khf
  
It was an astonishing, unexpected breakthrough. A blazing explosion through the blockade guarding the inferno of trauma. A ZONK! they call it, as I would later learn. Sexual abuse trauma is more penetrating, more psychologically damaging than you can possibly imagine. Or can be accurately expressed, so vast is the internalized brutality of the victim’s sexual body, mind and spirit.
 
We’d been meeting periodically for over a year in the spirit of growth and evolution. The most receptive client we’d ever had…fearless in exploration. But never did I expect this thrust into the light. I manage my expectations. I’m the presenter. The organizer of impressions. The medium. Skilled and knowledgeable, yes, or I wouldn’t be following this path. But I am a messenger. Not the creator of the message. Nor am I a predictor of outcomes. I’m a facilitator of the process.
 
* * *
 
Meditation ushers in yesterday. Instantly. As if it is today…time and space collapse into now. Immediately, at the second of the ZONK!—the breakthrough--they, the unseen, are here. There is no weeping or calling for intervention. No lag time. No challenge of distance. No drag through turbulence. They—unseen protectors—are present. A gathering of protecting guides arrive at the exact second of agony. At the moment of brokenness that feels utterly unrepairable, a fronting line of radiant silver entities appear like a great breath of life-giving oxygen.
 
High level spirit guides. Celestial. Divine. But profoundly connected to the shores of the physical earth. In attendance for the exact moment that the defense shatters. And the barricade fails. And the sexually brutalized child—condemned to the darkness so very long ago—rushes into the waiting light. Into safety. Bathed in spa energy. In healing, cleansing spiritual waters. Embraced with benevolence. Wrapped in comfort. Enfolded in the radiance of truth. Surrounded by the powerful mothering energy of soft and soothing colors…taupe and creamy white.
 
A stout, burdened entity approaches. Her clothes are drab and dowdy as the leaden energy she drags with her. The protectors quickly shoo her away. They will not permit the dense, muddy phobia of fear to intrude on this sacred event.
 
The hues are otherworldly, described perhaps only by way of babies’ dreams. I don’t know. But ethereal colors unfold in whispers of undulating waves. Burnished rose. Buttery green. Spirit entities swathed in diaphanous pink multiply into countless numbers of young ballet dancers—children dancing with pure and perfect joy—with sheer exhilaration. Forming an infinite, expansive, soaring mountainous pattern of feathery magnificence.
 
Leading this chorus of poetic blush and movement is a little Black girl, maybe ten years old. Upswept hair laced with creamy pearls. The most joyful child. The most exhilarated child: The Prima Ballerina. Once so brutalized. Once so broken. Now healed. Bathed in magnificent golden light. Now leading the way.
 
I realize I have been invited to witness a ceremonial celebration of liberation. Of illumination. It is not lost on me that I am surrounded by children. Young flowers once lost to the darkness of sexual abuse. Once barricaded inside trauma. Children once living inside traumatized adults, now free.
 
As I have been invited to celebrate, I, in turn, invite you to celebrate. And to know that you are not alone.
 
Namaste. khf  

Paranormal Voices?
khf
  
Grandma Foley read tea leaves. Told fortunes. Predicted futures. And the parish priest had something to say about that—no chance in hell would any kitchen-table psychic be permitted to darken the minds of the faithful while he was in charge. More recently my brother was possessed by an evil spirit. This according to a California psychic who knows about such things. The source of the malevolent spirit? An antique, of course. Right in his house. A doll, to be specific. And that hellspawn was the cause all his physical pain.
 
Cue the eye roll. Summon the inner skeptic. Really? Aren’t we talking about the uneducated? The gullible? About pagan ignorance? Delusions created by the great unwashed? Superstitions passed down through generations, peasant to peasant? Or are we? What if our assumption of peasant ignorance is in actuality our own lack of knowledge? The buffoonery of the brain refusing to venture into strange borderlands? Borderlands consisting of illuminated pathways of which we have no understanding?
 
In a world of grave instability, Grandma Foley peered into the vestiges of Earl Grey at the bottom of a teacup. A seer in extraordinary times—Wars. Depression. Serious rationing. Her efforts became a running Foley family joke. Dismissed as endearing, as laughable. But what if she was a true medium, a channel of soul light, offering tender care to those who found her kitchen table? What if she was a true gift in dark times to women saddled with more kids than they could possibly cope with? And burdened with husbands drowning in alcohol. Women cursed with intelligence, relegated to peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors.
 
What if the remnants of Earl Grey were not a mere distraction, but authentic communication from the illuminated borderland? Sacred light that could lead them back into their own light, into their own power. Allow them to see beyond their present circumstances. What if Grandma’s purpose was to affirm the beauty and goodness in the person sitting across from her? What if the message of the seer brought radiance, if only for a little while?
 
You would never know it from his constant smile, but my brother was very troubled. Hogtied by traumas never spoken of—traumas I witnessed being inflicted upon him when we were children. So…what if the California psychic was not a fraud, but a spiritual guide charged with making the first crack in the fierce armor surrounding the trauma lodged inside my brother’s heart? What if the malevolent doll was actually a safe, protective symbol of his child self—an outside entity that he could approach, study, and control with psychic rituals until he was ready to confront the real demon living inside him: an evil that had nothing to do with a spooky toy. And had everything to do with trauma buried since childhood.
 
If we can come to understand—then embrace—that paranormal voices are really the normal voices of the natural world of which we all inhabit. The natural world, the unseen world, seeks balance with powerful force. That volcanic force does not recoil from our resistance. It pushes and pushes toward light, toward resolution. It is healing in motion. It is love in its most potent form: rugged, enduring, tenacious, nurturing, supportive, instructive.
 
We are all here on this physical plane for a profound purpose. That purpose is difficult enough to accomplish under the best of circumstances. It is impossible to achieve if you are possessed by an evil spirit that is really your own dark shadow.
 
When we can see the light and purpose in ourselves, we can begin to see the light and purpose in others. Even in a grandmother sitting at her kitchen table in Brooklyn divining messages from wet tea leaves. And even in a psychic with a seemingly dubious message that just so happens to have the power to sneak light in through the back door of a broken heart.   

Stolen Child
 
Early on Stolen Child was findable—the abductor was no genius, no more than a lackey—but that was before the airbus. Before being wrenched away from the neighborhood and plunged into a dreamscape: a whirlwind of strange faces, hazy dulcet echoes, and the low drumbeat of threat.
 
Before clockwork took hold and the cold-blooded began the countdown until wings could spirit her westward into the land of pinion pines and red rock canyons. Where adobes dot the landscape. And the sun bakes the air to dust. Into the southwest. Into the badlands. Where a ranch—a camp of sorts—waits for girls like her. Children cursed by innocence. Children snared in a baited trap.

 Big Mouth Genius—that’s how they mock the abductor. He is a loud mouth. And woefully deficient in the brain department. But he’s not stupid. He’s a Christian. Proud to be forgiven and saved. Obsessive about serving Jesus. Sweeping floors and cleaning toilets in the church—the cleansing work of penance. So when they told him that the little girl needed protection, saving, he didn’t ask questions. He just sprung into action. He sweet talked her. Drugged her. And lured her away.

 The search was too tight. Too restrictive. A mouse in a haystack. That’s what the cops said they were looking for: a mouse in a haystack. But they were looking in the wrong direction. And eventually fate took its ugly turn.

  I am with Stolen Child, standing directly behind her—a medium, a scribe—peering intently through her eyes. Alert to her senses. Feeling for her impressions. Observing what she observed. Determined to fashion order and clarity out of the drugged vision of a helpless child. Capturing the afterimages. Electrical discharges—X-rays of shapes, sounds, sights—locked like movie stills suspended in time. Ghost flames scorched on hardwood. Fingerprints superimposed onto the breeze. Readable as a map. Detectable as a heartbeat. Knowable as the velocity of yesterday’s wind.

  Car tires crunch across gravel—a toneless chewing and grinding that batters the earth. She is staring at a low-to-the-ground walkup. Two floors of windows and cement. Four apartments? Six? A convenience store sits close by. Close enough to walk to. Pollo. That what she imagines. Eating pollo. Comfort food.

 Then she thinks about the cow. Driving past it in a slow-motion trick of the brain. How she stared at it from afar. From somewhere beyond herself. In a groggy fog. But sure it was not a real cow. Instead, a make-believe cow. A landmark on the roadway? A South Jersey oddity?
 
 It’s early morning, so early the sun is just beginning its rise through the mist. Behind the marsh grass that borders the swamp water with short, spiky green stalks. Not very far away a double row of thick pilings stand plunged into the muck. The once supported pier, long since rotted. An old man fishes off a nearby dock that wades deep into the mud and stands as a rickety hint to an abandoned fishery somewhere in the vicinity.
 
It’s death quiet. This place is all nature. Except for the shacks. And the wooden boats worn down to skeletal hulls. And the recycling business that can’t be too far away because of the undercurrent of clanking bouncing across the silence.
 
Atlantic City Airport, I’m sure of it. I’ve never been here before, but I am “here” now even though I am at least sixty miles away deep in meditation in the quiet dark before dawn. I am looking at Stolen Child. She’s is no more than five diagonal feet from me standing in line for Spirit Airlines. Beside her is a man reeking of pimp and money so dirty it should stink of sewage. They’ve dressed her up a in a long, bright red wig and a silly floppy hat that obscures her face. They flatter her by calling her Ariel, the Disney princess. Stolen Child thinks it’s a fun game of pretend.
 
Lots of little girls are dancing in sparkly costumes. Sequins and fringe. Recital costumes. Small legs silhouetted in fishnet. Dancing and twirling. Dancing and twirling to catcalls. Performing. Like they’re in a tawdry beauty pageant. Mini show girls. Sexy toy girls. Little girls in brassy makeup. Ruby lips. Smoky kohl cat eyes. Flaming scarlet cheeks. Dancing and twirling. For the men who watch and whistle. Little girls who think they are playing dress-up. They’re not.
 
 So, here we are at the moment where the story and timeline become fractured into elemental fragments, jagged edges of disjointed intelligence—information that veers backward and forward in time, defying organization and structure. Challenging the process of comprehension.
 
The moment that calls for those who understand that what is recorded by time remains in time…eternally. No different than a forgotten memory triggered by a stimulus. Making that memory accessible to decoding and comprehension.
 
The moment that calls for those who understand that these elemental fragments/images/visions are animated by the very same life force that propels you through your day. That receiving these visions is not the mystery. The mystery lies in the messages within the visions. And working out those messages requires a willingness to expand your intelligence.
 
The moment that calls for the efforts of an evolved, dedicated team--a village—to weave together and connect all the scattered pieces until they merge into a whole, as alive as a bouquet of flowers. Combined with the guiding perseverance of a skilled, emotionally intelligent investigator with a holistic approach on which success in a seemingly unsolvable mystery is dependent.
 
Elemental Fragments
 
Abductor knew of the child’s mother.
 
Abductor has something obvious “wrong” with one of his hands. A significant scar?
 
There are local people who know, but who are not speaking.
 
There is a connection between the names Santos—Sanchez.

“Tonto” (name/term) comes across as important.

A powerful dog energy surrounds Stolen Child, comforting and watching over her. It is unclear if this dog is on the physical plane, in the child’s memory, or is on the Spirit plane.
 
Underground network. Elaborate scheme.

Subterranean activity.

A tight union of men.

Criminal boss comes across as tall, 6 ft. or so. Ponytail. Graying black hair. Bit of a gut.

A man connected to this elaborate scheme services a local community in a very large truck. Possibly a trash truck. This community appears wealthy.

A “soft woman” (on the ranch) appears to be a caretaker of sorts. The men ignore her. She is not part of the power structure. She knows what is going on, but does not speak.
 
Distant craggy mountains. Cactus. Grande. Ranch. Horses. Long Horn Cattle. Cowboy hats.

​Gauchos. Black Crows.

Fox Meadow.

New Mexico/Texas energy.

Spanish spoken.
 
Understanding energy is to accept that energy, like scent, is around us always, wherever we venture. Even though we cannot see it with our eyes and many times cannot smell it, scent is a constant. When we permit ourselves to become aware of that which exists beyond our physical vision, we can access what we’ve wrongly judged to be imaginary and mistakenly condemn as the fantasies of the deluded. However, by aligning ourselves fully with all of our natural capabilities and senses, we both consciously and inevitably expand our intelligence and become capable of capturing vital information.
 
Yet, just because energetic information remains forever available to us does not mean that what we perceive with activated awareness always makes sense. It does not. It truly could take years—a lifetime, possibly many—before all the scrambled pieces and ghosts of outlier players line up and reveal what has been hidden in plain sight all along. In other words, all the stars must align, as eventually they must.
  
12/21 
 ** This energetic information was received in 2019 and has not been updated.
​

Angelina
 
Angelina was murdered, strangled to death. At the edge of a farmer’s field. In the mud--the last vestiges of an unseasonable thaw. As the fronds of parchment grasses rasped in the bitter wind. And a pair of rusted cultivators—stalwart sentinels--sat abandoned in the middle of plowed ruts frozen into dirt waves. Their shadows an eerie sight in the moon shine. It was an ugly place to die.

SHE HAD NOT, as they claimed, wandered off from the facility in a haze of depression and prescription drugs searching for a place to kill her sixty-something self. No. Not wandered away…lumbered away. Purposefully. Clomped away. Deliberately. Left. With purpose. Determined as a camel plodding through sand seeking an oasis to quench its thirst. An elegant red and golden shawl, hand embroidered, graceing its hump like hope and a promise.

Often, she fantasized about jumping on a plane. Hopping on a bus. Travelling to a city. Philly. Where she’d soak up the excitement and inhale the action. Where she would not have to endure the slog of hours organized into childish pastimes by bored attendants. She craved the outline of tall buildings stenciled onto a clear sky. She needed to be around normal people. Not caretakers. Not people too broken to function in the outside world. She needed to hear live music. She needed to dance. She needed to be free…of medical procedures…of psychological interventions. She needed to be free of them. She was not suicidal, as they assumed. The exact opposite…she wanted to live. So, she walked away. Miles away.

The bar was a dive, somewhere between honkytonk and hoedown. But the music was wonderful, and the stool felt rock solid. Sturdy enough to support her old bones while the whiskey buzzed through her veins. The whiskey…the whiskey. Golden amber. More potent than she remembered. Pulling a soothing fog over her brain. Awakening something long buried. Something sensual. And free.

“Let me roll out the red carpet,” the cowboy said. John? Johnathon? She didn’t quite catch his name. “It’s Moron,” someone shouted from across the room.

She liked his look. Hat, all brim, pulled low over dark hair that curled around his ears. Starched white shirt. Normally, the short sleeves would’ve bothered her. She liked him even with his pot belly and the buttons gapping just above his belt.

He was a working man--a farm hand. Proud to be a man who knew his away around tools. And livestock. Horses. He could fix fences and bale hay. And change a tire on a tractor faster than any grease monkey with a pneumatic lug wrench: reeep reeep. He even let her peek at his tattoo—a cowboy gripping the reins on a bucking bronco—inked across his left shoulder blade and riding roughshod down his back.

He was a lot younger than she was, somewhere in his early fifties, she thought. She was flattered. It had been a very, very long time since a gentleman had flirted with her.

But he was no gentleman. And fear locked her inside its tomb when he jerked her into a bear hug on the dance floor and complained about her wanting to “take it too slow.”

In an explosion of panic, she broke free. And fled. Out the door. Into the night. Where the pine tree couldn’t conceal her. Where the farm hand chased her, crunching across gravel and stone. And crackling patches of ice. She scurried like a terrified rabbit and stumbled into a truck boneyard where a fleet of corroded moving vans teased her with the promise of escape. Collapsing to her knees, she belly-skidded, clawing and scratching at the earth until she disappeared beneath a hulking mammoth.

Yet he caught her. Yanked her by the ankles. Punched her in the face, snarling, “So you won’t talk.” He pushed her. Dragged her. Shoved her into the weeds at the edge of the farmer’s field. Where he squeezed her neck until bones broke, mumbling his mantra, “So you won’t talk. So you won’t talk.” And sexed her. Raped her until her flesh tore and wept blood.

In a convulsing burst of magnified perception—with a fury worthy of hell itself— Angelina hurled herself out of her mangled body. Seething with rage, she watched the red and golden threads of hope and promise violently unravel. And in that moment of utter anguish, permanently united her rage with the murderer’s brutality. And forever strapped that matted, hairy tumor of hate onto her back. Where it grew…
 
Initiated by a vague nod from law enforcement, I began connecting with Angelina a year after she vanished. Over seven years ago now. The police were never really interested in the information I received from her. I understand. The paranormal world carries the baggage of cultural prejudice, and many of its practitioners are unreliable. At its most elevated, mediumship is an organizing principle—a channel for the emergence of light and truth. At its lowest, deceitful and predatory. However, impenetrable skepticism paralyzes the flow of vital information.

Eventually Phil and I contacted a missing person’s website and forwarded all we had available. Coincidentally, Angelina’s remains were recovered soon after. Reportedly, an empty bottle of prescription medication nearby. That claim effectively branded Angelina as a victim of suicide.

Angelina’s story is homicide. Not suicide.
 
Though I think of Angelina often and she is always in my heart, it had been five years since I had last connected with her energetically. Now I wanted to know if there was anything else she needed to add to her story. There was… I expected more wrath.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021. She is bathed in peace so profound, her aura warms my skin—a radiation of the infinite. A serenity unattainable by anyone without the benefit of a mountaintop and wings. And in the space between breath and heartbeat, through a nimbus that surrounds the flame of candlelight, Angelina tells me that she has abolished her anger. She has walked away from the rage that disfigured her for so long. She knows and accepts that the murderer will never be brought to justice. The consequences of his actions are no longer important to her. It is her work that defines her now.
​
The work of a butterfly, light dancing on its wings. She is a white light waiting at the cusp of “the expansion” where she welcomes and embraces those who have passed the initial stage of their transition. She is, she tells me, at profound peace.
Butterfly.             

MEN & THEIR FATHERS
 
Untangling the Knots
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am not going to give that guy a message from his dead father, I whispered to Phil.  But that old familiar sensation of density and pressure, of walking through glue when a spirit energy is close and wants to connect was increasing.  I’m not going to do it, I insisted.  I have my rules and boundaries.  An opportunity must present itself and must be very obvious.  I never search—I only respond.  Those are my parameters and I stick to them.  
 
Bringing up a deceased loved one to a stranger is always risky.  Not everyone is okay with the concept of communing with the departed, and I wasn’t up for the stink eye and banishment from the premises with silence and a long, cold stare.  Plus the guy—tall and lanky, well north of fifty if I had to guess—looked way too reserved, far too intellectual with his nose buried in a book as we browsed, apparently unnoticed, in his antique shop. 
 
So, I ignored him and his dead relative, kept my eyes on the treasures, and soon escaped to another room.  Just another undeliverable message…  On the bright side, I’d spared myself all possibilities of the stink-eye curse.  Then the guy poked his head in…friendly, chatty, artistic, kind…  Still I resisted.  Until the opportunities began appearing quicker than I could shut them down.  The man’s dad was persistent.  He needed to talk to his son.  Sorrow and promise weighted the air.     
 
A bruised boy becomes a bruised man.  But when a boy is bruised by his father—the most significant, most influential male in his young life—he is more than bruised, he is deserted.  Stranded alone on the pothole-strewn path to manhood.  Shut down by his principal mentor.  Left to his own undeveloped devices to get where he does not know he is going.  And the bruising within keeps widening, tunneling, quietly becoming entangled with love and anger, guilt and responsibility.  Along with the historical demands that pit personal growth and emotional survival against duty, expectations, and obedience to an unworkable image in an unmanageable dynamic. 
 
So it is that the beautiful boy even as a beautiful man may not identify this bruising—this emotional damage—caused by his father as trauma, but trauma it is.  And the knots of that trauma keep tightening.
 
And so, on that day, in those very humble surroundings of small trinkets and minor valuables, a father in spirit worked against all odds—including a reticent medium—to reach across dimensional planes to attempt to heal the heart of his son.  The son said “yes.”  The time was right.  The energies aligned in harmony.  So, I delivered the message:
 
Your dad knows.  He gets it.  He really gets it.  He wants you to get it, all of it.  He is profoundly sorry about it.  He will not burden you by asking for forgiveness.  He only wants you to know that he now understands.  And he totally supports and encourages you to go all the way to the bottom of it and express every single thing about the pain he caused you.  He does not want to be an obstacle to your growth in any way.  Say it all.  (Even the things you think you’re not supposed to say or think.)  This is the path to your healing.  And, yes, now he is in a very good place because he finally understands what he has done. 
 
I don’t know what the “it” is that the father was referring to.  It is not my business to know.  What is certain is that the love this father expressed for his son is unconditional.  And that kind of love—born from the deepest depths of profound understanding and self-evolution—has the power to transform. 
 
Healing is a long, slow journey of twists and turns.  But whenever the son decides to go down its path, his dad will be present, guiding him to the source of trauma hidden within the bruises of betrayal and disappointment.  The older soul will be embracing the younger soul’s tender heart with unconditional love and complete support as together they explore the tangles and knots of secrets and consequences in his boy’s search for clarity.  The old man will ensure his son’s safety on a path that often feels so frightening, lighting the way forward for his beautiful boy: forward into freedom.
 
In case you’re wondering, this message is not at all unique.  Though I go through my little hissy-fits of anxiety when I’m presented with an opportunity to deliver a message, it always comes through the prism of profound, unconditional, evolved love.  It does not matter whether the communication comes from a late relative, a departed childhood friend, a long-ago, mostly forgotten, deceased acquaintance, or the gentle light of an unknown, invisible guide.  It does not matter whether the message is given directly, overheard in a crowded room, carried by the wind to a listening ear, or stumbled upon by a reader. 
 
If the message resonates, it is for you.  And be assured that there is a loving, evolved spirit who is—and has been—reaching out to you.  
 
It’s a beautiful thing.
 
 
Namaste             
​

 In-Vision Communiqué
 
In mysterious ways that I don’t completely understand but have gradually come to accept, I connect with highly empathically advanced spirit energies desiring to communicate messages.  These evolved energies seek to deepen and advance our conscious understanding and soul development.
 
Spirit energies communicate in their own interpretative language which is received through the senses, read by intuition, and illuminated by the heart.  It is the receiver who determines the personal message.  Please be mindful that intuition is meant to lead the intellect, as intellect is a disruptive force to intuition.
 
Week of December 10, 2018
 
THE DARK PATH OF PROFOUND TRAUMA
 
Vision:  I vividly observed a path of gray, packed-down dirt winding through a woodland thicket.  Darkness.  Dense trees and thick vegetation rose up the hills on either side of the path.  The path was very long.  All was dark. Then arrived an herb and vegetable garden, overgrown and tangled, full of brambles and brush.  Then the appearance of a city with a large, concrete type building that at first looked like a bank, a mercenary institution which then converted into an ancient gothic cathedral with tall spires.
 
A man emerged in priestly garb wearing a flat brimmed hat.  I realized he was a monsignor, a prominent authority in the Catholic Church.  His energy was very negative.  In front of him was a child, a little girl about nine, with long hair down her back wearing her Sunday-best winter coat.  The little girl was awestruck at the surroundings, looking up and all around.  I watched as she became physically entangled with the monsignor.
 
A long procession of priests appeared and I heard, “There was a mistake made,” wherein the priests were unmasked and shown to be thugs and mobsters.  The overwhelming sense was a mess of entanglement.
 
I then saw a river, clean and calm with some light around it and heard, “It takes a long time.”
 
This vision symbolizes the extreme complexity and struggle to overcome the tangled chaos, confusion and emotional pain of unresolved trauma and the lengthy, difficult path to wholeness.
 
It highlights the genesis of the trauma as corporate, institutional, and authoritarian, perpetuated against innocence and obedience.
 
It offers the assurance of light when the path is allowed to follow its natural course.
                                                                     * * *
 
 “ILLUMINATION THROUGH LOVE”
 
Vision:  A path winds through city and suburb.  There is a group:  parents leading several children, a dog tags along.  There is joy.  The group enters into a building, it looks like a church.  The group is united together.
 
I saw then a luminous glow of purple and heard, “Illumination by love.”
 
This vision symbolizes the familial and community (as implied by the symbol of church) necessity to protect the innocent and defend, shelter and support those traumatized by despicable individuals, institutions and events, past and present.  While illuminating trauma victims through understanding, loving perspectives, and supporting and encouraging personal empowerment.
                                                                         * * *
 
ENTRUSTED WITH A VISION:
 
WHAT AWAITS
  
Several years ago as I was writing BREAKING THROUGH SILENCE, A No-Nonsense Love Letter To Women, I was entrusted with a vision that at the time I did not recognize as such, even though I felt compelled to include it in the manuscript.
 
If visions count for anything, I saw empty white veils in silhouettes of women strewn out on strange sands before me–graceful, diaphanous husks fused to the shore, billowing in the flurry of each passing breeze.  Behind them, sudden dazzling daylight and colors so brilliant that I had to blink for the intensity.  And a maze of shapes I’d never noticed before.  The sheer simplicity and dizzying complexity of vision, of all that stretched beyond the ghost women and the black-dress barricade, was as astonishing as smog lifting and unveiling the ocean.
 
Hidden by fog, the ocean is only thunder and roar, ominous and deadly, waiting to drown me should I dare tempt its depths.  But once it was illuminated, I saw its dance and sway; sunlight diamonds twinkling over its sky-blue water blushed with jade; waves frothing, pounding to climax against sand, shells, sea glass; receding in shivering ripples and contented gurgles; the sun shimmying across its horizon.  Beyond the black barricade of lies sat a bright, active world I never knew existed.  (Excerpt: Breaking Through Silence)
 
This vision symbolizes what lies beyond the comprehension of a victim suffering profound trauma and who remains (however overtly or subtly) trapped in its tentacles of dark lies and cunning deceit.  Beyond the dark exists incredible light and immeasurable possibilities.  Personal effort reaps indescribable rewards.
 Namaste