Katie. She lived in that same community that the others had recommended to me. It was just uncanny.

The next day, I began my workshop. I also put in a call to John the realtor. That evening, I met with him and got a tour of this community that I'd heard so much about. There were several lots for sale. I was intrigued with the idea of building a house from scratch this time. I'd long been intrigued with the tiny house movement and had decided it would be a great way to retire - less house, less cost, less cleaning and maintenance.

I was at my workshop for the next two days but kept thinking about the lots I'd seen. One in particular was really attracting my attention. It was near the end of a quiet street at the back of the community. I reasoned that even if this idea of moving to Hawaii was all a mistake, the housing market was at a low so a purchase could later just end up being an investment. I called the realtor and we put in an offer for the lot I liked. A month later, I was the proud owner of a small property in Hawaii.

The realtor shared all sorts of referrals to resources available for building a home. He recommended a man named Dan, my nephew's name, as a good architect. Then there was the local contractor named Kevin, the same name as my other brother. A reliable local surveyor was also named Dan. Were all these coincidences a sign, much like I'd experienced when I felt called to move to Colorado?

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### Chapter 36

Back in Colorado, business hadn't picked up at all in my practice. The economic recovery we were hearing about wasn't for everyone. But I wasn't quite ready to close up shop. I loved my work and felt like I was making a difference in people's lives. I was able to find my way around most of the requests from managed-care companies for my clients' personal records. But then they started to deny payments if I spent too much time helping someone. Their aim over the years had been to reduce the number of allowable sessions and reimbursement rates, and now they were whittling down how long a session could be.

I decided to make another trip to the Big Island later that same year. If I was to build a house, there were some preparations to be made, like having the land surveyed to establish my property boundaries. That November I headed back to the Island. This time, since I had land now, I didn't book a camping reservation. I was completely unaware of how thick the jungle could be. I was accustomed to camping in the Rocky Mountains where the higher you got, the fewer trees there were. I ended up having to camp beside the road in front of my lot because I couldn't find a clear enough spot to set up my tent in the jungle. It ended up being a good thing because I got to meet neighbors, curious about who was camping along the road. It was good to get a feel of the Big Island again and start the process of preparing to build my own house.

I was turning 60 the following summer. It seemed like a good time to close my business and start a new adventure. I returned home after my trip and began preparations to close my practice and sell my beloved mountain home. The following March, I closed my office in town. I'd been there almost 15 years and had made many friends in the building. It was a very special place, and thanks to the building manager there was a sense of family among many of the long-term renters. The building owner and manager threw me a going away party with a Hawaiian theme. It was really happening. I was going to move to Hawaii.

I continued to see clients at my home office in the mountains for a few more months. The house was looking good, and I would list it for sale in the spring after the snow had melted. It had been a very snowy winter and we got one of those big wet spring snows in April. I'd left my car out because I was preparing for a garage sale. The car was completely buried in snow but I had no worries because there was nowhere to be. A few days later, the skylight in the living room started a slow drip. I went up on the roof to investigate. The snow had obviously taken its toll. I put in a call to my roofer, but his schedule was all backed up after a long snowy winter, as were most roofers that year. All he could do was patch things up until there was an opening in his schedule.

I had planned a big garage sale for the Memorial Day weekend. People love to visit the mountains on holiday weekends so I was sure to get lots of traffic. Instead, it rained the entire weekend. It seemed like everything was conspiring to keep me from selling my house. By the start of summer, I'd decided to put off moving for a year. Good thing because the roofer didn't get to me until October, just before the snow moved in for another winter.

I now had another whole year to prepare for my move. I'd already pared down a lot of my belongings. If I was going to live in a tiny house, I'd need to get rid of a lot more belongings. I used the extra year to scan all my photos and tax records and sold off some more books. In retrospect, it was also good to have time to get used to the idea of ending my career, the first of many changes to come.

It was another long, snowy winter, but I had nowhere I had to be. I caught up on reading and relished being able to just sit back and enjoy my home for another year. I also used the time to play around with house designs for my new island home. I knew I wanted a tiny house but also didn't want to feel totally cramped. After all, this was to be my retirement home. I wanted another greenhouse, although this one would be screened in instead of insulated. At lower elevations, most of Hawaii has a year-round growing season, but that also invites bugs to proliferate since there's no freeze to keep their population under control. And on the rainy side of the island, where I was to live, heavy rains could pummel little plants before they had a chance to produce.

One snowy winter day, I was on the floor of my living room laying out made-to-scale cutouts of my new home on a map of my building lot. I knew I wanted to power my home with solar, so I angled the house and attached greenhouse towards solar south. I wanted a bigger greenhouse, twice the size of the one I had. When laid out, it was awfully close to the setback boundaries on the property sides. Should I reduce the size of the greenhouse? Or could I compromise the solar gain by tilting the structure away from solar south?

Just then, I heard the notification signal that an email had just come into my mailbox. It was a good time to get up and take a break. I walked over to my phone, took a peek out at the falling snow, and opened my email. My realtor in Hawaii was informing me that the lot directly next door to mine had just come on the market. It couldn't have been better timing. I put in an offer, engaged in some negotiation around the price, and was able to purchase the second lot. Now there was lots of room for my house and greenhouse. It was also turning out to be quite fortuitous that I had to put off moving for a year because property values were rising in my mountain area. This would help a lot since much of my retirement money was coming out of the sale of the house.

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### Chapter 37

Springtime had come to the Rockies again but that didn't necessarily bring an end to the snow. We got a whopper of a spring dump that April. I remember taking pictures of my monster snow thrower completely buried in the snow. Part of the handle was visible to indicate that it was there at all. Again, with nowhere that I needed to be, I could sit it out. Soon the sun would be shining brightly and it would do most of the snow removal for me. Spring storms were like that.

I'd been gathering documents for the house, and on the advice of a realtor I was putting together a user manual for the solar heating system on the house. An early summer forest fire in the area was filling my neighborhood with smoke so I put off listing the house. There had been several forest fires over the years, but they never got near enough to cause an evacuation in my neighborhood. This one came close.

Finally, by July I was ready to put the house on the market. My neighbor Richard, same name as my brother, was a commercial realtor. I approached him about a referral for a home realtor. His friend and colleague Jon, a similar name to my father's, was recommended. We put in a call right away and Jon arrived later that day. He loved the house and all the upgrades and additions I'd done. I had documentation of the energy savings I gained because of the solar heaters. Eco-houses were becoming a hot new market. We set an asking price and the sign went up that day.

It was really happening. I was selling my beautiful home. I was excited, but part of me felt sad and a little scared of what the future held. Almost immediately, we had a showing. Another realtor brought in a couple. The feedback was very positive but it was more than they wanted to spend. A week later, we had another showing and an offer. Property was selling quickly in Colorado so I wasn't surprised. An inspection was scheduled and, although it wasn't customary, I was asked to be present because of the unusual solar heating features. The inspection went well and I answered all their questions. The next morning, Jon called to say that the prospective buyer had backed out of the offer without giving a reason.

Following the disappointment, Jon held two open houses but no one came to either one. A few weeks later, another couple came on a Sunday. They wanted to see it immediately because it was exactly what they were looking for. Jon couldn't make it so my neighbor Richard came over and we showed the house together. The couple loved the house and stayed for almost 2 hours. They even discussed money and were ready to put a big down payment on the house. Then we never heard from them again. After that, we went weeks with no showings. I was beginning to be concerned. Summer was coming to an end and soon the snow would be back and it would be harder to sell. Jon had left for a vacation in Europe and wouldn't be back until after Labor Day.

I was sitting out in my sunroom one day in late August, thinking about how all the traffic that drove by in the summer would soon be gone. Suddenly, it hit me. Labor Day weekend was just a few days away and there would be lots of people driving by. What a perfect opportunity to have an open house. Since I had been helping show the house anyway, why not do it without a realtor? I sent an email to Jon, asking him to set up the advertising like he'd done before, and I headed out to the store to get signs. I even made a sign advertising that I had solar heat and hung it beneath the realtor sign out front.

Everything was set. Early Saturday morning, I got a message from Jon. He had already received a call from a realtor who had an interested couple. They were actually the third ones to show up that morning and spent a lot of time, not just looking at the house, but also hiking around the property and taking in nature. They seemed like the perfect buyers. It only seemed right that the new owners would appreciate the peace and beauty of the setting. After all, it had been my spot in heaven for the last 11 years.

I ended up having 11 showings that three-day weekend. People loved the place and I loved showing it off. Several parties were showing serious interest. The very last prospective buyer was a young man who arrived late Monday afternoon with a realtor named John. When they arrived, the realtor was surprised to be greeted by the owner, and did not want me present for the showing. I graciously bowed out so he could show the place himself. It wasn't long before he called me back because they had lots of questions. We did another walk-through of the house and property. Then they thanked me and I went in the house. It was evening now and the open house was over.

A little while later, I looked out the window and the two men were still in my driveway. A moment later, there was a knock at the door. The prospective buyer, Johnny, was very interested. There was that name again. I remember that he had on jeans and a pair of sneakers, and he seemed to be popping up and down in his sneakers. His enthusiasm was contagious. They let me know to expect an offer that evening.

As they pulled out of the driveway, I collected up my open house signs and went inside for the night. While I was out, my realtor Jon had sent me a text from New York while on a layover en route to home. He excitedly informed me that the couple from Saturday morning was making an offer. I got another text from him a few hours later when he arrived in Denver. He was shocked to find two offers had come through.

Choosing between the two offers was easy. The young couple interested in the house couldn't move for several more months, plus Johnny had offered $10,000 over asking price. I had already envisioned Johnny living there. I began to think that perhaps it had taken this long to sell the house because it was waiting for him. I was soon to find out why.

The inspections and paperwork process began right away. Not wanting to wait any longer, Johnny requested another walk-through of the house so he could learn more about the operation and maintenance of the solar heating system. We set that up for a Saturday morning. From the moment Johnny arrived, we couldn't stop talking. We shared very similar values around living in an environmentally sound way. He had hoped to modify a home to include the use of solar resources and accommodations for growing healthy food. Instead, he found it ready-made. We had so much fun sharing our similar thoughts about life and living sustainably that we had to schedule another meeting to discuss the house. It seemed I'd found the perfect buyer. It had been well worth the wait. This home had been my pride and joy, and it felt really good turning it over to someone who would treasure and care for it as much as I had.

Meanwhile, all the real estate paperwork was lining up. Inspections of the house, well, and septic system all went very well. There was actually nothing to correct. I wasn't surprised as I had originally intended to spend the rest of my life there and had spared no expense. It looked like we had a go.

Since I only had an empty lot on Hawaii, I still needed a place to live in until my home was built. I'd been watching the real estate market for several months, figuring that if a small place opened up in the neighborhood near my lots, it would make more sense to buy than to rent. But I had to wait for a solid contract on my house so I could roll the money into a new place.

I'd been watching a really small house just a block away from my lots, but it was significantly overpriced and the price hadn't dropped over the months it had sat on the market. I had nothing to lose so I called my Hawaiian realtor John. He agreed the place was really pricey and recommended we offer a more reasonable amount that was a full $25,000 below asking price. He expected the seller would counter some intermediate amount, and then I could decide from there what I wanted to do. We waited and waited. There was no response. Even if the low offer was unacceptable to the seller, surely we would have heard something. The deadline date for a response came and went. Two days later, my realtor called. The seller countered at only $5000 over my offer, a full $20,000 less than asking price. Surprised but thrilled, I accepted their counter. Everything was falling into place.

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### Chapter 38

Since I'd planned to move the year before, much preparation had already been done. I'd sold off a lot of stuff at my garage sales the summer before. Much of what I was keeping was already in boxes. Johnny was interested in my furniture so I was leaving it all with the house. I began making plans to ship my remaining belongings and the car. Since I had whittled down my possessions with the intent to live in a tiny house, there was no need for a big shipping container. Instead, I opted to stack boxes on two shipping pallets, have them trucked out to California, and then loaded on a ship bound for Hawaii. A shipping broker handled my reservations. The man who was assigned to handle my order was named Dan. There it was again - that name thing. I contacted a car shipping company and spoke to Patrick. My grandfather was Patrick. Surely, I must be on the right track. I planned to drive out to California and stay a week with my nephew to give my pallets and car some time to make the journey. I booked a flight to Hawaii from California and would arrive the day after I closed on my new house there - the best laid plans.

The closing date on my Colorado house was fast approaching. I was spending every minute I could at home, soaking in the beauty of my gorgeous setting. Underneath the surface I had a lot of stress. Although things were falling into place, so much was changing at once. I had left my career the year before. I just shed a huge chunk of my belongings, managing to squeeze my whole life into 110 cubic feet. I was moving to an island way off in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It felt like a calling but I had no idea why. I'd felt called before when I landed in Colorado 18 years prior and it all seemed to work out. I was trusting it would happen again.

Soon, I'd be closing on my treasured Colorado home. Was I doing the right thing? I loved my home. Was I crazy to give it all up and step into an unknown future? Yet there was no turning back now. The closing date the contract stated fell on a federal holiday, a bank holiday, so it was pushed back a day. I already had a reservation to drop off my car in California and couldn't stay another day. My realtor suggested I come in on the holiday and sign my half of the paperwork. It turned out to be a good option for me because I was in tears through the whole process. Jon and I were alone in a room. When we finished the paperwork, he gave me a big hug and I went home for the last night in my Colorado home. The next morning, I packed the last few items into my car and got ready to leave. I did a walk-through of the house, this time to say goodbye and collect up all the wonderful memories I'd made there. I wandered around the property for a while, doing the same thing.

Then it was time to leave. I started pulling out of the driveway, and I started crying so hard that I didn't even know how I could possibly drive halfway to California that day. My greatest consolation was that a man who now felt like a younger brother to me was going to take over stewardship of this beautiful place and give it the same love and attention that I had done for the past 11 years. He promised to keep in touch and invited me to come stay at the house next time I was in town. I left him several notes at the house, following up with last-minute details, and also left him a big welcome home sign. That night, as I was driving across Utah, I received a beautiful text from him thanking me for everything. Our texts and phone calls to each other still happen to this day. I had found more than a buyer; I had found a new friend.

### Part III: Hawaii

### Chapter 39

Everything for my move was falling into place. Well, almost everything. The closing on the house in Hawaii had to be moved back a month because the house was tied up in probate court. In exchange for not addressing any repairs suggested in the inspection report, the seller agreed to let me live in the house rent-free until the courts okayed the sale. So I would have a place to land when I got there. I had a sweet and restful week visiting my nephew while my car and belongings slowly made their way across the ocean. I had time to leisurely make calls to get electricity turned on at my new house and to work with my realtor to finalize the sale.

Because I didn't want my electronics and valuables to be on a pallet that would get bumped around and drop by forklifts, I had planned to transport those items on the plane. I also needed to take basic household and kitchen items with me since the pallets would take almost a month to get to Hawaii. Then there were the last minute items I'd forgotten to pack before the pallets were shipped. I ended up with two huge oversized and overweight pieces of luggage to check. A large backpack filled with important papers and random wardrobe items, plus a briefcase with a laptop, scanner, and mini printer were all on my person. It was impossible for me to carry it all. It had to weigh almost 200 pounds.

As we pulled up to the airline drop off, there was a huge throng of teenage girls in sports uniforms crowding around the security checkpoint. Just as my nephew was offering to park the car and come back to help me, a porter emerged from the crowd and headed straight over to me. As my nephew and I said our goodbyes, my luggage was taken over to the weigh-in scales. When everything was tagged and ready to go, I was escorted to the front of the long line of teenagers. Good fortune had issued me a TSA pre-check plane ticket so I didn't even have to unpack my electronics or remove clothing.

My seat assignment ended up next to a Filipino woman who had grown up on Oahu on a family-owned farm during a time when life was simpler. She shared engaging stories of her childhood most of the flight, and I never thought once to pick up my book. It was an enchanting aloha welcome to life in Hawaii. Near the end of the flight, I could see the first of the Hawaiian islands off in the distance. Kauai is the oldest and the most northerly island. Through fluffy clouds, I could see majestic peaks of green rising up from the ocean. Then we descended into Honolulu on Oahu where I had a layover. It was odd to see such an urban skyline in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Honolulu is the capital of Hawaii and the only real city in the state.

An hour later, I loaded onto a much smaller plane that would make the half hour flight over to the Big Island. They actually provided a very quickly executed beverage service during the flight. As they were collecting up cups, I caught a glimpse of this massive mountaintop towering way up above the clouds. Mauna Kea is the highest peak on the islands at 13,796 feet above sea level. Measured from its base at the bottom of the ocean, it stands at over 33,000 feet and is the tallest mountain on earth. It's a dormant volcano and it's about one million years old. It frequently has snow on it, especially during the winter. It was truly a breathtaking view as we descended into what was about to be my new home.

I deplaned wearing my backpack with my briefcase hung over my shoulder. As I stood at the luggage carousel, I saw my huge bags coming around. One by one, I managed to drag them off the conveyor belt. A man standing next to me softly asked how I was going to carry my bags. That was a good question. Since the curb wasn't more than 20 feet away, I figured I'd drag them. He kindly took the bag without wheels for me, piled it on top of his wheeling suitcase, and left it at the curb. A local car rental agency happened to be the same place that would receive my car when it arrived from the mainland, so I had made my reservation with them. I was quickly picked up and ferried over to their office to get my rental car.

After two visits to the island, I pretty much knew my way around. I stopped in town to eat and pick up some basic supplies and then headed out to my new house. It was already dusk when I arrived so I went to turn on the utilities first. I managed to find the electric box in the back of the house and switched on the main breaker. Water came from a rain collection container in the yard with a pump that brought it into the house. I was unfamiliar with such a set up and decided to leave it off until the morning.

The key was in the realtors lock box on the door. I'd gotten the code the week before so I let myself in for a first look at a place I'd only seen in internet pictures. Things always look different than they do in the pictures but it was certainly a cute place. Boasting a whole 344 square feet, of which almost 100 square feet was an outdoor deck or lanai, it was tiny yet not too tiny. Right away, I opened the two sliding glass doors onto the lanai and several windows. Immediately, a cool tropical breeze went through the place, carrying the stale air out the back windows.

One by one, I dragged my bags up the stairs. One bag contained a sleeping pad, a sheet, and a light blanket. I had even shrunk wrapped my pillow and pulled that out of the bag. The house lacked any real storage space and had no furniture so everything, including me, was on the floor. My other bag had pots and pans and even a blender. I set up a makeshift kitchen but soon found out that the outdoor cooking range didn't work.

I was pretty jetlagged so I went to bed early and slept great. It had been a long time since I'd heard crickets at night. They don't live high in the Rockies where even summer nights can get cold. The Big Island was also overrun with tree frogs, one of many invasive species that have found a home in Hawaii. Much louder than crickets, they can make quite a clamor for such tiny frogs. I'd come to enjoy their melodic croaking during my two prior trips.

Since I went to bed early, I woke before dawn. I laid there for a while trying to take in my vastly different new environment. No longer was there a smell of pine trees. Instead, the air had a much sweeter smell of fruit and flowers. It brought a smile to my face. I quietly got up and sat for a while in meditation as I did most every morning. Once the sun was up, I ventured outside. A light rain had fallen overnight and everything smelled fresh. I figured out how to turn on the water pump and then went inside to make some breakfast. Next, I began setting up household which meant arranging things on the floor. An open suitcase became my dresser, and I lined up pots and pans on the kitchen counter. On another trip to town for supplies, I bought a camp stove and a couple of canisters of propane so I'd have a way to cook until I could replace the faulty regulator on the outdoor range.

During my second night, I was awakened twice when the water pump turned on spontaneously. In the morning, I called my realtor and we figured out that the foot valve at the bottom of the water tank was defective, so water was slowly leaking out and periodically turning on the pump. Off I went to Home Depot. I was soon to find out how often stores on Hawaii were out of needed parts and how long it took to restock. Almost everything needed for life in Hawaii has to come by ship or airplane from the mainland. Luckily, I got the very last valve in stock after a kind employee spent 20 minutes rummaging through boxes. Once repaired, the water pump stopped running randomly, but it still seemed to run an awful lot. According to my house inspection report, the pressure tank was probably going to need to be replaced. I wasn't ready to invest too much money in the house until I was sure it would be mine. Probate court was still to make a determination.

A week later, I was in the bathroom washing my hands when my feet started getting wet. I immediately cut off the water supply to the sink. The plumbing was shot, and the cheaply made vanity was now swelling from soaking up the water. The kitchen sink became my best friend for the weeks to come. Plumbing, it seemed, had become the theme but repairs would have to wait. The closing date had been pushed back indefinitely, pending the now delayed court decision. I actually didn't take possession of the house until the week before Christmas, two months after the original closing date. A new vanity and faucet went in immediately. I also put shelves in the kitchen, installed a standing closet for the bedroom, and added an indoor range for cooking.

By early January, it was clear the pressure tank for the water was on its way out. I went next door to my new neighbors, a couple from Wyoming. We'd already spent some great time together reminiscing about the Rockies. I was hoping they'd know the name of a good plumber. Instead, he offered to do the installation. Off I went to Home Depot to get a new tank. We scheduled the plumbing date for the next day. That very morning, the tank gave up the ghost. Timing is everything.

My new neighbor wouldn't take money for his labor, but he and his wife had a much smaller water tank and none of the purification equipment I had. We ran a long hose from my house to theirs so they wouldn't have to haul drinking water. They were also off-grid and occasionally needed extra electricity. A long extension cord was stretched between the houses. We were operating on a whole new economy on our little corner of the Island.

### ****

### Chapter 40

We'd had a shocking amount of rain during the month of December, followed by an especially wet few months, so I made no effort to start building my new house. Besides, the house I was in had taken up a lot of my time with the repairs that kept cropping up. I had long loved being out in nature, playing or exploring, but the weather wasn't cooperating. I was becoming increasingly homesick for Colorado and started to doubt my decision to move. I kept comparing things in Hawaii to Colorado which wasn't a fair comparison because they were so different. Often, the rain came with high winds, and it was flooding my lanai where many of my belongings were being stored in boxes. Everything felt wet. I wanted to go home but what was home anymore?

I loved mountain climbing and had been up many of the peaks in the Rockies. Shortly after I arrived in Hawaii, I climbed to the summit of Mauna Kea, that majestic peak I'd seen out the plane window when I arrived. I found it barren and unwelcoming. It just wasn't the Rockies. During December, to escape the incessant rain, I'd taken my bike up on the Mauna Loa Observatory Road. The weather report had shown it was sunny up top. Apparently, I haven't gone high enough and got drenched riding down on my bike.

One thing that was hard to get used to was the noise in the neighborhood. Up in the Rockies, it was cool enough year round that windows were often shut. Not so in Hawaii. In fact, some people didn't even have windows and were merely encircled with screened walls. Even neighbors who were courteous could often be heard, and many others had no hesitation about turning their music up loud. I started feeling like I was living in a dormitory with competing music on either side of me. I also became aware of a lot of drug use. I'm sure that existed in Colorado, too. It was just more apparent where I was living.

I went from embracing every day with gratitude for my surroundings to becoming a chronic complainer. I hardly recognized myself. I tumbled into a crisis of faith, wondering if I had totally misread the signs leading me to move to Hawaii. It wouldn't be an easy decision to reverse. In spite of myself, I was starting to make new friends. Thanks to FaceTime and Skype, I was also maintaining relationships with friends in Colorado. I was also spending a lot of time with myself, coming to terms with where I was.

Perhaps because of my mixed feelings, I dragged my feet when it came to building my new tiny house. Several hazardous trees needed to be removed first, and because of their enormous size I was having trouble finding someone who could do it at a reasonable cost. By early March, the trees were down and I was on a waiting list for an excavator to clear a building site. The rain was back which delayed the excavation, but by mid-April my site was ready. Now it was my turn. I started by putting up some fencing and a gate, and then I began staking out the layout for my tiny house. My next-door neighbors at the house I was staying in called me one day and invited me to share the cost of a truckload of supplies from Home Depot. Immediately, I began putting together a materials list.

A week later, I went to town to pick up groceries and some building supplies. As I was coming through an intersection, a woman turned right out in front of me and I crashed into her. I'd never had a car accident before. The airbags had deployed but, other than a stiff neck and some bruising from the airbags, I was unharmed. The police quickly arrived on the scene and my car was towed away. The other driver was issued a ticket for driving while distracted.

Unfortunately, she had no insurance so the repair bills would be mine. I'd shipped my car from the mainland and it wasn't a popular model on the island. The man who I employed to fix it was having trouble obtaining parts and finally backed out of the project. I had now gone almost two months without a car so I began to shop online for another one. I was so blessed to have made new friends here. I was being offered rides and my next-door neighbors often let me use their spare car. I was being encircled with a sense of family and home.

In the meantime, I started building a shed next to the site for my tiny house. I needed a place to store my things that were piled up in boxes on my lanai. It seemed like a good place to start. One afternoon, as I was finishing up some framing on the shed, I was coming down a step ladder and somehow missed a step. Suddenly, I was on the ground looking down at my foot which was now hanging off and a bone was sticking out of a gaping wound. I was shocked. I hadn't even fallen that far. My first thought was that I was going to be an amputee. It looked really serious.

I flopped my foot back over the bone and started hollering for a nearby neighbor. Soon, a man on a bike stopped and then rushed off to get help. He returned with another neighbor who had apparently had a prior career as a paramedic and immediately identified that I had a compound fracture. He assured me that it could be repaired. It would be at least 20 or 30 minutes before an ambulance could arrive plus almost an hour to the hospital. Instead, they lifted me into a truck and drove me to the hospital.

I had surgery that night, and was to spend two days in the hospital. Word spread fast in my little community and I was soon receiving visitors. Even my FedEx delivery woman, who I'd become friendly with, showed up after work with a couple of containers of "real food." One friend picked up a pair of crutches for me. Another got my prescription. A friend offered me a place to stay for a few days until I was able to return home. Once back at my house, neighbors delivered food or mowed the lawn for me. I was so well taken care of. I felt that sense of family and home again. Perhaps this indeed was where I belonged.

### ****

### Chapter 41

Although at times it seemed as if my move to Hawaii was turning into a nightmare, I knew to trust the process. Sometimes gifts come in some really strange packages. By following signs that had guided me over the years, I always felt I had landed in the right place. That often meant finding a new level of happiness which was ushered in by a series of challenges and personal crises meant to help me evolve. All was in divine order. I just needed to be patient.

I was to spend the next six weeks on crutches, and another month using a cane to assist me in walking. For a couple of weeks, I didn't dare venture out of the house by myself. I had to climb a long outdoor staircase to get into the house. I would only tackle it with someone at my side. Again, neighbors and friends were there to help me. I soon found a car to purchase on a neighboring island, and the delivery date would be just in time for me to be able to drive again.

I used a wheeling office chair to navigate around the house. Every activity from bathing to cooking took a lot of effort to perform. I had to be very focused in the moment. It proved to be a wonderful exercise in coming back to myself. In all the chaos of adjusting to my new life in Hawaii, and the challenges being thrown at me, I'd become a stranger to myself. It was also fortuitous in that, since I was trapped at home a lot, I was missing being outside in nature. Sitting at home day after day, gazing out at my new setting, I began to yearn to be active again. I was warming up to the beauty of Hawaii and looking forward to finally being able to explore it.

As time passed, I was becoming quite mobile. I started visiting my nearby building lot which was only a block away. I could easily walk there with my ankle supported in a brace. It had now become completely overgrown with weeds and saplings, some of which were almost eight feet tall. The jungle was back and completely covered over my carefully laid out building perimeter. My rehab became slowly pulling up weeds, little by little, as I again cleared a space for my new home. One day, about halfway into my weed clearing, I realized part of my fence was down. As I got closer, I discovered that a neighbor had cut down a dead tree, and the whole top of it had dropped into my yard and was in rotted pieces splattered among the tall weeds. It was a mess.

I'd long had a nagging feeling under the surface that something wasn't right about this whole plan I had but I kept putting it aside. This was the last straw. I decided then and there that it was time to look for a new home and location that did feel right for me. Perhaps I just wasn't meant to build a house. The house I was living in certainly didn't feel like it was the home I was looking for. I spent the rest of the day on the Internet looking for a new place to live.

A few days later, I got an unexpected visit from the realtor who had helped me purchase the house and land. He was also a neighbor and friend, but I hadn't seen him since my injury. It was uncanny timing. I told him I wanted to sell my land. He let me know that the value had gone up, especially since I had already cleared a building site and had a structure on it, so I wasn't going to lose money. We'd put it on the market once I finished clearing weeds and the shed was completed.

The general area of the Island that I was in just didn't feel right for me. I started looking at other areas. I located a new realtor and it turned out that she used to live in Colorado. I soon learned from her that some of the locations I liked were out of my price range, but she was very helpful in finding options I could afford. She set it up so that I'd receive daily emails of all the new listings on the Island that fit my specifications.

It was becoming discouraging because nothing seemed to fit for me. I finally realized I needed to set a clear intention if I wanted to draw the right place to me. Ultimately, what I was looking for was a place where I could feel the same joy that I'd felt living in the Rockies. I knew what that felt like and I wanted to live that way again. I held a vision of that clearly in my mind along with the feelings it had brought me, firmly believing it would come to pass if I didn't give up the search.

One day in early December, an email listing came up in a neighborhood that I hadn't heard of. It was way down at the south end of the Island. I hadn't really been looking there but it was worth checking out this new community. I widen the potential parameters of my original website search and several more homes came up in that community. One of them really captured my attention. It was a tiny house that had many of the features of the house I'd planned to build. I called a local realtor in that area and set up an appointment to see the house and a couple of more in the same neighborhood

As soon as I stepped into the house that had captured my attention, I knew I'd finally found what I was looking for. It had a big outdoor lanai with views of the ocean which was about four miles away. I felt on top of the world, much like I did living in the Rockies. It passed inspection a week later and we went under contract to close in early January.

Just two days before closing on the new house, I was doing yet another trade with my next-door neighbors, with them putting a new roof on my shed in exchange for my electricity. They were literally put the last section of the roof on when a man stopped by and said he heard I was selling the land. On the day I closed on my new house, we opened escrow for the land sale. A month later, I passed ownership of the land to the buyer, leaving me with just the old house to sell and the new home to make my own.

### ****

### Chapter 42

I had some plans for upgrading my new home but this time decided I would hire out the work instead of doing it myself. My house inspector was also a contractor and had drawn up some estimates for the work I wanted done. Typical of construction work, there were several delays and the project went on over a month longer than expected. Once I could see the end was in sight, I put my old house on the market. I slowly began packing up and clearing out the house to ready it for showings.

Meanwhile, an old friend from engineering school came for a visit. We went snorkeling and swimming and sightseeing, and also spent a day at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The park is a fascinating place with a viewing area where you can see the active Halema'uma'u crater in Kilauea far off in the distance. It's the highlight of the park. After we visited the crater, we went back to the visitor's center for souvenirs. Soon, we heard people shouting that something was happening at the crater and drove back for a look. Inside the crater is what's called a lava lake and its level fluctuates, depending on what's happening geologically. In recent years, the lava lake had been rising and in 2015 it became visible from the viewing area, actually spilling a little over the sides. Since then, the level of the lava lake had remained high. It looked like we might have one of those rare opportunities to see the lava lake peeking over the rim of the crater. But when we got there it was nowhere in sight. Some tourists had gotten a brief view of the lava just before we got there, and word had quickly spread around the park.

After my friend left, I got back to packing and cleaning at the old house. A few weeks later, I rented a U-Haul truck and moved my belongings to the new house, leaving behind a few pieces of furniture for house showings. I was finally in my new home. A week later, the lava lake in the Halema'uma'u crater suddenly dropped an estimated 700 feet. Shortly after that, lava began pouring out of newly formed cracks in the ground in a neighborhood just miles from my old house.

It was hard to know how extensive this lava flow would be. In 2014, a flow had threatened the area but stopped short just before reaching the local town. Perhaps this one would be similar and minimal damage would be done. The day after lava broke through cracks in the road, the area was hit by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. Even nearly 60 miles away at my new house, objects were knocked off shelves. I feared for my old neighborhood. One neighbor answered my text shortly after to say they were alright. Already, there was something different about this flow. Days later, two access roads leading down to my old neighborhood were closed. That left only one remaining way to get there. I made the decision to retrieve whatever I'd left at the old house before all access was cut off.

I called two friends in my old neighborhood who had offered use of their trucks at one time or another. Both were busy packing up whatever they could and moving away. I called a local repairman in my new area who had done some work for me and owned a big truck. I hired him for the day and we took off an hour later. It was eerie going into the old neighborhood. Already, many people had left. Although I hadn't planned on making this house my home, I had spent a year and a half living there. It was sad to think that I might never see it again.

We had the last pieces of furniture in the truck and were tying down the load. Off in the distance, we heard two large explosions. We took one look at each other, jumped in the truck, and beat it out of there. The explosions were from the lava pushing out of fissures in the neighboring community. This was to become commonplace for weeks to come. Many people who stayed in the area learned to live with it. As we drove out, we passed by many beautiful spots along the ocean that were soon to be buried in lava. No one knew how long or extensive this eruption was going to be.

I felt so blessed to have a new home far away from this disaster. My new area was affected by the volcanic ash and gases, depending each day on which way the wind blew. It was minor compared to the devastation so many people were experiencing. I was feeling strangely neutral about the fate of my old house. I'd used some retirement money to buy the new house, planning to put the money back when I sold the old one. Insurance companies wouldn't cover lava losses so I could stand to lose a lot. But there was nothing I could do and worrying was a waste of energy. Perhaps over the years, as I faced the various challenges life brought my way, I'd learned a few things. Somehow, I'd always ended up standing on my feet no matter what the circumstances. I had also acquired a confidence in myself and a trust in the future as I navigated what I had once thought would have taken me out of the game, literally and figuratively. A new outlook on life had set in while I was busy living. There was an acknowledgment of how powerless I was to change anything outside me, be it natural disasters or other people. What I could change was how I addressed the challenges of life and come to see how they were ultimately all gifts to be unwrapped.

As I watched coverage of the 2018 eruption, I heard some of the same sentiments being shared by those who had lost the most. It reminded me of the hundreds of people I'd met during my career, each facing crises and emerging from them a stronger, more confident person, having found the secret blessings that comes from unwrapping the gifts of life.

### Afterword

I hope my story has inspired you to open the door to healing any of your traumas that may still need attention. I could continue to add chapters, chronicling the challenges and solutions, for they will go on until the day I die. It is said that life is a journey rather than a destination. If that is true, the happy ending is not the resolution of the challenge, any more than the challenge itself. The truly happy ending is that you embrace your life as the wonderful gift it is.

Traumas can come in many different forms. Certainly, violence, physical abuse, sexual assault, shootings, and all sorts of crimes that violate us can cause trauma. Wars, terrorism, environmental disasters, and even natural disasters can traumatize thousands of us. Any life event that can overwhelm our ability to cope and lead to ongoing emotional distress, such as accidents, bullying, divorces, losing someone close, or being diagnosed with a serious illness can be a trauma. Watching the TV news or even reading it online can have a powerful traumatizing effect on all of us. Even positive things like starting a new job, moving to a new town, or an upcoming wedding, especially if they become too complicated and overwhelming, can become a trauma.

We are living in times of great change. Scientists are acknowledging that we are entering what's called a grand solar minimum during which sunspot and solar flare activity is greatly reduced. Historically, grand solar minimums are accompanied by more erratic weather as well as increased earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We're already seeing some of these earth changes and the disruption of multiple lives. At the same time, global political and economic crises seem to come up daily, and many people are suffering the consequences. Undoubtedly, many of us will experience trauma in our unpredictable future. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is now a well-known condition. We're all being traumatized by what's going on in our world. And as more people openly discuss the physical and sexual abuse they've experienced, it's encouraging others to come forward with their own abuses.

We know today that we're all affected by the views of the society around us, and we can be profoundly affected by trauma, either our own or that of another. There's a way where the energies that surround and embrace us also program and influence us, whether it's our hometown or the earth we inhabit. We're all in this together and at the core we're all family, an earth family on a fantastic journey of understanding and recovery.

In alternative medicine, there's something called a healing crisis. It refers to symptoms that sometimes get worse before they become better after receiving a treatment. It's often an expected step in the process of healing. It seems humanity is entering a healing crisis right now. Repressed traumas are finding their way into the light, both individually and as a species. This could be a powerful invitation to heal at both a collective and individual level, and the rebuilding of our failing social and governmental institutions would be best accomplished by healthy people, sufficiently healed from their own past traumas.

### Resources

I hope my story has not only given you hope that traumas can be healed but also shown the many avenues available for you to do so. Many psychotherapists, counselors, and psychologists are well-trained to work with trauma, especially as it's being recognized as increasingly prevalent in our world. Particularly helpful are therapists trained in some of the alternative treatments such as EMDR, TFT, and EFT. These therapies are especially effective with traumas since they've been proven to rapidly and thoroughly release the mental and emotional charges trapped in traumatic memories. This can free you to live a more powerful and transformative life which is your birthright.

Since trauma affects us physically and spiritually, in addition to mentally and emotionally, a wide range of other healing modalities can also help during the process of recovery. For instance, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and massage therapists may be able to help release energy blockages and trapped memories in your body. Gut health is now being identified as a factor in psychological health, and the stress of trauma can create many physiological complications, so professionals such as naturopaths, functional medicine psychiatrists and physicians, ayurvedic doctors, and certified nutrition specialists can be of help with diet advice and supplements. Emotional distress can be reduced using homeopathy and herbal medicine. Finally, pastoral counselors, psychic or metaphysical healers, and spiritual teachers may help with the spiritual consequences of trauma.

As I weaved my way through my own recovery, I discovered the many layers of healing and the various techniques that could help me through it. Everyone's journey is different. It's good to know that there are so many avenues to finding relief and recovery, and for plotting your own course toward personal evolution.

Below are lists of some of the many alternative treatments and practitioners for you to explore. The internet has an abundance of information on these healing modalities. You can also explore self-help avenues like support groups, twelve-step programs, peer counseling options, or learn acupressure techniques like EFT that you can use on yourself to relieve emotional distress. Never hesitate to invest in yourself in whatever way feels financially feasible for you, especially when your insurance won't pay to help you.

One self-help tool that you can begin right now is meditation. It's a powerful practice that can help you to reduce stress and calm your nervous system. Over time, as you become better at meditating, it can enhance the development of the part of you that can step back and be able to observe yourself. This allows you to become sensitive to when old feelings or memories are starting to be stirred up deep inside, perhaps looking for a way to emerge and be healed. You can then employ one of the practitioners or techniques below to find resolution. Meditation can also provide you with a steady place to anchor yourself as you allow your pain and traumas to emerge, rather than being tossed around by the waves of emotion.

Over the years, as your meditation practice becomes deeper, it can help you acquire a wisdom and understanding of life and a compassion for yourself. As we learn about the true nature of our unique life challenges and the gifts that can emerge from them, and that each and every one of us is on the same kind of journey, we can then find compassion for all our fellow human beings. Ultimately, a serious meditation practice can help you tap into a place that transcends our material world of things and thoughts to touch the edge of a field of love that encompasses everything. That's the place we come from and return to.

In the meantime, openly engage the challenges facing you with everything you've got, unwrap your own unique gifts of life, and reap the benefits found along the way. You're worth it!

Types of Practitioners

Acupuncturists

Addiction Counselors

Aromatherapists

Ayurvedic Doctors

Chiropractors

Counselors

EFT Practitioners

EMDR Psychotherapists

Energy-Based Body Workers

Energy Medicine Doctors

Energy Psychology Practitioners

Functional Medicine Psychiatrists

Herbalists

Holistic Medicine Doctors

Homeopaths

Kahunas

Lomi Lomi Practitioners

Massage Therapists

Meditation Teachers

Metaphysical Healers

Naturopathic Doctors

Pastoral Counselors

Psychic Healers

Psychologists

Psychotherapists

Shamanic Practitioners

Social Workers

Spiritual Teachers and Healers

Therapists

Traditional Chinese Doctors

Tribal Healers

Types of Therapies

Adult Children of Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous

Art Therapies

Bach Flower Remedies

Biofield Energy Healing

Chi Gong

Donna Eden Energy Medicine Techniques

Emotional Freedom Technique( EFT)

Essential Oils

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

Faith Healing

Herbs

Holotropic Breathwork

Homeopathy

Kinesiology

Massage Therapies

Music Therapy

Narcotics Anonymous

Pranic Healing

Reflexology

Sexual Abuse Survivors Anonymous

Supplements

Therapeutic Touch

Trauma Touch Therapy

### About the Author

C. Grace is a retired psychologist living in Hawaii. She spent her career offering trauma survivors therapies for freeing themselves of the troubling symptoms of PTSD to find their true gifts in life.

She can be reached at unwrappinggiftsoflife@outlook.com

