This page showcases the writings of trauma survivors.
If you have a contribution to make please email it to: tsint@therapeuticspiral.org.

Helen Eden is putting together an anthology of healing writings from people who have attended the workshops. Please send your contributions to this First Edition of TSI Writings to her at HelenEden@aol.com and look for it to be published sometime this year.

Survivor's share their experience with the Therapeutic Spiral in words and songs so that others can find the hope that many have found at our workshops.

Also, be sure to read Dr Kate's Column for Survivors, a regular feature on this site.

Thank you for sharing.

Kate's new puppy, Spirit

• ____________________________________________________________________________
  
• Contents:
  
• 
  
• * The Legend of Mr. Magic by Kate Hudgins October 2004
  
• * Containment Poem by Helen Eden April, 2004
  
• * Words With Lost Content Paul Allchin, March, 2004
  
• * Body Voices Learn to Speak by Paul Allchin, Added Feb, 2004
  
• * Spontaneity by Linda Ciotola Sept, 2000
  
• * Imagine a Woman by Diane. Added Nov, 2003
  
• * The Spiral. A poem by Patty Akley-Warlick, 2000
  
• * Healing A poem by Roberta Culbertson, 2001
  
• * Quotes from Workshops 2001
  
• * Fishes Fly Around the Moon, poem by UK participant, 2002
  
• * Sitting with the Shattered Soul, Kathy Steel, 1989
  
• * Potluck Cake. A group poem, Belfast workshop, April 2003
  
• * Recovery. A poem by Helen Eden, 2003
  
• * A Dedication to Me. A writing by C.N., 2003
  
• * Words of an Aboriginal Australian Woman
  
• * At Last. A poem by Helen Eden, 2003
  
• * Moment of Truth. A song by Katherine Amsden, March 2003
  
• * Awakening. A song by Katherine Amsden, Rehoboth Beach 2002
  
• * Quotations from workshop participants in Ivory Park, South Africa, July 2001

The Legend of Mr Magic
Black Earth
October 2004

He arrived home in a colour coordinated Black Porsche, so small curled up in my lap, just six weeks old. Sleepy eyed, his beautiful blue eyes seducing me even then. By the time we got home, I was his…and he was mine. I was in love and that feeling lasted for 13 years, something that has never happened for me with a man, mind you!

Now you are leaving me, going home to your mamadog in spiritworld. It is good to know she is there waiting for you. I want you to feel as welcomed into that world as you have been in this physical realm. You have many friends, human and canine, who support you in both worlds as the 100s of emails and cards you have received demonstrate clearly. So much love.

I want to thank you Mr Magic for all you have given to me and the many other humans you have touched with your spirit self. Anyone who has met you has immediately seen your presence, your beauty, your arrogance, and your sweetness. Those who have not met personally, have still felt your being through me and the pictures I always have with me. I have shared more than one plush toy magic with other survivors like myself. And you have brought us much comfort, peace, and most of all hope. I’d like to honour that today with a few memories of your life on this earth.

For me, many of the memories are at Black Earth and it is here that your legend begins. Black Earth, home to a dream…a dream of a healing center for survivors, set on 38 acres of perfect Wisconsin woods, an empowered place where the glaciers left deposits of rocks and minerals for native people to come and build their homes. A dream of a second family home where we could be together to celebrate life with friends, you, me, Robert, and Wes. Today I grieve for the losses, but remember the beauty and the gifts.

My first clear memory of you at Black Earth is when Yako Tahnagha is leading a native ceremony for a group who has gathered there for healing. You come bounding toward our circle, full of adolescent energy and enthusiasm, fire within the circle and fire inside of you calling to each other. She commands you to stop. You do, without question. She teaches you that your job as a canine is to protect the circle by staying outside of it. You never come in the circle again. But you are always there protecting us. When we do our morning practice around the spiritfire, praying to the four directions, asking for help for our own healing and those of the plants, animals, and other beings. Sitting outside the sweatlodge waiting for us to emerge hot, shaken, but cleansed. You are always there protecting each being who comes seeking something beyond trauma.

The one perfect night when it was a literal minus 27, and a wind chill factor of 65! You—an adolescent still, howling for hours, and I mean hours, at the door to get out in the cold. Finally, you wore us down, as adolescents do…and Robert and I said “Go ahead you silly dog, go out into the cold and freeze to death!”. Then we went to bed and slept for awhile. At 5:30AM, I woke up terrified you had in fact died. Robert groggily gets out of bed to go check. He comes back with a smile on his face. He tells me you have dug yourself a little igloo by jumping into a snow bank and turning round and round til you have a nice warm protected space surrounded by the quiet of 3 feet of snow in the early morning air. Looking up at him with the question…so what do you want? You are happy and we go back to sleep.

Sitting with me in the woods. Me not being a woods person, Barbie goes woodsy for those of you who didn’t know me then! You loving the woods and showing me how to aggressively chomp sticks in the way and play with them. You smelling the earth, looking at me with boundless enthusiasm for being in the physical earthsmelling world. I sat with you many times, before, during and after the healing workshops we held at the Psychodrama Theatre of Protection. Being quiet, away from the humans who were hurting and healing. You brought me peace and a knowing that everything would be OK. I could be with you, resource myself, and go back to lead another “trauma drama” into stories of horrific abuse, what humans do to each other, and still keep believing that spirit was greater than all the horror.

So many psychodramas at Black Earth where you would show up at just the right time to bring in an unexpected presence, a reminder that there was something greater than the trauma we were revisiting. I don’t remember the protagonist now. She was collapsed in despair on the stage, calling up to the heavens, oh god, oh god, where are you? You, all of a sudden, appearing on the balcony looking down with your intense blue eyes, telling us all…Here I am. Reach out to me and I will be there. We did and spirit filled us with love. Healing came for everyone that day and just because a blue eyed dog/god came in the back door and looked over the balcony at the perfect moment.

Another night. I am ready to go home in the Porsche. I am down the hill in the car. You are nowhere to be found. I know you are around, but just not coming. So I hike back up to the theatre and there you are sitting with a woman who is crying. I take a deep breath, draw up a few more “Dr Kate” inner resources, and sit down beside her, comforting her, taking time to care. The moment her feelings shift, you are standing up, demanding to go home, telling me NOW we are done here and can go home.

And finally, one of the last times we were at Black Earth together. Now, only there for my own healing, having bottomed out, standing in shame and humiliation, trying to find myself in all the pain of raging at others, trying to destroy outside what I cannot destroy inside of myself. Finding help from Ann, Kristen, Nora, and Mike, Rachel and others, as Yako tries to bring healing between myself and Francesca. You walked with us as we tried unsuccessfully to follow her directions of moving around the seven points in the land silently for hours. We come back and know we have to take down the sweatlodge, that Black Earth is ending. You and the Kehls dog have a fight. You are left with a tear shaped wound under your right eye. I see in you, tears I am not ready to cry. I wish it were different. You never abandon me.

I miss Black Earth terribly and I will miss you more than I can bare somedays. But today the tears are coming. I cry uncontrollably. For my losses as a child. For my losses with Robert and Don, men I married and planned lives together. The dreams shattered. The love destroyed. My profession disrupted. The surrendering of my psychology license. The defense of my psychodrama certification. My dependence on pot and alcohol. The simple not knowing of the power of trauma and how it does keep repeating cycles of violence if healing doesn’t occur at the deepest levels. So much to grieve. So much to grieve.

Yes, you are even in your dying teaching me still. Teaching me to open my heart to the loss and to feel the love by doing so. I cry as I write. I cry while we walk in the darkness of moon and stars on our 3am, 4am, 5am walks before light. I cry for decades, and lifetimes, for myself and for others. I am a waterfall. You are my rock.

You ask who will be my rock when you are gone? I do not have a single being for that role, but I do have a community now. A community I have built with other humans, humans now dedicated to stopping the cycles of violence inside ourselves, our families, our workplaces, our lives and our world. A community of faith where we have come to trust that when someone says I love you, they mean it. A place where we can have arguments, disagreements, even anger…and it doesn’t break the bonds of love. A family, a community where we are there for each other to hold the pain and the loss and to celebrate the good and the healing. Both, all, truly integrated. A place beyond words. A community filled with god, dog spelled backwards.

It is only short time before you go. I know that. I will miss you so very very very much. I also trust your spirit will be inside my heart forever. Who could forget for a moment the legend of Mr Magic? You are truly a legend of your own time.

I have seen you already in your next life with me. A white husky with blond markings. My big blond dog. I look forward to meeting you and sharing unknown adventures together again. I love you.

The Legend of Mr Magic Continues
Part 2
Living at the Lake House

You, Sammy dog and Tove—a house full of dogs, and oh yes, the cat Night as well. Walks, many walks, around our special wealthy community, beautiful, architecturally designed, unique houses with acres of landscaped lawns. David Lynch, director of the erotic flick Blue Velvet, he lived two houses down the street among all the doctors, lawyers, professors, and their stay at home wives. Our family—a clinical psychologist, a poet and teacher, and a growing son, living with our animals.

Life on the lake. Lake Mendota in progressive Madison, Wisconsin, where smoking dope was almost legal. Not that such things mattered to you, dogbeing that you are. No, your happiness and altered states came from more pure sources. Swimming in the lake and then coming home, smiling, happy, and wet--for the next 24 hours with the furry coat of a Siberian Husky! In the winter, you, Rob, and your dogfamily playing on the frozen lake, making snowangels with your body, sniffing, snuffling, and tossing the snow with your face. Heaven on earth. That is all you needed to be happy.

Regally sitting on the balcony of my home office, happy face covered in snow, looking in on me, checking to make sure I was there, safe and warm inside, while you enjoyed the cold weather outside. My, oh my, did you love the blizzards! A love affair with the winter wonderland that came each year and stayed for months to your delight and a bit less enthusiasm from your humans. Images of you and Sammy dog sleeping at opposite ends of the pink leather sofa with Night in between, butt to butt, peaceful co-existence of the animal beings.

The humans, we didn’t do so well together. Me--my PTSD was at its height as the normal turbulence of my son’s adolescence and a deteriorating marriage triggered me, unexpectedly, for the first time in my life, into body memories, flashbacks, intense feelings, child regressions and increased dependence on alcohol as memories of childhood sexual abuse, assaulted me anew in the present, unknown from the past. Raging, screaming, warring with everyone I loved, trying to kill myself and at times wanting to destroy everyone around me as well. I still carry the shame and guilt of my actions. It was not a good time for the humans.

You--an oasis for us all. When Rob and I could no longer reach out to love each other, we both turned to you, our Magic dog. I will always remember and hold close to my heart an image of you at the top of the stairs. Rob, lying on the floor, cuddling you, talking to you—I knew he wanted me to cuddle and reassure him, but I was too far gone by then to take that risk. I just felt sad and little, powerless to stop the rampages of PTSD that were destroying my family.

You—being a container for Wes’s aggression when he would give you “heart attacks”, pushing your breath out of you with a quick thrust to your ribcase. Not something he would do today as the good man he has become, a dogdaddy like his mama and Rob brought him up to be. You told me once, when we went to a communicator, it was your job to take his aggression and turn it back into love. You did your job well. You—the magic of love during those turbulent times, helping us all to know it still existed, as our lives spun out of control with fights, pain, projections, and, most of all loss, loss of our dreams as a family together.

Funny memories of you too. I’d let you outside for a pee and go back to my wonderful kitchen. Looking out the window for you, I’d see you leaping over the fence, flying to freedom with your graceful body. Michael Jordon in a dogbody. Only to be brought home in the front seat of Gerry, the friendly Shorewood Hills policeman’s car. A car that also brought Wes home from nighttime adventures after the neighborhood curfew more than once! Neither of you were bowed by the experience, but thought it your right to be brought home in honour!

Sammy and you playing tug of war with your Xmas toys. Chelsea, a little girl from university housing, thinking you were a “spiritwolf”, being scared, quickly learning to trust your gentleness and spirit self. Greeting all visitors, welcoming teenagers, music buddies, and well dressed women alike with a howl and a big lick in the face! Whether they wanted it or not, mind you, your enthusiasm for connecting to humans evident from the beginning. Always, always, always, you following me from room to room, my constant companion, a body double before I knew what that was.

Tender moments with you as well. You—six weeks old. Wes at 15--holding you and looking at you with wonder and innocence. Wes rapidly putting on his hat, gloves, coat, scarf and boots to protect him against the elements, while you were prancing, dancing and “talking” at the door with Sammy, demanding to go out for your evening walk NOW. Me--coming home from working at the hospital to find Rob on the floor with Tove’s lifeless body as he let her go into spiritworld. Sammy dog as witness. You an adolescent, oblivious to the reality of death, believing in immorality as all teenagers, dog or human, do.

Now, today, you know personally the reality of death, your old body aching, rapidly dying from cancer. It is only a few steps away for you now. I see you welcoming it with peace. Tove, Sammy and other dog and human spirits are waiting for you when you are ready. I will help you when you tell me it is the time to go.

I don’t, of course, know how your last year at the lake house went for you. I do know you were well loved and looked after by your dogdaddy Rob, who didn’t, in the end want to give you up as I can well understand. Me--I was in Australia, having run off with Peter, the man who would become my now husband. No doubt you gave comfort and a reminder of the goodness of life to Rob and Wes alike as I abandoned them both, searching for hope wherever I could find it. Desperate, desperate to just to stay alive as PTSD ate up my body, mind, heart, and soul—our lives together as a family.

Wes said it was good I was gone his last year in high school, given that he “was 18 and gonna do what I wanted to do. It saved us a lot of fights.” I’m still not sure that was true. For all of us, I wish I had made different choices--to enjoy my son’s last year of being at home and to help him with the preparation of going off to college, joining together as a family to celebrate his achievements, and, then, to find out what life would have been like as a couple again, in the empty nest with just our animal beings. Most of all, I wish I could have been a “normal” person, not triggered by PTSD—living the lives of the stay at home mom’s I saw around me, totally dedicated to their families.

But I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t--without more help from those around me. I tried therapy. God knows I tried therapy being the clinical psychologist I am. I went to a Harvard trained shrink, a very good therapist mind you, 3x a week to try and stay sane and manage my symptoms of PTSD. We went to several different marriage counselors. They all told us it was hopeless and to get a divorce. I went to inpatient treatment to recover from childhood sexual abuse and alcoholism. They too told Rob it was hopeless. We went to family therapy with one of the namebrand gurus of the beginning movement to work with the family system. Sometimes it seemed therapy appointments ruled our lives. Unfortunately, none of it worked--except to keep me alive. I just couldn’t get better, no matter what I tried. God, do I wish that had been different.

It’s hard to believe now, in middle age, at almost 52 when the hormones no longer flow, that I could in fact leave my son, my dog, and my husband for a dream with another man, but I did. I did. It was all I knew how to do, given my family history. I did it to survive, to not kill myself, in the isolated world the lake house had become for me, inside the world of PTSD. I wish it had been different, but it wasn’t. I’m still working on forgiving myself. I still seek the forgiveness of others for the worst of times and all that I destroyed cause I couldn’t do it any better. I hope that will come in the future.

And when I came back to the USA nine months later, you were there, waiting for me, joyful to see your mama, forgiving me fully without question, with your love and acceptance. I wish the humans could have waited and forgiven me too.

Thank you for waiting. I trust you know how much that mattered to me, Mr Magic, soulmate of my heart. Rob couldn’t do it. It was too much to ask of a husband, even a husband who was a soulmate in this lifetime. Wes was off to college, living his own life, gratefully oblivious of his mama, like you were when Tove passed. You, there, a mama’s boy forever. A container of love, joy, forgiveness and acceptance. My God, what a healer you have been to me!

Thank you for holding me inside of yourself, your body and heart, during the worst times of my life as an adult. Thank you for always being a beacon of faith, hope, and love, always a connection to a god of my understanding. I understand god to be dog spelled backwards. You kept me alive when I couldn’t do it for myself. You were stellar at your job. Thank you. I will love you always.

The Legend of Mr Magic Continues

Life in the cul-de-sac
The Normal Years

Eight years ago today, we--Mr Magic, Peter and I--moved into a nice, normal, middle class suburb in Charlottesville, Virginia. Wes was successfully off to college after a summer spent in Australia and New Zealand with me. My divorce from Robert was complete, at least legally, if not emotionally. The Porsche was gone. The Lake House was still there, but Wes, Magic and I no longer lived there. Rob and I tried to co-own Black Earth and did so til 2000, but it was never the same and once again ended in sadness. In some ways, all felt lost. In many others, a new life had just begun.

Mr Magic, you helped me get to know the neighbors—no CEOs or famous movie producers here--as we broke the subdivision’s leash law again and again. Margaret, who lives across the cul-de-sac, tells the story of gardening outside in her yard, when all of a sudden a big, beautiful “wolf” with intense blue eyes was staring her in the face, introducing himself. Joe, a member of the board, politely suggested that Mr Magic didn’t mind walking on the leash, but I sure did! Larry, always coming over with a treat in his pocket for you, a smile and kind words for Peter and me. Maggie, a golden retriever not sure she wanted you here, taking away her dominance of the cul-de-sac. Oscar, a shizhou, falling in love with you, small dog that he is.

Normal people, in a normal neighborhood, where people had normal dreams of working for a living and putting their 2.3 kids through school, knowing how hard that can be. Nothing fancy. No great dreams of psychodrama theatres on 38 acres. No expensive cars. I didn’t socialize much, taking our walks early in the morning before others were up, or late at night after everyone had gone to bed, so you could walk off leash without anyone noticing.

Peter became the emissary into the normal life, checking the neighbors out at an Xmas party and helping me make the transition from a childhood and marriage of wealth, privilege, and entitlement to one of quiet comfort and neighborly connections--where I didn’t have to pay the price of abuse. I truly did not know what to do. He told me it would be OK, that these were nice people. He was right. I still didn’t know what to do.

People taught me. You stayed by my side each step of the way. Peter too, walked beside me, quiet, comforting, worshiping and adoring as the sweet, gentle man that he is. I took a year’s sabbatical off from work to find ways to heal my own PTSD. No fancy therapy in the end, just simple connection with folks who had lived lives without trauma, not without pain mind you, but somehow they had kept their footing in a way I had not. Joining a 12 -program with the promise of anonymity as a spiritual foundation to change. Hiding from life in some ways, coming alive in others.

Here was a place where starting a monthly gourmet dinner club was something new. Mary Alice in her French maid’s outfit, when the theme was the cuisine of that country, shocked us all, given her penchant as a good Catholic woman! Steve and Teresa coming to the annual Halloween party we started in role reversal—him as a pregnant woman and her as the doc in scrubs. Karen and Rob, bringing the real gourmet meals to us all. Me, always shaking things up—a dominatrix that same Halloween, a fallen angel with black wings the next, when we had a pajama party to celebrate our house addition of a master suite that included a bathroom “as good as the Hyatt”, showing off my $1000 toilet--remnants of my old life.

Through it all, you have been with me Mr Magic. My soulmate, my love, my life. When I asked a communicator where I could get the spiritual help I needed for this strange new stage of my life, she said “there was a spirit that walked beside me at all times, who even knew everything I ate” and of course I immediately knew she was talking about you! Food sharing, not begging as others may call it, always being an important part of our bonding.

Here too are funny images of you. The insistent nose and telepathic stare for those who still needed to learn the lesson of food sharing when they came over for dinner. Claiming your place on the sofa where we watched television, the best place on the sofa of course! Talk about entitlement…..we could not believe that you would push my 80 year old mother with Alzheimers off the sofa so you could sit in your place, but you did! She learned the first time too, cognitive deficits and all! Hanging out with the other “kids” at the evening cul-de-sac gathering where the moms, and often the dads too, came out to talk and connect, forming bonds I was still not sure how to do. I mean if you don’t talk about trauma and abuse, what DO you talk about?

You were always a good topic of interest. Your presence, while somewhat limited due to subdivision rules, could not be less than what it is---regal and arrogant at first glance, sweet, tender, and loving as your true core. Not unlike your mama, ey? You putting up with little girl hugs and boys with balls, looking up at me with eyes pleading…do I have to do this, I’m a middle aged man now? Understanding that yes, this was now part of your job. To stand with me and help me learn how to be normal as I too turned to middle aged life.

Not to say that our life over the past 8 years has been without its own component of trauma dramas. While my PTSD was mostly a slumbering giant, it could be re-awakened in the here and now—by outside events and by my own lack of self-care. Social drinking still turned to alcohol abuse at times. Then the ragequeen would surface again, shaming, blaming, screaming epithets at Peter. But this time I had an observing ego that could see my behavior more clearly and say…”oh, whoa…this is not good, you truly don’t want to destroy another relationship, do you?”. You, my magic dog, being an emotional barometer, always helping me to “get it”--by leaving the room even when a slight voice change signaled the switch to hostility and rage on my part. A perfect reminder of the new order of affairs.

We will all remember the night a week before 911 when we found out Peter’s mum was dying in Australia. He was in denial of how quick it would be. I told him we had to go NOW. Stubborn man that he is, he was only going to do it in his own time and in his own way. I knew that would mean we didn’t get there in time and that he needed to say goodbye to his own conflicted relationship with her in a conscious manner before she died. I didn’t know what to do except bitch, moan, scream and try to force him to get on the next plane to OZ. Somehow you got out of the house and went to find Liz, the minister who married us in 2000 and lived down the street, to help us.

At your Life Celebration and Going Away party in August of this year (2004), Liz told this story with relish. She said that she and John were sitting in their family room, when all of a sudden you came to the back door and started howling. She knew something was wrong, as even though you were known for walking around the neighborhood without a leash, I was always close behind. They came down to the cul-de-sac, worried that we were being held hostage by some mad psychopathic killer. They peeked into the window and only saw me yelling at you, holding you hostage with my rage. They rang the doorbell. Startled, we let them in. Liz prayed with us, asking God for help at this time of death and dying, telling us to love one another and gain support from our connection. She helped stop the old cycle of violence with her love and her teachings. We did as we were told. We took a deep breath, looked at Magic, and loved one another. We made our reservations for the next day. You were happy and relieved. A Lassie intervention.

Here are some of the beautiful moments. You were magnificent as the “best dog” at our wedding. Even those who don’t’ believe in animal communication got a lesson from you that day. After walking down the aisle of 15,000 rose petals and gardenias in front of me you went off to the woods at the Clifton Inn. Kathy my matron of honour, Penny the flower elder from OZ, the flower girls-- Bridget, Madeline and Isabelle--and Jesse, my sweet Jesse-- as ringbearer, followed in your wake—though not to the woods. I arrived on the arm of Joe Gottlieb, who had become the “father of the cul-de-sac” by then.

The very moment that Grant, Peter’s best man, stepped up to the podium to read the poem you “wrote” from a communicator session, you appeared from the woods. Everyone gasped in awe as you calmly walked in front of Peter and me and sat down, staring at me with those brilliant blues eyes. Grant read the poem:

I thought there could be no greater love
Than between my mom and me.
But when Peter came along
He taught me how great family love can be
Now the circle is complete.

When he was done, you once again walked off into the woods. You also enjoyed kangaroo from the rehearsal dinner brought to you as room service since they had some silly health rule you couldn’t be in the restaurant!

My 50th birthday party in 2003. I felt disappointed. Kathy didn’t’ come. Peter didn’t make a big fuss of it as he was too busy with his MBA. Only the “hood” as it had come to be known by then, and a few other special family and friends came. It was not the worship and adoration fix I had grown up knowing my birthday would be. As a child, adopted at birth, the celebration at home would not actually be my birth, but rather the “day you came home from the hospital”—two months after I was born premature at 4lbs. Meanwhile, my borderline birth mother lived in the hospital and stayed as close to me in the incubator as she could. I needed some birth repair.

It came from Kathy Amsden, singer and songwriter, talented therapist in the Therapeutic Spiral Model, a model I created out of my own lost healing by other therapists, and a mother who had given up a child for adoption when she was a teenager. She wrote a beautiful song called “One in a Million” and sent me a copy to be played at my birthday. When it was time, everyone gathered to open presents and to hear this song. As her beautiful, haunting, soft yet powerful voice sang her words to me, everyone noticed that Magic was, once again, sitting at my feet, staring at me…telling me telepathically that I was one in a million to him. I watched as people nudged each other, tilted their heads and said quietly..do you see Mr Magic? Everyone did that night. That was as important as my birth.

Tonight, the third night I have written Magic’s memoirs in the middle of the night, I feel blessed to have him here beside me still. To know I have the cul-de-sac family I fell into all around me. Happy to have my chosen sisters Kathy and Mimi with me now and for the future. Amazed at the TSI community we have created as healers together, bringing the model I created into the world to help other survivors have a different life than I had up until the last 8 years, while healing ourselves. Magic asks if I will be OK when he dies. Who will be my rock he asks?

I do not have a rock, I tell him---not a single rockbeing. No, now I have a healing community, trustworthy neighbors, true friends who don’t abandon me no matter what, a good enough marriage, a 12-step program, a good therapist, and most of all, the blessings of my dog/god. Thank you Mr Magic, spirit companion, love of my life, dogbeing of class---thank you for walking beside me in the chaos years and the normal years. I am not sure which has been harder, but I do know I couldn’t have done it without you. You saved my life. Thank you.

Now, you can leave on your own time. I don’t have a single rock, but I am OK. I am loved, supported, cared about and accepted as who I am now today--almost 52 years old, older and wiser, more healed, less crazy. The normal years, they did make a difference. You, you changed my life. I love you and will see you when you come back for another life with me. Meanwhile, I will miss you terribly and when I feel I cannot go on a minute more, I will reach out to the humans who have come to be around me in this time of loss, love, and transition. You are magnificent.

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Hello Everyone

This is Mr Magic's final public ceremony. Rachel and Peter and I will do a small family ceremony to mark the first 40 days of his transition on December 9th, but today at 11AM is when we are interring his stone. When I walked, Monkey, my son's dog who is here for Thanksgiving so the home wouldnt' be dogless, yesterday....she made friends with all the humans who walked at the same time. Each asked if she was my new dog? I said, no, not yet and reminded people of the final neighborhood gathering for Mr Magic. Lynn, who sent us a lovely card with the a story called the "Rainbow Bridge" on it said, of course they were coming, they had even changed a brunch date to be here---because Magic had been "everyone's dog". And here I thought he was only devoted to me!

This week since I've been home from Taiwan I've re-read all of what I have written over the past 3 months to the people on this listserve and the adds on I've made. My son and his father wonder...why do I tell so many people all of this about me? about my life? About my dog? I have to say, I wonder too when I read it all.......still a bit of fear there.....

But mostly, I am able to read it all and see that, in fact, what I have said, that I am going through a profound emotional and spiritual transition to the next stage in my life through doing hospice with Magic for 3 months, is true. I have actually lived these last months of my life, fully open to the love, connection, and healing possible and available in the life I have created for myself today. Believing in god, spiritworld, something greater than humans! I have not questioned that reality during those months as all of you entered into this surplus reality with me. It has no doubt been profound for all of you as it has been for me. I am great-full to have shared with you all as I have, in the end...

and to have an "official", left brain, cognitive map of what I have experienced in this right brained, emotional, spiritual experience with Magic. I do intend to publish Magic's story, aka my story. The working title is The Legend of Mr Magic: The Canine who Healed Humans" and I believe it will be a good inspiration to others. I will offer it as a 2005 fundraiser for TSI.

As I came out of my 3 months of healing trance with magic on November 2nd and went about living life again in the real world, I was all of a sudden confronted with the reality of believing in the emotional/spiritual world I had lived in for 3 months, or discounting much of it and giving it over to grief. I have to say going to Taiwan strengthened my belief that it was oh so much more than that...that it is a truly transforming event for me and for those whose lives I touch through TSI, the neighborhood and other venues to life.

Today, in just a wee bit of time, we will give thanks to Magic's physical form one last tiime as we put his stone--Mr Magic 1991---2004 at the top of our property on the cul de sac. I decided to do it in a public place so that others in the neighborhood could feel his presense, his inspiration to them each morning as they walk by and remember his beauty, his love and his teachings for us all. His legends and mine have been, are public, and it seems it is the right way to be.

Blessings and Balance to each and everyone of you and to all of us together as a TSI community of family, friends, colleagues, students, donors, and everyone else.

Love to all, Kate and Magic