the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

Appreciation
Many path makers gave me road signs on the way out from the stroke.
The ones named: Jake Yake, Dr. Martha Sarno, Dr. Katherine Smith z’il, Dr
James Correll z’il, Dr. Yehuda Nir, Robert Bly, Henry Pearson z’il, Leigh
Kimball, Dr. Ruth Chaffee, Deborah Zazlow.
Many many unnamed are as blessed for me in the journey as the named.
Those who could see me when I was invisible and could hear me when I
could say so little.
My first flower drawing teacher is nameless because the stroke wrecked
remembering proper names. She was the pointer to my seeing the unique
in how I see and to sending me to Henry Pearson and thus to my becoming
a painter.
To unpack what happened in the Lakota ceremony, I studied with
David Spangler, modern mystic, for decades, learning and practicing subtle
activism in the Lorian community. Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, z’il, practiced the
mystical publicly. He talked to the Mystery; I could see and feel it around me.
He showed me not only a mystical Judaism but also a Judaism that reaches
outward and embraces all belief, could embrace the Christian Jewish agnostic
me. It was Rabbi Marc Sirinsky who brought all of that into the bare bones of
my life shattering the walls of isolation, love and creativity
Vision makers: Aaron Ortega, Shotokan Sensei . . . . Stephen Victor,
Fields of Grace, constellation work…..also adepts in their paths and deep
lovers of life. Paul Richards’ energy work after the chaos of brain trauma.,
reorganized everything and perhaps extended my life.
Dr. Oliver Sacks’ work was the profound inspiration for my doing this
story as an inner narrative, and maybe for doing it at all.
Rachael Resch and Richard Seidman’s part in this story is dim compared
to the brilliance they are in my life. Rachael is center in the whole of my life
story: her wisdom, her beauty, her creativity with her life, her own prodigious
capacity for endurance. Richard loves my daughter, and what mother doesn’t
love a man for that. He quietly tends the world we live in, profoundly touches