wavesworld

to have and have not

i led a support type group for my co-workers this week.  i brought in the angel cards to help us focus...we each picked a card with a word on it, and shared what it meant to us personally.  next we talked about how the word related to our work...and finally, we shared our thoughts about our coworker's word, and how we related it to them...the words gratitude, commitment, truth, love, understanding, resilience, and adventure were picked...and my word was abundance...which was exactly the feeling i had after the experience...i used to deflect compliments, as many of us  do...but somewhere along the line, through practice, i learned how to accept them...now i can look in the eyes of the person, allow the kindness in, and respond with a either a hand to my heart, a silent smile, or a word of thanks...i'm really touched by the willingness and grace of these co-workers, who happily go along with my unorthodox methods...i know how fortunate i am to have this place to come to... to work alongside such good hearted people...

i've been thinking about money lately - and who isn't...a therapist/teacher once told me that to really know a client, you needed to know their relationship to money and to sex. i'll leave the sex part for another time... back to the money issue...a friend from israel pointed out that an american will tell you their deepest, darkest secrets in a minute, but god forbid you ask them how much money they make or have in the bank. that is a complete taboo... money is tricky... and i'm no mentor in the ways of loot. 

lanie once said i live my life like a trust fund baby...in some ways that's true.  i never learned to save, and i've gambled and wasted an awful lot. i've rarely put off fun for the sake of retirement.  years ago a friend asked me about my retirement savings.  she was concerned.  i admitted to not having any, but told her that i had a sense that i'd find my way when the time came ...well, as it turns out i don't need to worry about retirement...that time won't come, at least not in the traditional way ...when my friend david died 17 years ago he left me a big chunk of money.  i remember feeling a combination of fear and responsibility, along with my excitement when i saw the numbers on the check.  i was so not used to having a lot that i began giving it away...it was too much to handle...i've learned something since then, and think i'd do better now, more planning, more awareness, more saving...i did what i could, for who i was at the time...luckily, those weren't gambling years and i was able to pay off my student loans, buy my first real furniture, and take a vacation or two.  david was so thrilled that he was leaving me money...he got the biggest kick out of knowing that i'd be flush one day because of him...for a gay man who wasn't that much older than me, he was sort of a father figure...that was a long time ago, but i'm grateful that i had the experience of having money for a time.

when we were young, my parents were mostly broke, partly due to gambling, also due to life with 5 kids.  the thing is, when they weren't broke, they were very generous. if anyone told my mother or my father that they really liked something of theirs, it would be offered to them, happily...there was very little attachment to stuff... and that's one of the gifts they gave to me...i've been kind of minimal and not too attached in the stuff department.

i remember my parents talking about people who "cried poor"...they were the ones with savings and houses, who "couldn't afford" to go out, or ever be the one to treat...their cushion was never soft enough...in my experience, people who have less, or live paycheck to paycheck, tend to be the most generous. when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose...i also know wealthy people who are aware and grateful for their good fortune... they give and they share, and you never hear them complain about their personal economy... but those who "cry poor" drive me nuts. they have more than they'll say, even to themselves... they'll share their sense of not having...good news is kept a secret and bad news is amplified...that gets under my skin.

we all have our money issues...and we all hold different levels of trust in the universe being able to provide for us...i know it's scary out there now...i just hope we can pull together and share with those who have less. even in this time, we have far more abundance than most in this world.

the new girl

i really like the therapist that facilitates my cancer group once a month.  i try not to miss that one. when she opened the door tonight she let me know that there was a new member, who was mostly deaf, and had some kind of electronic contraption to help her hear.  my first reaction was annoyance... just having to deal with someone new bugged me, but she was also old, and deaf...i've barely recovered from the recent deaths in our group and then there's a new person to deal with.  when it was my turn to share i let loose as i usually do...all my feelings about treading water, my decision to stay off treatment, and my latest medical issue...high risk for cardiac problems because of high cholesterol...i only half jokingly told them that having a heart attack would be so much easier than cancer...the therapist was astute as usual...she understood why i wanted to take back some control of my body by not taking medications.  next was the new person's turn.  as soon as she began talking she felt familiar to me.  i'll tell you a bit of her story...when she first was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late sixties it was fast growing and she was in terror all the time.  she took what money she had and bought an rv and went traveling. she met a lot of people along the way with cancer, and little by little she made a decision - she would choose joy instead of terror everytime she could.  in her travels she met a man whose wife died of ovarian cancer a few years before.  they fell in love, and she said everything woke up in her...they were really happy together....then she had a second diagnosis - ovarian cancer... he told her that he couldn't continue the relationship... he just couldn't go through losing someone again in the same way he lost his wife.  she was heartbroken and moved in with her son. two days later he came to the house.  he said he didn't want to live without her, no matter what the cost, and he would take care of her for the rest of her life.  as fate would have it, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and it was she who held his hand and stayed by his side until his death on valentines day last year.  a few months later her oncologist told her that she had about a year left to live.  she could either spend it in treatment, with nausea, in hospitals, or she could just spend it other ways.   this is her 8th month since then.  she said that she was tired of yo-yo-ing between hope and fear, and she made a conscious choice to accept her death and spend the rest of her life searching for tranquility about it.  she joined our group,  she signed up for classes she's interested in, and she's reading her favorite books over again...i think i'm gonna like the new girl.

the twilight zone

you know those websites that tell you your "real" age based on questions about your lifestyle, history,etc., well jane and i were on the phone talking about our "real" ages - our cancer ages.  she's younger than me by 7 years, but we've both been dealing with the terminal thing since 2004.  recently she was staying with friends in their sixties, and noticed how comfortable and similar their day to day life was to hers...she realized that her cancer age is around 60, just like her friends.  that got me to thinking about my "real" age.  metastatic cancer is like getting old in fast motion. that's how its been. this all reminded me of a twilight zone episode from long ago.  there was an old couple, very much in love, and there was a machine developed that could make you young again.  it was very expensive, so they took their life savings and paid for the old man to have the transformation.  the plan was that when he had his youth back and was strong and healthy again, he'd go to work to earn enough money for his wife to have the same transformation.  when he came out, he was gorgeous, and fit, and back to what he was when they first met.  they'd go to the beach together, and he'd be doing handstands, and jumping up and down, totally excited with his new body, and she'd sit on the blanket watching and clapping for him... but she'd feel embarrassed - all too aware of people watching while he held her hand or kissed her.  she was so old and he was so young... as time went on, she came to the decision that he should go on with his new life, and she was going to allow old age to finish hers...long story short, he took what money he had and reversed the "operation"...he realized that growing old with the person he loved was far more important than the fountain of youth...and they lived happily ever after...

mitchell is on a week long yoga retreat in mexico.  he looks great these days...in shape, he even lost the little extra weight he had gained  (rather easily, as far as i'm concerned)... he was looking forward to lying on the beach, swimming in the ocean, soaking up the sun...i admit some jealousy...i can't do yoga...i can barely exercise at all, can't seem to lose a darn pound, in fact the scale numbers keep rising...and i'm aging - way to quickly for my liking...if i had a a fountain of youth machine i'd jump at it...no question about that...but would i want mitchell to be like me ...okay there's a teensy drop of the misery and company thing...but the bigger and better part of me is glad and grateful that he's alright...he deserves a real vacation, and a happily ever after.

it was good to talk to jane today.  it is so easy for us to understand each other. so easy to laugh at the incredibly difficult and ridiculous ride we're on.  

alan's boat

my favorite memories of being with my family were the driving trips accompanied by our marathon singing sessions.  we drove to gettysburg, hershey, philadelphia, and the amish country. all the way there and all the way back we sang.  everyone had their specialties, everyone but my middle brother, i don't remember him ever singing...i don't know what he was doing - come to think of it...just listening, i guess... my father was the leader.  he'd put his lucky strike in the ashtray and we'd begin. he taught us call and response songs...he'd sing "by the light" and we'd sing ("not the dark, but the light") "of the silvery moon" ("not the sun but the moon")...or... "down by the old mill stream" ("not the river but the stream") "where i first met you" ("not me, but you")...then he'd serenade my mother "her eyes they shine, her lips are like wine, there's no other girl in the world like that wonderful girl of mine"...they did their regular duet, switching some of some words to "bicycle built for two", which ended with my mothers part "but i'll be damned if i'll be crammed on a bicycle built for two"...my two littlest brothers had their own "band". "maggie may", and "no time left for you" were their hits...neither had any idea what the real words were so they filled the song with non-words, which always cracked us up...and alan and i sang "your just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you"...i have no idea how or why we came to that one, but it was our song, and we sounded good.  sometime into the drive, my father would tell us to be quiet because he had something very important to say....then he'd launch into "my country tis of thee", with his hand in salute... he'd get all teary eyed, and so would i. 

my brother alan...

he's less than two years younger than me and he's the oldest of the four brothers.  i wasn't the nicest sister back then...well hell, i wasn't even in the running for nicest... mean and selfish might be more accurate...at least until i got old enough to feel bad about that.  alan was a dreamer from the start. we'd be riding in the car near the water and he'd point toward the ships and say "that's my boat"...i'd let him know, in loud tones, that it wasn't his boat.  apparently i thought it was my sisterly duty to throw reality at him, and i always let him know how stupid his pretending was...as a little boy, he refused to eat meat, because there was an animal involved...when my mother finally got him to have a piece of chicken, i'd be there to remind him that it was a dead animal. that's the kind of sister i was back then...

alan had lots of hobbies, and collections of things...including his menagerie of turtles, fish, iguanas, little alligators, and birds...and alan had dreams. dreams that he wasn't going to let reality beat down...after we were evicted, he told himself that he would never be without again. he was going to be a success...and that's what happened. he started his own business, and when things didn't work out, he started another one.  he never gave up.  he became one of the best screen printers in the country, self taught and determined.  he's a soft spoken, (quite rare in our family), kind, thoughtful father himself now...and in my mind, the hero of the family... my brother grew up to be a good man.  and somehow he keeps a positive view on all of it, including my cancer diagnosis.  he told me that he has a two year plan for us.  in two years he'll become wealthy, and then take us both on an all expense paid world series of poker vacation...i tell him, alan, its unrealistic, look at the economy, and look at the statistics for my survival... and alan says, " what a great story it'll be for television when we're sitting at the final table"...and that's alan for you...its his 51st birthday tomorrow...happy birthday my brother...and yes alan, that is your boat!

an up date with an update

i couldn't sleep last night - too uncomfortable -  i ended up in the living room with the couch pillows on the floor and the cats snuggled all around me wondering what was going on.  my fears were having a field day - or a field night to be exact.  its always scariest in the middle of the night.  some of the paths i went down - my neck is hurting again - will it fracture...sharp pains down my leg - spinal cord compression?  and the bottom line, the one i wish i could avoid - this non treatment option isn't working...not at all... i wrote the oncologist  this morning figuring that one of these days she'd get back to me, and lo and behold, right before i was leaving for my date with mair, she wrote back. there were a couple of options to contemplate...a new trial with a combo of drugs, or faslodex, the next in the usual line of hormone treatments.   i feel so confused about the next step...do i become a guinea pig, an adventurer, or take the faslodex with all its known side effects.  neither sounds good to me.  i had my blood taken yesterday, so by next week we'll have a better idea from the tumor markers...do i wait and do nothing until then...but what if things get much worse this week?  mitchell's going on a yoga retreat...what if i need him...he'll be in godknowswhere, mexico...usually i get a feeling about what the right move is, but today, there's only questions, no answers....at least not so far.

mair and i met at "greens"  for lunch, right by the theater. she got us tickets to see "tough titty", a play written by a woman who lived and eventually died of breast cancer. after venting my angst and confusion about what to do, we ordered.  mmmmm, as soon as we began eating i started feeling so much better. funny how that happens...here we were on a wednesday afternoon, i was off work, on my way to the theater, with the sun out, eating a delicious meal, with a friend...what could be so bad? staying in the present - so much better. 

i want to say something about mair and her family.  they are a generous lot...their wealth is not measured in gold...its far easier to give when you've got a lot of that.  mair learned about giving and sharing a long time ago... it runs in her family.  and they know about cancer too...they lost elizabeth, their sister, when she was just a young girl...when i first got diagnosed, you wouldn't believe how they all responded.  the first week, sister eileen sent me a thousand dollars - why?  just for me to go out and have a good time...i've never even met her...a few weeks later, mary, the mother of the clan sent me her prayers with a check enclosed...the other sisters sent cd's, poetry, treats, and the most kind thoughts and wishes...they're my best blog readers...a true blessing to know... i came home from this lovely date and in the mail box was a brown envelope addressed to me...i knew it was one of them immediately, cause their envelopes always look like they were addressed in a big rush. this time it was from kathleen.  on the back it said "the boss is at your door", and inside was the latest bruce springsteen cd. that's just how they roll. makes you wish you had sisters...lucky for me that mair brought them into my life. i'm grateful...

by the way, the play was well acted, deep, difficult, and it rang true for me, especially the stuff about her relationship.   when one partner has a long term illness, the other one also gets the raw end of the deal. sometimes i forget that...everytime i see a one-woman show, i want to write and act in my own. its such a big undertaking tho' -  i doubt my ability to complete it...i feel the inspiration, but not the commitment, at least not yet.     

good words to live by

the Cancer/Fear/Mortality had come to reside at the 

center of his person and affected and perhaps directed 

everything else in his life. He said once he realized that, 
he decided to move that weight, that burden, that suffering, 
away from the center. He knew it would not go away, but he 
said sometimes he hefted it on his shoulders, sometimes he 
dragged it along beside him, sometimes he could compact it 

into a very small package he carried. But it was then part 

of his life, a real part, but not the center of his being. 
And once he was able to do that, he could live so much more 
fully, and have a sense of Being that was satisfying and  joyful. 

anonymous from online cancer group

a friend

while driving over the bay bridge this afternoon,  i turned on the radio and "you've got a friend" was playing.  this was our song - mark and i.  i got chills when i heard it because today would've been mark's 53rd birthday.  we were close in high school and stayed close for twenty something years. i used to wish i was mark's girlfriend, but what we had was something else...we were best friends. almost everyday for years on end he'd pick me up in his vw and we'd drive into the woods outside of town.  we'd find a place to park, put on the 8-tracks, smoke a doobie, and sing...we sang for hours before he'd take me home...we'd have tons of "aha" moments, realizing what the song lyrics meant...there was joni mitchell and james taylor (who mark looked and sounded like), cat stevens, and bruce springsteen (who we discovered way before the rest of the world did), oh, and jackson browne, we can't forget him, because his songs were so deep and real. these were the songs of our lives.  mark wasn't the most articulate guy, but he could relate his feelings by way of music. he'd sing a line or two to express himself.  when "you've got a friend" was on, he'd look at me, and i knew...i was his best friend.  shortly after i moved to san francisco, he came to visit, and then he came to live here. when i moved to hawaii for 6 months, he came to stay with me.  we shared our secrets, and helped each other deal with lovers, of which mark had many.  the girls loved him.  and he loved them, lots of them, too many of them. he never liked my swiss boyfriend alex, but when he met mitchell, he said he could see us as an old jewish couple together.  i kept that image in my mind, especially during our break ups.  as the years went on, mark and i spent less time together.  he got involved in more serious drugs, and eventually left san francisco to try and get clean.  we lost contact for a long time, but he found me through email about 8 years ago. he had married his crazy girlfriend from japan, and they had a little daughter. they lived in oregon and he was a tree trimmer and  civil rights activist.  when mitchell and i were in portland a year later, i called him.  his wife told me they had divorced because of his drug addiction...he relapsed shortly after he contacted me the year before...she said he moved to ohio to live near his sister, but had no phone, and no email account... that was the last i heard of mark, until a few months after my diagnosis.  toby wanted to do something wonderful for me, and she began searching for mark.  what she found out was something she didn't want to share with me.  mark had died.  he died of skin cancer. i found out later that he wouldn't do chemo...  his request for the funeral, was to have everyone sing james taylor's "country road"...(i posted a link to it below)...i wonder if mark tried to get in touch with me when he knew he was dying.  i didn't have the same phone number, addresss, or email either... maybe he tried to reach me...i wish i could've been there for him.  it still seems unreal that he is gone...just like the lyrics to another one of our songs... "i always thought that i'd see you one more time again".  i always did...

it was special and comforting to hear "you've got a friend" today - marks birthday.  if we do meet on the other side, there's so much music to share, so many songs we missed while apart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzh7oYhhtjc&feature=related

love and loss and love

i was reading this morning about a grief therapist who works with people who lose their loved ones, including their pets.  something she said hit home for me...that having loved once, you will always have the capacity to deeply love another. i know now that this is true. 

growing up, we had dogs as pets, but no cats. my parents were afraid of them and we caught that fear. about 25 years ago my friend asked me to keep her cat for a week.  by the time she returned i had a big turn around about cats. i was living alone at the time, and i played with the idea of adopting one. i read somewhere that if you don't know how to love, start with a plant, and then move on to an animal, and eventually you will learn to love another human...

right across the street one saturday the spca was doing an adoption drive, and that's where i found poppy - my first poppy.  she lived with me for 14 years.  she was often my only reason to come home. there were times she was the only love and affection i gave or received.  when she died, i grieved for a long time.  i remember months after her death  i was dancing around my apartment, as i used to, and it hit me out of the blue...poppy is gone...it was like a punch in the stomach...the grief was right there, as if it happened yesterday.  in that moment i grieved for all the loss in the world, for all of the parents, and the children and the pet owners, who lost their loved ones...and i thought especially of my uncle, who lost his young son to cancer...if i could feel this for my cat, how can anyone ever recover from the loss of a child...

when people would say "adopt a new cat" i felt like they didn't get it.  there's no replacement... it was poppy, not just any cat...lanie said something that only made sense later...she said that poppy's spirit was an embodiment of all cats, so that adopting another would be honoring her...(or something to that effect)

well, i decided not to.  i had my freedom back, i could travel, mitchell and i were together again, and most of all, i didn't want to go through another loss... one morning, awhile after we moved to berkeley, there was a brown and black cat out front that looked malnourished.  i put out a plate of sardines and the next day, there were two cats...a skinny little black kitten with a runny nose was right alongside the other one.  i didn't really want to get involved, but here they were, what was i supposed to do.  i didn't know anything about ferals, but i googled and found that berkeley was full of them. ferals were a generation of cats that were abandoned by people, left to fend for themselves. they live by going through garbage for food and have an average lifespan of 1 1/2 years.  it wasn't long before i became the crazy cat lady, and i enlisted my neighbor adam into the cause.  we would borrow humane traps, catch the ferals, take them to the vet, have them spayed, and then take on feeding them.  most were sick, and some were euthanized.  ferals are terrified of people, don't meow like other cats, have bad teeth and gums, and a variety of health issues...its almost impossible to help them because they won't let you get close enough to give them medicine, or clean their wounds, etc...mitchell built a little shelter outside our house that winter...the little black one  started to meow a bit when she would look up at me begging for food, and she started getting close enough for me to pet her.  it didn't take long before i began to call her poppy..and that was that. she moved in and she was poppy.  i wasnt trying to make her into my old poppy...its just that the name poppy encompassed the feeling of love to me...poppy adopted me this time...it was as simple as that...six months later, poppy's mother, a very sickly, hard to catch feral, was pregnant again. we waited until six weeks after she had her litter, and then got her to take the bait in the trap. she had feline leukemia and was euthanized too...i had to find a way to save the kittens if any were still alive.  they were born somewhere on the other side of the fence in the backyard, and i kept putting out food, closer and closer to our side of the fence..it took a day or so, but i caught the little ones (who were petrified of me) and brought them to the vet, and then home.  they were smaller than my palm and would only come out at night when we were asleep.  it took a month before "buttons" and "ollie" let me near them. but now, 4 years later, i'm their girl...they think i'm the cat's meow, and they're right...with me they hit the jackpot, rags to riches...even though the boys have their own names, i sometimes call them poppy too...my life is so much richer because of them.  we are a little family.

 

yes, i think it is better to have loved and lost and loved again than to never have loved at all...but i can understand someone taking the other path.   

treading water :( and pavlov's cats :)

last night i was feeling anxious - my body was experiencing all these weird feelings, and my mind started tripping.  the hot spots where the cancer are (is?) are more achy, and i'm just not feeling well. i started narrating this to mitchell, as i usually do, not really thinking there'd be implications. but he got really mad at me, asked me what i expected to happen when i stopped taking medications. i said i thought maybe things would get better. he asked me if i was crazy..."how do you think its gonna get better, you have stage 4 cancer"...and then i got mad at him for being so harsh and judgmental... i couldn't explain myself well, and was getting more and more incoherent as i tried to, so i went back into the bedroom to get in touch with what was going on inside me. disappointment was the feeling that most resonated... you see, underneath it all, i hoped that if i didn't take any drugs, my body would rally on its own and defeat the cancer...okay, unrealistic, i know, but hope springs eternal, and that's what i wanted most of all...with all the drugs and the side effects i forgot what the cancer feels like on its own...it doesn't feel good. my oncologist reminded me that chemo and other treatments are used to fight pain and symptoms, not just for cures and remissions.  

anyway, back to last night, i threw the i ching, dropped a couple of tears, and then settled in to watch the grammys.  mitchell came in a while later and said he was sorry.  he was upset that i wasn't on any medications now, disagreed with my choice, and worried about the cancer progressing.  he said he didn't know exactly why he yelled at me so intensely, but he realized that he has a lot of deep feelings about this, and not always a chance to voice them.  that made sense, its always about me and how i'm feeling...what about him...then we talked about something we both share, the feeling of treading water... tired, not really getting anywhere, only buying time...what do we look forward to...what are we to hope for, when the inevitable is staring us down.  we know intellectually that treading water is about as good as it gets with this kind of cancer, but we're kind of burnt on it...eventually we went to sleep without the answers, woke up and went to work today.

life continues, and we tread.

and as far as waking up goes;  you may know about pavlov's dogs, but what of his cats...that's a horse of a different color...they say a dog sees you as one of the family, and a cat sees you as one of the help. if you have one, or three as we do, then you know...mine have it down...when its time for me to wake up they let me know...they ring the little feng shui bell on my dresser (which i have now put away), or slap the leaves on our bedroom plant over and over, or poppy, the oldest one gets the job done. she softly pets my cheek with her paw...aw,very sweet...unless i don't comply quickly enough, then she digs her nails in, just a little...and a little bit more... until i am up and headed for the food source...i'm so used to it now, and most of the time it cracks me up...they aren't generally known for being the smartest animals in the kingdom...but they sure have me trained.

  

fame...i'm gonna live forever...

i've got a bit of detective in me.  i like figuring people out.  thats why i went into counseling. and before that, i studied astrology, tarot, numerology, palmisty, i ching, you name it...and i've especially been interested in fame.  i want to know what makes people famous, and what makes them tick. besides looks, talent, opportunity, and ambition, what they got that i don't got...25 years ago in a 24th street cafe i met andy kaufman. he came in with his girlfriend, lynne. i waited on them. i didn't really get his schtick, but that didn't matter at all...he was famous, and that was enough for me. i barely noticed lynne at first...i was so starstruck. little did i know that it was lynne who would become my lifelong friend...one thing andy and i had in common was our love of chocolate cake... once after meeting for our daily fix he came over and i threw the i ching for him. my supposed insight completely missing what would be coming very soon in his life...a cancer diagnosis...one he couldn't get away from.   lynne went off with him to the philippines for a cure, and later they rented a house in pacific palisades to live in during his treatments.  before he got sick, andy promised to evaluate my paper on "the psychology of fame".  i attended a very cool college, where some of your credits came from "life experience". if you could show that you had knowledge in something, had read enough books about it, and were evaluated by an expert in the field, you could get credit for it (i love that concept)...i went down to visit them but it didn't look like he'd be able to do the evaluation, he was just too exhausted, and i was too embarrassed to ask again. one night andy went to sleep early, and lynne and i had an andy marathon. that's when i realized how brilliant he really was.  we were hysterically laughing when andy came out of the room...he was really angry. i remember his face and his now skinny body turning red as he yelled.  how could we be having such a great time while he was dying...lynne fought back...she was a devoted caretaker, but she needed something too, and that night she let him know it...(this reminds me of my own anger at mitchell after my diagnosis...i'd take to my bed, assuming our visiting friends would get the message and leave - but they stayed and hung out, and i would be pissed at mitchell for not sending them home - he'd be just as mad at me for resenting him having any fun)...anyway, andy's anger motivated him, and the next day he found the energy to go off on his own. when he returned he apologized to me, really sweetly, and we sat together while he evaluated my "understanding" of fame.  i saved a copy of the evaluation and dug it out of my files today.

it started with andy,  but because of my friendship with lynne, i've had many brushes with the famous, and plenty of fun because of it. i've learned a thing or two about fame and about myself. these words came from an i ching throw not too long ago...it struck a chord. 

"we are almost always unaware that our strange attraction to people of power, wealth, or fame, is due to envy caused by old, hidden doubts about our being able to achieve a full and rich life"  

i don't judge myself too harshly though, just another one of those human foibles.

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"through numerous discussions and conversation, beverly has shown a clear understanding of my experience of the psychology of fame.  not only has she observed what i've gone through, but has added her own insights which have also expanded my coming to terms with my own fame.  she has far exceeded my expectations in her understanding and learning ability"

andy kaufman   march 21, 1984