Let me give you some back story first. A lot of people will read this blog who don’t know me and it’s important to understand why this cruise was a major turning point in my year. I have a congenital disability known as Arthrogryposis, which means I’m completely dependent on a wheelchair. This past December, January, and February, I was repeatedly knocked down by bronchitis, strep throat, and the severe strain of flu that was killing people. My immune system has been compromised for many years, so relatively simple illnesses like bronchitis or strep throat can turn fatal for me if I’m not careful. In January, my family had to call 911 and I was hospitalized because the pile of illnesses was suppressing my respiratory system. It took about six weeks to recover.

Being so ill for so long aggravated my anxiety disorder as well. The lack of control over my life and being completely dependent on other people for survival, as well as trauma from sexual, physical, and mental abuse at different times in my life have made me extremely prone to panic attacks for about fifteen or twenty years. Generally, I have a handle on it. The last six months have been extremely hard on me, though, and I relapsed into the worst of my depression and anxiety before I sought treatment. It was getting to the point around my birthday (February) where I was honestly questioning why I was alive at all, not that I told anyone.

One day this winter, my friend, Wendy, texted my other friend, Sissy, and me to tell us that we were all going on the cruise together. I was stunned and thought it was too much, but I also knew Wendy was not going to take no for an answer. To be truthful, I had a hard time finding motivation to even get excited about it because I was just so worn down by my health. There were times when I had to give myself pep talks like, “You haven’t seen Jon since 2011. If you don’t go, he will forget you. You don’t know when you’ll get another chance to see him. He always makes you feel better. Come on, get it together for him.” Get it together for Jon became my mantra in the six weeks before the cruise. Aside from my friends, he was my motivation.

I got into Miami with Wendy the day before we were to board the ship, and Sissy arrived later that night. Getting in with time to spare gave me a chance to spend the day with my brother and his girlfriend, who also live in south Florida, since I hadn’t seen them in a few years. Being out and doing things in the hot Florida sun was a bit tough for me after spending months at home convalescing, but I pushed myself to do it because I knew it was for my own good. I needed to be around people who loved me. My brother took us out to lunch and dinner. He took me to Walmart to buy the things I needed. That’s how he is – he almost takes on a fatherly role with me sometimes because he doesn’t trust other people to properly take care of me.

The next day when we boarded the ship, we found that we were technically put into a wheelchair accessible cabin but the cabin was so badly designed that I couldn’t get anywhere. You open the door and you were faced with the bed and television only inches apart, so you couldn’t pull a wheelchair into the room enough to even close the door. Then the bathroom door wouldn’t open more than a few feet because it banged the end of the bed. So I couldn’t even get into my own bathroom. Wendy took charge and rearranged the cabin herself so I could at least get inside, but there wasn’t enough room for a third bed because of how badly the cabin was designed, and Sissy had to fold and unfold her bed on the floor whenever she wanted to sleep. Rose Tours was wonderful this year with disabled passengers and I have absolutely no complaints about them, but Carnival is progressively becoming worse and worse each time I cruise with them. Even the quality of Carnival’s food is on the decline. The ship smelled moldy, my mattress was slumped way down in the middle, and there were little bitty ants in my shower.

Luckily, NKOTB cruisers don’t spend a lot of time in their cabins! I was not willing to let a shoddy cabin ruin my cruise!

The first afternoon of the cruise was tough for me because crowds are one of my panic triggers. When you are as small as I am and you’ve had a leg broken before because of fangirls trampling you to get to Jordan Knight (true story), crowds will make you uneasy. Everybody usually mobs the buffet before the sail away party and we had to feed the pregnant lady (Sissy), so I ended up in a confined, crowded dining room. Something in my brain went, “You have no way out. There is no escape away from these strangers and this ship.” Boom. Instant panic attack at the lunch table. There’s very little logic with anxiety disorders and I knew I was going to struggle more this time than my last cruise in 2011, but I was still very disappointed in myself for not controlling it better.

I figured out fairly quickly that being outside on the lido deck was easier for me to tolerate. I didn’t feel so confined and trapped as I did inside the ship, so my best times on this cruise were when I could be outside enjoying the guys, the weather, and the music. They put the disabled section next to the stage in a place where we would be guarded by security but we could still participate in everything the guys did with the cruisers. This setup was the best of all cruises. On the first cruise, disabled passengers had absolutely no safe place to go, so I’m giving Rose Tours a lot of love for listening to us about what we need to be safe and included.

My first encounters with the guys happened at the sail away party as we were leaving port. They came out on the upper deck like usual and then they came out on a stage built over the elevated pool. Donnie spotted me first and made a dash off the stage to hand out kisses, hugs, and pictures to everyone in the disabled section. For a man who has to make himself available to as many people as possible, he really does try to remember everyone and love them even when he’s exhausted. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Somebody got video when Donnie greeted me at this party. I think I come in about halfway through the clip. I’m a brunette with glasses and I’m wearing a turquoise and white striped halter top. You’ll see him stop in the row in front of me. What he did was pull down his sunglasses and wink at me before hugging another lady. Then when he got to me, he kissed me, asked how I was doing, cupped my face in his hands, etc. The lady filming it pulled her camera away before we were done but he told me he loves me, he misses me, etc. I do love this man very much.

I would like to be clear that Donnie has never kissed me in an inappropriate manner. Donnie has excellent intuition and he knows which women want to flirt and which women do not. I’m personally very old-fashioned and I never kiss men with whom I’m not in a relationship – even the mighty Donnie Wahlberg. It took me two or three years of knowing Jon to even want to kiss him, not that he would, but it just takes me a while to get there with anyone. (Hint, hint, Jon.) My friends are well aware of my “Victorian sensibilities” as they call it, so it never occurs to them that outsiders might react weirdly about it.

Donnie has always treated me tenderly with respect like a true lady, and when we kiss, it’s on the cheek or the forehead. I’ve never had to ask him to respect my personal boundaries. He just knows on an intuitive level. So no, I didn’t reject the mighty Berg like the rumors say. I’ve never had to reject him because he makes me feel absolutely loved, secure, respected, and necessary. We kissed cheeks in this picture as you can see in the video too. No rejection. Just love.

Joe came through my section a little while after Donnie did. I have an interesting relationship with him even though we haven’t interacted quite as much as Jon or Donnie. He’s been trying to get my attention for years, although I don’t quite know why he’s so interested in me, and I feel bad because he’s called me out on paying more attention to Jon than him. A few years ago, Jon and I were talking and I didn’t realize Joe was standing right there waiting for an opening until he piped out, “Hey, I know you love Jon but can’t I at least say hi?!” He has said before that he tries to sing to me on stage too but I never seem to see him doing it. I always feel bad because missing Joe seems to be a repetitive thing I do without realizing it.

So this time, Joe was simply not going to be ignored. He worked hard to hold my attention, beginning here with the sail away party. We talked a little bit, kissed cheeks, had a cuddle, and as he was moving on to the next person, I said something like, “I don’t think Jon knows I’m cruising, so could you let him know?” He nodded and said he would but I couldn’t see all of his face. Sissy said it looked like I crushed his little heart by asking for Jon. In my defense, it was an impulse after I gave him lots of attention and he was on his way out. I didn’t mean to make his little face fall. I do love Joe!

Sigh. One day I will understand Joe’s needs and get better at meeting them. He wasn’t done with me yet though, as I found out at my concert a few nights later.

It wasn’t long after that when Jon hopped down from the stage to give hugs and pictures with the disabled section too. I thought he had seen me earlier because he looked right over me. I thought he was at least vaguely aware of my presence. Not so. He had no idea. The man has such serious tunnel vision that he was in the row in front of me – we’re talking like five feet away – when he looked up at me and realized I was there. I wish I had a picture of his reaction because it was hilarious. His jaw hit the deck and his eyes got huge, and then he hopped up and down like an excited toddler. The closest thing I have his his reaction to Sissy next to me, which was after he plowed over a bunch of fans to maul me with cuddles (I’m sorry to the people he plowed over but he tends to have a very one track mind when he wants something).

I really didn’t even have time to say hello because he came at me so fast. He mauled me with this full-on starfish hug like we hadn’t seen each other in years, and then I remembered it has been a long time. He mentally added up how long it had been since we last saw each other. He kept caressing my face, my arms, and cupping my cheeks in his hands while we were talking. Honestly, his eyes looked rather emotional and he didn’t say much at first. He was just touching me a lot like I can’t believe you’re here. Then he’d wander off to socialize with other fans and he’d bounce back to me to tell me about this or that fan. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to have such a big reaction. I thought he’d be like oh cool you’re here too, because, you know, who am I really? Nobody of importance. There was no denying how happy he was to see me though, and he was rather excited to see Sissy and interrogate her about her pregnancy.

This is probably one of the best moments of my life. The unexpected moments usually are. I will never forget his face when he saw me. I felt like I really did matter to him for the last five years that we’ve known each other. It’s very easy to get lost in the shuffle where NKOTB is concerned because everyone wants their attention. It has been such a long time since I saw them last that I didn’t really think they would care or remember me. They all seemed thrilled that I was there though, and given my problems this year, I really needed that healing experience of being loved without demands or expectations. I felt wanted in their lives that day. It gave me courage to keep pushing forward with my life because people really would miss me if I wasn’t here anymore.

That night was the game show. I have to say how respectful, again, Rose Tours employees are with making sure the disabled passengers are seated in good places. I had second row on the right side in the theater with Sissy and Wendy, which was amazing. We kind of made friends with the sign language interpreters and I’m pretty sure Donnie had a crush on the blonde one! Game show night is always one of my favorite nights because I laugh until my face wants to fall apart. Jon was a little inebriated, so his mouth just had no filter. Very few people can make me laugh as much as these guys do.

I think the next day was Half Moon Cay if I remember right. Sissy being pregnant and me being in not-so-great health, we decided to go to bed early rather than go to the retro red carpet party. My body just can’t tolerate partying all night long and then going to the beach all day the next day. I was in the blue group, so we were the first people with the silver group that had to catch the tender out to the beach that morning, so sleep was important.

This is what beach day looked like.

There were games on the beach hosted by NKOTB. I think they had fans run an obstacle course a few times and Donnie was out in the ocean with a microphone, which scared Joe a lot. He was convinced Donnie was going to either ruin the microphone or electrocute himself out there while he was schmoozing with fans. Then they played tug-of-war with fans. The only level part of the beach was right in front of me, so Victor (the bodyguard) sort of threw himself between Donnie and me because if his side lost, he was going to be flung directly into my lap. So this was my view for that game.

I love looking at the ocean even though getting me into it is a bit like trying to get a cat into a bathtub (I’m not above clawing people either). Beach day was tough for me because I had another panic attack. The choice for wheelchairs was to either sit on the pirate ship or under a tent on the beach, so I opted for the tent because the breeze was better there. I had a front row seat for the games led by the guys, and that was awesome, but I overheated. Sitting in a wheelchair is a bit like wearing a coat when it’s 90 degrees. It’s no cake walk. Sometimes panic attacks are not triggered by fear but biological reactions. When I overheated, I got dizzy, and I sort of freaked out because I thought something was really wrong. Blah, blah, blah, I had a panic attack that went on for a half hour and I guess the guys could tell something was going on because Sissy said Joe and Jon in particular were looking in the tent trying to figure out what was happening without being obvious.

I felt guilty. I didn’t want to be in the way or irritate other people around me on their beach day. I still feel guilty about how much care I need just to survive a day and I struggle with feeling my worth as a person with value to those in my life.

When I was feeling better, I saw that Donnie came trudging across the beach right at me and his face was rather grave. It kind of scared me because he looked worried and I’m not used to people being worried like that except my closest friends. He discreetly asked me how I was or if I was okay (I don’t remember the wording – panic attacks affect my memory) and I knew I had to tell the truth. I tried to make light of it and said I overheated and had a panic attack. His reaction was to immediately hold his cold drink to my face. He rubbed the drink up my cheek and across my forehead, and then I felt him smoothing back my hair. I thanked him but I still felt guilty for showing that I’m not as strong and healthy as everybody else. He told his security to go get Jon for me, which they obeyed right away, and I was grateful for that because I needed to get back to the ship and rest in silence.

Jon came along a few minutes later and he simply sat down next to me for a while without really talking. He was simply a calm presence there with me, which helped a lot, although I again tried to play off my panic attack as nothing. I know he was exhausted and I was grateful that I didn’t really need to try and be witty in conversation, although we did talk about the games and stuff that day.

There were pictures of Donnie and me, and Jon and me from beach day but I don’t have them yet. I’ll update the blog when I get them.

That night was pajama and movie night on the lido deck. After a long nap, Sissy, Wendy, and I went out there to watch everything. We were late for the cruise DVD but luckily we all got copies, so I can watch it later when I have time. The deck parties are pretty well documented by now. I don’t need to go into a lot of detail about them but I’ll post a few pictures from pajama night.

The day we docked at Nassau was easy. We decided not to go ashore because, really, if you’ve seen Nassau once, you’ve seen it all for every visit after the fact. Not having scheduled events for most of the day meant that we had freedom to roam the ship, go to the pool, etc. We went up to a certain deck to see Codie and Abbie at their cabins. They weren’t there but we ran into Jon’s and Jordan’s sisters instead, so we talked for a while. Jon was still sleeping and we had a giggle about him wanting to be up by a certain time but he probably wouldn’t make it (he was really exhausted).

At lunch in the buffet dining room later on, Jon happened to show up in the food line. I was eating at a table with Sissy and Wendy. He saw me across the room and his face lit up as he waved at me. I smiled back and returned to my food thinking he was just passing through. Not so! He dragged his security across the dining room and came over to talk to us for a few minutes.

I got to spend some wonderful relaxed time with my friends and they talked me into getting in the pool again. I’m afraid of water because I can’t swim but on the 2011 cruise, I did get in the pool. Donnie happened to walk by at that point and he was completely shocked to see me in the water, so he hung out for a little while. He told Jon all about it later, and that night he told me how proud he was that I did it. So this year, Jon pointed at the pool at the sail away party and asked if I was going swimming again. Getting in the pool on NKOTB cruises has become a bit of a tradition for me, I suppose.

This time, it was Abbie, Wendy, Codie, Sissy, and a new friend, Amy, who were all there and promised nothing bad would happen. Amy just happened to be at the pool and I don’t think I knew her before, but she volunteered to help out. Presto – a new friend. Why? NKOTB fans do actually help each other despite the craziness sometimes. As it turns out, Amy lives in Savannah and I live in Atlanta, so we will see each other again at the Atlanta show.

Check it out, y’all. As Codie said, we were mermaids for the afternoon.

That night was my group’s concert (group B). I think I was probably more excited about the concert than anything else because there was a good shot I’d get to hear Jon sing one or both of his solos. Singing solo is incredibly difficult for him though, as we all know, and I hoped that he would see a calm familiar face like mine in the crowd and feel safer about doing it. Everybody’s anxiety is different, but I tend to do better if the people around me are calm and supportive. Sometimes I wonder if people going nuts the minute he opens his mouth makes it harder for him, so I made an effort not to yell until after he did his parts.

Jon’s solos were early in the show. I could tell when he was going to have to sing because he has very physical reactions to his anxiety. He pushed his way through it like a champ though and he sounded wonderful. I suspect he sounded better than he thinks of himself. We made eye contact during his solos from what I could tell (he was on the other side of the stage so I’m not 100% sure) but I sang with him and tried to nod at him as if to say, “You’re doing great. Keep going.” I want to be of help to him because I have some idea of what he goes through. As much as he pushes me by example to work through my anxieties, I try to return the favor for him, although I’m not sure that I’m any inspiration to him. I’m just some woman in Atlanta. I care about him a lot though. In my heart, I like to believe I can help him push through it and sing, because he really does have a beautiful voice. He carried off We Own Tonight beautifully and although Survive You clearly scared him more, he got most of it out, if not all of it, and we gave him a standing ovation. He also belted out step five. I never heard him sing so much and I was never so proud of him.

Remember when I said earlier that Joe wasn’t going to be ignored anymore?

Yeah.

So we’re having a good time at the show and everybody is singing along, dancing, etc. They get to Single and toward the bridge, I think, I see Joe moving toward me on the stage. Inside, I was thinking, “Oh Lord, here we go…” and before I know it, he’s standing in front of me on stage singing his part to me. I thought it was nice. I mean, what lady doesn’t want to be serenaded? Suddenly, Joe leaped off the stage and bounced off the couch right in front of me. Wendy yelled, “Oh shit!” because she was sure the ship was going to lurch and Joe was going to fall on me or pregnant Sissy. He leaned over the couch, got right in my face, and sang to me while caressing my cheek. I remember smiling but I think I was in shock because I was aware of a spotlight on us and I knew the whole theater was looking at me. I made a conscious effort to keep Joe’s eyes because if I became too aware of being stared at, I would have frozen.

In another instant, he gazelle leaped over Wendy and went a few rows back to serenade another lady. I gave Jon a guilty smile as soon as Joe was gone because I realized Jon watched the whole thing like a hawk. His reaction? He looked at me with a little smirk and wagged his finger at me like, “No you didn’t just mess with another man!” I wish that was caught on video because we busted out laughing, but most of Joe singing to me is in this video.

Yeah. I think Joe is pretty awesome. Something has changed in him since the last time we saw each other. He used to be full of bravado and comedy, but he seems much more attentive, compassionate, and gentle now. Don’t get me wrong – the bravado and comedy is still there – but I feel something shifted in his energy since we last saw each other. I don’t know Joe very well, so I don’t want to speculate about why he has changed, but he’s behaving toward me with much of the tenderness Donnie gives me and I like it. Joe almost never walked by me on the ship without stopping for a cuddle or touching me somehow with a sweet smile.

I don’t know who did it, but after the show was over, we were waiting for the theater to clear out and somebody appeared with the set list that was taped to the stage floor behind the guys. I think that’s where it was anyway. The person gave it to me! So now I have the set list that was used for the shows on the cruise. I think I ought to frame it or something! I thought it was bad luck or just not done to give away set lists, so I was pretty shocked that I ended up with it.

The last day was the photo op, which I don’t have yet. As soon as I came in the room, Joe looked at Jon and said something like, “And that’s the one I serenaded last night.” Does Joe not know my name?! So I wore my hair down for the first time the entire cruise and Donnie had a fixation with it (my hair is very long). After the photos, security was trying to kick us out but Jon wanted a kiss and Donnie’s hands were in my hair. I thought it was Jordan at first until I heard Donnie cooing about how soft and beautiful it was. It was either obey security and leave with Donnie’s hands in my hair or wait until he was done. I’m sure the pictures look funny because we were all exhausted and laughing too.

All in all, my cruise experience was amazing. I think it was my best yet, even though I didn’t have the correct pain pills (I forgot them) and even though my anxiety was a struggle this time. I did my best to be friendly and cheerful for everyone. It’s hard for me sometimes though and I have been accused of being cold and aloof more than once. I never intend to come across that way.

Miami is a clusterfuck of evil though. Wendy and I waited five hours for a wheelchair taxi to the airport and we missed both of our flights. Even the hotel people were yelling at the city about the horrible service. Luckily, Southwest is a fantastic airline that bumped us to the next flight and we eventually got home. Miami’s transportation system is the worst in the country though. I’ve been to a lot of places and I’ve never had so many headaches as I do in that city. If you don’t rent a car, you might as well throw yourself at their mercy. And don’t get me started on how people drive there!

I’m so grateful to Wendy and Sissy in particular for looking after me and giving me the opportunity to see everybody again. I’m grateful for beautiful friends like Abbie, Codie, Amy, etc., for accepting me as I am and including me in their lives.

Being grateful to NKOTB is an understatement. Every time I’m with them, they give me more love than I could ever realistically expect. Jon, Donnie, and Joe in particular go out of their way to make me feel wanted and a necessary part of their own experiences as human beings and performers. I will never forget the things they’ve done for me. This cruise was very much a healing experience for me and it helped me remember that I do have value as a person and there are people who want me to stay here. My life is difficult on a good day but people like them give me things to look forward to and encouragement to keep going no matter how many times my body tries to fail me. These experiences of coming together and celebrating life are important to people like me who tend to get lost and struggle.

I’m beyond grateful to be able to say that I know NKOTB enough that they’ve gotten to know me over the years and look forward to seeing me too. I honestly do love them as human beings. Jon in particular is a bright spot in my life. I just hope they know how much they’ve helped people like me over the years.

See y’all at the Atlanta show.

My purpose with this blog is not to speculate about why or how the bombings were carried out, though. This is about how disturbingly desensitized we as a society have become when people are killed in such public ways. It was horrible for me to scroll through my news feed on Facebook yesterday, looking for updates on my friends who were still missing, and instead seeing photos of mutilated, mangled flesh and bone ripped from human bodies. People posted these things over and over again with captions like, “OMG!” and, “What happened at the marathon today!” I’m used to people posting horrible things on Facebook for the shock factor, so I looked away and went to Tumblr instead. Tumblr is the most mindless place of entertainment, or so I thought, but I couldn’t scroll more than five or six posts without seeing more horrifying photos of the same variety. At least on Twitter you can’t see an image without deliberately clicking a link on the tweet. But the same things were happening over there too.

My initial response was outrage on behalf of the people actually trying to survive and overcome in Boston yesterday evening. Many of the posts were like directing attention to what the bombing did to bodies in a sensationalized kind of way. I posted on all of my social media outlets the following: “Please stop reposting pictures of mutilated bombing victims. It does nothing but incite hysteria and violate the privacy of the victims in their horrifying struggle to survive. Let the authorities sort out who did this. As citizens, focus on the missing and the wounded in helpful ways instead of sensationalized ways. Pray for them, give blood, etc. Don’t gossip. It’s not helping anything at all.” Truthfully, I don’t quite know why I take stands the way I do. It’s not like I change the minds of the people doing these things, but I still feel a responsibility to voice the other side.

I went to bed last night and, lying in the silent darkness, felt the jitters all too familiar in my life set in right away. All night, I had nightmares about scrolling through my computer and seeing nothing but a specific man and what was left of his mangled legs. His ashen, shell-shocked face is burned into my mind because of all the people passing around the photo on social media. I’m still a mess, and, in checking in with other people like me, they are messes as well because of the inability to go on any social media without being forced to look at the carnage.

It can be argued that people have the right to post whatever they choose on social media. That’s true. Everyone has First Amendment rights. It can also be argued by some that people need to see the reality of what happened to understand it and, according to some, understand why revenge is necessary. I disagree with those ideas, though.

We, as a society, have become incredibly desensitized to the horror of these things. This generation lost its innocence the morning of September 11, 2001, as we all watched human beings on live television jump from 70, 80, and 90 stories high to their deaths on Manhattan streets below rather than suffer slower deaths in the fires. Since then, the media coverage of such catastrophes has become so uncensored that people didn’t think twice yesterday about posting photos of people with limbs blown apart in the Boston Marathon bombings. The loss of innocence in society is reflected in the media coverage and a lack of thought for replaying blood and gore over and over again.

While it is the responsibility of news outlets to accurately report these events, I don’t feel that people in general are being responsible about the spread of these types of photos. Twitter is a place where you have to deliberately make a choice to view any image. However, Facebook and Tumblr are places where you see everything people post whether you want to or not just by scrolling through the feeds. So the argument of, “If you don’t like it, don’t look at it,” isn’t even an option on the table. I actually saw the man with his legs ripped off on one Facebook post with the caption, “Don’t look if you’re squeamish!” That’s probably the person’s way of trying to feel better about that, but the thing is, the eye will go to large images first and small words second. There is no option not to look. So people like me either have to completely stay offline until it dies down, or suffer through the repercussions. When you’re trying to look after people you care about, staying offline simply isn’t a choice.

What do I mean by people like me? I mean people with anxiety disorders, people with post traumatic stress disorder, and so forth. An estimated 7.8% of Americans will experience PTSD in their lifetimes, not to mention the millions of others who have anxiety disorders, which means chances are you’re posting those photos where your friends with those problems will have no choice but to see them. You may think you’re educating people about “what really happened”, or you’re just facing the enemy head on, but what you’re really doing is contributing to triggering the symptoms of what people suffer with PTSD and similar disorders. Aside from those types of people, you simply don’t know what children are out there. True, it’s nobody’s responsibility to censor things for children except they’re parents, but we’re not talking about swearing, tepid violence, or sex. We’re talking about innocent people blown to shreds on the street. This is different. Children can be forbidden to use media, but we all know they sneak around the rules. We all did it. You’re exposing children to unspeakable things that they shouldn’t be seeing by freely posting such graphic, bloody photos in the name of your own agendas.

I understand the different reasons for doing it. However, I have to strongly urge that people consider that not everybody can handle it. There are ways to share these things, if you insist on doing it, so that people will have the option of not seeing it. Put it in your blogs. Put it on Image Shack or Photobucket. There are responsible ways to share those things and make your statements while still being respectful of other people.

I’m still feeling the repercussions of what I’ve seen in the last 48 hours. Not only do I feel violated that the bombings happened at all, but I feel doubly violated by not being given a choice about what I’ve seen as a result of it. The nightmares last night have scarred me the way my old PTSD nightmares used to scar me, and I feel like I’ve ricocheted right back to the days when I felt the worst of my symptoms. I haven’t been able to focus today. I’ve been periodically shaking. A myriad of other symptoms are still struggling to be contained. It’s going to take me time to recover from what I’ve seen and to regain my ability to log onto social media without fear. At least I could turn off television coverage under my own control. I have no control over the pictures you all post but I hope I’ve made you think about the way you go about it a little more. No, I don’t want to explain where my PTSD problems originated. That’s not the point. If you’ve been around here long enough, you can piece it together. I’ve had it under control for several years, but again, the last 48 hours have me feeling like I’ve ricocheted backwards. I know I’m not the only one because I’ve asked others like me how the photos circulating on social media are affecting them.

Just think before you post. Think about who might be affected by it even if it is “your page” and “your right”. Have some compassion for those who don’t have stronger coping skills like you do.

My mother had a best friend through her job at Southwestern Bell. Remember when it was Southwestern Bell? Her friend heard about a Steven Soderbergh movie called King of the Hill that was going to be filmed in the old part of the city and she really wanted to go and audition, but she was nervous. So my mother agreed to go and be moral support, although it really didn’t interest her. Friends just do that kind of thing for one another.

I don’t know much about how they were cast other than they needed extras to play tuberculosis patients in a sanitarium. My mother’s friend was terribly excited and hoping they put her close to one of the principal actors so she could get some camera time. In the end, my mother who really didn’t care about the movie, was eyeballed by the casting people. She noticed they were talking among themselves and looking at her. Before she knew it, she was cast as a tuberculosis patient and told that she would be placed quite close to the principal actress. Her friend, however, was too dark and too modern looking (the movie was Depression-era), so she was put much further away at the other end of the hospital. My mother was the one they wanted and she never intended to actually be an extra.

That night, my mother told me about how she was going to be in a movie and I was very excited. Being only 10, I thought my mother was going to be a real movie star. She was pretty enough, so it wasn’t that far-fetched in my childish mind. There were always comments about how she resembled Helen Hunt or Meryl Streep from strangers and friends alike in the same way that my grandmother was compared with Greta Garbo in her day. I loved movies then but I didn’t quite reach a magical place of wanting to be part of movies until The Last of the Mohicans came out that fall. It probably started then and blew up when The Last of the Mohicans came out, then Gettysburg, and The Age of Innocence in the next two years. My mother had a bit of magical fairy dust on her just by being part of a movie though.

I don’t remember if the shooting day was one or two days now. I just know that it was the longest day I had ever spent away from home and it might have been two days that my memory is blending together now. I was dropped off at a babysitter’s house before dawn and not picked up until well after dark. I remember it was murderously hot and I spent the day at the Queeny Park pool. Missouri summers are as hot as summers in the Deep South, except the humidity is much higher because St. Louis is wedged in the nook where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet. Everyone in the movie is sweating when you watch it. That’s not stage sweat. That’s real sweat.

While I was swimming at Queeny Park, my mother was in the old part of the city making her big screen debut. They chose a location for the tuberculosis sanitarium that was part of the Catholic church in the area. The building used to house nuns, and then when there was a tuberculosis problem in the city, they turned it into a sanitarium – so the movie people used it for their sanitarium too. My mother was herded with all of the other extras through makeup and wardrobe until somebody realized that she was supposed to be positioned next to the principal actress in the scene. Then she had to go and get better makeup, hair, and wardrobe fitting before she was taken to the set. To make her look like she was wasting away from tuberculosis, they put baby oil in her hair and braided it down her back. Then they powdered her face and hands to make her look sickly and pale, along with dark makeup under her eyes. She was given a real housecoat from the 1930s, which was greenish and long to the floor. They used the baggy housecoat to hide her healthy figure and trick the camera into thinking she was skeletal.

After Soderbergh was happy with how the extras looked, they were taken to the set. In those days, people could only visit their sick family members by standing in the courtyard of this U-shaped building and shouting up to their loved ones along the balconies. In the scene my mother shot, the boy in the movie – the main character – arrived to visit his mother who had been sick with tuberculosis for most of his life. She was on the second floor on the left-hand wing of the U-shaped building from the boy’s point of view in the courtyard. My mother was placed right next to her, on her right (left if from the boy’s point of view). She said it was about a bed-length away. My mother got her own “family” since she was so close to the principal actress and they were directed to pretend to communicate by mouthing words so their voices wouldn’t interrupt the emotional scene between the mother and son. She described long breaks between shooting takes because the lighting people were unhappy and trying to change things. The scene itself wasn’t very long but it took something like eleven hours to shoot. It was hot. They were all wearing scratchy old 1930s clothes. They were slathered in oil and heavy makeup used for film.

My mother was exhausted by the time it was over and had witnessed lots of squabbling about whether it should be a wide shot on the whole wing or a close shot on the mother’s face. So after everything and then being a bed-length away from the actress, there was a good chance she wouldn’t make the cut in the scene anyway. Of course, as an adult, I know now that it’s pretty typical of films to cut, re-cut, edit, redo, etc.

You can watch the scene in this video. It starts at the 7:35 mark, roughly.

You know what’s really awesome too? These people were in the movie. Adrien Brody wasn’t a big star yet. Elizabeth McGovern wasn’t the Countess of Grantham yet. Lauren Hill wasn’t crazy yet. I love Adrien Brody! For the rest of my life, I can say my mother once worked on a Steven Soderbergh film that had Adrian Brody in it.

I watched the movie last night on Netflix. I hadn’t seen it since we all watched it when it was released. Even though my mother didn’t make the cut because they used the close shot, I know she was there and my interest in movies gives me something to talk about with her. I told her that if I ever win an Oscar or something, I will have to mention that my mother was once an extra in a Steven Soderbergh movie. There is still a 10-year-old girl in me who thinks my mother was pretty and bright enough to be a real movie star.

Both books are about how very different women, Sherrie Lea Laird and Valerie Franich, who have no connection to each other by the way, sought help from Dr. Finkelstein in resolving issues from their respective past lives that are negatively affecting their present lives. The women couldn’t have been more different and, as it turns out, the results of their cases couldn’t have been more different, yet a lot of valuable information could be found in their stories. I view one as a cautionary tale and the other as taking the road to real healing.

I had been aware of the Marilyn/Sherrie case for several years but I never got around to reading the book. For a bit of background, Sherrie went through her entire life feeling unstable and like a grown woman existed in her somewhere even as a child. She endured repeated suicide attempts, hospitalization in psychiatric facilities, and so many similarities with Marilyn that she couldn’t deny the trauma of that death hadn’t yet been resolved. Unlike many cases where people will brag about being someone famous, which is considered a huge red flag for authenticity, Sherrie was never a Marilyn fan and ran from looking into such a past life for six years after initially reaching out for help. She finally agreed to undergo hypnotic regression with Dr. Finkelstein, and after a period of many months of partnered research and treatment, appeared to be on the road to recovery. She abandoned her suicidal tendencies as a result of the hypnosis sessions and reached a more peaceful place about her past life case; however, she never fully reached what I would call complete stability. Marilyn herself never reached stability either, as we all know, and I find it difficult to believe that a life as chaotic and, at times, as tortured as hers could have been corrected in the immediately proceeding lifetime with just a few months of assistance. In other words, I’m not surprised that Sherrie is still apparently unstable and living in a bizarre world.

I was acquainted with Sherrie at the time of this book’s release (2005 or 2006), so I have looked in on her periodically over the years. This was roughly the time that I was beginning to take my own Fanny Chamberlain case into public light after many years of hiding the way she did. I wouldn’t say we were friends but we were casual acquaintances, as many are in this odd little “I used to be famous” club of reincarnationists. Where Marilyn is an A-list international icon, my “famous” life was, by comparison, B-list or C-list at best. But Sherrie had been through public scrutiny over her case already and I thought we’d make acquaintances to sort of compare notes. I found her to be friendly and relatively sweet at the time, sort of like an adolescent girl in hyperactive thought processes and a peculiar naivete that made me raise an eyebrow at her technically being old enough to be my mother. Indeed, her energy did read as Marilyn to me and I do feel the case is valid, but that also meant a certain chaos within that energy that carried over from that life to her present one. I backed off from the chaos quickly, like a rubber ball bouncing off a wall, and I also noticed Dr. Finkelstein’s patient reserve showing cracks of exasperation at times as well. Now that I think on it, a lot of people backed off from Marilyn’s chaotic energy the way I backed off from Sherrie in the present.

The damage Marilyn did to herself has made Sherrie into a far more chaotic and I daresay paranoid person today. In the last few years, she has adopted many of the most outlandish conspiracy theories that have, in part, made her become a rather vocal anti-Semite, among other things. It’s going to clearly require several more lifetimes until the Marilyn damage is fully healed. Dr. Finkelstein himself has been forced to publicly disassociate himself from her because of the path she has taken, and so have I. The thing I want to point out about all of this is that just because a person has apparently become very controversial and unstable doesn’t necessarily diminish the legitimacy of the past life case. On the contrary, given Marilyn’s mental state for most of her adult life, I would be far more skeptical of Sherrie if she emerged from a few months of regressions spouting sunshine and roses for the rest of her life. It’s a myth that being aware of your past life traumas automatically gives you this sense of zen that makes you a beautifully evolved spiritual being. Suicides typically come back fairly quickly and the immediate lives after the act of suicide are very rocky and marred by chaos and swinging back and forth between peace and unrest. I believe the healing process is incredibly difficult. People will fall off their paths and become misguided before the worst of it is through. Sherrie is not hopeless but I believe she needs much more distance between Marilyn and future lives before she has the ability to see more clearly and abandon her apparent hateful and misguided stance on a variety of present issues.

In truth, I found Marilyn Monroe Returns: The Healing of a Soul to be an exhausting experience because of how terrible and exhausting Sherrie’s personal journey was. I don’t feel that she is as healed as we would like, but that is to be expected given the circumstances of Marilyn energy in Sherrie for so many years.

On the other hand, I found By Love Reclaimed: Jean Harlow Returns to Clear Her Husband’s Name to be much more of an experience that led to a resolution for the parties involved. This is not to say everything is perfectly wrapped up into a beautiful bow for everyone involved, but the resolutions reached were such that allowed people to more fully function here in the present.

Unlike Sherrie Lea Laird, Valerie Franich was never oppressively plagued by terrifying flashbacks of her past life, nor was she nearly that unstable as to be suicidal or hospitalized. She is highly educated in the mental health field as well, so she has an understanding of her own mind perhaps better than the average person. Valerie’s energy comes across as shockingly nonchalant, which may seem odd in a past life case, but was actually found to be a rather close match with the way Jean Harlow approached things.

Valerie’s progression into realizing that she was Jean Harlow in a past life came rather gradually. It began with an affinity for California and the Los Angeles area that she never consciously realized was a past life issue, although it is very common that we develop affinities for the places where we once lived and loved. In my case, I developed an affinity for Maine and upper New England very early in my life, before I ever really understood where those places were. Like Valerie, I didn’t automatically leap to the reincarnation conclusion. That came much, much later. She thought something strange was going on as an adult when she visited Beverly Hills and gave a friend a tour of the neighborhoods. The friend reported that she went into a semi-trance state and began describing things about the houses that she couldn’t possibly know. Later, they found out that all of the houses where she had stopped in this semi-trance state were houses where Jean Harlow had lived or new people.

After a series of other strange coincidences, she felt compelled to contact Dr. Finkelstein, especially after three separate people asked her how she felt about his Marilyn Monroe book. As he did with the Marilyn case, he began conducting hypnotic regressions on Valerie and establishing her past life case with historical research and several other kinds of evidence like physical recognition, handwriting, and so on and so forth.

The reason why Jean Harlow came back so quickly was because, according to her, she needed to clear her husband’s name. She had been married to an MGM executive who allegedly killed himself two months after they were married. The truth was he had been murdered by his previous common-law wife and the studio covered it up to protect Jean because she was there moneymaking machine. The most shocking turn of all was to find out that Dr. Finkelstein himself had been the husband that was murdered in his past life, which he initially denied for many months. As a man of science, he could not accept something like that so quickly. He brought in two separate unrelated consultants to conduct research and regressions because he could no longer be objective about the situation. Eventually, as the regressions continued on both of them, and using the same standards of evidence on himself as he does everyone else, he found the claim to be true. He had been her husband.

I have personally never undergone hypnosis as I used to be rather against it. I’m not entirely for it either at this point but I’m more open to the idea from an experimental perspective. Ordinarily, I would not be so open to “famous” past life cases like these if they were presented from a strictly hypnotic perspective, because hypnosis by itself is not enough proof of a past life case, but there was a lot more evidence provided that swayed my opinion. One particular thing that I did find interesting was that the same medium (Shirley MacLaine’s medium) the confirmed my past life case also confirmed these past life cases. Until I find someone qualified enough to guide me through the hypnosis process, however, I can never truly understand what these women went through in their stories. I am interested in doing it partially on an experimental level but partially because both women reported feeling relief in certain negative cycles in their lives. Such relief would be quite helpful to me as well.

Both women displayed knowledge of their previous lives on levels that they shouldn’t have unless they were Hollywood historians, which they were not. Both women, under hypnosis, displayed appropriate emotional reactions to questions that, if they were being deceitful, would be met with factual answers like a fan would have collected. Both women bear striking resemblances to their previous lives in the faces, hands, and feet. Both women displayed health problems earlier in their lives that they could not have known about but corresponded with their past life counterparts. It goes on from there, much the way I collected evidence about my own past life case. If I expect people to respect my past life case, then it is my responsibility as a fellow human being to respect their cases.

On a personal note, I really did enjoy how both books mentioned Clark Gable, since he is one of my favorite actors. The Marilyn Monroe book did not mention him in great detail but he was somewhat mentioned. However, Jean Harlow was very good friends with him and her recollections were a pleasure to read. She talked quite frequently under regression about how Clark Gable tried to keep her going after her husband died. They were like brother and sister and he tried to keep her laughing and distract her from her turmoil. He respected her and she respected him because they both showed up and did their job no matter what was happening in their personal lives. Arthur Miller was also mentioned in the Marilyn Monroe book, which is interesting to me because he is Daniel Day Lewis’ father-in-law, and we all know that he is my number one favorite actor. Sherrie came back with an attraction to men of Arthur’s type because she did love him even though the marriage didn’t work. She said he just wasn’t capable of dealing with her problems. She never really spoke badly of any of her husbands under regression, although she did put a lot of blame on the Kennedy brothers for her state of mind toward the end of her life. This old Hollywood junkie loved those anecdotes.

I have never had any contact with Valerie the way I did with Sherrie, so my opinion of the situation can extend no further than what was presented to me in the book. The book itself seemed a bit rushed from a strictly literary perspective because much of it was transcripts of hypnosis sessions with both Valerie and Dr. Finkelstein and very little actual narrative. I’m forgiving of that because I know firsthand how gut-wrenching it is to write about your past life case for the world to consume. The Marilyn book went into much deeper detail of background information and the logistics of hypnosis, the different levels of hypnosis, the different types of reincarnation, why it happens, and so on and so forth. Reading the Jean Harlow book, it is implied that the person reading it would have some working knowledge of reincarnation and hypnosis. So it is my suggestion that if you read either of these books, you should read both of them concurrently to get an accurate picture of the bigger situation. I do recommend these books if you are interested in the process of going through past life memories and learning to assimilate those past lives into the present. That is really the purpose of the whole thing. Learning what cycles went wrong in the past and making them right in the present. More and more people are starting to come forward with their past life cases, so I think more books like these and like mine will be coming out as time passes.

Seeing Nine was part of my quest to catch up on the Daniel Day-Lewis movies I haven’t seen yet. I was supposed to see it opening weekend in the theater like I usually do with his movies since The Last of the Mohicans (let’s all pause and think fondly upon Hawkeye) but I was very, very sick during the holidays of 2009. My mother and uncles went without me. I still haven’t forgiven them. After that, I just never got around to seeing it until now. Nine was Daniel’s last movie before making Lincoln. So he went from Guido Contini to Abraham Lincoln in three years.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Nine is a musical about an Italian film director (Guido) who is basically on a downward spiral into an emotional and mental breakdown. He used to be revolutionary, highly praised, and is something of a legend, but he is facing writers block and dealing with juggling a wife and as many mistresses as he can handle. As it turns out, he’s not the young man he used to be, and he is starting to witness the breakdown of his wife as well as the breakdown of his primary mistress. He’s completely incapable of taking responsibility for anything, including the fact that he is making a movie that isn’t even written yet. As the story progresses, he is slowly losing everything, including his mind, and finally it all comes to ahead, making him finally understand the responsibility in himself for everything that has gone wrong. By the time he realizes exactly how much everything is his fault, it’s too late. He’s lost everything and has to rebuild his entire life from the ground up.

The film, to me, is really just about the deconstruction and reconstruction of a man. Misery is largely of our own creation and when we get down far enough, we can’t see that it’s our own fault anymore, so we blame everyone and everything around us. Those are the times when we have to be completely deconstructed and rebuilt as if beginning life all over again, shedding all of the material acquisitions, greed, and immoral behavior to be better people. Some people, like Guido, are so resistant to self-accountability that they have to be deconstructed to the point of being nothing more than a shell of a human before they can begin to rebuild.

As I remember, Nine got mixed reviews. A lot of people didn’t like it and I suppose I’m in no position of authority to say whether it’s good or bad because I’m not educated in musicals, but I personally liked it. I saw a lot of press about it beforehand and all of the actors were clearly nervous about not being professional singers and dancers (except Fergie) so that changed the way I watched it. Daniel said no matter how things went, he would always remember the amazing experience of making such a movie. He prefers string women and so he enjoyed working with all of those strong women in it. So maybe it doesn’t really matter if it was received by critics as disappointing because the actors clearly worked hard in a genre not their own and they enjoyed the experience.

As I said, I didn’t find the movie disappointing at all. I enjoyed it. Daniel has a tendency of playing roles that involve infidelity and having women he shouldn’t have, so that part of it wasn’t new to me. What was new was seeing him in clearly choreographed situations. That was a little foreign to him and you can see that on screen. The way he was trained as an actor was to approach every take as a new experience, so being restricted by choreography made his movements a little awkward at times.

His singing was better than I expected though and he clearly worked hard to find his singing voice. The director said he was very insecure about having to sing and was trying to find ways to quit at different times. Once he walked into Fergie rehearsing Be Italian and his response was, “Can I go home now?” Obviously he didn’t quit but I daresay this night have been his most terrifying role yet. I would be terrified to sing and dance in a musical. He did find a way to sort of speak his lyrics instead of fully singing them but I also think he was too hard on himself because his voice is not terrible at all. People just seem to balk at him doing a musical because we always see him doing heavy drama like Hawkeye or Bill the Butcher. It is hard to imagine Hawkeye singing his way through 1757 or Bill singing his way through 1863. So I think even if Nine was the best musical ever made, Daniel would never have been received well in that type of role because it’s so far removed from the way we’ve come to know him.

Speaking of the women in the movie, I know there was a big deal about Nicole Kidman being in it but I found her to be entirely forgettable. I couldn’t even give you the tune of the song she performed. There was absolutely no chemistry between Nicole and Daniel, in my opinion, so it was a blessing that her part was so small. Of all the women, I would say the strongest voices were Fergie, Kate Hudson, and Penelope Cruz. My favorite number of the whole movie was A Call to the Vatican. I have no idea why other than it’s fun and it got stuck in my head for a long time.

She fought like a warrior for about two years through cholangiocarcinoma, which is basically cancerous growth in one of the ducts that carries bile from the liver to the small intestine. That’s the cold medical definition. The painful reality was far more graphic and horrifying, and I couldn’t possibly recount her battle with any justice. You must read Janine’s blog to see what she went through in her own words. Her last post was January 5, and not long after that, she was placed in hospice care. The last time I heard from her directly was February 4, my birthday. She was in hospice care and entirely too unwell to think about other people, but she thought about me, and I’m so thankful that our last words to each other were exchanges of love and support. I was able to tell her that I loved her before she died. That has been a great comfort to me.

I first came to know Janine about eighteen years ago. At that time, I was living in St. Louis, going to school, and just learning to use the internet. Happenstance brought me to a chat room for my favorite television show at the time, Dr. Quinn. Remember those early days of the internet when chat rooms were about meeting like-minded people instead of nasty places where dirty old men troll for underage girls and boys now? It was more innocent back then. I met Janine there, as well as many others, and all of us got together every Saturday night to talk about the show. Three of them – Janine, Jennifer, and Mariann – became lifelong friends for me. We were all writers in one way or another. We were all interested in history. We were all relatively close in age.

Janine and I were a bit closer over time though. We had a bond that lacked real explanation, nor did we ever try to explain it. A great number of trials and tribulations befell both of us as we grew into womanhood, as well as sharing innumerable secrets between women that will never again be uttered aloud. Despite the physical distance, Janine became one of my best friends. She was the first person I confided in about my past life case as Fanny Chamberlain, and when I eventually wrote a book about it, I made sure I included her in it. She never judged me when I felt completely insane by the whole thing. That was her way in any situation. She could be loud and opinionated when the passion of a thing overtook her, but there was a gentleness in her that made a person feel secure in enjoying full confidences. Now that I’m looking back on it, I can’t think of a single incident in which my confidence was broken. Until you’ve enjoyed the rarity of someone so incapable of petty gossip, I don’t think you could fully understand the value of it.

Janine and I cut our teeth in literature by sharing our writing with each other. We were both avid readers and writers, which was probably the biggest source of our bond. I probably wouldn’t have worked on improving my writing so much if I hadn’t had people like Janine, and a bit later, Martina, who were willing to be honest about what was good, bad, and ugly. Janine was a wonderful writer as well, although she never thought herself as anything much, and never (to my knowledge) tried to get herself published. Late last year, she asked me for advice about self-publishing, as publishing a book was on her bucket list, and I offered to help her through the process. She got sicker and sicker though. It never materialized. I hope one day, after the loss isn’t so raw, her family will find her stories and have them published. It was one of her dreams that never came to fruition.

A little more than ten years ago, I became engaged. I was the first one of us to take that plunge. That relationship became abusive in various forms that I don’t want to discuss now, but I didn’t see it until it was too late. Janine came to visit not long after we moved in together and she knew right away that things weren’t right. As is the case with so many women in abusive relationships, the face of denial becomes such a heavy mask that it will destroy every other relationship in her life. She and I hit the roughest patch of our relationship and I went on to have to smack rock bottom face first with a miscarriage, alcoholism, and pill addiction before I found the courage to leave. Janine and I were not on good terms during the years that I was with my ex but she never completely disappeared. She was there observing and was still there when others disappeared completely.

And while she visited, she gave me a rosary that she’d had blessed by a priest specifically for me, pictured above. I often hid the rosary under broken parts of my old jewelry box and managed to save it from being stolen as I lived like a nomad in the years after leaving my ex. I used that rosary when I went on paranormal investigations and had it in hospitals with me. It has traveled almost as much as I have and I don’t feel right without it if I leave for any trip, whether paranormal related, history related, or just pleasure. The last trip I took it with me was when I went to San Francisco with PRS for paranormal work at the USS Hornet and Alcatraz. Janine was always supportive of my work in the paranormal. For many years, she was one of the only people on this planet who knew I was a child medium (and grew into an adult medium). She never judged or scolded me about it. She understood because she had been through some paranormal experiences of her own.

When I did my NoH8 picture about three years ago, I used Janine’s rosary as well, pictured below.

In repairing my life after going through abuse, a miscarriage, addiction, etc., Janine and I rebuilt our relationship too. This is one of the things I’m most grateful for in my life because it wasn’t too long after that when her symptoms appeared. Had either of us been too proud or too stubborn to forgive and reconcile, she would have died without us coming back together again as we were once.

There were times in the course of her illness when she expressed to me the fear and desire to know if I felt, on an intuitive level, if she was going to beat her cancer. She never fully asked. Part of her didn’t want the answer. I never gave an answer either, mainly because she never fully asked, and partially because I always had a foreboding that it was only a matter of time. Neither of us ever wanted to say it aloud but I think there was a silent understanding that we both knew. I made it a point to tell her I loved her as often as I could and that has given me a little peace over the terrible loss. Had I not conveyed my feelings to her and resolved our relationship, the unsettled feeling and the pain would be worse.

My grief is not so direct. Imagining what Milo, her husband, or her mother, or other family members must be going through is rather impossible. I’m so thankful that Janine finally found true love before she got sick. It was the greatest dream of her life to find a lifelong companion and a beautiful love, just as it has been for me as well. We spent many, many hours talking about such dreams. Janine nearly gave up on finding real love until Milo came along. She never spoke a harsh word against him, and he stood by her through every minute of her illness. I may never find a love that beautiful or a companion that devoted, but I was so glad Janine got to experience it in the last years of her life. She never took it for granted after all of the frogs she had to kiss and the years of solitude in between that it took to find her prince.

At the end of a life, the only thing that really matters is whether you gave love and received love. Janine was blessed on both accounts. She will be remembered for her loyalty, passion, creativity, opinionated nature, joy, courage, and for the beautiful love she built in her marriage. For me, she will be remembered as the friend who never gave up on me when I wanted to give up on myself.

Rest well, my friend.

To read about the first novel in the trilogy, click here.
To read about the second novel in the trilogy, click here.

My established readers know that the Cavanaugh and Reed families in the trilogy are from Charleston, South Carolina. Although we see Isabelle and Eva venture to St. Louis in the first novel, I brought the Cavanaugh clan back to their Charleston roots in the second novel. I usually stick to locations in my writing that I’ve visited numerous times in my life and therefore can write convincingly. I rather enjoy it when a setting takes on a life of its own and almost becomes its own character throughout the storytelling process. In fact, I’m more selective about location scouting and making sure those locations existed in the time that I’m writing than I am about any other aspect of building a story. That may be my tendency toward being visual and hoping one day to make movies. Nobody could ever say I wasn’t ambitious!

Recently, I took a trip to Charleston for a few days. One of my goals on this trip was to walk around old Charleston experiencing the city as my characters experienced it — on foot, for the most part. I remembered where all my main locations were and we set out for a walk to see if all of my careful planning was worth it.

Location 1: the “Meyers-Cavanaugh” house.

By Charleston standards, this house is rather middle-class. It was built in 1760, has three bedrooms, and is 2,287 square feet. In my novel, I added a little space with two extra bedrooms since there are so many family members living there. The outbuilding on the property is no longer there and the size of the property is smaller than it was in the Civil War, but luckily, most of what I needed to see is still in tact. The fence that usually lines the front of the property wasn’t there for some reason. We think the current owners are making some improvements.

Location 2: the Reed mansion.

In reality, this mansion on the battery is the Edmondston-Alston House. It was built in 1825 and enhanced in 1838. This was one of the first mansions built on what is known as the high battery. In my version of Charleston, this is where Eva grew up before getting married and moving to St. Louis. This house has a lot of memories for Isabelle as well because they were constantly with each other, having no sisters of their own.

Location 3: Saint Mary of the Annunciation Catholic Church and cemetery.

I forgot to get a picture of the actual church, so I stole one, but the cemetery pictures are mine. Saint Mary of the Annunciation is the oldest Catholic Church in Charleston and it’s the parish of the Cavanaugh and Reed families. Isabelle and Eva attended Mass here as little girls and many of their family members are buried in the graveyard surrounding the church. The graveyard is rather crowded and wraps around the back of the church from both sides. The Cavanaughs have a rather large plot here and a new grave is added in the second novel.

There you have a bit of a walking tour of Isabelle and Eva’s Charleston. I have more but I can’t show them now or I’ll give away plot spoilers. I will post them after the novel is published though!

This month, I decided to do a little bit of a theme with my books. I have a lot of books I haven’t read yet in my Kindle. I’m trying to read all of them before I go and buy new books. So this month I scrolled through and picked out all of the historical novels that I haven’t read yet and I read as many as I could in 31 days. I couldn’t read as many as I had hoped, unfortunately. I was rather ill for the majority of the fall and winter, and it became really bad at the beginning of January. I lost a few weeks of reading time. February will be better though!

Here are the book reviews for January.

Becoming Marie Antoinette
by Juliet Grey
5 stars

As if you expected me to read anything else! I devour everything about my Queen. This is the first novel in a trilogy about Marie Antoinette’s life. It shows her childhood and upbringing in Austria through her own eyes. Written in first person, the novel conveys intimacy that leaves the reader feeling like they’ve stumbled onto the Archduchess’ diary. You have to approach this novel from a fictional perspective, not a history lesson. The characters, based on the real people that populated her life, are well-written and well-defined. The novel follows Antoinette’s life through the day she becomes Queen of France and I was quite impressed with how the narrative voice grew up with the little Archduchess, into the Dauphine, and into the young Queen in the last pages. The novel was not without its faults though. No novel is perfect. Some of the language sounded a little too modern at times. Overall, however, it didn’t detract too much from my experience and enjoyment of the world of 18th century Austria and France. I highly recommend this trilogy if you love historical fiction as I do.

Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
by Juliet Grey
4 stars

This is the second novel in Grey’s Marie Antoinette trilogy, which follows the Queen of France from the beginning of her reign through the dark days of the French Revolution. (The third and final novel, The Last October Sky, is due out in September 2013.) I found this novel to not quite be as fluid as the first. I don’t hold the author entirely at fault for this because I’m in the process of writing my own novel at this period of French history and untangling the truth from the spiderweb is incredibly difficult. I found her research to be thorough, however, just like the first novel. Anything that had to be leant a poetic license carefully blended into the story and I couldn’t find anything that truly struck me as false. Again, some of the language drifted precariously close to modern voices, but the author managed to pull herself back into the period before it distracted me too much from the story. Villainous people in their own time (as viewed by their people) are likable while still quite flawed and realistic in the novels. It is their flaws that bring them down from mythology. I will definitely read the third novel.

I have avoided this movie since it came out despite Daniel Day-Lewis being in my top three favorite actors, if not my number one (he’s neck-and-neck with Clark Gable in that race). Something about My Left Foot has always terrified me. I can’t quite explain it but I’m sure you can draw conclusions. I’m severely disabled. Christy Brown was severely disabled. I’m an artist and writer. Christy Brown was an artist and writer. The idea of watching a film with Daniel Day-Lewis reportedly mastering being so severely disabled seemed to fall under the category of “hitting too close to home” for the last 20-something years. The problem was I don’t like claiming people as “favorite” in anything without examining their entire body of work. So I set aside my peculiar fear of this movie, cuddled my dog for comfort, and reluctantly clicked My Left Foot on Netflix.

It took twice as long to get through the entire movie as its runtime because I kept having to stop and take breaks. By the end, my eyes were so red and glassy from the exhausting emotional experience that my family tiptoed quietly around me as if I might have another one of my panic attacks to which I am prone. As I suspected, I would not have been capable of watching something like that when I was younger. Following my instinct to not see it 24 years ago was correct. I saw so much of myself in Christy Brown that it was like having certain old wounds ripped open and exposed to the world. Something about Daniel Day-Lewis – a decidedly able-bodied and athletic man – so thoroughly and masterfully crossing over into my world, so to speak, disturbed me in a way that I haven’t yet been able to understand. I think it had something to do with being reminded of how easily he could cross over into my physical world, while I can never cross over into his physical world. I will never climb through the rugged Irish countryside for solitude, or experience the thrill of speeding on a motorcycle, both things that he reportedly does. Human experience will always be limited for me. Yet this man who immersed himself in my world for this film managed to drag out the darkest parts of this kind of life into harsh, blinding light just by the pain in his eyes and the rawness of his performance. I didn’t know whether to love or hate Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness.

Day-Lewis’ interaction with the disabled community, and dedication before, during, and after the film made it even more compelling to me. He’s famous for being “obsessive” and “so Method” in his movies. I read that he spent months at a hospital for severely disabled people in Ireland getting to know them and learning to live that way. During filming, he couldn’t jump in and out of character, so he remained in his wheelchair even when the cameras weren’t rolling. Crew members were reportedly irritated by having to haul his wheelchair around for different setups. People had to feed him and give him drinks on breaks as well. When his English agent visited the set, he reportedly refused to jump out of character and the agent left in a frustrated huff. Being contorted in hunched positions that come with cerebral palsy broke two of his ribs but he kept filming with little to no complaint. And when he won his Best Actor Oscar for playing Christy Brown, he took the award back to the hospital where the disabled patients taught him to live that life and he spent a day letting them look at his Oscar in person and spent time with them.

Truthfully, there was no other way to approach this story from where I sit. If you open yourself to the claustrophobia of existing in a body that won’t obey your alert and beautiful mind, you have to be willing to go through the mental anguish of feeling trapped, rejected, and misunderstood. You have to be willing to find a way to push yourself through the imprisonment into a world of your own creation while everyone around you seems to push you back into entrapment for the sake of simple survival. If I ever got to speak to Day-Lewis, I would ask him directly if he ever felt trapped in his own body while filming. If so, then he truly grew as a human being.

Many parts of the film could have easily been lifted from my own life. I was rather bothered when teenage Christy was with the other neighborhood kids playing spin the bottle and none of the girls wanted to acknowledge it when the bottle pointed to him. His guy friends stood up for him and the girl only kissed his cheek because they pressured her into it. Christy always seemed to be so painfully aware that his peers were moving past him and having boyfriends or girlfriends while he was not. He was a normal adolescent inside though, and craved those romantic connections. He liked the girl and painted her a sweet little picture to tell her so. At first, she swooned quite dreamily, thinking the romantic gesture was from his brother. When she realized it was from Christy, she took it back to him and told him she couldn’t accept it. She couldn’t accept the feelings of a man with such a severe disability, made obvious by the fact that she thought it was wonderfully romantic until her friends pointed out the true artist. Christy was largely left behind his peers.

The same story repeats itself over and over again no matter if it’s 1950 or 1990. I don’t have cerebral palsy like Christy did but my disability is no less “frightening” or “intimidating” to many who cross my path. I became aware of exactly how unsuitable I was as a girlfriend in middle school going into high school. Like every girl, I had my fair share of crushes. I watched my friends pair up, have first kisses, go on dates, etc., but it never happened for me. I learned to make boys laugh in an effort to make up for my physical shortcomings, and they were perfectly happy to pal around with me, but no boy ever had a crush on me. I knew exactly why. I knew as clearly as I knew the pain in Day-Lewis’ Christy when he was rejected more than once by ladies. Occasionally, I got brave early on if I liked a boy. I would tell him so. Rejection without looking me in the eye or giving me a clear reason why came too many times and I basically stopped trying when I reached my junior year in high school. I never had dates to dances, I never really went to parties, and I never had a prom date. The first boy I ever really loved came along my junior year – more than a simple crush – but by that time, I lost all nerve to try. Carl was on the football team and his girlfriend was a cheerleader. I never stood a chance and I knew it. Not only was I in a wheelchair but I lived with an abusive stepfather, so I was rather insecure, quiet, and unwilling to expose myself to more pain. He may or may not have known about my feelings – I don’t know. He was my friend regardless. To a teenage girl in love, though, friendship was just a consolation prize.

Christy Brown had a similar relationship in the film with his doctor. He fell in love with her through their friendship and she married someone else, which shattered the last hope in life that he had, and led him through the black door of considering suicide. The film depicts Day-Lewis as Christy grasping a pencil with his foot and writing a suicide note – “All is nothing, therefore nothing must end.” He then dropped the pencil and picked up a straight razor, which he attempted to use in slashing his own wrist but failed because of his own limitations. This was when the thought popped into my head: “I didn’t know whether to love or hate Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness.” Suicidal tendencies or full-fledged suicide attempts are a very dark secret among the disabled – so much so that we don’t even talk about it among ourselves in hushed tones. When the full weight of never leading an easier life and facing a life of solitude settles upon your shoulders, the weight presses you further and further into the grave if you allow it.

My method was not going to be slashing my wrists. Women very rarely mutilate their bodies in suicide, I’ve learned since then. I’ve been suicidal twice in my life to the point of formulating plans of how I was going to do it. The first time was as a senior in high school. My former stepfather was regularly sexually assaulting me for quite some time, combined with a lot of other issues related to facing 60 more years as a quadriplegic. I calculated how many sleeping pills it would take – not many because I’m small. The second time came at age 24, a few months after my miscarriage. I was in an abusive relationship and entirely blamed myself. If the only people who wanted to be in my life were parasites, then there was no reason to live. That time, it was going to be oxycodone and vodka. And as I watched Christy Brown fail at his escape attempt, I thought again what a cruel twist of the universe that people like us couldn’t even physically accomplish the escape. These severe disabilities are the only prisons from which escape is truly impossible. I have since found better spiritual footing and I abandoned those plans after the second time, but the devil does lurk in the darkness once in a while.

The only time I felt a sense of calmness or reprieve in this difficult film was when Christy was painting. There were only short glimpses of Day-Lewis acting out the process but it was calming to see it. Day-Lewis apparently could not master it with his left foot but he could with his right foot, so many of those scenes were shot through a mirror to give the illusion of being his left foot. I’m not surprised. I’m right handed and my right leg is also dominant. Day-Lewis is also right handed, so his right leg would be dominant too. In the opening sequence, Day-Lewis pulled a record from its sleeve, put it on the record player, and set the needle with his foot. He practiced doing it so much that he did it successfully on the first take. Unlike Christy Brown/Daniel Day-Lewis, I don’t have the flexibility or dexterity to paint, write, etc., with my feet. I do it with my mouth as you can learn here. Painting and writing are indeed the only times when I feel wholly at peace and rarely think of the difficulty in my life. I expect at least part of Christy Brown must have felt that same sense of peace. That may be why I was able to relax when watching those sequences, although they may still have been disturbing or pulled some other emotion from watching it. I especially related to the sequence in Christy’s gallery showing in which being a “crippled artist” vs simply an artist was briefly mentioned. People like Christy and me have probably never felt (or past tense as he is dead) secure in knowing whether people admire our art because it’s good or because we created in weird ways.

My only problem with My Left Foot was the somewhat misleading end. It appeared that Christy Brown finally got his happy ending by marrying Mary Carr, but what the movie doesn’t show is her alleged and probable abuse within that marriage. I confess, I was disappointed when I read the allegations. I had hoped Christy found some peace and contentment in life, but it has been reported that his wife was repeatedly unfaithful and bruises on his body at the time of his death suggested she was beating him. As disappointed as I was, I can’t say that I was entirely surprised. Abuse rates among the severely disabled have always been shockingly high compared to other minority groups. Among women, reports say that between 57% and 63% will be sexually or physically abused in their lifetime. People in general with disabilities are twice as likely to face abuse than the average population. I have been abused in every form by different people in different periods of my life, so these statistics are, unfortunately, a grim reality. I think the statistics were probably higher in Christy Brown’s generation. Still, I wanted to believe he got a happy ending like the film suggested but I suspect it wasn’t that happy. It is like filmmakers to tie up everything in a pretty bow though. As a storyteller in my own right, I understand why the ending happened the way it did.

Part of this passage written by Christy Brown himself was quoted at the end of the film. It struck me because I could not have found these words in my own vocabulary, yet it reflects my heart and mind as exactly as it reflected his heart and mind. Read:

“It would not be true to say that I am no longer lonely, now that I have reached out to thousands of people and communicated to them all my fears, frustrations and hopes which for so long lay bottled up inside me. I have made myself articulate and understood to people in many parts of the world, and this is something we all wish to do whether we are crippled or not. It is a common need to make ourselves understood by others, for none of us can live entirely alone or by our own devices. Yet like everyone else I am acutely conscious sometimes of my own isolation even in the midst of people, and I often give up hope of ever being able to communicate with them. It is not the sort of isolation that every writer or artist must experience in the creative mood if he is to create anything at all. It is like a black could sweeping down on me unexpectedly, cutting me off from others, a sort of deaf-muteness.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. The film was as dark as it was inspiring. And I still haven’t decided whether to love or hate Daniel Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness of imprisonment within these bodies in his performance. Once you open the door to hell, you cannot shut it again. You can only spend your life trying to stay on the safe side of it where inspiration, art, and love exist. Although I’ve looked through the doorway to hell more than once, just as Christy Brown did, I’m still here and I still know how to smile, paint, write, and live.

Recently, a friend told me that I should write more about my life experiences, my disability, how I do things, etc., so that people can get to know me better. I admittedly focus more on topical posts rather than myself because I never want to give the appearance of being self-serving or self-centered. This friend has never steered me wrong, though, so I’m experimenting with letting you all, my readers, know me on a more personal level. I’ll be slipping in more blogs about my personal experiences and such to see how the response goes, and I’m beginning today by allowing you all to see how I paint, draw, etc. The drawing here at the top of this blog is one of mine that I never finished. Yes, that’s most of Scarlett and some of Rhett.

As you all must know by now, I’m technically classified as a quadriplegic. I have a congenital condition called Arthrogryposis. That means I cannot use my hands like the rest of you do and I never could. I also come from a family of artists. My mother and father are artistic, as were my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother. All of that artistic energy passed to both my younger brother and I. The problem was nobody expected artistry out of me when I was a toddler because I couldn’t use my hands. The lack of expectation actually fostered a sense of freedom for me to figure out how to get by in life on my own as much as possible, so as a toddler, I somehow got the idea in my head to do things with my mouth. Nobody really knows when or how I made this decision about using my mouth instead of my hands but everybody basically agrees that it was around age three. It just happened as naturally as any child taking an interest in beautiful, vibrant Crayola markers. My mother likes to say I must have read an instruction manual on my disability before I was born because I came screaming out of the womb ready to take on the world.

Due to the nature of my disability, I spent most of my time on the floor lying on my stomach. I didn’t get a wheelchair until I was ready to start school (and it was fabulous Barbie Corvette pink, naturally), so being on the floor so much kind of skewed the way I viewed the world. Nobody realized the way I viewed the world was messed up until I started learning to draw and write. I often drew everything completely upside down or sideways. Part of it, we learned later, was due to me being dyslexic. I was told drawing things upside down was wrong, so I tried training myself to do it the right way. Everything went slanted for several years, as you can see in this childhood drawing below. I was about 11 or 12-years-old at the time.

Once I got a wheelchair and was in school for years, the problem corrected itself, and my teachers began putting me in every art class they could find. I began winning local awards in St. Louis (where I was raised), but I was a perceptive child, and I knew people were more fascinated with how I created more than the creations themselves. It was upsetting to me and I developed a bit of a complex about allowing people to see me in the creation process. Even as a child, I wanted the work to be respected on its own merits and not given awards for simply being the inspirational poster child for overcoming disabilities. I overcompensated by trying to learn as much technique as possible. By high school, I was technically proficient but I stifled my personal creativity in the process. Here are some pieces I did in high school.

My complex about letting people actually see me in the creation process followed me into adulthood. I still don’t normally allow people to see me actually doing things with my mouth and I’m always the first to make jokes about it before anyone else has the chance. I hadn’t really thought about it in a while but that beast raised its ugly head in West Virginia over the summer. I went on a PRS retreat and brought a pad and pencils but I never touched them. My friends asked me one day over breakfast if I wanted to draw, but I realized I was in a room full of people and abruptly said no. Among many people I respected there, including Ryan, the idea of putting myself in a position of being watched, in my mind, like an oddity, was too much to bear. So I avoid it. There are only three pictures in existence of me doing my painting or drawing. I had thought about posting a video months ago but I never got around to it, mainly because I’m not comfortable putting it on display yet. However, at this stage in my life, I can reconcile my discomfort with the curiosity that comes with being me. I live in this body, so it’s all very normal to me, yet I understand that it is a bit extraordinary to people not living in this body. I shouldn’t hide what I am or what I do.

This was a portrait I did in 2008, I think. It was somewhere around the end of 2007 into the beginning of 2008 and I gave it to the subject of the portrait. The pictures were taken by my brother because, at the time, I had been posting progress of the work and some people didn’t believe that I was actually disabled. I was accused of lying and faking my disability for attention, so my brother took a few pictures of me working on it to prove that I was telling the truth. (See, we get back to the freak show aspect of my life, as if it’s too bizarre and I must somehow be dishonest.)

In these pictures, I’m using a blending stump that is taped into a chalk holder. When you use charcoal pencils, most of the work is done with the blending stump, which is paper based, rather than the harshness of the actual pencil. I can’t put paper based things in my mouth or they’ll fall apart, so I found a chalk holder that would contain the blending stump. It protects me from swallowing unwanted things and makes the implement longer so I don’t injure my eyesight as much.

This next piece is one that I’ve never shown in public. I did it last summer as a birthday present for someone very dear to me. I have moved into oil painting and I find it much more to my taste (figuratively) than anything I’ve done besides charcoals. My friend – the one who advised me to write more about my own experiences – was here when I did it and she took the picture as I was getting started. With painting, the best way to do it is to section out the canvas first and fill in each square as you go. It’s a trick to reference photos without tracing that allows you the freedom to change things about a photo’s composition. That’s what I did with this painting – used image references to create something in my style. I tend to paint somewhere in between Realism and Impressionism.

I don’t actually handle painting chemicals. That would be toxic. I have to paint when people are available to help me, which would only be a handful of those who I trust enough to watch me. This particular painting took about 48 hours total to complete, broken up over a few days. It turned out a lot better than I expected given that I’ve never had professional training in oils.

As soon as summer was over, winter brought on a constant barrage of illness for me though. I haven’t been able to paint much. It’s not a good idea to expose yourself to painting chemicals when your respiratory system has been under attack for months. I’m finally starting to get better though and I intend to get back to it. Maybe you’ll see more as time passes.