Road Girl -- My first (self-) publication!

California, 1962. Juni Shimata is nine years old. Marilyn Monroe just died, the Cubans and the Russians are coming. A topsy-turvy world of glamor, hypocrisy, and rules. But the bogies threatening little Juni are much closer to home. Divorce, racial discrimination, abuse. Bright-minded Juni is just becoming aware of life and struggling to fit two and two together. In a series of tableaux, like random reels of old home movies found in the attic, "Road Girl" shows how the pintsized protagonist uses her fantasy to cope with a world that isn't ready to make room for her.

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DID Videos

I've selected a few clips from YouTube and put them on a playlist. I've included an amazing documentary in 4 parts by Ruth Selwyn (more from Ruth here).  

Brilliant DID Specialist Nijenhuis in Denmark

Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis, brilliant co-author of the book The Haunted Self, recently held a workshop at a conference in Denmark. His book was invaluable in helping me understand and get through the initial stages of DID. I met Dr. Nijenhuis in 2012 and asked him why the final treatment phase, 'integration', was only discussed on 17 of the book's 418 pages. He replied to the effect that the next book would cover that. I'm waiting.

To Be or Not ...

Setting up a website and blog today is not so easy. A whole fishnet of social networks needs to be braided into web's back-end. To my dismay, I discover how many 'Vanessa Arayas' exist in the blogosphere, especially in the Facebook galaxy. I have thus switched all the Vanessa accounts to Juni Shimata accounts. Juni is unique. :-)

Becoming

I am currently working on establishing this website. This entry is a test.