Elsa and I met in Vicenza, Italy in 1994 at a "Love and Logic" parenting class sponsored by Army Community Service. Her demeanor was warm and friendly with an irreverent sense of humor, and we found ourselves laughing at the same things. She was adjusting to many things - marriage, military life, co-parenting and American culture. Coming from Portugal, Italian culture was an easy fit. She had given up a career in psychiatric nursing to marry a US military officer and followed him to Vicenza. She missed her friends and colleagues, and as many military wives do, having control over her life. This new life seemed overly structured and she needed a friend with a divergent personality.
     I was grateful to be her friend. We moved often in those years. Vicenza was my fifth move (and seventh house) in five years. I was starting to tire of never being settled and starting all over every year. I fell into a dark depression and wonderful Elsa was a bright spot in my life. I felt guilty for having such a hard time and didn't feel entitled to register any complaint or be unhappy. There is enormous pressure on military spouses to fill a support role and maintain a façade of cheer and competence at all times. I bought into that and into the traditional marriage model – thinking that I should be able to meet ALL of my family’s needs without anyone knowing what my needs were. Least of all me!
     There is little I value more than a relationship that does not require facades. Elsa and I could be honest with each other about anything. Not just the challenges in our lives, but humorous and deeply meaningful experiences. She didn’t judge my depression. Her attitude was compassionate and empathetic. She felt that the regimented and subjugated roles we played were abnormal, and my reaction was simply human.
     We were in Vicenza less than a year before moving to Germany. Another house to settle, another school to enroll the kids in, another place filled with strangers. By this time, I was in full existential crisis mode. The “head of my household” had proclaimed counseling to be an unnecessary expense, so I educated myself on depression with books from the library.
     Numerous resources suggested that meditation was a good way to get the negative thought loop under control. In my experimentation with meditation techniques, I became aware of the observer. That revelation was the beginning of my realization that I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know why humanity existed, or the earth, or anything! It didn’t make sense that all this would exist simply for us to go through our lives chasing goals and striving to acquire more things. I wanted to know the “why” of it all, the purpose, the origins of how we came to be.
      I read all kinds books in those days, trying to get through my list of questions. During Elsa’s illness, I spent lots of time trying to understand the mind/body connection and the emotional roots of disease. Elsa had a more traditional way of processing. She was Catholic and trained in Western medicine. Her faith lay in external sources – God, Jesus, doctors and drug therapies.
     Everyone facing a crisis must choose a path they can truly put their faith in. Elsa made a choice and I supported her. I also made a choice to try something I could put my whole-hearted faith into. Meditation.

     The Yellow Dot story begins with getting the call from Elsa. We had met while we were both living in Italy. Both of our military husbands had been reassigned to Germany within a few months of each other. Elsa's family moved to Stuttgart and we went to Hockenheim, near Heidelberg. The hour-and-fifteen-minute journey was doable on occasion, but we talked often on the phone.
     I was getting work ready for my annual show in Italy and could hear the stress in her voice as she asked how the trip had gone. Then she tried to hang up when she heard that I was leaving in a few days. She knew she couldn't continue the conversation without spilling the terrible news. Always the caretaker, Elsa didn't want to spoil my trip.
     I couldn’t let her go without knowing the source of the stress. She had inflammatory breast cancer. I knew she had been to the doctor several times trying to resolve a lesion on her breast. The mammography didn’t indicate a tumor, so she was sent to dermatology…. and so on.  She finally gave up on the military medical system and went to a German specialist, who recognized what she had right away. The very next day, she was scheduled for a radical mastectomy!
     She was calling me post-surgery, and was already starting on chemo and radiation therapies. The news was like a punch in the stomach. I could hardly breathe when the call ended. There was absolute terror in her voice. She was a nurse, after all, and knew what lay ahead. I haven't followed the current prognosis of this disease, but twenty years ago, it was pretty much a death sentence.
     Inflammatory breast cancer is hard to diagnose, because breast cancer screenings are designed to detect tumors. This type of cancer doesn’t produce tumors. By the time patients get the correct diagnosis, it has often metastasized. To make matters worse, IBC is unusually aggressive.  
     Elsa was thirty-six and had an eight-year-old daughter. She was willing to try anything. At the time, I was learning about the mind-body connection from authors like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil. I had read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, and was coming around to the idea of emotional roots and physical illness. Elsa was firmly rooted in traditional Western medicine. She put her faith in the cancer specialists and any treatment they had to offer.
     This meant moving to Virginia, so that she could be treated at Walter Reed AMC. She also hoped to be accepted for trials at the Cancer Institute. That part didn’t pan out because the Cancer Institute’s programs were in high demand and they had a lottery system. Elsa didn't win that lottery.

Launch day for my Yellow Dot Kickstarter!
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I've been working on this project for two years. This is the third time I have attempted to capture the images. It wasn't possible for me to make an accurate representation of what I saw and experienced, so I settled on a stylized version. My hope is that the text and artwork, together, will convey the mystical nature of the story to the reader.

​Another concern I had with the publishing of this story, is the fear of readers thinking that I was trivializing my friend's death and suffering. If I could have my way, Elsa would still be here. Alas, I didn't get to choose that story line. I have reconciled her passing and eased my anxiety over her suffering, but I will always wish the whole cancer thing had never happened. 

​My plan for this blog is to post each of the 16 images for the book and give you a little extra insight into the meaning of each. I have chosen a square format for the book, so I am limited to eight and a half  inches for the text. I wanted the layout to have one page of text for each image. I know, I have created my own box...

​This is my first time writing a blog, and it would be great to get some feedback. I would love to hear stories from other people that relate to this topic.