The Wondering Heart

Dear Michaela ... Happy Birthday!

2012-01-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

It's not quite the 24th yet here yet, but I don't know where you might be, Michaela, and in some places it is, or will be soon. I wouldn't want you to wake up anywhere and say, "It's my birthday! I wonder if my mom remembers," and sign onto this blog and not find anything. So I'm home today, alone, and I am sending you my birthday wishes early.

I have a card for you. I've actually had it for over a month. When I was shopping for a birthday card for your younger sister at the beginning of December, I saw this one, and I burst into tears when I read it. So I bought it for you....

When you were born, we lived off Santa Clara Street in Hayward. I have been coming home from work that way for a couple of weeks now, trying to avoid the traffic on the main roads. I am always filled with the memory of driving down that street when we brought you home from the hospital. My head always turns at the street where we turned off for home. At the stop light, I glance around at the palm tree in the front yard, which was little at that time and now towers high in the sky. I remember the promise of that time, and my throat fills with tears at the way it was broken.

I don't know what I will do for your birthday tomorrow. Over the years I have handled it in so many ways. The first birthday after you were kidnapped a local church had a concert in your honor, and close to a thousand people attended, and they had a cake and asked me to blow out the candles. For some of the middle years I had friends, most of whom I had come to know because of you, come to my house, and we would sit in a circle and celebrate the fact of you and what an extraordinarily wonderful and special person you are. In recent years I have kept your birthday a personal and private day. Honestly, I am always torn between wanting to keep your name and face out in the public, wanting to keep you alive by keeping your memory alive in people's minds and hearts, and wanting to withdraw into the privacy of my heartbreak, and yours. On the anniversary of your kidnapping I have been having a public remembrances, but for your birthday, it's just you and me in my heart. Some years, I'd get cakes, but I remember a few years ago I went to the store and looked at all the cakes, and the thought of having something sweet for your birthday while you were missing just filled me with sorrow. But yesterday when Johnna asked me what I was going to do for your birthday, for some reason I burst out with, "I think I'm going to buy a cake and eat the whole thing." I'm not going to do that, of course, but I suppose this is all symbolic of the emotional roller coaster I have spend the last 23 years on. There have been times when my feelings have gripped me so tightly, have been so raw, that I could not eat. But you know me -- eating is one of the things I have always done to numb myself so that I don't have to feel all those feelings.

But I guess there is only one thing that is important, and that is that it is your birthday. It is the anniversary of the day you were born, the day I first met you. I remember that day so clearly, after five years of infertility and two days of labor, the miracle of your actual arrival, holding you in my arms. I remember I woke up early the next morning, so excited as I remembered that you were here! I scooped you out of your basinette next to my bed and woke you. I carried you to the window where the sun was streaming in, and I said, "Look, baby, your first morning!"

You changed me, Michaela, changed my very identity. When you were born, you changed me from "Sharon" to "mommy." When you were taken away, you changed me again. And one day, I will find you, and I know I will be changed once more. I have been asked, since you have been gone, whether or not I would have chosen to have you, if I had known what was going to happen. For your sake, Michaela, I might say no, in order to spare you the suffering you have had to experience. But for myself, however much pain and grief I may have experienced in losing you, it cannot eclipse the pure joy of having you, or being your mom, of watching you grow and seeing what a beautiful, talented, magical and special little girl you grew to be. I love you, Michaela, purely and completely, totally and forever.

And I have decided, I am going to get a cake for you ... just in case you should decide to come home tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, sweetheart.

I love you,
mom

Dear Michaela ... a message from Megan

2012-01-08T18:36:00.001-08:00

Michaela, this is a beautiful message that was sent to me to give to you.
Love you,
mom

Hello Michaela,
My name is Megan! Although we have never met I feel as though I know you. The reason I say this is I read your mom’s blog. She has tried her best to let the world know of you her beautiful daughter. Although your mom and I have not met in person, I feel as if she is an old friend I have known personally for years. The reason I say this is your mom and I share an experience that bonds us in away. When I was a child I was taken from my mom. I was forced to live with the person who took me for years. At first I held onto every memory I had of my family. Then in time I let go of it. It was too hard and hurt too much to remember. Then in time the truth is sometimes you just forget stuff even if you don’t try to. I didn’t see my mom again until I was grown up. It was hard because I honestly didn’t remember her or my life with her. I got to talk to her on the phone before we saw each for the first time in years. I have a birth mark so I asked her about it. That was only something she would have known about. Although I couldn’t remember my mom, somehow I could remember the bottle of perfume that sat on my grandmother’s dressers. My grandmother died when I was two years old! I asked my mom on the phone what kind of perfume her mother use to where. Again this is something after all these years only my mother would have the answer to.

If you are out there in the world and happen to be reading this. It is ok if you do not remember everything from the time you lived with your mommy. If you remember something, anything from your childhood and maybe it doesn’t make sense. You can email Sharon and ask her if she knows what it means and if she can explain it to you. You can leave a post here on her blog. You don’t even have to an account! Or even sign your name or where you live. If you see the comments on here and are scared what you might say will get posted. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment! When you leave your comment all you have to say is “Dear Sharon, what I am writing you is private. Please do not post this on your blog.” Then on the next line write your question. Many people have left comments like this for Sharon. Including myself, so if you tell her it’s private. You don’t have to worry about her posting it. A lot of readers send her comments anonymously. Because of this sometimes I think it is hard to tell if the same person sends a comment more than once. Also if she responds she is not sure what to call them. Maybe you have a favorite color like purple, or a favorite place you like to go on vacation like the beach. So if you decide to write Sharon you might want to sign a name. You don’t have to, or even use your own. You can just sign it Sincerely Purple or Sincerely at the beach!

You are old enough now to have children of your own. Do you have children? If you don’t, I can tell you one of the hardest things for a mom and dad is not to know if their children are safe. If you see this, and think Sharon might be your mom. Do you think you can try and find away to send her a note? If you look at the right hand side of Sharon’s blog you will see a mailing address. Maybe the next time you go on vacation to the beach you can mail her a post card! Just scribble two sentences. Tell her your one vacation and having a good time. Then tell her about that birthmark you still have or tell her you still remember what kind of perfume your grandmother use to wear. Just try to tell her one thing you remember from when you were a child. Even if that one thing doesn’t make sense! Or while you are at the beach, you can leave a comment here on her blog telling her your having fun at the beach and you still remember having pizza night when you were a kid! Then sign the note purple!

I have talked to your mom about doing something special for you this year in Nov. I’ll let her tell you about all of that later after it has been planned. If we do this it will take place in California. Do you live in California or near California? Maybe you would like to come? Would you be able to find a way to get to the bay area of California? If you need help getting to Ca maybe Sharon and I can figure out a way to get there. Maybe we can send you a bus ticket. You are welcome to come. You don’t even have to introduce yourself to anyone. If you decide to come and say hello, you don’t have to be afraid. Nobody including Sharon will force you to stay. Sharon’s only wish is to make sure her Michaela is safe and happy!
All the best,
Megan

Dear Michaela ... my birthday present

2012-01-06T22:12:00.000-08:00

My birthday present from all the kids just arrived today, and I wanted to share it with you. It's a very pretty bracelet, with each child's name engraved on each link. Here you can see your name, Michaela, on the first link. You are always so present, so very much a part of the family. If you came back, Michaela, it would be almost as though you'd never left.

Dear Michaela ... your family

2012-01-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

Libby posted this photo on her facebook, and I thought I'd post it for you, Michaela. It's a picture of the Garecht side of your family ... your baby brother and sister, Robbie and Libby, your dad, Alex with his wife and his three girls, Shylah, Kalia, and Raina. I guess coming home for you would feel like approaching strangers in a strange land, but here they are, Michaela. You can picture them in your mind. They are all waiting for you, all anxious to open their arms to you and give you nothing but love.

And me, too.

I love you, Michaela.
mom

The reality of grief and compassion

2012-01-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

You know I have been trying to find the words to write about grief for awhile. This morning I watched the most amazing documentary. It is called "I Am" and is made by director Tom Shadyac (known for many big Hollywood comedies of recent years). I saw it on the "Super Soul Sunday" program on the Oprah Winfrey Network, although it is also available pretty inexpensively at amazon.com if you click on the photo below. It was so full of "aha" moments when lightbulbs popped off in my head that I had to pull out my journal and start taking notes.

One of the first lightbulbs that went off helped me to understand the meaning of grief. Surprisingly, it was scientific terminology that revealed this to me. They were talking about "mirror neurons," that when you see something you have previously experienced, it causes the same neurons to light up in your brain as when you had that original experience.

I've know, have written before, about the transforming experience of grief, that it forever changes, deepens, your perception of life. And here, this explains it. If you haven't experienced deep grief yourself, you might "understand" it, you might feel your own form of compassion for it. But once you have experienced it, your very neurons carry the memory of it, so that when you see someone else experiencing it, you feel it in your very being.

This is the physiological root of compassion and empathy, but it is more than that. Love is part of the experience of grief as well. So I think that for the rest of your life, whenever you experience love, that neuron of grief is going to be firing as well. At its worst, of course, this might cause you to be fearful, might even cause you to turn away from love because of the association. But at its best, it transforms love from a frivolous feel-good experience to the really deep and fearful experience is actually is.

The mirror neuron explains many other things in life as well -- how the trauma of abuse continues to affect people, for example. But there are many other treasures in this film. There is the study of the interstitial heartbeats, how our emotions are revealed in them, the vast electromagnetic field of the heart and how it really is the root of emotion, sending impulses to the brain rather than vice versa. The heartbeat even reveals a precognitive ability, sensing seconds beforehand the emotion it is going to experience as a result of images the brain has not yet seen. There is a discussion of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory, and the fact that Darwin used that phrase twice, while he used the word love hundreds of times, because in fact love and cooperation, beautifully illustrated in this film, are the basis for the survival of almost every species and the individuals within it -- including mankind. There is a discussion of the distribution of goods -- the example of the animal kingdom, that the lion doesn't kill every gazelle, but only the one it needs for nourishment. Among the many varied native American peoples, there was a commonly held belief that holding more private property than one needed was a sign of mental illness.

I'm not generally inclined to be romanced by scientific explanations. There are those who use science to negate the spiritual, I know. Reducing the depth of human experience to firing neurons wouldn't ordinarily appeal to me. But in this case it just fell together so beautifully. The fact that our spiritual and emotional experiences are reflected in our physiology doesn't lessen the depth of those experiences at all. There are very scientific explanations for thunder and lightning. Nobody believes anymore that a lightning storm is a battle among the gods, but that knowledge doesn't make the human experience of those storms any less thrilling.

Some of these scientific principles are so practically useful in our lives. In exploring the heartbeats and their revelation of our feelings, it considers the electromagnetic field of the heart. There are a couple of really practical lessons from this. First, we know that our moods are influencing our environment. If our electromagnetic field contains negative energy, it will affect us physically, affect our environment physically (even a bowl of yogurt), and affect those around us. What better motivation can we find to adjust our own attitudes, to find a place of peace and love from which we can operate. It will not just make us feel better -- it will make our homes and workplaces much better. It also tells us that we will function better if we don't surround ourselves with negative people.

This is a film that grew out of a transformed life. It is a film that I think contains the seed of transformation not only for the individual life, but for the world we live as well.

Live, love, laugh, hug each other, do good in the world, and don't be greedy. Let's create a more positive world in 2012.

Dear Michaela ... a message from Crystal

2012-01-01T15:50:00.000-08:00

Michaela, I received this e-mail today from one of the readers of this blog. It contains a message she wanted to share with you, so here it is. And thank you, Crystal.

Hi Sharon

I've been reading your blog a lot lately, gets me all teared up every single time. Something or the other during the day always reminds me of Michaela, for an instance I had just finished reading one your blogs and went out shopping to get my mind of things, when I got to the checkout I saw an elderly woman at the till and read her name tag that said Michaela. I have never personally ever seen someone with the same name but coincidentally the first time that I saw someone with the same name was the very first day I read about Michaela.

The next day was Christmas day. I went over to my aunties for lunch. She had presents under the tree and told us that there were no specific names on the presents so we all can go grab which ever one we wanted. I picked mine and nearly cried when I opened it to see a necklace with the word "JOY" on it.

I have a message for Michaela and I thought what better way to share it with her than through you, as I know the bond between you and her is so strong, I know she will get my message.

Dear Michaela

I don't know you personally, I wasn't in this world when you were born, I wasn't even here the day you got kidnapped. But I feel so strongly for you.

I went to church the next Sunday after Christmas wearing my necklace that I got as a present from an aunt that had the word JOY on it. The piano lady at my church saw it and told me it was very pretty and it rang a bell when she said this about it, she said:
J- Jesus first
O- Others next
Y- Yourself last

Through your mothers words it seems to be that you are the sweetest person so I won't be surprised if that's how you are seeing life as well. That your putting everyone else around you before you, if you have grown close to the people you were taken by then you are probably putting them first by trying not to dissapoint them, even if that means putting your happiness aside. Just know that because of your mum spreading all this attention towards you, there are millions of people around the world that miss you without even knowing you, so you will make a lot more people happy by returning home, there will be doors open for you with welcoming arms waiting to reunite you with your family (no questions asked) so don't feel like you won't be able to get help just because your In a different country. New Zealand is a very small country away from the rest of the world, if I'm thinking about you from all the way down here then you can just imagine how much your mum has done to get you back.

Thoughts and prayers to you and your family, always.

Dear Michaela ... Reflections on 2011/2012

2011-12-31T12:05:00.000-08:00

Good morning, Michaela. Today is my birthday. Do you remember? It's also New Years Eve, and all combined that makes it a day when my heart and soul just fall into reflection. I actually have made some New Years Resolutions this year. One is simply to get out of the house. Anybody who knows me will tell you that on my days off it is really difficult to get me to leave the house. There are a lot of reasons for this and some of them are really excellent reasons, but I know that at least part of it is fear. A few weeks ago I was watching the season finale of Survivor. Of all the places to get a flash of wisdom, right? But an audience member asked Ozzy how he manages superhuman feats like climbing to the top of palm trees to get fruit, or staying underwater an exceptionally long time in order to catch fish. His reply was just that he is able to do these things because he doesn't have fear -- that he learned through the course of his life, and activities like skateboarding, to act and not to let fear hold him back.

This really struck a bell with me. I have tried to be a good mom to your brothers and sisters, but I have really come to recognize the tremendous fear I have and what a terrible influence I have allowed it to have on their lives. It's not that I didn't have it before I lost you. I did, hugely! On that morning when you asked me if you could go to the store, you know I didn't want to let you go. But I did, because at that time I felt that I had to do these things whether I liked it or not. I remembered my own childhood, when I literally walked all over creation, and I just knew that whether I liked it or not I had to free my own children to do the things I'd done as a child. But after you were kidnapped, the only thing I could see is that I had been right, that my fear was justified. I had this idea also that because I hadn't wanted you to go, because I'd gone so far as to mentally trace the route you would take looking for the sense of danger I felt, that I'd had an intuition of it, and I vowed to try to listen to that intuition in the future.

The problem is that it's really difficult to sort out the intuition from the fear.

The other problem is that it wasn't only stranger danger, kidnapping and the like that I feared. One of the things I found myself most afraid of was cars. I could have taken a million day trips with your brothers and sisters that were never taken because staying home was just simply the safer choice. At this point, all of your brothers and sisters drive, and you can't imagine how difficult an adjustment that has been for me. They are all also now actually adults, your youngest sister having just turned 18 this past month. For the most part I really am not in a position to tell them where and when they can and cannot go. But I do follow them around like an annoying buzzing little fly in their ears suggesting that maybe they don't really want to go where they want to go, and if they do really want to go I advise them on driving, and on avoiding days/times when there are likely to be a lot of drunks on the road, etc., etc. Yes, I can be a real pain. To their credit, they are very patient with me. They literally never tell me off for behaving this way. And also to their credit, they invariably do whatever it is they intended to do regardless of my nagging.

And here is another legacy of your kidnapping. When they leave, I always try to say "I love you," because those are words that should never, ever be left unsaid. Remember, Michaela, when you left for the store that day, those were our last words to one another. I remember you had such a bright smile on your face when you said them. But now, because of that, I never, ever allow them to be my last words when I part with someone I love. I always add something afterwards. Often it is "drive carefully." Also, "see you later." And I look away before they leave my sight. I watched you on that morning ride your scooter to the end of the block, until you turned the corner out of sight. A time or two else in my life I have watched someone walk away until they were out of sight and have never seen them again, so now I turn away. I release them of my own free will, instead of having them taken from me, because that way they will come back.

So much silliness, I know. Most of these little rituals are unspoken. I doubt any of your brothers or sisters is aware of them. They probably recognize them. They would probably say, "Oh yeah, mom always does say 'drive carefully' or 'see you later' just before we leave." But they don't know what lies behind it, what superstition, what just plain fear.

But here is the thing I know. Fear is bad. Fear is destructive. When you allow fear of loss to control you, you bring loss upon you. When you fail to embrace love because you fear loss, guess what? You have already lost the love you could have had! When you cling too tightly to love because you fear loss, you just might drive it away. There is no doubt about it, loss is a fearsome thing. Sorrow, suffering, the very literal heartache, the bitter, paralyzing grief. Nobody wants to experience this. But we do. We all do. And until such time as we achieve immortality, we always, always will. That grief is another whole subject, one which is so deep and so important, and yet one for which I never seem able to find the words which will convey its depth.

If we allow fear of loss, basically fear of death, to control our lives, we may continue to exist, but we will be losing a lot actual life. And I have come to realize that this is what I have done to myself, and this is what I have done to your brothers and sisters. Well, the loss I experienced when I lost you was so devastating I suppose I can be forgiven for this. Although all the kids have suffered from this in various ways, for the most part they have grown up and gone on, and they don't stay home all the time or anything. But I have been feeling particularly bad about Johnna, because I know that girl has an adventurer's soul (she has lots of planets in Sagittarius, as you do yourself), and I know that soul hasn't been fed what it needs to thrive. Part of my New Years Resolution is for myself, to get out and live more fully, but also for Johnna. I know that as she and her friends get a little bit older, she will embrace this part of herself and seek out the adventuring she needs, but for right now I just want to make sure I give her what I can give her to do that. I need to take her on more adventures, just to show her a little bit of the path that lies outside the door. But most of all, I need to equip her with what she really needs, and that is the freedom to do all this without being afraid of the journey, or of how much the trip is going to cost, or worrying about whether or not I will miss her while she is gone ... or if she will miss me, I guess.

Actually, I have done this to my dogs also. You may laugh, but it's true. And I plan to remedy that as well. I know, Michaela, that you would not ever want to leave a legacy of fear. You would not ever want to take anything away from life. Your true legacy is love and light, and freedom of the heart and soul.

Anyway, on to other things. In my last blog, I posted a song by Adele. In fact, I'm going to post it again here. I have listened to this song over and over and over again, and every time I hear it I cry. Here is the thing about sorrow -- it's just past thought. Libby said she didn't really see how this song connected to you. Well, actually when I hear this song it makes me feel this for all my children. You know I love them, every one of them, just as deeply and fully as I love you. When any one of them suffers, I suffer, too. It doesn't matter if their heartaches are caused by minor things, they are still heartaches. It is true for every one of my children that, "When the evening shadows and stars appear, and there is no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel my love."

But you know, the fact is that I can't.

I just remembered that somebody once told me that you shouldn't cry on your birthday, so I really shouldn't be writing this blog today, but I guess it's a little late for that. Oh, and wouldn't you know it, that song has just now come up to play on my itunes?

I cry every time I hear this song, because I know that there are so many sorrows and terrors that you have faced and I have not been able to be there to physically hold you. And this will be true for all of my children. Love just needs to become something that transcends physical proximity. You know I told you that if ever you were sad and I wasn't there, to just look in your heart and I'd be there. When my mother lay dying, I told her that I didn't want her to suffer anymore, that if she wanted to go it was okay because I would have her with me always in my heart. I know she'd worried about that, had even tried to establish me with surrogate mothers because she was concerned that I'd need someone to take care of me after she was gone ... as if anybody could ever come even close to her! But within minutes of my telling her that I'd be okay, she let go. Oh, were my words true? Of course she is always here in my heart, but that doesn't mean I don't miss her.

With you, that has always been the hardest part, that you needed me and I wasn't able to get to you to help you. I wasn't able to find you. Some of the lyrics of this song apply only to you: "I know you haven't made your mind up yet, but I would never do you wrong. I've known it from the moment that we met, no doubt in my mind where you belong." If you are out there, if you read these words, then something holds you back from making contact, from coming home. But whatever it is, just know that I love you, and just as I want the best for your brothers and sisters even when it is something that is difficult for me, even if it is letting them go, I want that for you.

So the other day I listened to this song dozens of times, and I laid down that night to go to sleep with my heart heavy within me. I closed my eyes and tried to stretch my spirit out like a giant hand with a hundred tentacles to reach into all the corners of the earth, to find you. The next morning still those tears wanted to keep coming. I had to put a pretty boring audible book on to still the tears so I could drive to work. I drive across the San Mateo Bridge every day, and that morning there was a mist hanging over the water, and fog caught in pockets between the trees and hills on the far side of the bay, and it pictured the mist which hides you from me. Where are you? I miss you so much.

But 2012 is coming. And if you have read much of what I've written, you know that I believe it is perhaps the year that you will be found. (I wrote about this on my other blog: http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/will-michaela-be-found-in-2012-charts.html) And I have been trying to prepare my heart for either eventuality. If you are not physically in this world, Michaela, I know that you are with my anyway, that our souls are bound, that we are and will be together.

Wherever you are, whoever you are, my heart and my arms are open to embrace you. I love you, for always and forever.

mom

Dear Michaela ... there is nothing that I would not do...

2011-12-29T22:23:00.000-08:00

... to make you feel my love.

Merry Christmas, Michaela

2011-12-24T08:04:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Michaela! I wanted to send you a picture of our Christmas tree -- ours meaning yours also. You remember how each child always had a special ornament, one dated with the year of birth? Well, I still hang yours on the tree for you every year.

Your ornament, which says "Baby's First Christmas 1979

For some years now we have had a second ornament on the tree for you also. It was made by Vanished Children's Alliance, and colored in by a school child somewhere.

Michaela, we are at Nana's house. You remember where that is? I will be there waiting for you, as always, to come walking through the door, just like I did on that first day after you were kidnapped. And if you don't, whether because you can't or because you choose not to, just remember, wherever you are, there I am, in your heart always.

I love you forever
I like you for always
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be

mom

What to do with sadness

2011-12-21T21:40:00.000-08:00

So much of this blog is about the big sorrows, about loss and grief of a magnitude that shakes the earth and changes the topography of your life. But there are many sorrows in life, and different people have different abilities to cope. Someone I love was feeling one of the little sorrows today, just a kind of general loneliness I guess you'd call it. Mind you, she's not really lonely. She has family and friends and activities. But it was just a bit of a down time, and because I love her I could feel it in my own heart.

I'd been feeling that particular little sorrow today myself. I'd been thinking about a time which is not even today, kind of a little, temporary empty nesting period, and I felt a wave of sadness rush over me and settle in my heart. You know that heart feeling? It's like a pocket of unshed tears that forms there. My first reaction was a momentary panic at this impending sadness -- what would I do, how would I get through it?

But I have a lot of experience with that kind of thing, and I knew I would do what I usually do with sadness. I would look it in its face and say, "What are you here to teach me?" Loneliness in particularly is always calling you to a deeper relationship with the most important person in your life ... yourself. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent in my life, alone with my journal and my pen, traveling inside at levels both deep and shallow. Deeper still, it calls you to confront the dark and shadowy places in life -- the spiritual and emotional nighttime and winter.

Don't ask me what you take out of these places, cause I couldn't tell you, but once you have learned to walk through them with your eyes open, all of life becomes richer. You become richer, deeper, more multi-dimensional. The spirit of creativity is born in these places. All of the greatest artists of all kinds are acquainted with them. Many deeply creative people have suffered from depression, which is interesting, because depression brings nighttime and winter to even a sunny day, and crashing, thundering, whipping storms out of any real sorrow.

The thing you have to remember with sadness is that it will pass. Even the grief of death lessens over time, and all the other sorrows will simply melt away. There will be other lovers, there will be friends, jobs, outings, fun times. So in the moment, you can look sadness in the face, learn from it, grow strong from it, grow wise from it, because you know it is not your only companion, not your constant companion. It is only the moment that belongs to it, not you, and not your life.

I know the holidays can be a really difficult time for people. Today there was a discussion among some people on an e-mail group I belong to, and I was surprised to learn that some of the warm and intelligent people I have been talking to for a couple of years are alone at the holidays. Many don't have trees. Some can't afford gifts. I know people who are getting through a first holiday season without a loved one, and some of us are getting through the 23rd.... Well, if there is good in your life, focus on that. Instead of focusing on what you don't have, focus on what you do have. Count your blessings, however many or few, however big or small. There are many people who are lonely at the holidays. If all the lonely people reached out to each other, what would happen?

And if all else fails, dig deep within. Grab your pen, your pencil, your paintbrush, clay, your yarn, your guitar, and write, paint, sculpt, sing, whatever it is your soul wants to use to mine that deeply buried treasure.

It's one of my most deeply held beliefs that life is not an accident. We are where we are for a reason. There are things we are put here to learn, and things we are supposed to do. Everything we encounter along the way is there to help us to become who we are supposed to be, so we can accomplish what we are supposed to accomplish. Learn fast, learn well, and get on with it. A million cliches are filling my mind here, but I believe that it is only by doing this can we find real peace and satisfaction in life.

Blessings to all of you.

And of course, to you Michaela, all my love, always and forever.

Michaela's Note: packing for a trip to heaven....

2011-11-20T10:26:00.001-08:00

"I am packing for a trip to heven.
The first thing I expect to see is my Grandma Madgge.
The next thing I expect to see is my Grandfather.
The last thing I expect to see is my Guinea pig Coco."
Written by Michaela, date unknown.

In the midst of the ribbons and balloons, the symbols of love and hope, yesterday I received a copy of this note. It was written on a little slip of paper, the size of a post-it note, and Michaela's dad had found it stuck inside one of Michaela's books that he had among his belongings. There is no doubt that Michaela wrote it. The handwriting, her unique spelling, and the formulaic writing that they had drilled into her in school, all mark it as Michaela's. I had never seen it before. Apparently she had written it to nobody in particular, and had stuck it inside a book. What motivated it? I don't know.

It made my heart sink when I read it. I have resigned myself to the fact that I want a resolution to all this, that the truth is the truth and whatever it is, knowing it is better than not knowing it. But my resistance to the possibility that Michaela is not alive makes itself known in the heaviness of my heart every time I actually have to face something that might lead to that conclusion, as well as the lightness that overcomes me every time I am granted yet another reprieve from that, even though it means continuing to live without knowing.

It is entirely possible that this was some random thing that passed through Michaela's head and landed on a piece of paper. (Goodness knows that would be an inherited characteristic here!) But odd, so odd, so very odd for a nine-year old girl to write something like this. There is one thing that I have absolutely no doubt at all about, and that is that Michaela had some inner foreknowledge of what awaited her. There was the poem she wrote in the middle of the night a week before she was kidnapped, which she said was about people who had been kidnapped. There was that odd, quirky fear she had of bathrooms. (If you are a regular reader of my blog, I apologize that all this is repetitive, but it is just so significant I can't help but repeat these things.) Whenever she went to the bathroom, she would literally beg me to go with her. In our house, if I was sitting on the couch in the living room, she could go into the bathroom and leave the door open, and keep eye contact with me the whole time, but when I told her that, she said that was not enough, and begged me to please get up off the couch and walk those few feet into the bathroom with her. I was reminded yesterday of that fear also. What did it mean? Ultimately, was something destined to happen to her in a bathroom?

I don't know, I don't know what any of it means. But you add it all up, and it has to mean something. Actually, it is somewhat comforting. If Michaela had some foreknowledge of what was going to happen to her, then that means that there is a spiritual reality to our lives beyond what our five senses tell us. And somehow, what happened to Michaela fell into that spiritual reality. That means that it was not some random, meaningless event, but that it had some meaning, some purpose -- that there was something in it that Michaela knew, grasped, even accepted on some level, albeit reluctantly. I've said before that Michaela seemed to have some reluctance to come into this life, and seemingly some reluctance to stay here. I had to take fertility pills to get pregnant with her. She was induced almost four weeks early due to pregnancy complications, and as a newborn had a strep infection where the fetal monitor had been attached, which could have been fatal if it had not been caught. When she was an infant, I saw the only real, live black widow spider I have ever in my life seen, sitting on the head of her teddy bear next to her crib.

When she woke in the middle of the night before she was kidnapped, and wrote her poem about people who had been kidnapped, she was just extraordinarily calm and accepting. Just this morning I was thinking about it, and I could see her face as she sat on the floor at the coffee table, twirling a pencil and looking at me, so placid and slightly amused in the face of my astonishment at this poem that had come out of this mere child. Placid and completely humble in that amused way, not at all impressed with her own achievement, or with the fact that other people were so impressed.

So I guess for those who haven't read the thousands of words I've poured out in this blog, I will repeat the poem here. It certainly bears repeating:

The people knock on doors of steel
The people knock, the people kneel
They think of things that aren't real
Outside the doors of steel
The people walk, the people know
That outside those doors
The people know.
The people think that you may say
The people think that they, too, may
They lack the confidence you have
They think it's real,
The dreams you have,
The dreams you feel.

Michaela said that she had written this poem about people who had been kidnapped, and were being held captive, like in the movie "The Peanut Butter Solution, which was a children's movie that involved a crazy artist who kidnapped people and made their hair grow so that he could cut it off and use it to make paintbrushes, with which he was able to paint pictures that were alive, so you could actually walk into them. It was in the wee hours of Saturday morning that she wrote this poem.

A week to the day later, Michaela became one of "the people who had been kidnapped." Even in the actual kidnapping itself, I could see this spiritual dichotomy of acceptance and reluctance. Michaela was lured to her kidnapper's side by a scooter, which had been moved from where it had been left outside the door of the market, to the side of his car. But when she and her friend left the market, they initially forgot that they had brought scooters. They completely overlooked the one scooter that remained by the door and started to walk home. To me, this was the final attempt by her little soul to escape something that on a different level she had foreknown and accepted since before she entered this world. But halfway across the parking lot, she remembered, and turned back to the fate we now know awaited her.

It's a fact that those of us who have endured great suffering want to find a purpose to it. We want to know that there is some benevolent purpose in the universe that will help us to make sense of what doesn't make sense. We are determined that something good has to come out of it. It is for this reason that people found nonprofit organizations, write books, write blogs, speak out, in a determined effort to bring something good out of the worst that the universe can send. Depending on their orientation, people may set out to help find missing children, to cure diseases, to stop drunk drivers, to find and share a spiritual reality, or even just to help others who are suffering. And if our own suffering has involved losing someone we loved, we are driven to give their lives and their suffering meaning.

But the fact that we have some innate drive to do this does not in any way negate the truth behind it. When we get hungry, we want to eat. Eating is not a meaningless way of rationalizing our hunger, though, is it? I don't believe that finding meaning and purpose in suffering is nothing more than a way of dealing with our pain. I believe it does have meaning. It does have purpose. We may never find it, may never fully grasp it or understand it, but somehow or another we know it's there and we search for it.

Well, I don't know quite what to make of this note of Michaela's. Perhaps it means nothing. Perhaps it was motivated by something she read or heard somewhere -- in church, in books, on TV -- and perhaps it is nothing more than that. But to go to the trouble of writing it down??? That is odd. But it's something that I've seen happen in the aftermath of Michaela's loss. When Robbie was nine years old I was looking for something and came across his baby book. Inside it was a drawing Michaela had done of Robbie, and a note that said, "For Robbie when he is 9 years old." That's how old Michaela was when he was born, of course, and she'd written a little bit about it. But it was such a synchronous event, it had to have meaning.

When my youngest daughter was born, the world was acknowledging the loss of another girl who had been kidnapped and murdered, Polly Klaas. We had her memorial service on in the labor and delivery suite. I'd chosen to do that, not only in honor of Polly, but in some acknowledgement that birth and embracing of love is in the end also an embracing of loss. But my daughter was actually born just as the memorial service was ending, and literally as the midwife was preparing to deliver Johnna, I looked up at the television in the corner of the room, and there was Michaela smiling down at me.

Again, what does it mean? I can guess, surmise, assume, but one thing I have concluded about all things that are spiritual in nature is that in this lifetime, I will never know. The only thing that I can absolutely and positively take out of the string of synchronicities over the last 23 years is that Michaela is still speaking to me. Through her poems, through her drawings, through her notes, through things that just pop up at exactly the right moment, she is telling me that she is not gone. She is here, with me, alive in my heart, forever alive in my heart. She changed me, changed my life, changed my very identity at the moment she was born, and she continues to do so even now.

She does not have to have passed on in order for this to be true. The bond between our hearts and souls could well be strong enough for the link to remain strong through all the years we have been lost to one another. I think about the line in her poem, "they think it's real, the dreams you have, the dreams they feel." How can that line be interpreted, except as a statement of the direct link between minds and hearts?

There are a couple of really strong leads in Michaela's case, which the investigators are hoping to be able to get to the bottom of in the next few months. One of those leads to a likelihood of Michaela being alive. One leads to the likelihood of her having been killed. Might this note be a preparation of my heart to be able to accept the latter? Perhaps. Letting go is so difficult. When my mother died, she had been sick for a long time. She'd been in the hospital for three days, most of that time at least unresponsive, and I don't know whether she was aware of her surroundings or not. During most of those three days I sat and held her hand and sobbed and cried and soaked her with gallons of tears. Finally, I held her hand and whispered to her that if she wanted to go, it was okay, that she would always be with me in my heart, and I didn't want her to suffer any longer. I sat down and picked up one of my mother's crossword puzzle books, started trying to work a word puzzle, but within minutes I was aware of a change in the room. I looked over and saw that my mother had stopped breathing. Had she just needed my permission to leave?

Could it be that in all these years the truth of what happened to Michaela has eluded us because God, the universe, or Michaela, knew that I was not able to face it? Could that note be a message from Michaela to prepare my heart? Honestly, if she was killed, as terrible as that is, I do know that she didn't cease to exist. I do know that our souls are locked together and we will hold each other again. If she had died 23 years ago, then I do believe that this would mean that she had spent the last 23 years in a much better place than the place she would have been in here for all that time. Well, maybe. I would suspect that Jaycee Dugard would disagree. Maybe it's not really just my selfishness that makes me want her to come home to me.

On the other hand, I've heard snippets of people talking about how you only reach freedom when you can come to accept loss. As long as you fear loss and death, you will live as a slave to that fear. Only when you embrace your death and the fact of loss of your loved ones will you be able to fully embrace life and love. This is a difficult concept to fathom. I understand it completely. I even agree with it. But that fear lies deep in the roots of the human heart, and the thought of even attempting to eradicate it is terrifying -- because in order to do that, you have to actually face it. You have to actually acknowledge that eventually, you will lose or be lost to everyone you love. You have to look at it, look at them, and let it go.

Letting go is hard. I have learned a little bit about it, just in my children growing up. The first times they have taken car keys and left the house, I've had to let them go. In this you can plainly see the truth of this lesson -- if you live in fear of death, you cannot live. If the fear of death controls you, how many things will you not do because of that fear, and how much less will you live because of that? If you live in fear of the loss of love, you will be far less able to embrace love when it comes along. In fact, this is the precise theme of the novel I am writing. I know it, I understand it. I act on it, and yet there is a depth of work that I haven't attempted. I have gotten as far as being able to close my eyes to it, but I haven't gotten to the point of being able to look in its face.

I will never stop looking for Michaela. I will never, ever stop loving Michaela. I will never, never, ever stop shining her light into the farthest corners of the earth. Whether she is alive, or whether she is not, she is still here. She is still speaking to me. And with that knowledge I will face the future and be prepared to accept the truth, because whatever it is, it will never, ever take my daughter from me.

Dear Michaela ... we remember you.

2011-11-20T08:20:00.001-08:00

Link to newspaper article:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19374098

Michaela, here are some photographs of the remembrance that we held for you yesterday. We met at the Rainbow Market (now called Mexico Super) at 10:00 a.m., which is the time that you went up there that Saturday morning 23 years ago. I stand there, in the exact spot where you were kidnapped. It is the most horrible place in the world, and yet it is this also: it is the place where you spent the last happy, carefree moment, before your life was forever changed by some monstrous excuse for a human being who somehow thought he had the right to take you, a child, away from your home and family, from all those who you loved and who loved you. Lord, I cannot even imagine this. And yet it is true.

Many people came -- I think I counted about 70. Your family was all there, except for Alex, who lives a distance away and wasn't able to make it. All your old family, and your new family, sisters and a stepdad you haven't even met. There were people there from the police department, and Michaela I want you to know that those people really, genuinely care about your case and are working to do everything they can to find you. There were many people there from the public, people I'd never met but who knew your story. There were people there who knew you, and who came to show their love, from the Cabral family, who lived next door to us in the apartments on Berry, to John Spahn (now also known as "the boy in the picture," since he was standing next to you in my favorite photo of you).

We hung yellow ribbons on that scrubby little bush that we call a tree. It is right at the head of the parking space where the kidnapper parked. People wrote messages to you on the ribbons. If you are anywhere near, you should go and read them. If you are not, I will post photos of them here so you can see them. My friend Kaye Santos, who is the mom of Robbie's best friend and partner-in-music-making, brought 23 yellow balloons, one for each year that you were gone, and we released them into the sky with all our prayers and best wishes for you.

Robbie sang some songs. One of them was "Please Come Home" by Dustin Kensrue. The lyrics of the song as a whole didn't apply to you, because it was based on the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, who had taken his inheritance and squandered it on partying, but whose father longed for him to come home and welcomed him with open arms when he did. Robbie sang that one because, of course, we want you to come home, and because we know that there are kids who are missing, kidnap victims and runaways, who are afraid to go home because after all they have done, and that has been done to them, they are ashamed and think they will not be welcomed, will not be loved. I've said a thousand time, and will never stop saying, that Michaela there is nothing at all in the whole wide world that could ever, ever, ever make me stop loving you every bit as much as that day I last saw you, an innocent nine-year old child. (And if there are any other kids out there who may be separated from family like this, I'm just telling you that this would be true for you as well, so GO HOME!) And Robbie sang "Somewhere Out There," a song that you knew well (better than Robbie did ... he provided a little lighthearted relief there). Remember, the song from An American Tail, about the little mouse who got separated from his family? And I know you are somewhere, somewhere out there.

Libby was our chief photographer, and took videos, and I hope to post them later. But she likes to sleep most of the day on Sunday. So right now I'm just posting a few photos that I took, or that others took and posted to facebook, so you can see just how much we still, always and forever, love you.

The tree, before.

Your baby brother Robbie, singing.
To the right is me, your stepdad Jeff, and your baby sister, Johnna.
Do you see the sunbeams? Your light shines always.

People with balloons, before the release.

The balloons flying away, carrying prayers and wishes and love for you.

Your dad, and Libby.

Remember Debi Varner, Anthony's mom?
This is a picture of her with me.

Remember John Spahn?
Here he is with his son, Evan, putting ribbons on your tree.

Here is your baby brother, Robbie,
up on a step stool to hang ribbons on your tree.
Your baby sister Johnna (almost 18 now so not such a baby)
is ready to catch him in case he falls.
That's what brothers and sisters do ... for you, too, my love.

Many of the ribbons that were hung on the tree had messages written to you, Michaela. Here are some of them:

This is my ribbon for you Michaela. <3

From the Varner family.

Pink roses from mom. <3

I have to tell you one other story, Michaela. There were many people I spoke to yesterday, but one was a young woman who came and told me the story of her kidnapping in 1991 in Hayward, when she was 13 years old. She was known in the press as Jane Doe, and her kidnapper is now known as the "Holiday Rapist." He kept her in the back of a van for three days. He was discovered and prosecuted recently by DNA evidence, and though the statute of limitations had run for a number of the crimes he had committed in this incident, he was convicted of felony torture.

This young woman, tiny and petite even now as an adult, came and talked to me. She said she'd wanted to tell me this for a long time, that during the time she was being held prisoner in the back of that van for three days, as terrified as she was, she did not feel alone. She said the first thing that came to her mind was your name, and that somehow you were with her for those three days, helped her to get through that ordeal. Finally, she convinced the kidnapper, who had kept her blindfolded the whole time, let her go.

It's one story, Michaela, a part of your legacy of light. And I know there will be many more stories in the future.

I love you forever, Michaela.
mom

Dear Michaela ... the world remembers you

2011-11-20T07:56:00.001-08:00

Michaela, here are a few of the photos I have received from people around the world of ribbons, balloons and candles that they have hung in remembrance of you on the anniversary of your kidnapping.

From Chris, whose daughter died in a car accident at age 17.
She hung this ribbon for you in Tricia's Secret Garden.
Do you see the M on it?

From Jennifer. She now lives in Oregon,
but she went to Hillview Crest with you.
Her brother was the one who first came up with the idea of yellow ribbons,
and hung them on the "waiting tree" at Hillview.

From Jo in the U.K.

From Kristy, in California.

Candles from Robin, in Nevada City.

From Lynn in Colorado.

From Marie, in Tracy, California.

From Elaine in Queensland, Australia.

From Teri, in California.

From Kathleen, ribbon on a wishing well.

Alyssa is a 16-year old girl in Arizona who read about your case on the internet,
and she was so touched that she ordered this bracelet.
It arrived on your anniversary, and she e-mailed me a picture.

John and Michelle, in San Leandro, California

From Kathy, Union City, California

Michaela, I didn't know most of these people before you were kidnapped. I have met them all because of their love and concern for you. Never doubt, baby girl, that you are loved. You have always had a light that shines, and still shines after all these years.

(If anybody else wants to send photos of ribbons or remembrances they posted for Michaela, I would love to include them here as well. You can send them to sharon.murch@gmail.com.)

Balloons for Michaela: 23 balloons for 23 years missing

2011-11-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Kaye Santos for the balloons, and to Cassandra Cummins for the video, and thank you to Teri Stoddard for the html code to post it here. Love you guys!The anniversary today was very nice, and I want to thank everybody who came out, and everybody who remembered Michaela on facebook and on this blog. I am pretty exhausted, but I will post more photos later. I also have something really haunting from Michaela that I will post sometime in the next few days.Michaela, just know you have never been forgotten, and we love you always and forever.

Dear Michaela

2011-11-19T06:14:00.001-08:00

I woke up at 5:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. It's still dark outside, but cold and windy, not like that day 23 years ago today when it was so unseasonably warm and sunny that you could go to the store in shorts and a tee-shirt. If only it had been cold that day, so cold that all you wanted to do was stay in the house and keep warm....

The day after you were kidnapped, it started raining -- just a sprinkle at first, but it turned into lasting downpours in the days to come. I thought the angels were weeping for you, my baby girl. I just hoped that their tears didn't fall on you, and drown you in despair.

Where are you? Oh where are you? Michaela, I told you that if ever you were alone or scared or sad and I wasn't there, all you had to do was touch your heart and you'd find me there. I don't know if that frail promise helped you, in circumstances beyond what I'd ever imagined. But I'm still there. And you are still here, in my heart, every single day of my life.

I love you, Michaela, for always and forever. Please, please come home.

mom

Next Saturday is Michaela's Anniversary Remembrance

2011-11-13T07:05:00.001-08:00

Next Saturday, six days from today, it will mark 23 years since the day Michaela was kidnapped. As we have been doing for years now, we will be meeting at the spot where she was taken, to remember her. Any and all are welcome to attend, and if you can't attend in person you are welcome to attend right where you are by hanging a yellow ribbon or a balloon for Michaela, and sending a photo to me at sharon.murch@gmail.com.

It's a simple remembrance. There is a little scrubby evergreen thing growing right next to the parking spot where the kidnapper's car was parked. We generously call it a tree, and adorn it with yellow ribbons. You will see scraggly remnants of ribbons tied there over the years, although this year I understand that all the lower branches have been cut off, so we might have a bit of a challenge with the ribbons this year. I say a few words, and a few other people say a few words. This year I believe our wonderful and dedicated detective, Rob Lampkin, will speak, and I'm not sure who else. As long as it doesn't rain my son Robbie will play his guitar and sing a song or two. It is a fairly brief, and in all honesty I am always left feeling that I should have done or said more, but what that might be I don't know.

For some reason, I have been feeling a sense of anxiety over the anniversary this year. It comes up over and over again in my dreams. I have had dreams in which I have been suffering from a case of the emotional paralysis that has afflicted me recently, and I have not made it to the anniversary. Either it has gone on without me, or I have finally gotten around to being able to leave the house at 3 in the afternoon and have wondered if anybody would still be there (we hold it at 10 a.m., which is the time at which Michaela was kidnapped). I have had dreams in which a big bear was walking through the streets and I had to keep adjusting my route to avoid the blocks where the bear happened to be. I have had dreams in which other people were behaving quite inappropriately at the anniversary. I don't know what this means. Probably I am always anxious about it. Maybe I just don't usually remember my dreams. But anxiety or not, it will go on, and I will get there on time.

One of the best things about these anniversaries for me is the people who come. There are so many wonderful people who show up at this event. Often too many of them seem reluctant to take up my time, but if you come, please, please take up my time. I can stand there until I have spoken to the very last person. Some are people I have known for many years but rarely see, and some are people I have gotten to know because of Michaela. I have the photograph of a young girl featured in the sidebar on this blog, Tricia Seymour. She was killed in a car accident a few years ago. I have gotten to know her mother through Facebook. You may think that I am dedicated to keeping my missing daughter alive and remembered, but Chris's dedication to keeping her daughter's memory alive is a beautiful thing. She is always creating special photographs of Tricia and posting them, and she has created some for Michaela as well, including the one at the beginning of this blog. Last year she drove all the way from Southern California to attend the little, short remembrance for Michaela on her anniversary, and she is apparently doing so again this year.

It is just love, pure love, for this little girl (now a woman), my daughter, that I feel from all these people who come to this event year after year. This is what I long for, what I strive for. Even if she were to be found, even if I were to know that she was never going to come home, I would continue to talk about her, write about her. I would continue to remember her and to keep her alive in this world by keeping her memory alive. She is just such a special, special spirit. She was a gift to the world, and if she is not here to give that gift, then I will continue to give it for her. I will shine her light to the farthest corners it can reach.

Of course, there is one very special person I would really like to see attend the anniversary remembrance. Michaela, could you come? Even if you don't want to introduce yourself, could you come and just see that we still love you, that we still miss you, that we still long for you to come home? I wonder, have you ever been by that market to see the remembrances that are always there for you, somewhere? In the weeks after you were kidnapped, the people in this area took your missing flyers and hung them from every surface. Driving down Mission Boulevard, every telephone poll had your face smiling down from it. It was a breathtaking, and I thought about you being rescued and coming home, and how you would be driven down those streets and would see this dramatic visible display of so much love being poured out for you, and I hoped that it would help bring healing to your heart. Even though that never happened, I always hoped that somehow you were able to see. I hoped that you would know that you were not ever abandoned.

And still, you are not abandoned.

If you cannot attend, I am going to try to post some videos here on this blog. We have taken some in the past, but they are generally really poor quality because we don't have really good equipment or anything. We have some videos of Robbie singing, but his voice is overwhelmed by the trucks rolling down Mission Boulevard. Perhaps on a Saturday morning it will be a bit quieter. But we will try to record something to share with all of you who can't be there, and especially with you, my sweet Michaela, if you are out there.

If you can attend, we will have a limited about of ribbons to tie on the trees. They are wide ribbons, and I am bringing some Sharpies, so you can write personal messages to Michaela on them. You can feel free to please bring your own ribbons, balloons, or flowers.

Here is a link to the Facebook event page, with the address and all other pertinent information:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=256784957700691

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for reading this blog, and for remembering Michaela.

God bless.

Forever Searching ...

2011-11-11T08:19:00.001-08:00

This is a beautiful poster of Michaela. I love this photo of Michaela, so happy and carefree. Please feel free to copy this and share it with others.

And to Michaela ... I love you forever.
mom

The Scent of the Missing

2011-11-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

I just finished this book for the second time, and really, it is so wonderful that I just had to recommend it to everyone. Of course, you'd have to know that I would love it, since it combines two of the subjects that are closest to my heart -- the search for the missing, and dogs. It is the true story of a woman working in search and rescue, from her start working with other dog teams, to selecting her own puppy and training her in search and rescue. It is beautifully told, neither overdone nor overdone. I actually have it on an audiobook, from audible.com, and this is one of the few books whose narration is absolutely flawless, and which adds to the story instead of detracting from it. It is, however, available from amazon.com -- you can just click on the photo of the book to go right to it -- and it's only $5.98.

There was one occasion when I was listening to this while I was grocery shopping, and I had to turn it off because I was about to start sobbing in the middle of the store. It is definitely touching, but not in those terrible, can't stand to listen to it sort of ways. It touches your heart is all.

I think canine search and rescue is one of the best things a person could do. I can't tell you how much I wish I could do it myself. If one day millions of dollars were to land in my lap to use however I wish, I think supporting this work would be a great use for it.

Dear Michaela ... it's that time again ...

2011-11-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I've written, honey. A little while ago, one of my readers reminded me that I needed to get back to this, because what if you are actually reading this blog? And ... well, let's just lay it all out up front here ... I'm not a person who is able to present a false front, even when it's the right thing to do, and with you above all people I want to be honest. So just remember that I love you above all things, and nothing is ever, ever going to change that fact. But I think I have been lax in writing because honestly, I still find it hard to believe that you would be out there reading my words and not responding. It's not even because I am so convinced that I am such a wonderful person and a wonderful mother that you could not resist running back into my arms (although I do believe that, because I know the strength of the bond between us and find it hard to believe that it could have been broken), but it is that every single moment of this not knowing, every single moment of this missing you, is a moment spent swimming in a sea of grief. And in this sea of grief, it is sometimes difficult to keep myself afloat, much less hold up that heavy burden of hope.

I function, in some areas very well, and in some areas at less than par, but in all honesty, I live in a state of depression that wavers between a mild background state and a heavy, soggy-hearted state. But bear with me here. I have to say the things I have to say, but it will not all be dismal.

Everything has been very, very close lately. I'm sure it is because the anniversary is approaching again, but there have been a confluence of other things happening that have brought various things back, right into my face. So let's start with the worst. I was watching the pilot of a new television show the other day -- "Grimm," it's called. I liked the show, liked looking at the pretty actor starring in it, liked some of the music, maybe the concept or maybe not, but we shall see. But it was about people who transformed into the Big Bad Wolf and kidnapped and murdered girls/young women. In the beginning there was a young woman grabbed while she was jogging. She then went off screen, but you could hear her screaming. And it just stabbed right into my heart, Michaela. I have never known what happened to you. It can't help but be that possibilities scutter across my consciousness from time to time. I try not to linger on them ... but I can tell you that I didn't find Jaycee's book as horrific as some may have. The things she described are actually far more pleasant than some of the things that have traveled down that dark path in my mind. People watch horror movies, read news stories, and to them they are just stories, but not inoften when I hear or see those things, my thoughts wander to you, my little girl, and to just what you might have endured through the years.

If you are reading this blog, Michaela, then one thing would be true, and that is that however terrible the things you endured may have been, the very worst of the worst of those things did not happen to you. Do you know how very much I would like to know that? Do you know how much of a blessing it would be if you could just forever close the gate that allows those thoughts to travel through my mind in this way? I guess the bottom line is this ... I know you loved me. At the time you were kidnapped, I knew that in addition to the fear and grief you would be experiencing yourself, I knew that you would be worried about me as well, that you would be concerned about the fear and grief I would be feeling as well. Michaela, if you are out there, even if you don't want to come home for whatever reason, if you could please, please, please just set this one small part of my mind at ease, could you do it, please? You can leave quite an anonymous comment on this blog if you want. You could e-mail me at missingmichaela@gmail.com. I will post my personal phone number in the side column of this blog in a minute. Just give me some information that nobody else could know, so that I know that it's you. Do you remember our family code word? That would work. Is there any memory of our life together that you could share that nobody else would know? Please, Michaela, I'm begging you, on my knees, with my heart full of tears. Please.

Okay. Onward and upward here. I promised that this whole blog wouldn't be dismal. Pretty soon it will be 2012. And for various reasons I believe that 2012 could well be the year that you will be found. In fact I've written a detailed description of why on my other blog, which you can find here:

http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/will-michaela-be-found-in-2012-charts.html

I just can't help feeling that Something Big is coming next year. Completely apart from the blog post above, I have felt it reaching into my heart, preparing the ground, planting the seeds. I don't know what is exactly, or what form it will take, but I do believe that something is coming. And I do believe that it involves you, Michaela. Your solar return and my solar return are veritable twin images, and in some way our lives, our spirits, will be in sync in 2012. The one thing I can say for certain is that if you are not found, then something else will happen that will unlock the secrets of our place in each other's lives -- there are so many questions, so many things just vaguely glimpsed and not grasped. It's like your poem. It means something, but what? One of the quotes that has lit my path is by Rilke:

Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look now for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the questions. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answers, some distant day.

That distant day has come. It is here. It is time to start living the answers. As you held my hand, Michaela, when you took your first steps (and how clearly I can see and feel that, deep in my heart), please just take my hand now, and together we will take those first steps into the light of the truth, and the warmth of the love that binds our hearts together, now and forever, for all the past and for all the future.

I love you forever, Michaela.

mom

What happened to Baby Lisa?

2011-10-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that I don't know what happened to Baby Lisa. I don't know whether she was the victim of a stranger abduction, was kidnapped by someone known to the family, or was the victim of a terrible accident that was covered up. But neither does anybody else, and at this time there is absolutely zero evidence pointing absolutely at any of those possibilities as the single most likely. This is the only fact that exists in the case -- that we don't know what happened to Baby Lisa Irwin.

So if we don't know, what is the proper way to proceed? It is with an open mind and most of all with an open heart. The only appropriate way to approach this case is to focus on searching for a living baby Lisa, because most infants who are kidnapped are not killed. Most infants who are kidnapped are kept and adopted and can easily be raised by someone else as their own child. And the other only appropriate way of approaching this case is by opening our hearts to the family. I know that everybody is thoroughly outraged by the Casey Anthony story, but keep that outrage where it belongs -- on Casey Anthony. We cannot let it affect our attitudes towards other families with missing children.

The overwhelming grief and anxiety of having your child go missing ... well, it is absolutely the worst thing that you could ever experience. To be heaped on top of that with the terrible experience of being treated like the prime suspects by the police, including some pretty heavy handed interrogation techniques, and then to be vilified by the media and the public ... well, that just creates a burden that is too great to bear. This family needs to be treated with love and compassion. In this country we are innocent until proven guilty, right? More to the point, as decent human beings, it is our obligation to love and respect our fellow human beings and treat them with compassion unless and until it is proven that they are not deserving of that. And this family has not shown that they are not deserving of this. So far the only thing that we know the mom did that is even questionable is to drink several glasses of wine after putting her kids to bed, and then not admitting to that right up front. It may not have been the best judgment, which perhaps she knew and for that reason didn't talk about it in the first place, but it's hardly criminal. It doesn't mean she doesn't love her children every bit as much as anybody else, and it doesn't mean her heart is any less broken because one is missing. It doesn't make her any less deserving of our compassion and help.

I'm appalled at the disinformation that has been spread regarding this case. For example, I kept hearing that the mom failed the lie detector test, or the mom admitted to failing the lie detector case. In fact, this is not true at all. What the mom actually said was that the police had told her that she had failed the lie detector test, but that they refused to show her the results. People, the mom was not admitting to having failed the test -- she was accusing the police of lying to her. And they do lie to people they are interrogating. They make it seem that they know more than they do, in order to get the person they are interrogating to admit something. But the media and the public took off with this like it was some kind of an admission of guilt when it was not. And if she had "failed" the lie detector test, what would that mean? Failing every single question? No. So what question might she have failed? One that had nothing to do with what had happened to Baby Lisa? Like, perhaps, something to do with the fact that she'd had too much wine to drink before going to bed herself? Yet this still has nothing to do with guilt in the disappearance of her baby.

People say the parents are "not cooperating," or "not saying anything." They are criticized for having an attorney, and criticized because a private investigator has been paid to work on the case, and then criticized because they didn't accept help from a different private investigator. Someone puts up a $100,000 reward and they are somehow criticized for that with articles saying that it has nothing to do with the police tip line reward of $1,000 (which the police said they would only consider increasing if the leads dry up). The mom went to the grocery store the day before her baby disappeared and bought wine and baby supplies, and she was in the company of a young man (who I've heard was her brother, but I don't know), and somehow this is interpreted as something terrible and an indicator of guilt??? Oh, and don't forget that there are all these "experts" out there who are getting on TV and analyzing the position of their eyebrows and intonation of their statements to figure out whether they are guilty or not.

Come on, people! If I was the parents, I wouldn't be talking to anybody either, because there seems to be nothing they can do or say without it being twisted and turned and used against them.

As for the police, of course they need to investigate the parents. They should ask questions. They should thoroughly investigate the evidence, as they have been doing. But in my opinion no police officer should be treating the family of a missing child with bullying tactics. They should not be trying to "wear them down." They are already worn down with the worst of grief and fear. By the police as well as the public, they should be treated with compassion until it is proven that they deserve anything else.

Yes, it is entirely possible that Baby Lisa could have been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night. For goodness sakes, both Elizabeth Smart and Polly Klaas were kidnapped from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, while their mothers slept in a nearby room, even while other children were in the same room with them! There is absolutely no reason to think that this could not have been the case.

One final word ... I hope that you caught the fact that I am insisting that at this point in time, this family should be treated with kindness and compassion. For some reason, people are always offended if I monitor the content of my own blogs and facebook, but I want to let you know up front that I will not print any comments from anybody which do NOT treat this family with kindness and compassion. In the current climate, there are too few places where this is the order of the day in this case, but this blog is going to remain one of them.

God bless you, Baby Lisa. May you come home soon and safe.

Of course the police need to investigate the parents. They need to inve

The Latest News

2011-09-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share a little bit of news with you, at least as much as I can. First, regarding the Garridos, their property has been searched, they have been interviewed by our investigators, and now they have both been polygraphed, and I believe we are able to conclude that they had nothing to do with Michaela's kidnapping. So what that means is that it is even more imperative that we find the someone else who did. Whatever they may have done in their lives, the Garridos are in prison and will remain there for as long as they live. They will not be in a position again to hurt another child.

As far as we know, the person who kidnapped Michaela is likely still out there, free, and as long as he is, other children remain in danger.

I did meet with Inspector Rob Lampkin this week, and we discussed some of the things he feels need more investigating. Believe me, there are some excellent, excellent leads in this case. What we need is the opportunity to thoroughly investigate them. Unfortunately, that opportunity is difficult to come by. The police department has its policies, including a rotation by which our investigator is regularly assigned to new cases, which can take days, weeks, or months of his time away from Michaela's case. And as someone recently said to me, "Something new is always going to come up. A decision needs to be made as to whether or not Michaela's case is going to become and remain a priority.

Obviously, it should. But nobody is able to guarantee that it will. Even if every single person who has any say right now were to agree to this, one of the problems with police departments is that there is a constant changing of the guard, and there is no telling where this case might be shoved into the background. There are so many levels ... the detective, the sergeant, the lieutenant, the captain, the chief, and the process can break down at any link in this chain.

So what can I do? I can ask nicely. I can complain. I can hope and pray and trust. Or I can do something.

I have learned recently that a number of positions in the police department are not paid for by the City, but rather are funded by grants. So I have this idea that has just begun taking shape in my brain to form a nonprofit organization for the purpose of raising money to assist police departments in the investigation of cold cases. Of course, my motive is to solve Michaela's case. I have been nice and polite and relied on the goodness of others for too long. I really need to be more proactive, to be the strongest advocate I possibly can for my daughter.

And after that, I need to give back. I was really touched recently when the remains of a missing nursing student from Michaela's hometown were found, because they were actually found by Carrie McGonigle, the mother of another formerly missing child. Amber Dubois disappeared at age 14, and it was over a year before her remains were found. In the aftermath, Amber's mother became involved in canine search and rescue. She and her dog found Michelle Le, who had been missing for four months. I can't imagine the emotions of that moment. None of us want our children to be found deceased, but if that is what happened, we need to know. We need to bring them home to rest. For a mother to had been denied that for such a long time to help bring that resolution to other families is, I'm sure, at once heart wrenching and deeply satisfying.

The purpose of the nonprofit organization I would like to start, therefore, will be to provide the resources to help solve Michaela's case, and then to help solve whatever long-unsolved missing children's cases that can be solved -- it will be to enable those investigators to be able to make the case a priority and keep it a priority. There are a thousand missing children's organizations dedicated to getting the word out about missing children. This one will be for the purpose of helping find them.

There are a lot of questions that I need to answer. I've had some encouragement from some fine folks, but I know I will need more than encouragement ... I will need a lot of smart people who are willing to help make this a reality. But the first step is to gather my courage to take the first steps.

Seriously, you would think that with Jaycee having been found alive, the paradigm would have changed completely. I don't know the statistics, but I'd say the number of long-missing children who are found alive is probably not that much less than the number who are found dead. How dare anybody assume that their cases are any less important than any other cases, just because they happened years ago instead of last week? Yet this is what happens. And this needs to be changed.

The worst book on missing children ever written

2011-09-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

In case you are not aware of it, there are dozens of novels out there in the world about missing children. And I think I read most of them. They used to make me mad, because they were so inaccurate. The first I ever read was "The Deep End of the Ocean." I loved the title, but I was really pretty offended by the inaccuracies. Perhaps it would seem crass for an author to do research on this, which would best be done by interviewing families of the missing, but it just seemed ... well, I guess I felt as though they were writing about my life, and they were doing it wrong.

I've become a little less sensitive to these things over the years since then, but I just finished one book that will always remain on my list of the worst books ever. It is called "The End of Everything." The cover says it was written by a woman called Megan Abbott, but I find that hard to believe. I think it must have been written by a middle-aged male pedophile. And if you are at all contemplating reading this piece of trash, this is your SPOILER ALERT right here.

This book is about a 13-year old girl, Evie, who goes missing, and it is told from the point of view of her 13-year old best friend and neighbor, Lizzie. I actually listened to the audiobook of this, which undoubtedly made it much worse as the narrator read the 13-year old's voice like she was a simpering, preschool drama queen. I listen to audiobooks every single day, and I've gotten used to the imperfections of narrators, but this one was particularly awful, particularly combined with the content. About half the book is spent focusing on Lizzie's sexual and romantic fantasies about Evie's dad. There is also a lovely discussion by this 13-year old girl about a snuff film she'd seen or heard about (can't remember which) in which a nine-year old girl was raped by 20 adult men in a row and then killed on camera, and it was just as well, they said, that she was killed because of the condition she was in after being raped by 20 adult men. I was listening to this on my way home from work, just as I was pulling up in front of the house. I suppose you won't be shocked to learn that I came into the house and burst into sobs.

Early on in the book they figure out who took the girl. It was a man from the neighborhood, who used to stand in Evie's yard at night and watch her through her bedroom window. She'd sort of mentioned this to Lizzie without being really specific, showing her cigarette butts in the yard, saying that "sometimes he is down here at night," without saying who, and noting a car that kept driving by slowly, so that afterwards Lizzie is able to help the police add 2 and 2. And the missing girl does come home. There is talk about how torn up she was from having been raped by this man for three weeks. It's not completely graphic, and yet prurient somehow.

The topper comes when Evie finally confides all in Lizzy. She hadn't been kidnapped after all. She gone willingly with this man, because she had enjoyed his attention. She had not only gone with him willingly, but she had given herself to him willingly, and even when her insides were coming out in the aftermath, she said it was okay, and kept saying it was okay and offering it to him. She said she knew nobody in her life would ever love her the way this man loved her.

Honestly, if it had been one single character in this book that had this sick sexual attraction to a middle aged man, that might have been one thing, but this book seems to indicate that it's the norm. It seems to indicate that the "love" these dirty old men feel for the young girls is some sort of a blessing. And again, perhaps if the book said this once in passing, or intimated it ... well, even then I don't think it would be easy to take, but this is laid on thick, shoved down your throat on every page.

This is a disgusting, disturbing book. And on behalf of all victims of pedophiles in all forms, I can only say to Megan Abbott, you should be ashamed of yourself.

And to everyone else, please don't go out and get this book in order to see what I am talking about. Nobody deserves to profit from this sort of thing.

Dear Michaela ... a song from Robbie

2011-09-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

Robbie posted this youtube video today of a song he wrote recently. The first time he sang it for me, a few weeks ago, I broke into sobs. The lyrics are in the "see more" right under the video, and I know obviously that they don't exactly fit the situation, but the theme of the song just reminds me so much of you.

Look how grown up your baby brother is as well! Last time you saw him he was a cuddly baby. Now he's 6'4", but still cuddly.

Love you forever, baby girl.

Dear Michaela ... a message from Turtle

2011-09-12T19:43:00.000-07:00

Michaela, do you remember this page from your third grade school journal? I posted it on my personal facebook a couple of days ago. You will be happy to know that I often post links to animals who are in the shelter, in need or homes, or in need of help some other way. There are some people who get annoyed, probably not so much with the fact that I post about animals in need, but just the fact that I post so often! So I posted this journal of yours and told people that if you were here, you'd be posting about those animals also.

I got a lot of replies, all of them positive, but this one really touched me. It's from Turtle ... I know you remember her. She's all grown up and calls herself Kate now, but I am sure you will remember her nickname best, because that's what you always called her when you talked about her. Anyway, I just wanted to put it here in your blog, so if you are out there somewhere, you can read it, too.

"I love this note. I remember her often writing and once she shared something she'd written with me and because I was a bratty teenager, I didn't pay her the attention she deserved. That's always haunted me. I wish I had drank in every detail because she was one of the brightest human beings I had ever and still have ever met. She is a special person and I wish everyone had the opportunity to watch her turn into an incredible and gifted adult. Those of us who knew her even briefly have been changed because of her and what happened to her and all of your family and I know it's a small consolation to us, but I think she could appreciate and take joy in that. That she effected the world in a positive way. And finally, the date on that is the day of my thirteenth birthday. :)"

Wherever you are, whatever has happened, whatever you have gone through, you are still special, and incredible and gifted. Nobody could ever take that away from you. You are a gift, and you have touched the world immensely. There is no way to possibly tell you how very loved you are, not only by me, by your family, by the friends who knew you, but by a thousand strangers who never knew you.

I love you forever, baby girl. I miss you.
mom

Is Michaela Alive? What did she say about this?

2011-09-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

Michaela with little brother and sister, Alex and Libby.

Someone sent me an e-mail recently saying she was going to spend the next three months searching for Michaela. Well, I didn't quite know what to make of this, since lay people really don't have the resources or information necessary to search for Michaela, and professionals who are working on the case generally go through the police department rather than me, and don't post blogs about it. She went on over the course of a couple of e-mails to explain that she was going to try to identify Michaela as one of the unidentified deceased.

Now I will admit that I myself am friends with a page on facebook that posts nothing but pictures of unidentified deceased, and I looked at those damn pictures for a long time, feeling that it was somehow my duty to do so. And on the subject of unidentified deceased, I first of all want to say that I don't understand how it could be possible that Michaela could be among the unidentified. Her fingerprints, her DNA, and her dental records have been in the hands of the investigators from day one ... or at least day three or four. I have given cheek swabs for mitochondrial DNA in more recent years. Is all this not in a database that is regularly checked if any unidentified deceased persons come up missing? Michaela is listed in the NCIS database and has been since the beginning, and is listed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I have to tell you that if she should turn up as one of the unidentified deceased in this country, I'm going to be one pissed off mom. Such a state of affairs should absolutely never exist in this country, and if it's even possible that it does then some changes need to be made. NOW.

Personally, I consider it a very real possibility that Michaela could have been taken to another country. So what about the unidentified deceased all around the world? Is anybody checking them?

Well, yes, I do think about these things. How could I not? The person who wrote to me told me that she knew that I believed that Michaela is still alive and she hoped she did not offend me. It is not actually true that I believe Michaela is still alive. I do believe that there is as good a possibility that she is alive as that she is not, and I also believe that until it is proven that she is not alive, the only correct thing to do, the only loving thing to do, is to behave in every way as though I believe she is, because if that is the case then she needs our help. She needs my help. She needs me to never give up on her.

If she is not alive ... well, I don't know. It is true that if her remains are out there somewhere, unidentified, that I want to identify them. I don't want to know this, don't want to hear this is true, but I know exactly where I stand on this from the time that our police department was digging up the Garrido's back yard in the areas where the cadaver dogs and ground radar had indicated a body could possibly be found. I felt that I had to be there while this was happening, because if they happened to find Michaela, if the light of day were to fall on Michaela for the first time in decades, even if it were only here skeletal remains, I wanted to be there. If this were to happen, what I wanted to do was to gather her little bones into my arms and hold her.

I apologize if I have made anybody cry here, but if it makes you feel any better I have made my own self cry pretty hard as well.

I know I'd never have been able to do that. The Hayward Police Department went out of their way to be kind and caring toward me, but I wouldn't have been allowed to contaminate evidence, and if Michaela's remains were to see the light of day for the first time in years, we wouldn't know that for however long it would take to run those dental records or whatever they would need to confirm her identity. But this was how I felt at the time. And I can tell you also that when they confirmed to me that they had not found Michaela buried in any of those holes, I did not feel any disappointment that the case has not been resolved. I just felt a sense of overwhelming relief.

Nevertheless, I know that the important thing is the learn the truth, whatever it is. If Michaela is not alive, me believing that she is will not raise her from the dead. Nothing I can do is going to change the truth of what happened to her. As I have said many times, whatever Michaela endured experiencing, I can endure hearing, whether I like it or not. The category of things I might like disappeared on November 19, 1988, at 10:15 in the morning, at the exact time that this man kidnapped her.

What Michaela Said

If you've read this blog in its entirety, or watched every interview I've ever done, you've heard this before, but about a week before Michaela was kidnapped, she wrote a poem. She'd been awakened in the dawn hours, she said, by noises coming from our attic, where were being made, she said, by people who had been kidnapped and were being held captive up there ... "you know," she continued, "like the people in The Peanut Butter Solution." This was a children's movie about an artist who kidnapped people and held them captive, applying a peanut butter solution to their hair, which made it grow unnaturally fast. He'd then cut off their hair and use it to make magic paintbrushes, with which he could paint pictures that came to life so that you could actually walk into them.

When I got up at 5 or 6, I found Michaela sitting at the coffee table with a piece of paper in front of her. She told me she'd written a poem about these people in the attic and asked if I'd like to read it. It was the most extraordinary poem, particularly coming from a nine-year old girl! It went ...

The people knock on doors of steel
The people knock, the people kneel
They think of things that aren't real
Outside the doors of steel
The people walk, the people know
That outside those doors, the people know
The people think that you may say
The people think that they, too may
They lack the confidence you have
They think it's real, the dreams you have
The dreams they feel

One of the striking things about this whole experience is that Michaela seemed to be so totally peaceful and relaxed around it. If Michaela woke up in the middle of the night while it was still dark, she'd be far more likely to be scared and come to my room than to go sit by herself in the living room. But she was so calm that morning, no fear at all in her. Of course, it was an astounding poem to have been written by a nine-year old, but while I was amazingly proud, I was also just a little concerned. So over the course of the next week, I continued to ask her about it. One day I asked her, "Michaela, are you behind the doors of steel?"

She'd smiled a little indulgent smile, like mom is so silly, and so peacefully answered, "No, I'm not."

But one week later to the day, she did become one of the people who had been kidnapped, and I have really had no choice but to believe that this episode in those early morning hours was somehow a premonition, and that this poem somehow contains a key to what happened to her. And if it does, it clearly says that she was not killed. She was held captive. I know this is not incontrovertible evidence. It would never hold up in a court of law. But it does seem to be a message that Michaela left.

There is much, so much, that I could discuss here, that has to do with destiny, fate, why bad things happen to good people, the meaning of it all, but this blog is getting long enough as it is, so I will leave that for another day. There is so much here whose meaning I don't understand, the reference to the dreams. What dreams? I don't know. Could it be the collective dream that says that children who have been missing longer than 72 hours are no longer alive? If the world dreams this, these children even while living become dead to the world. We cannot allow that to happen.

Whatever happened on that day almost 23 years ago, and in the days, weeks, months and years since then, I cannot change it. I probably cannot fix it. But I have to try. I just want to have the chance to hold my daughter again, my baby girl.

Michaela Poster

2011-09-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

If anyone would like a poster of Michaela to hang on a wall or to distribute, please e-mail me at either missingmichaela@gmail.com, or sharon.murch@gmail.com, and I will send you a PDF copy of this flyer.

Dear Michaela

2011-09-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

I have been going through some of your things this morning. I am meeting tomorrow with the City of Hayward. They have been putting up murals all over the city and I think they have agreed to do one for you. So I've been looking for inspiration. I didn't find the particular drawing of yours I was looking for, but I did find your school journal, kept in the months right before your kidnapping. This one here sums you up very well, that making other people is what makes you happy. In fact, I could absolutely swear that I dreamed about this very thing last night.

I love you, Michaela, forever.
mom

3096 Days in Captivity

2011-09-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

I just got this book in the mail today. It came out in Europe long ago, but I pre-ordered it from amazon, and it just arrived. This is the story of Natascha Kampusch, of Europe. She is a missing child who actually managed to escape after eight years of captivity. This is what the back cover says:

On March 2, 1998, ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was snatched off the street by a stranger and bundled into a van....

Hours later she found herself on the cold floor of a fifty-square-foot dungeon in a house that would be her home for the next eight years. When she emerged from captivity in 2006, having survived one of the longest abductions in recent history, her childhood had come and gone.

Now Natasche Kampusch tells her extraordinary story for the first time. She was starved, beaten, and treated as a salve, sleeping in a dungeon-like basement and being forced to work for her deranged tormentor. But she never forgot who she was -- and she never gave up hope of returning to the world. She writes about how she refused to surrender to despair, and how she learned to manipulate her captor and managed to escape.

Ultimately, Natascha's account of her experience is about the triumph of the human spirit, and how, through an ordeal of almost unbearable hopelessness, she emerged against inconceivable odds -- with her heart and soul intact.

There is hope.

New blog

2011-09-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Ribbons for Michaela.

From its general beginnings, this blog has come to have a very specific focus, which is around Michaela, and around what Michaela has given me ... including lessons about love, and grief, and how to handle those things in life. So I have branched off into two other blogs.

The Wandering Journey blog was begun a long time ago, but doesn't have a lot of entries. It also focuses a lot on Michaela, as well. I do astrology ... not the newspaper column type astrology, as you will see if you ever look at this blog ... and I make some astrological investigations into Michaela's case and some of the leads. I don't do this often because honestly it is sooooo much to write up an analysis of these charts. This blog also may explore other spiritual ideas besides astrology, but thinking deeply enough to write those is hard work also, lol. These things really do often have to do with Michaela, spiritual lessons from her loss, what I think it all means in the bigger picture. Those of you who actually know me, or who have followed my blogs for a long time, know that I have gone back and forth on all this. I also know that it's easy to offend people with what I have to say here, so I haven't said much at this point, and I have kept it separate from the heart of my search for Michaela.

Just yesterday I started a new blog. As I said in the introduction, I had been watching Julie & Julia when I thought, "I should cook my way through the Skinny Bitch cookbook and write a blog about it." Well, that's not exactly what's going to be happening here, since I really don't cook much, but the blog is generally about health. It's about traditional health and weight loss and nutrition and exercise, but will also branch off into health as those high school health educators see it ... relationships, spirituality, that sort of thing.

I know that many people come here solely out of their love and concern for Michaela, and I want to keep that focus here. My other blogs, if you are interested, are listed in the side column on this blog, but they can be found at:

www.thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com
www.brutallyhonesthealth.blogspot.com

I've had some issues with comments on the other blogs. I know people could not comment for a long time on the wandering journey blog, and I worked hard on the settings and people seem to have been able to comment on brutally honest health. If you do try to comment on one of those blogs and can't, please let me know. I really do love our conversations.

Also, I changed my profile photo for the other blog, and it changed it on all the blogs, including this one. So you will now see my funny looking face instead of Michaela's on my profile picture. But maybe that's okay ... if Michaela is out there, I want her to get used to looking at my face again! I am going to try to insert more pictures of Michaela more regularly on my blogs.

Thanks to all of you for keeping me company on my journey.

Another one bites the dust, and believe me, you are safe here

2011-09-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Michaela with her little brother and sister.

I guess I should let you know that the lead regarding the "headed home" e-mail has been resolved. After sending a couple of e-mails with no response from the sender, I sent him one laying it all out there, that I was the mother of a missing child and that when I get an e-mail with the subject line "headed home" from someone I don't know, I just automatically jump to the conclusion that it is my missing daughter who is headed home. So this time I got a reply, which was that it had been sent to the wrong person. It was a bit of an odd thing that he said he didn't know how my address got into his e-mail. But it is also true that the e-mail wasn't addressed to my correct address. If I tell you my e-mail address, I will tell you that it is sharon.murch@gmail.com. This was sent to simply sharonmurch@gmail.com. The g-mail system explained to me that dots really don't exist in their world, so that this address actually belongs to me also. If someone had got my address from my blog or facebook or somewhere, it would probably have been the correct form, I'd guess. So it must have been some sort of mistake.

Anyway, I wanted to address something else here ... and that is the privacy of the people who post comments on this blog. There have been a few suggestions lately that I should start tracking down IP addresses of people who post various comments, because they could by some remote possibility be Michaela, or her kidnapper, or "the advocate." I have said that comments don't come with the IP addresses of those who post them, so it would not be easy to do that, but the other thing is that I want people who post comments here to feel safe. I don't want them to feel that if they say the wrong thing that the police are going to come knocking on their door.

More to the point, if Michaela wants to post anonymous comments here, I want her to feel safe in doing so. You can agree with me or disagree with me all you want, but she is my daughter and this is my choice. If she is out there somewhere and does not feel safe enough to make contact, does not feel safe enough to come home, then what I want to do is to make her feel safe. If she thinks we are going to be tracing the IP addresses and knocking on the door, she might not post comments at all. And I would rather have just a tiny bit of anonymous contact with my daughter than none at all.

I'm a paralegal, so I'm good at anticipating counter arguments, so I know you could say that perhaps Michaela is being held somewhere and wants to be saved and I am letting her down by not visiting the IP address of all the people who post on this blog, but what if that were to put her in actual danger? Take the example of Jaycee ... if the police had come bursting onto the Garrido property and said, "We think Jaycee is posting comments from this address," there is a chance they may not have found her. That back yard was very well concealed. But there are many, many other ways to conceal a person, so what we are looking at here is that somebody has a really good way and the police don't find her. If she is in the company of some actually violent criminals and they go through this close call because she has been commenting on her mom's blog, she could face violent consequences.

Well, I feel a bit like I'm writing a mystery novel here, but I'm just saying, if Michaela is reading this blog, if Michaela is posting on this blog, there is only one thing I want her to know -- that she is safe here, and the reason she is safe here is because she is safe with me, because I have only her best interests in my heart.

Shawn Hornbeck made anonymous comments on his parents' website for him, I understand. I understand he asked them if they would even want their son back, and that this is because he felt shame because of what had been done to him. But they did want him back. Nothing that had been done to him changed him in the least in the eyes of those who loved him. The same with Jaycee and Elizabeth Smart. They are loved and cherished as survivors. Michaela, you are loved and cherished as well.

Before comments appear on this blog, they come to my e-mail for my approval. So if ever anybody wants to communicate with me anonymously and not have the rest of the world see their comments, just ask me not to publish them. Sign them, please, with a code name if you want, so that I can answer your e-mails on this blog without publishing what you have said. Whether you are Michaela, or whether you are someone with information about Michaela, I will give you the space and time that you need to safely give me what I need ... my daughter back, a resolution to this crime.

I love you, Michaela.

Never letting go ...

2011-09-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

There is much on my mind and heart that I want to share, and yet I will admit that I have been putting it off. But now the dishes are done, and the coffee pot is set for the morning. I'm sitting on the couch with my laptop, watching Bones out of the corner of my eye and wishing investigations could be tied up as neatly as they are on television ... at least maybe I wish that.

Well, I have to tell you that investigation has worked like it's supposed to this week. The girl in the photograph I posted a little while ago has been found. She has been found by our investigator, and she was also identified by some really nice people who grew up in the town of Antioch and put their heads together. I have to tell you, I am amazed at how well both the police and civilian investigations worked. But the fact is, the girl in the photo is not Michaela. She and her friends and her family all verified that, and yet you will all be happy to know that our investigator took that extra step to be thorough and took fingerprints just to make sure. She and her family have been very cooperative, and in fact she and her sister have both posted comments on Michaela's facebook and on this blog.

I guess I might just as well confess that in the last couple of weeks I went overboard about something else as well. A week ago I got an e-mail from someone whose name I didn't recognize, with the subject line "Headed Home." I get a lot of e-mails from political parties with subject lines like that, sent as though they are from individuals. So I figured I'd open the e-mail and it would say, "we are headed into the home stretch in this election or on this cause, and all we need to make it all the way is some money from you." But instead, the e-mail had no text at all ... just a photograph taken from the inside of a car of a rural highway with a numbered exit sign. I am not sure how long it took me, but it wasn't long before I leaped headlong into the conclusion that it must be from someone who was driving Michaela home. (The name on it was a man's name.)

All of you sleuthers out there will be happy to know that I did run a search on the IP address, but its location could not be identified. I'm guessing this means that it came from a cell phone? The sender's information on the e-mail indicated it came from somewhere in the eastern standard time zone. I did actually run a google search of the highway exit number and looked at photographs and google maps of those exits all around the country and couldn't find one that matched ... not that it would necessarily give me much to work on if it did. I have personally passed a whole lot of numbered highway exit signs in the last couple of months, but I don't think knowing that would really help anybody to find me, or to identify me.

After a day or two, though, I had calmed myself down, and I had decided that it was likely a wrong e-mail address. I'm not the only Sharon Murch in the world. Probably somebody sent it to my gmail address when they really meant to send it to a Sharon Murch with a yahoo or hotmail or comcast or aol or yada yada address. I did send a couple of messages and didn't get an answer ... if I sent something to a wrong email address I'd probably say oops sorry, but I suffer from a compulsion to answer when people speak to me. I know just from sending text messages to my kids that not everybody feels this way!

In the aftermath of these things, people started asking me if I was okay. And I always answered that I was. I feel compelled to say this for some reason. Well, it is true that there are people over the years who have thought that they were protecting me by keeping me from getting my hopes up. I don't really want people trying to protect me when it comes to Michaela's case. First, that always involves hiding things from me, and I want to know everything I can about my daughter. And second ... well, any chance of protecting me disappeared when my daughter was grabbed by a stranger and thrown into his car. That is the cause of all the heartache and grief I suffer.

I've said it many times, but unfulfilled hope is a really heavy burden to carry, and "getting my hopes up" sometimes just feels so good. It's like a little balloon comes along and attaches itself to my heart and holds it up for a little while. It's not just emotional, either. I mean, one morning I woke up and turned on my computer and found that someone had sent me a photograph that could have been Michaela. If that proves nothing else, it does prove that things can change in an instant, that at any moment a piece of information may be provided that will open up the case and lead to Michaela, that just because I don't know it now and haven't known it for the last 22 years, it doesn't mean that I won't learn it tomorrow.

Hope just brings hope.

But still, when hope comes crashing down ... again ... it hurts. My daughter Libby worries about me probably more than anybody else does. After she found out about it, she called to see if I was okay. I found myself again having that reaction, just automatically wanting to say I was okay, to deny that it hurt. Why am I doing this, I asked myself? Is it that I don't want to look weak? She asked me, "Did you cry?" And I wanted to say "No, I'm fine." But instead I just said, "yes."

I was at work when I found out. I tried to ignore it, tried to be the strong person I wanted people to believe I was. But a heaviness settled in my chest, and tears filled my eyes. Driving home from work, those tears came again. I really wanted nothing more than to find a place to be alone and to sob and let all those bottled up feelings out. But there is no place like that in my world.

It's okay, though. It's okay to be sad. I read a book recently, in which there were so many people who were missing, or had been missing, so many mysteries to be solved, sprinkled with philosophical discussions about whether or not we should keep looking for the lost and what it means about us... But there was one little boy whose mother had died, and he always wore her red hat, because he missed her and it was his connection with her. But life went on, he made new connections, he healed. Then one day he took his mother's red hat and put it away neatly in the drawer of his new dresser. His mother's death hadn't made me cry. Him missing her so much he had to keep her hat with him hadn't made me cry. But him putting it away did ... it was like opening his hand and letting her go. I know it's a good thing. I know that those of us who are left behind need to do that. And I know that those who loved us would want us to do that ... they wouldn't want us to live in protracted grief and sorrow. But still....

There have been times when my sorrow has been so deep I have had to turn my back on it. I've had to close my eyes so I wouldn't get dizzy and fall into its bottomless depths. But I cannot, I will not, open my hand and let go of Michaela. She is my daughter, my baby girl, the love of my heart. If it hurts, then it hurts. It's not Michaela's fault, or the fault of people who send in leads, or anybody else's fault. It is the fault of the man who took her away from me, and nobody else's.

I got this news yesterday. Last night I spent the evening stuffing bumper stickers into envelopes to mail out. It reminded me of those early days, of all those hundreds and thousands of flyers stuffed into envelopes and mailed all over the place. I took each bumper sticker before I put it into the envelope, and kissed Michaela's picture. I send them out with love, continuing still and always to hope.

Thank you all, for trying to help.

God bless,
Sharon

Dear Anonymous

2011-09-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

We are collecting lots and lots of comments on the blogs, which I'm really happy to see. I'm really happy to see them even if I don't agree with them. I also try to respond to comments, but it gets really difficult because there are so many that are "anonymous." If you want to submit your comment anonymously, I don't have a problem with it, but could you just make up a tag name and sign it at the bottom of your comment? It makes it much easier if I want to reply to you.

Thanks,
Sharon

From Libby

2011-08-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

Michaela, Libby, sent me this picture today. It's from her fortune cookie. We have hope for you, enough to give you everything you need.

Love you forever,
mom

There IS HOPE, and we MUST honor it!

2011-08-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me in a comment on my previous blog how this picture, which looks so much like Michaela, makes me feel. Well, it makes me feel outrageously hopeful. There is this "wisdom" among law enforcement that if a missing child is not found within the first 24, 48, 72 hours, then he or she is probably no longer alive. In many cases, this is true, whether the sick person who kidnapped them does this because it is expedient so the child can't describe him (or her), or whether it is part of their sick fantasy.

But there are other scenarios that don't get the stamp of credibility from law enforcement, simply because the kids are not often found. One is like Jaycee's ... that this sick person keeps the child. The other is given even less credibility, and that is that the child is kidnapped by a ring of pedophiles. Human trafficking has become all the rage as a cause in the last few years, but for some reason missing children are largely left out of this equation. In either of these cases, the child can remain alive indefinitely. The fact is that even though only a handful of these children may be found, that doesn't mean that dozens of them might not still be out there, waiting to be found. That Elizabeth Smart and Shawn Hornbeck were found alive probably didn't change the minds of the investigators in El Dorado County, who had pretty much decided Jaycee Dugard was not alive and could not be found. But their opinion didn't change the fact that she was. If there are any other law enforcement agencies out there who haven't revised their opinions of their own cases after Jaycee was found, they need to do some reevaluating.

If this is a photograph of Michaela and it was taken two years after she was kidnapped, I am happy because she seems to be well, and that she is not bound and captive somewhere. The other lead I mentioned involved Michaela having been identified as having been in Mexico, in the company of people known to be part of a ring of pedophiles and traffickers in child pornography. There is no scenario which makes me happy. I know that nine year old girls are not kidnapped to be adopted by nice childless families.

But the point is that in either of these very possible scenarios, which are based not on my wishes or imaginings but on actual leads, Michaela could very well still be alive in this world somewhere. And this is a major point. Michaela's case has never really fallen into the "cold case" category. In order for the case to become truly cold, the leads would have to have run out, the trail gone cold. In Michaela's case, those leads keep coming in, and there have been so many of them over the years, not all have been run down to their conclusion because there simply hasn't been time for it ... and occasionally, apparently not the motivation on the part of whoever was in charge at the moment.

But cases cool also because they no longer seem as important. This happens with missing children because law enforcement buys into the notion that if the child isn't found in the first 72 hours they are no longer alive. In the early days of an investigation into a missing child case, the efforts are extraordinary, because everyone is set on rescuing the child. But a year later, ten years later, twenty years later, they most often are not thinking that the child still needs rescuing.

We would hope that Jaycee has changed that, always and forever.

There are people at the Hayward Police Department whose hearts and souls are dedicated to finding Michaela. To them, the case is warm and alive. They believe it is necessary to solve it, and they believe it is possible to solve it, but barring some miracle, it will take a lot of work to follow down a lot of the leads we have to their conclusion. With regard to this photo, who knows? It may be that the girl in this photo can be traced easily. Perhaps it will be easy to find the name of the people who lived in that house, and they will have put in changes of addresses with the post office and the DMV. Perhaps the girl attended school, and that school will have forwarded her records from place to place over the years. Oh, and perhaps all these institutions will still have these records after all this time. This is all unlikely, however. If it is Michaela and these people had a missing child in their possession, it's not likely they have left a clear trail of their legal names and residences. Mmm, not impossible. Garrido never hid his identity. But it's less likely to be the case. And the other difficulty here is that most agencies and institutions do not keep records for 21 years. So the trail here may be cold, and it might be difficult to trace the girl in this photo. As for the lead in Mexico, it would be even more difficult, particularly since it is in another country, and that lead is also very old with some of those involved now deceased.

The other possible miracle, the one I continue to hope for, is that Michaela herself will see that I am still looking for her and will reach out to us.

But barring miracles, like I said, it will take a lot of work on each of these leads, and on several other really good leads. It will take a lot of time, man-hours and resources. Sometimes law enforcement agencies find it difficult to justify that expenditure of time and money. Often there are fewer people working on the case in the first place, and those involved in the investigation of an older case are pulled off that case to work on more recent cases ... and you know no cases are wrapped up in an hour minus commercials, like CSI would have us believe. Even if they know whodunit, it takes a long time.

Police departments need to change this way of thinking, however. If a case is truly cold and there is nothing to work on, no leads to follow that haven't already been followed, that's fine. But if that is not the case, then these missing children deserve whatever time and resources are needed to follow up on every viable lead. Michaela has been missing for almost 23 years now, but she is still a victim. If she is alive, then she is no less important than any other victim, however recent the other cases may be. The same is true for all other missing kids.

We have had Jaycee's case, and she was gone for by far the longest time, but she is far from alone. There are other missing children, who were all missing for long periods of time. They were all kept by their abductors in situations where they had some relative freedom, yet were never mentally free enough to escape. They will tell you that they were waiting, longing for someone to come and rescue them, and yet were unable to break free. Shawn Hornbeck even read letters his parents wrote him and published on the internet, but for almost five years even this did not give him the strength to escape.

This is not in any way to criticize missing children for not escaping their captors when they have a chance. It is not at all unusual. It is an established fact that missing children rarely do escape, even though they may have the opportunity. This is one of the most important facts that must be considered by law enforcement in these investigations! These children are out there, longing for rescue! Don't give up on them!

In Elizabeth's case, she was rescued. The lead which led to this was apparently at first discounted by the police department. Her sister, who had witnessed the investigation, suddenly realized that she'd heard the voice of the kidnapper before. Her parents had to run with this lead, had to have a composite sketch created of a homeless man they'd hired to work around their house, had to publicize it. Someone called in his real name, and when he was picked up, Elizabeth was with him, in disguise.

Shawn and Steven and Jaycee were rescued only accidentally. Steven had been a captive of his abductor, attending public school all the while, pretty close to where he was abducted, using his own birth date, for over seven years, when his kidnapper took another young boy. Steven, in an act of pure courage, took that boy to the police department. What he hadn't been able to do for himself, he was able to do for the younger boy. In the end, he was responsible for his own rescue.

Shawn was found also when another child was kidnapped by his abductor, and the investigation into the other child's kidnapping led to his rescue. (This small pattern was one of the things that made me so hopeful that Michaela would be found when Jaycee was.) But in the cases of both Steven and Shawn, if their kidnappers had never taken a second child, they may have lived out their lives with their abductors. They may have spent 18 years in captivity, like Jaycee did. They may have spent 23 years in captivity, but they would still have been alive and they would still have been longing to be rescued ... like Michaela perhaps?

We need to take these lessons of these previous children seriously. Law enforcement and the powers that be need to understand that just because they haven't been found in a given amount of time, that does not mean that they are not alive, and it does not mean that they are not victims who are in dire need of help! And just because it has been awhile, this does not mean they are any less desperate to be rescued. They are VICTIMS as deserving of the dedication of time and resources as any other victim. Il am all in favor of hunting down thieves and other criminals. But don't forget the children!

Help them, please. Do not give up on them.

And one final word to Michaela ... and also to any other missing child old there who may be reading this ... those missing children who have been found have all had opportunities to escape from their captors. They didn't. Please understand, this is an entirely normal thing. They haven't had to explain this to anybody, and neither will you. But please also understand that just because you haven't been rescued, it does not mean that nobody cares. It does not mean that nobody is looking for you, that our hearts and souls do not desperately want you, do not desperately desire your happiness, your safety, and most of all it does not mean that we do not love you in the most desperate, all consuming way. WE DO. WE LOVE YOU. WE WANT YOU! WE ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU! Everything is okay, I promise. You will be safe. You will be loved. Please, please just come home.

Michaela, write me at sharon.murch@gmail.com, or post a comment on this blog. Call me at 510-461-0470. (For everyone else, please don't call this number unless you know for sure where Michaela is at this time. If you have any other lead, please e-mail me or you can post an anonymous comment on this blog. I assure you, I get e-mails as quickly as I get phone calls, and I always answer them.)

I love you forever, Michaela. Never, ever doubt that.

mom

Dear Michaela .... IS THIS YOU?

2011-08-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: The girl in this photo has been found.

You can find more information in my blog of September 1st.

I received this photograph this morning. I saw the text before I opened the message, asking me to look at a photograph to see if it could be you. So of course I assumed that it would look nothing like you, which is usually the case when this happens. I opened it, and first focused on the boy in the center, but then my gaze wandered over to the girl on the left, and I was shocked. This photograph looks so much like you. Libby said if she had found it lying on a table, she'd have assumed that it was a family photo. Alex said he had to look closely at the boy in the photograph to make sure it wasn't him because the girl looks so much like you. The face is partially obscured, so we can't be positive, of course ... but from what we can see there is a very strong similarity, and the hair, the body type, the posture, even the choice of clothing are all you!

The woman who sent it also included some information about this girl. She said this girl was always coming over to her house, that she loved playing with the younger kids and was very nurturing. All this sounds like you. Nurturing you were, and also so outgoing. I remember when we moved to a new house, you so boldly walked across the street and knocked on the door where Trina lived and said, "My mom's friend said a girl my age lives here and I'd like to meet her." You'd ask for what you wanted also, it seems. I'd always wondered about the pearl necklace you wore in the school pictures I got after you were kidnapped. Awhile back someone wrote to me and told me that it was her pearl necklace, that she'd worn it on picture day and you'd liked it so you asked her if you could wear it.

The woman had wondered about the resemblance of this girl to you, but had thought it couldn't have been you, because you surely wouldn't be out wandering around the street, and you had never asked for help. This girl went by the name Tamera or Tamara.

I had to wonder about that myself. Around about the time she guesses this picture was taken (1990), I was just starting to think that you couldn't possibly still be alive, because if you were alive then surely you would have found some way to contact me.... Many things have happened since then, though. Things I've seen, heard and read, that educated me. I read a book called "The Perfect Victim" about an adult woman who was kidnapped and she was told by her kidnappers that they were part of a huge sex slave ring, and that she couldn't go for help because many in the police force and government were also part of this ring, and if she did try to get away those people would kill her family. And it worked. She stayed with these people for years. When she wasn't being kept in a coffin sized box underneath their bed, they'd leave her alone to babysit their children while they went to work. At one time they took her for a brief visit with her family, and then she went back home with them, to get back in the box under the bed.

If that can be done to an adult woman, what could be done to a child?

I was thinking today about Jaycee as well. I was thinking about how she didn't want to talk to the press or give interviews after she was rescued. You know, I think part of it was that she wasn't prepared to answer that question about why she stayed, why she didn't try to escape. I guess I was thinking about that because I was thinking that if you were found, if you came home, you might not want to have to try to explain that either.

As hard as it is for me to believe that you could be out there somewhere and not want to contact me, I have to accept that it could be true. As hard as it is to believe that you could actually possibly read these letters to you and not try to contact me, I know that could be true as well. I'm told Shawn Hornbeck read letters his parents posted online to him while he was kidnapped. He was gone for five years ... nothing compared to the time you have been gone, and yet an eternity.

I know, Michaela, I know that it's possible. I know that you could have every good reason. I could never hold it against you. Yes, certainly I have suffered in the last almost 23 years that you have been gone. Yes, it would have saved me from that suffering if you had come home. But Michaela, my suffering is not for me. It's not because of what I have had to endure. My suffering is for you. It is for all the thoughts, all the possibilities of suffering that you may have had to endure. My suffering is for you, even just because of the fact that as a young child you were robbed of the love and protection you needed and deserved and which I longed so much to be able to give you! You know, it looks to me as though the girl in this photograph has a cut on her lip. Some have said it looks like a shadow, but I'm not convinced. It makes me think of someone hitting her in the mouth. That is my suffering, Michaela.

What I'm trying to say is that you would have no reason to feel guilty for not having tried to get in touch with me, for not escaping and trying to come home. Do not ever feel guilty because you think you put me through something difficult. I just want you to be okay.

Awhile back, our detective and I were both getting some e-mails from someone who identified herself as "an advocate" who intimated that she was in touch with you and you didn't want to be in touch with us. Well, my feeling is that she was not telling the truth. If she was, the most obvious thing about her was that she wanted to be in control of the situation. If she was telling the truth, and if you are out there with someone who is encouraging you not to make contact with your family, that person just simply doesn't have your best interests at heart. That person does not love you. I love you. We all love you. I know that ... I have always known that. But I could see it so clearly demonstrated as your brothers and sisters today saw this picture and said, yes, that absolutely looks like Michaela. Alex said, "Okay, now how do we find her?" followed up by, "I hope she's okay." Libby cried so hard she got sent home from work in the middle of the afternoon.

Michaela, you don't owe anybody any explanations. The only debt to be paid here is to you, and that is just plainly and simply all the love I have been saving up for you for the past 22 years, 8 months, and 30 days. (By the way, if you ever want to know how long you have been gone, you can look at your wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaela_Garecht - there is a counter in the box on the right side.)

I'm just going to say it again. I LOVE YOU MICHAELA! Come home!

I'm just going to finish up here with a couple of pictures. Here is a photograph of your nieces, Alex's girls. On the left is Shylah, who is four. In the center is Raina Joy, who is six, and on the right is Kalia, who is two. You know they'd love to meet their Auntie Michaela.

And here is a photograph of the back of my car....

Wherever I go, Michaela, you go with me.

I love you forever, baby girl ... as long as I'm living ...
mom

Dear Michaela -- I have never stopped loving you

2011-08-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

The investigator on your case has been interviewing Philip Garrido, and yesterday I was interviewed by Channel 2 about it. The interview was done at the police department, where they have a little office that is dedicated to your case. Just see, my baby girl, how much you are loved, not only by me, but by the many people who even all these years later dedicate their hearts to finding you.

http://www.ktvu.com/video/28888696/index.html

I love you forever,
mom

Dear Michaela ... only in my dreams

2011-08-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with the song "Only In My Dreams" playing over and over in my head. It's after 3 in the afternoon now and it's still playing. It took me a little while to place it. I was thinking it was a current song, but then there was this string that was drawing me to you for some reason. I had to look it up to be sure, but it was a Debbie Gibson song, and she was one of your favorite singers.

I can't help but wonder, of course ... because I'm me ... if there might actually be a connection to you....

I miss you, Michaela. More than that, my life is really an agony just thinking about all the things that could possibly have happened to you. Please, please, call me, write to me, come home!

Love you forever,
mom

Dear Michaela ... journey through the dark

2011-08-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about grief this past week. Can't remember what started it. I was thinking about what life was like in the days and weeks after you were kidnapped, winding down through the months and years, right up until the last couple of years. Over all that time, I've learned a lot about how I work, things I never would have guessed about myself. I think this started because of something I read or heard about crying, something about the surprising fact that most women believe that it doesn't help things so you should just "man up." This is true, of course. No amount of tears has ever healed a single person of a broken heart. As Libby would tell you, it just gives you a stuffy nose. Even Jaycee mentioned that she didn't cry because her hands were behind her back and she couldn't blow her nose.

What surprised me, Michaela,was that in the days after you were kidnapped, I was so much more dry-eyed than I ever would have guessed ... more than I am now. You know, all these TV cameras assaulted me, asked me questions ... things like "what is your daughter like?" Like they thought I could sum that up in a sound byte? She is beautiful ... but they could see that, couldn't they? She is amazingly intelligent, writes the most incredible poetry, draws rainbows. She's nice, and friendly, and popular. Did I mention what a strong spirit you have? I don't remember. What do I want to say to the kidnapper? Just to bring Michaela home, drop her off at a phone booth, drop her off on the street. We don't care about you, we just want Michaela back. But mostly dry-eyed as I recall. I was just thinking this past week about that, wondering if you had seen it, and wondering if you thought it meant that I didn't care.... Well, just writing that makes me tear up now.

You know, or at least you knew, that there had never been another child born on the face of the earth who was loved more than you. It had taken me five years to get pregnant with you, a complicated pregnancy, a delivery induced almost four weeks early. As a newborn you had jaundice and a strep infection where they'd attached a fetal monitor to your scalp which required you to be hospitalized for a week. You were so dearly wanted, so hard won. You know, sometimes I've wondered if what happened to you, being kidnapped, was part of your destiny, and if the difficulties of bringing you into this life were either because of your reluctance to step into this fate, or God's way of saying, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

But we did it, you and I. We stepped into each other's lives. You grasped my fingers in your tiny hands, and my heart, to hold it forever and ever, no matter what. (Tears again here.) I know I've said it before ... in fact I'm probably fairly repetitive in what I write, just because it's all so important ... but my heart and life were devoted to you from the start. I didn't go back to work after you were born, because dropping you off somewhere in the morning and going to work would have felt like ripping out a piece of my heart and leaving it behind every morning, and I couldn't do that. I held you, and I rocked you.

I kept waiting for that day to come, which everyone said must, when I would have to leave you to cry yourself to sleep ... but it never did. Never once in your entire life did I leave you to "cry it out." Always when you cried, I picked you up and held you, heart to heart. I wanted you to feel secure in the knowledge that you were loved, that you were not alone. In such a small thing, I just could not bear the thought of you feeling abandoned, even for a minute.You know, that is part of what makes it all so just plain UNFAIR, that those nine years later some stranger could come along and rip you away and force that abandonment on you, because I couldn't find you! The only thing I can hope is that by then it had been so deeply ingrained in you that it could not be destroyed.

This is one of the reasons why, after a certain point, I started having a hard time believing, Michaela, that you could still be alive. I just could not believe that you would not have found some way to try to contact me. I could not believe that anybody would ever be able to convince you that I didn't love you, that I didn't long for you, that I wasn't waiting with my arms open wide for you to come home.

But I understand now that there are so many possibilities, dozens of them. I know you could have been taken to another country, where you could not figure out how to work the phones until it had been so long, so much time, so much distance, so much brainwashing, that you could have come to doubt all you'd ever known as true. I know this, and many other things. And so I write to you, wherever you are ... so you will remember ... so you will feel a part of the family ... so if you ever think about the possibility of coming home, it will not be some great unknown that you would have to embrace. It will be as familiar to you as home should be.

Well, I've strayed from my original topic here ... which is really such a huge topic in itself. Grief, broken hearts. There was a time that I went to see a therapist, a few years after you were kidnapped, and I told her, "I feel dead, like I can't feel anything." And of course she explained that after you feel bad enough for long enough you just stop feeling. I don't know if I've said this or just thought it, but when I read Jaycee's book, or saw her interview on TV, it didn't make me cry much, and I think that is because there is a kind of flatness to her expression. She says the most horrific things in such a matter of fact way. Well, you know that Jaycee has spent the major portion of her life having to deny so many of her feelings ... in my own experience, I'd guess that it will take more than a couple of years to get over that. The ages and stages I've been through in this journey follow a deep and winding road, I know.

I've found one thing about myself that is really odd ... when my heart is at its most broken, instead of collapsing in a heap on the floor, I can't stop moving. Right after I was told you had been "snatched at the market," I started pacing in figure eights, around and around and around, and I continued doing that literally for years. In fact, I still do when something comes up. I also used to drum my fingers all the time. In the early days, weeks, months after you were kidnapped, I wanted to be doing things all the time ... there were always people around the house, always things going on. And as that slowed down, I actually started running! I know you will find that hard to believe, but I was quite addicted to it. I used to run every single day, at 4:30 in the morning no less, while it was still dark and quiet in the world. I ran when it was cold, when it was pouring rain, and when I was sick. I could not stop.

After Jaycee was found was another particularly bad time for me, and oddly enough I found myself doing the same thing. I'd go to the gym to work off my emotional pain. I'd walk and walk. I was suddenly really into cleaning the house, anything to be doing something. I could not sit, could not be still. You know I'm a person who tends to eat when I'm depressed, but I know now that is part of trying to bury my feelings. When they are real and raw and present, I don't eat. I run.

When my feelings were most raw, I invariably drifted into distracting myself. I think I mentioned Jaycee focusing on the pain of losing her kitties. Believe me, I'm an animal lover, and I know this is a real pain in itself. But the real pain was so much deeper, so much more severe, too horrible to really allow herself to fully feel ... well, that is something I've experienced. I've found things to be distressed over, found feelings to have that were not terribly well founded, just because it was so much easier than the real feelings.

I wonder, Michaela, what you have done with your grief. Have you buried it? Distracted yourself from it? Expressed it in some easier way in order to avoid its most devastating impact?

The thing that I have come to know for certain is that it is really difficult to cut yourself off from your grief without also cutting yourself off from love.

I spent the entire night after you were kidnapped sobbing. That night was absolutely the worst, most terrible night of my existence. The thoughts of what you might be going through tortured me. Just not being able to get to you, not being able to help you ... it was the most absolutely unimaginable pain. I literally beat my head on the wall. In the course of the night I ended up in just about every position possible, including on my knees ... much of it on my knees. After that first night, Nana came to stay. She'd been there the first day, but had gone home at night. The next day she returned and didn't leave. She slept on our couch with the broken springs for over a month. It was only having her there that kept every night of my life from being a repeat performance of that first night ... but I feel so terrible even saying that, even admitting that I received comfort from my own mother's presence when you yourself were denied any comfort from anywhere! Many, many, many people came to help. People would arrive at 7:00 in the morning and not leave until 11:00 at night -- friends, relatives, missing children's organization workers, police, reporters, tons of them. They helped me to survive with the busy-ness. But what helped you to survive?

That's been true of the last 22 years, Michaela. I've had your brothers and sisters, friends, hundreds of people who never knew you and yet reached out with love to you, and that love passed through me on its way to you and helped me to survive. Did it reach you? Did it help you?

I apologize. This has not been a cheery blog, maybe even depressing. And rambling. I promise next time to go back to the part about making you feel at home in your family as it is now. You, and your own family if you have one. But the darkness is there, spread out over the countryside of the past 22 years of our lives. And sometimes you just have to pass through it to get to the light. And that is surely where we want to go.

I love you forever, baby girl. I miss you.

mom

Dear Michaela

2011-07-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't written in awhile. A reader wrote to me to find out if I'm okay, and I am. I have been busy in the last few weeks, mostly with your baby sister. Not such a baby now, as she will actually be 18 in a few months. First she had a performance as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Then she and I went on a vacation. I have realized recently that we just haven't done that much in her life. Part of it is that having five kids and being a stay at home mom hasn't left much room in the budget for such things. I don't know whether the kids would rather that I had worked and provided them with more stuff and entertainment, but it's the choice I made, and I couldn't have made any other choice. It was just what my heart demanded that I do. Even now that all the kids are older ... all adults except for Johnna, who is 17, they are my first priority. My boss questioned this not long ago, said aren't your kids grown up? Do you need to take so much time off for them? Well yes, sometimes I do. (The only one I've really taken "a lot of time" off work for is you, by the way. In the month after Jaycee was found and while we were looking for you, I took off work more often than I went, but my boss was very understanding about that.)

I remember watching the movie "Baby Boom" with you, not that long before I lost you, where Diane Keaton was a high powered executive who inherited a baby from a relative who had passed away. It ended up transforming her life, and she had to quit her job and move to the country where she stayed home with the baby, where she ended up starting a baby food company. I remember when we watched it you actually cried, and said, "When I grow up I want to be just like you, and stay home to take care of my children." So I guess it meant something to you, and hopefully it has to the other kids as well.

Money isn't the only reason we haven't gone on a lot of vacations, though. Part of it is that it is just plain hard to get me out of the house. I couldn't tell you exactly why or what that is all about. I know that after you were kidnapped, I wouldn't leave the house for a long time, because I expected you to come walking down the street to home, or to call, and I wanted to be sure to be there for you. So that's not it now, I know, but sometimes things just get ingrained in you and continue to affect you long after they have any validity in the reality of your life. Maybe also I'm afraid? A little bit, I think. But you know, Alex and his girls live just a few hours from here, and I don't get to see them nearly often enough....

Anyway, when we came back from our vacation, Johnna had another thing going on. One of her friends had come up with the idea of having a parade in Castro Valley for gay ... umm, not gay rights so much as just plain gay acceptance. This little event ended up ballooning into something so big the sheriff's department said they couldn't march anywhere because it was too many people. So it became a rally at the high school, with speakers and musicians, and a few hundred people attended. It was so much fun. It was just the nicest bunch of people, a really peaceful and happy event, and I was really impressed because afterwards there wasn't even a bunch of garbage to pick up. Here are some photos from the event for your family album.

Johnna with the group of people who gathered together to work on the event.

Johnna is the fourth from the left.

A few of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence came from San Francisco to support the event.

This is Billy, who was gorgeous and also an extraordinarily nice human being.

Of course, this is Johnna with him.

Johnna and the friends who started it all, being interviewed.

I suppose you can recognize Johnna by now. :)

Anyway, there was a woman there selling rainbow jewelry. Rainbows have become a symbol for the gay community. I bought a necklace, and I wear it almost every day. So undoubtedly there are people who are going to think I'm gay, but that's okay. I am an "ally." I also wear it because it's pretty. But when I put it on, what I thought of was you. Do you remember how you used to draw rainbows all the time? They have always symbolized you to me, because of that. In your drawings of rainbows, what I have always seen is hope. Jaycee Dugard has set the pinecone as her symbol of freedom, and I have ordered one of her pinecone necklaces as a symbol of freedom for you, Michaela. But if you were to come home and make symbolic necklaces, I think they would have to be rainbows, the symbol of hope that you left behind. I hope the gay community would be happy to share that symbol with you.

Well, today I hope to be able to get back to work on the book I am writing. I know I've talked about it before, but it's a fiction novel about allowing love to triumph over fear ... and what happens when you don't, I guess. I have actually written a book about your kidnapping, and life since then, which kind of had the same theme, but I pulled it some years ago and have now replaced it with this idea. I did that partly because I realized that although it left me breathless much of the time, my life was not that interesting ... at least not unless I included other people's lives in it, and to do so would have been a violation of their privacy, which I don't feel I could do. Also, everybody (meaning publishers) wanted a resolution. They wanted an ending that told what had happened to you. The actual point of the book was learning to live with the questions, with unresolved grief, with continuing to go on and to choose to love in spite of it, but that is kind of a wispy point I guess. I read Jaycee's book, and there was a part where she spoke about losing a cat, and she pondered whether we should allow ourselves to love at all when it's inevitably going to end in loss. But that is the point. Those are the things those of us who have suffered such terrible losses must ponder in our hearts.

It's interesting that Jaycee focuses so much on animals. She allowed herself to feel the sense of loss in the love she had for her animals, but within that grief she had bundled up the loss of her mother, her sister, her life. I do that, too. I am sometimes ashamed because on my facebook I am far more likely to feature photos of animals in animal shelters than photos of missing children. I think part of the reason is because it is just a problem that is so much easier to actually solve. Here is an animal who will die if nobody adopts him or her. It is so much easier to find someone to do that and save the animal than to find a missing child. And it is also true that the photos of missing children receive far more press and attention than those unwanted animals. I get friends requests every day from people who have hundreds of friends in common with me. Funny enough, it is because they want to tell me about the issue of missing children.

But perhaps it is also that honestly the subject of missing children just clenches at my heart too deeply. It's like referred pain, I guess. You can only deal with what you can deal with. People say I'm strong, but perhaps I'm just too much of a coward to face up to some things. Yet those feelings will come out, if not where they originate, then in some other place where they are perhaps a bit easier to feel.

I do know that opening my heart up to love again after it was broken when you were taken was extraordinarily difficult and painful. Do you feel that also, Michaela? If you are out there somewhere reading this, if you have a reluctance to come home, is it because of that?

Anyway, the book I am writing begins with you. At first I started with a mom with a missing child, but I made the characters fictional and created different circumstances. But it just didn't ring true, so I cast that off and now the missing child in the book is you, every bit you. I changed your name, because I didn't want the reality of you and your kidnapping to lead people to assume that anything in the rest of the book is based on fact of any kind, because it isn't.Well, mostly not. I draw on my deepest feelings every day for this book. But basically it's an illustration. As for your name, I haven't settled on it for certain, but right now I have named you Aria Joy, which means "song of joy." That is what you are to me, a song of joy. And in the end, this book will be a love song for you. It is so difficult to write, though. It is so difficult to capture in words all that my heart holds for you.

I ask again, Michaela, that if you are out there somewhere reading this blog, that you would let me know. Even if you aren't ready to reveal yourself, where you are, to come home, just let me know. You can respond anonymously on this blog, or you can send me e-mails, or you can call me. I know some of those things can be traced, but not all can, and not easily. Let me know it's you by telling me something that nobody else in the world would know. Do you remember our family code word? A memory? Hope doesn't always float along like a helium filled balloon. Sometimes it is an iron anchor. It would lift my heart and my hopes so much to hear just a word from you, just to know that you are out there somewhere, that these words that I write are not falling into a chasm of emptiness.

But either way, I will keep writing to you. I will keep you alive with my words.

I love you forever, baby girl. I miss you. You are in my heart always.

Love,
mom

Dear Michaela ... new phone number

2011-07-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Well, you have been on the news again, Michaela. Apparently the District Attorney from El Dorado County, where Jaycee's kidnappers were prosecuted, has said that he believes that Philip Garrido was responsible for your kidnapping. So we have had reporters calling, or just stopping by the house, for an interview.

I really don't like these interviews. I don't like to be on television, and it's always difficult ... they want to stop by while I'm at work, which I can't be doing all day long, or even at home, where we have two dogs who bark like crazy at strangers ... especially strangers with equipment! But I do it. I rarely say no ... perhaps twice in all these years. There is the standard wisdom, like our police department tells me, to get your name and face out there, so maybe that one person who knows something will see it and be moved to call in the information they have. That's never something I've felt down in my bones, though. I mean, we have tons of information on your case. We could use a little help sorting through it and figuring out which is the right piece of information that can lead us to you. And I guess I figure that over 23 years, that right person has had plenty of opportunity to come forward. So it's a good reason, but it's not the reason.

Yesterday, I figured out why I do it, what it is that I feel down in my bones, in the center of my heart, that makes me do this. It's two things. First, it is in case you might be out there somewhere, in case you might see me on television and know that I am still looking for you, I am still missing you. But I think the main thing is that I am just absolutely driven to keep you alive. If you are alive, people need to remember you so you will be found. But even if you weren't, you are just so special, so beautiful, such a gift to the world, that I just have to keep you alive by keeping you alive in people's memories, in their minds and hearts.

So Jaycee's book is out now. I have it, but I haven't read it yet. Libby is reading it right now, and I will read it later, if Libby says it is okay for me to read.... But I've listened to her interviews. It has been so enlightening. She was asked why she never tried to escape, and she said that she didn't know, that it just "wasn't an option." And you know what? That's okay. Nobody could ever hold it against her. And nobody would ever hold it against you, if you are out there. Well, if you get a chance, maybe you could read Jaycee's book, "A Stolen Life." Jaycee found in the end that all her fears were illusions, and that escaping from her kidnapper's grip was nothing but good, that she was safe, even though her kidnapper had told her that she wouldn't be, that she was loved and accepted, that her children were loved and accepted.

Just like you would be.

Well, every time I write to you, I tell you that you should e-mail or leave messages on the internet, or leave a voicemail somewhere. And it always seems so inadequate. So today, I got a telephone, just for you. The phone number is 510-461-0470. (As for everyone else out there, if you have actual information about Michaela, you can use this number also, but if you just want to chat or to express your feelings, I'd really appreciate it if you would e-mail me, or leave a message here or on Michaela's facebook. I promise I really do read all the messages that are sent to me, and I actually try to answer all of them pretty quickly as well.)

I have to tell you, it seems impossible sometimes, that you could be out there. It seems like a dumb thing to do, to go and get a phone for you to call. But you are alive to me. You will always be alive to me. You know, a reporter came to my office to interview me today. Nobody is surprised to find photos of you in the house. As I sit on the couch, there are seven photographs of you straight ahead in my line of sight, and of course there are more scattered in other parts of the house. But in my office, there are three in my little cubicle, and two missing flyers in the lobby ... on in English and one in Spanish. And in the lobby there is a business card holder which holds cards with photographs of you and a listing of your website and my blogs. And you are not just photographs. You are just so much here, so much with me, all the time.

But what is wrong is that I am not with you. I want to be there for you. I want to hold you when you cry, and laugh with you when you are happy. I want to be able to love away every bit of loneliness and fear and sorrow that you have suffered. I want to give you all the love and comfort I have been holding onto for you for almost 23 years now. I know that's a big thing. Like Jaycee's therapist said, there are things that her kidnapper took from her that she will never get back, but she has taken back so much of what she had lost, and he can never take that from her again.

That is what I want for you. And it is possible, Michaela. It is. Just call me. Just come home.

Love you forever,
mom

Dear Michaela ... Jaycee's story

2011-07-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, Jaycee's book comes out in a couple of days, and the interviews are starting to appear. Last night I made it through the People magazine interview, through taking little peeks. That means that I didn't start at the beginning and read it all the way through. I looked at the pictures and the captions, and I read little parts of text. By the end of it, I had read all the text, but I had to filter it.

Sheesh, even writing that first paragraph has blurred the computer screen through my tears. And I also want to slap myself. I mean, how can I be incapable of grasping these truths except in teensy bits when you, my sweet, wonderful daughter, had to endure something that is unknown but equally awful.

And now, by the way, I am actually sobbing. And just so you know, this also makes it difficult for Libby to put her make-up on, because when I cry about you, it makes her cry, too. You remember how Libby used to want to hang around you all the time? You know, she still loves you and misses you, Michaela.

In this little excerpt of Jaycee's story in People magazine, a couple of things stuck into my heart. Of her first night in captivity, she says:

He says he will be back later to bring me something to eat. Then he is gone.

The tears start again, softly at first and then my silent sobs rack my body.

I cry myself to sleep alone.

There are many horrors I can't wrap my mind around, partly because I have no idea what actually happened to you. But these are the things that have always, always haunted me, Michaela, because I know they are true ... the little things, just the simple fact of you being alone, with nobody to love or comfort you ... with me not there to love and comfort you. I remember the night before you were kidnapped I woke up in the middle of the night feeling crowded in my bed. I reached out my hand and my fingers touched your hair, and I knew it was you who had come into my bed. I was pretty uncomfortable, and I thought about waking you and sending you back to your own bed, but I didn't. I let you stay. And I am so glad that I did, that I allowed you to seek that comfort of my presence in the middle of the night, because I was never given the opportunity to do that again. And just that little thing completely shatters my heart, Michaela.

And this line also made me cry:

For the longest time, I couldn't remember what my mom looked like.

I would try to draw her, but her face wouldn't come to mind.

Michaela, after almost 23 years, you may not remember my face, but remember my heart. In this short article, Jaycee wrote of a lot of reasons she stayed with Garrido. She stayed because she had a baby, and she thought nobody would want her with a baby, she worried even after she was found about whether or not her mother would accept her daughters. Funny enough, she actually came to believe that she and her daughters were safer with Garrido, because he convinced her that without his protection her daughters might be kidnapped, like Jaycee herself had been.

Michaela, if you are out there, I just want to ask you to please cast away any fears that you have because wherever you've been and whatever has happened, you are my child, my daughter, you are my baby girl forever. You are the tiny baby, my first child, the first person to ever call me mommy, and no matter what has happened in your life or in mine, nothing is ever going to change my love for you. Over the years, I have moved from house to house, the family has changed, but that room in my heart that you came to occupy from even before your birth has not changed. It is still there, still warm, still furnished with your favorite things, always waiting for you to come home.

And I'm telling you that I am sitting here weeping as I write this blog, because I want you to know how heartbroken I am. If there is a balancing point between your fear of leaving where you are and your desire to come home, if you have trouble establishing which would be most comfortable for you, perhaps you might let this tip the scales towards coming home, knowing that my heart is broken, and this part of it can be fixed by nothing at all except holding you in my arms again.

I love you, Michaela. I love you, I love you, I love you. I stretch out my arms and reach my fingertips as far as I can, and tell you that I love you this much, just like you used to do time after time each night after I sent you to bed ... only it's never enough, as you know. I love you more, deeper and farther than my arms could ever reach.

Please, Michaela, come home. Write to me at sharon.murch@gmail.com. Leave a comment on this blog. Just please, if it is at all within your power to do so, end this suffering that has gone on for almost 23 years now, for both of us.

And if it isn't in your power to do that, then just know that I love you, and know that none of this is your fault. Remember I told you that if ever you were sad or lonely and I wasn't there, all you had to do was touch your heart and you would find me there? Well, I'm still there. Touch your heart, and feel my love for you, feel it envelope you with a warm, soft embrace that never ends.

I love you forever, Michaela.

mom

Dear Michaela ... this is your family.

2011-07-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

You have been gone so long now ... perhaps it would be difficult to come home without knowing what awaited you, so I thought I'd tell you a little bit about what that might be, and about your family today. I don't generally like to talk too much about them in public places, but it might give you something to picture in your mind that might make it easier for you to free yourself from wherever you are and come home.

You probably know the sad news, if you have read my blogs over the years, that Nana has passed away. She died in 2004, from emphysema. It was a peaceful death. She just got more and more tired until one day she was too tired to get up, so I took her to the hospital, and three days later she died while I sat beside her. She'd had breast cancer many years ago, and she told me that one of her first thoughts when she was diagnosed was, "Finally, I will get to find out what happened to Michaela." By that you know she meant that she thought she would die, and that she would get to see you, because she thought you had died. But she would never say it that way. And the thing is, she didn't die from breast cancer. She completely recovered and it never came back. She lived, and maybe you do, too.

I guess I'm telling you this sad news first, because I was going to tell you where we live, which is in Nana's house. It's not fancy, by any means. In fact there is a lot of work that needs to be done in it. But we have taken down all the wallpaper and painted the walls in colorful pastel colors. The living room is blue, and the kitchen and dining room are green. We still have the beautiful view. Do you remember it?

Here is the living room. To the right is Bella, one of our dogs.

Right over the fireplace is a sketch of you done by a local artist.

On the mantelpiece, these are photos of you. You probably

never saw these pictures, because we had them developed

after you were gone.

The view from the living room window at sunset...

All the kids are living at home now except for Alex. Alex lives a couple of hours away, and I don't see him nearly often enough. I have suffered from a kind of post traumatic stress disorder for the last couple of years, I think, which has kept me from doing a lot of things. Well, no, let's make that for the last 22 years. But he has a beautiful little family who I love very much.

This is not a new photo, but it is Alex and two

of his girls, Raina Joy (yes, named after you) and Kalia.

Libby has grown up to be beautiful, as I'm sure you have. Sometimes when I look at old pictures of you and Libby, it is hard for me to tell you apart. I have to look at the background sometimes to figure out which are pictures of you and which are of Libby. They have done age progressions of you, Michaela, to show what you are supposed to look like now, but none of them look to me like you. I'd love so much to see how you really look, to see if you still look like your sister. Libby has moved in and out of the house over the years, but is in now, so she will be here waiting for you.

This is Libby on her birthday.

I'm sure she will hate my choice of picture, but she is beautiful.

I chose this also, because it makes me think of the many birthdays I have

missed with you. When you come home, we will make up for them all.

We will light a forest fire of candles and eat cake for days!

Then there is Robbie. Remember, he was just a tiny baby the last time you saw him. Robbie doesn't remember you, because he was only a baby, and Libby probably has more memories based on photographs than actual memories, because she was only three. I can't remember, but I think it was Libby who was asked about her memories of you, and she said she didn't so much have actual memories, but that she felt as though she knows you because I have kept you so alive for her. Do you ever think that you would be a stranger if you came home? You wouldn't. You are a part of our lives, every day. I don't know how it is that I can miss you so much, and yet feel really as though you are somehow here with me every single day.

Do you remember also that when Robbie was a baby, you drew a picture of him in his striped pajamas, and you wrote him a letter, and folded it up, and wrote on it, "For Robbie when he is 9 years old." I guess you chose the age 9, because that's how old you were when you wrote it, telling him about himself and about you. The really funny thing is that I just happened to come across that letter one day. I dug out Robbie's baby book when I was looking for something, and there was your picture and letter. And Robbie just happened to be nine years old.

Is it any wonder that I feel you are here with me?

Anyway, Robbie is 6'4" now, completely adorable, and just the nicest boy. Well, man, I guess, since he is 23 years old. He has a day job as a merchandiser, but his great love is music. He's been in several bands over the years, mostly hardcore, although one of the bands played acoustic music. He was a screamer in a few of the hardcore bands, but now he plays guitar with them. He sings with the acoustic, and he has a beautiful voice. He's also been in a few plays. I think all this performing stuff is really weird, but I remember you were supposed to sing a solo in the Christmas pageant at Hillview Crest right after you were kidnapped. I'm sure you would have been the first to go into performing, but now Robbie and Johnna have both gone this way.

This is Robbie with Alex's other little girl, Shylah.

About a year after you were kidnapped, your dad and I split up. A few years later, I remarried. Jeff had a little girl when I met him, so you have a stepsister. Ariel came to live with us when she started kindergarten, and is twenty now and still living with us, so everybody sees her as simply a sister rather than a stepsister. I know you will enjoy getting to know her when you get home.

This is Ariel, one of your new sisters.

You have a new half sister as well. Johnna was born five years after you were kidnapped, but you were there at her birth as well. She was born during the memorial for Polly Klaas, another girl who was kidnapped and who had been found murdered. We'd had the memorial service on the television in the labor and delivery suite, and just as Johnna was being born the station we were watching broadcast photos of other children who were still missing. I looked up into the corner of the room, and there you were, smiling down at me as your sister was coming into this world. It was as though you were sending me a message ... but what?

Johnna is also into performing. She is an actress, and has been in so many plays I can't remember them all. Right now she is playing Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I'm writing a novel, by the way. I have written about you for years, but finally I put away the true story and started telling my story in the form of fiction. The book is about a mom and daughter. The mom is the mother of a missing child, who is based on you. I have described you as gold and light. The other daughter I have modeled after Johnna, and I described her as the storm. There is something about the two of you that reminds me of one another, and yet you are completely opposite. Oh, and by the way, I named her Johnna Joy, after you.

This is Johnna, in her prom dress.

And this is Jeff, my husband. This picture was taken when we went to see Robbie's hardcore band perform last week, and he was being silly. He said he was practicing hardcore screaming!

And finally, baby girl, here is me ... holding you.

I love you forever, Michaela ... as long as I'm living and beyond, you will be my baby girl. You have my heart always.

mom

Dear Michaela

2011-07-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

It is Independence Day, Michaela! If you are out there somewhere, you too can be independent, and no fear or desire needs to keep you from it!

Someone asked me if you might be out there and have Stockholm Syndrome, where you actually want to be with your kidnapper and protect whoever it is because you have come to care about them. This would be a good thing for you, of course, but please try to remember your family and how much we love you and miss you. You have a new little sister ... well, not so little anymore, since she is almost 18 now. And Alex has children. Libby is all grown up, and Robbie is 6'4"!

And as for me, my heart is broken. There is a dark hole in the center of my life, and even after almost 23 years it doesn't get any smaller. In fact, sometimes it seems like it's larger. I just take a stray step sometimes, not even realizing that I'm going that way, and fall into that black hole.

Michaela, do you remember? Search back through your mind and heart and find me there. Remember I told you I would always be there in your heart, even if I couldn't be with you sometimes? I am still there. And if you find me, don't let me go.

You can reply to this comment, you can send me an e-mail at sharon.murch@gmail.com.

I love you, baby girl. I love you forever.

mom

Maybe next year....

2011-07-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of a three-day weekend for me. I don't usually go out for the 4th of July. Usually I stay home with my dogs. The fireworks spook them a little bit, but I also don't like to leave them alone in the house in case a stray firework started a fire or something. I live on a hill, so I have a view of all the fireworks everybody else is setting off. It's not as exciting as a professional display, but there are very few of those around these days.

Actually, I am hoping that in this three-day stretch I can get some of my book written. In case you don't know, I am writing a novel rather than a true story, but the main characters are a mother with a missing child and her younger daughter, and yes, the missing child is based on Michaela. And writing it is difficult. I go over it and over it and over it, writing and rewriting and rewriting again. The theme of the novel is the continuing impact of grief on a family ... when your heart is broken, how can you make it work again?

So even though I have not been writing much, we are still looking for you, Michaela. You know, there is not a lot that I can actually DO at this point, 22 years later, but it doesn't stop me from turning things over and over and over in my mind. The investigator at Hayward Police Department is really great to work with. There is a long time of building up trust which has allowed him to feel he can share a lot with me. So there are things to keep my mind busy. We have a little more than a handful of primary suspects. If you hear each story, it sounds as though it has to be the truth.

But after all this time, I'm kind of thinking that the case will be brought to some sort of resolution in 2012. My basis for this belief is astrology. I think I will write something on it in my other blog, so you can see that "astrology" does not mean the sun sign predictions in your daily newspaper. I've studied astrology for a long time and have found it to be very accurate. For example, Pluto was exactly conjunct my natal Mercury the day Jaycee Dugard was found. Pluto is power and Mercury is communication, and that event brought some pretty powerful communications into my world. Michaela's case probably got more attention in the following month than it did at the time of the kidnapping. Pluto transits last a long time, however, and this was just the final exact conjunction. During the previous year or so, I'd gotten it in my head to write a child safety book, and to start a website for Michaela, which kind of laid a foundation for what was to come without me even knowing why. Michaela's website was drawing 6,000 visits a day in the month after that final conjunction, and I don't know because I tend to doubt myself always, but perhaps the extremely modest sales of my book afterwards did something to help keep some child somewhere safe.

Just so you know, astrology didn't in any way influence me to do those things, because I was not practicing astrology at the time, had no idea where the planets were or what they were doing. It was only in retrospect that I looked at it, out of curiosity, and was astounded by what I saw. As in so many things, it has just proven to be very accurate. So this time, I'm looking forward, and there are just so many things falling together that I can't help but believe it will come to some kind of a resolution. Maybe she will be found, maybe the case will be solved, maybe it will be some other resolution ...

I say that last because in the years in which there have been no concrete answers, no who or what, I've had to dwell on the why's, because my heart cannot allow this to be some random, meaningless act. Whatever terror and suffering my daughter experienced could not be meaningless. There must be a reason, there must be a purpose, there must be a silver lining somewhere, there must be ... well, there just must be, has to be, some redeeming virtue, some justice, some balancing act in the universe. You know, this is at least a part of why I do what I do, here and elsewhere, in this blog, my purpose in writing a book ... to bring some good out of this evil. Michaela was a bright and shining gift to this world, and if she is not here to do it, then I will continue to shine her light in whatever way I possibly can. Through her suffering, and through mine, perhaps some gift of healing can be brought to the world.

I just simply have to believe that ultimately the universe holds good for Michaela.

If anybody is interested in the astrological aspects I was talking about, you can find it on my other blog:

http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/will-michaela-be-found-in-2012-charts.html

Thanks!

Another picture of courage -- Nicole Gillette

2011-05-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

"There was this silent, holy moment between Auntie Sarah and myself as we unwrapped the blankets and got to look at this brand new little one that somehow bore the all the grief and sweet joy of her abandonment. What a heavy grief for a mother to choose to say goodbye to the baby she birthed and the extreme joy that we get to have her for our own. The Aunties and I then gathered around her to welcome her into our home, praying for her and marveling over all of her newness together."

http://nicoleshopefuladventure.blogspot.com

This morning I sat reading this blog, which is written by the daughter of a very dear friend of mine. Nicole Gillette works at an orphanage in Johannesberg, South Africa. This particular passage is about an occasion where a mother with a newborn baby came to the orphanage because she felt she was not able to take care of her just-born daughter. Nicole's words so sweetly capture the pathos of it all, and you can't help but feel the heart of this baby girl.

When you read the words describing Nicole's joy, however, what you are witnessing is an act of courage, because of course Nicole doesn't get to have this little girl for her very own. The aim, of course, is to find forever homes for these little children, but even if the children were to somehow stay forever in this orphanage, Nicole won't be able to stay with them. She recently was transferred from one children's house to another, which will disrupt a very close relationship she formed with one of the babies in the house where she had been working. Eventually, she will have to return to the United States. These babies are not hers to keep, and she knows this. When she so freely and fully gives her heart to them, she is doing it with the full knowledge of the heartbreak of separation at some near or far day.

This is true always for all of us, whenever we choose to love, but it is never something we believe. Whenever we embrace love, we see eternity in the eyes of those we love. In that way, we are more like Nicole's babies than Nicole. Innocently, we give our hearts thinking surely they will never break. Few of us have the courage Nicole has, to give ourselves willingly and knowingly to the truth of love ... although, it must be said that Nicole does see eternity in the eyes of those she loves. Throughout her blog, she states that it is her faith in Jesus that allows her to do what she does, and that she knows that through him she will again be able to embrace all these little ones. And I have to say that her faith so simply stated touches me more than a thousand words from the most inspired evangelist.

Nevertheless, I present to you Nicole Gillette as an example of the strength and courage you are always accusing me of having. She stands up and reaches out and gives her heart away, every day. So let her inspire you, and keep her in your prayers.

A picture of courage

2011-05-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

I'm posting a link here. I'm sure there are more interesting ways to include this in a blog, but I'm not all that tech savvy I'm afraid. But I hope you will look at it.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=148402621896409&set=a.148402501896421.33232.136427856427219&type=1&theater

This is a photograph of a woman who worked at an animal shelter. This looks like a sweet picture, but actually the woman, whose name is Emily, is hugging a dog right before she is to be put to sleep. She is providing one last touch of love and comfort before death. This photo is so heartbreaking that I can't even write about it without crying. Even more heartbreaking is that this woman's employment was actually terminated by this shelter recently. The reason given was that she "wasn't a good fit." Well, I'd guess she wasn't. She dedicated herself to loving these animals, to taking photographs of them and posting them on the internet to try to find homes for them so they wouldn't have to be put to sleep, while apparently this particular shelter is a horrendous place. Another recent article about them said that they euthanized a woman's pet dog of 13 years. The dog had escaped from the house, and she had registered a missing dog report with the shelter, but they picked the dog up and put it to sleep in a matter of just a few days without ever glancing at the missing dog report in their files.

But here is the real reason I want to post this photo. It is because I want to give credit to this woman. People are always talking about how strong I am, or how courageous. They say this because I have survived having my heart broken in a way that they think they might not be able to survive. But in reality, when you are put in this position, there just is no choice but to survive or to die, and dying just doesn't do anybody any good.

It is people like this woman, Emily, who are brave, who are courageous. She is apparently willing to step out there every day and have her heart broken in order to give some measure of love and hope to other creatures, and to do it in an environment where her efforts were not welcomed. This strength of heart pours into the world. There are many lives she has concretely changed for the better, but the spirit of love behind it affects the world at a much deeper level. Unfortunately, it seems to be a drop in the bucket compared to the heartlessness of which the human race as a whole seems so capable. But that only makes it all the more brave, all the more necessary.

To Emily, to all those who voluntarily allow their own hearts to be broken on behalf of the suffering, be they human or animal, God bless you, and may God expand your spirit to blanket this world.

Roller Coaster Dreams

2011-05-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

I don't remember my dreams often, and when I do it is generally just snapshots. There is a common thread that winds through my dreams of traveling, of going somewhere. There is even a kind of a common landscape to my travels. It is a very pretty landscape, actually -- bright and colorful cities and villages with rivers and amusement parks. I cannot really remember a lot of details from the journeys, and I can't pinpoint the feeling of it either. It doesn't seem to be difficult or painful, and it isn't happy and exciting either. It just is.

I've ended up in amusement parks a few times in this journey. Again, I don't remember a lot of details. Last night there were a couple of roller coasters. I rode them in the dream, and actually felt that stomach dropping feeling. It was scary, but I knew it would be okay. But then I was getting a roller coaster which actually had a dip at the end where you flip upside down. I'd been on it before, knew it was a little scary, but I remembered sitting in the seat, holding onto the bar in front of me, and I knew that although it was scary it wasn't actually dangerous. And besides, it was part of the journey. The rails didn't end where they began, and I had to get to the other side to continue to where I was going.

But when I went to get on the roller coaster, only some of the seats were roller coaster-type seats, and they were all full. The other seats were all tables and chairs. I wasn't really sure about that ... it seemed like it wouldn't be safe on a roller coaster to sit in unanchored seats at unanchored tables, but then I thought that the people running the roller coaster surely wouldn't do it if it wasn't safe. I'm mulling over the power of centrifugal force and talking to a fellow traveler, but finally I decided that no, it didn't seem safe. I went to the man who was running the roller coaster and he treated me like I was stupid, said I had to sit in the chair at the table. But I decided to stand up for myself, and along with the fellow traveler (some unknown person), I went and got some legal papers to serve on the man, stating that he had promised to get me safely to the next stage in the journey and since the way he was proposing was not safe, he would have to provide an alternative means for me to get there.

Lately I have also had a couple of dreams that I am trying to get somewhere and the GPS in my car goes out. In the dreams there is always a moment of panic before I resolve to just follow the freeway signs.... These GPS dreams aren't like my journey dreams. They take place on ordinary freeways. My journey dreams take place in that pretty, fantasy like setting.

I have always believed that life is a journey. I'm sure my dreams tell me something about where I am along the way. I'm not very good at interpreting them, though.

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Today, on Mother's Day, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the little girl who was the first person ever to reach out a tiny hand and grasp my finger and call me mommy, the little girl who changed my life, transformed me from who I was into who I am.... She did this a couple of times over ... first when she arrived, and then again when she left.... I love you forever, Michaela....

And to my other children, as well ... all so different from one another, all so special. I gave them life maybe, but they have given it back to me many times over. As precious as it was to hold them when they were infants, to feel the weight of them as they relaxed in trust that I would support them, molding their body to mine, or to watch them grow, listen to their baby talk, hold their chubby little hands ... they are now all young adults, and I enjoy them more than ever. I enjoy watching their lives unfold, listening to their dreams and hoping they will all come true.

And to my mother. She has been gone for over six years now, and I love her and miss her so much! My mind is filled with memories of the life we had together, and so many, many times I think of the things she did (or didn't) do, which made her such a good mom ... and other times my memories make me sad, as those times I was inconsiderate come back to me, as I think of the hundreds of things I could have/should have done or said to show my mother how much I loved her, appreciated her, cared for her. But most of all, my heart is filled every moment of every day with the love which she planted there.

Happy Mother's Day, to all of you, my children and my mother. I love you so much!

Faith (Happy Easter)

2011-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I spent hours writing a long blog, which I may or may not post. For one, I talked about some other people and out of respect I need to get clearance from them before I publish it, and for another I ended up just rambling on and never really reaching a point!

But this was the gist of it, since it is Easter ... I really miss being a Christian. I really wish I could just enfold myself in that fold and find all the answers in between the covers of a single book. I love the faith, and I loved even the intellect of it. But most of all, I loved the love. You can say what you want about Christianity, and I know that there are those who profess to be Christians who like to be judgmental and even carry signs, but I didn't know them. I was surrounded by people who radiated love and tenderness. I went to a church, not a small church, and whatever its faults, it was a deeply loving place.

The reason I left Christianity was that beneath all the love, there was ... well, they truly loved gays for example, but underneath the love was the expectation that they needed to change in order to be acceptable to God. Mind you, they didn't go around preaching to them that they needed to change. They figured God would do that from the inside out. But I knew a lot of gay people, and whatever other great things were there, I never felt comfortable inviting them into an environment that might love them but wouldn't accept them. Worst of all, the message was that if you want God to accept you, you had to give up your love. Because that is what it is, in case you don't know. It's not about sex. It's about love. I think the show Glee said it best ... sexual orientation isn't about who you find attractive; it's about who you fall in love with.

Not to mention all those other people who for whatever reason, cultural or intellectual, or just plain lack of consideration, do not believe in Jesus dying for them ... all those really good, really nice, really loving people are going to experience eternal torment for that failure to accept a historical idea? This just does not make sense. It's not acceptable. If it is really, actually true, then this represents the worst sort of a god, don't you think? It is such an odd juxtaposition that Christianity inspires such really genuine love in the hearts of its people (and it even did with me), while at the same time proclaiming a message that says most of the people in the world are headed for hell. There are a few other things that bothered me also, but these are the main things.

Perhaps there is another way to interpret some of these things, but if so I haven't found it. I've read the Bible maybe a hundred times. I wonder if it would be possible to read it from a different point of view and find something different in it? I know that there are churches which are welcoming to people with alternative lifestyles and accept them as they are without figuring they need to change, but I haven't explored any and I'm not sure that's where the answer lies anyway. So for now I will bounce around like a pinball, and wish you a Happy Easter anyway!

Grief

2011-04-15T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today during my commute time I was listening to an audiobook. I'm not going to tell you which one because I don't want to give away any plot lines or anything, but as I was listening today a young man died. He was put to death for a murder he didn't commit. His family was there to witness his execution, and then his body was taken to the mortuary at his home town. He was part of the African American community there, and the author noted that while the white people in town always wanted to get their funerals done and over with quickly, the African American community lingered over them, taking their time in a long goodbye.

His mom met the hearse at the mortuary, and after he was carried in and laid out, the mortuary director turned him over to her. It was sad, heartbreaking in every way. And she prepared him herself for burial. She took a pair of scissors and cut the jail clothes off him, strip by strip, putting them in a pile. Then she took a basin of warm sudsy water and washed him, and dressed him. As on the day of his birth, so on the day of his death.

I am listening to this as I am driving to my office. Bare blocks away I have tears streaming down my face. No sobs, you know, just this overflowing water that keeps coming out of my eyes.

I was thinking about it still this evening, the sorrow of this young man's death, of his mother's loss. There are no thoughts behind my feelings. Sometimes I don't really understand myself. On the one hand I quite honestly sometimes feel that I am practical and even hardened. There is so much in life that is painful that I just HATE. I hate it and I turn away from it. I get angry instead of getting sad.

Maybe just because the sad is too deep. Tears are still filling my eyes hours later over the death of that young man, and the funny thing is that at one point I thought that is something I couldn't survive. And the next minute I remembered ... oh, I have. I have lost a child. And I know those overflowing tears are not just for that fictional son who died.

One day, when I'm all alone, I think I'm going to have to dive down into those waters that I avoid so vehemently. I'm going to have to jump in and allow myself to be surrounded and covered in that grief, and to scream and cry and carry on.

And then what? I don't know. That's the thing about grief and sorrow. They don't go away. If I scream and cry for five minutes will it help? What if I stop then? Or would I feel better if I went on for a half an hour? So much futility. There is just nothing, nothing, nothing you can do that helps. And I guess that's why I sidestep it, avoid it, why I get angry sometimes, instead of getting sad. It's just so much helplessness.

Checking In

2011-03-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a long time since I've checked in here. I do see that there are a number of people who still check the blog regularly ... or new people who do! And I am very grateful to all of you who do so!

I could probably come here far more often to write, but I've come to feel that all anybody wants to hear about is Michaela. I don't know, sometimes it seems as though some kind of a betrayal if I write about other things. What if Michaela is out there reading this. If I keep posting blogs about other things, will she think I am not thinking about her anymore? I know, that is probably dumb.

The fact is that things are quiet regarding Michaela's case right now. I know the police are still working on it, but they don't tell me everything they are doing, and they don't need to tell me everything. We used to get together for lunch semi-regularly, but I have been working full-time the last couple of months, and I work pretty far away, so that hasn't happened as often.

And here is the other thing, and these are the things I hate to say because I don't want anybody to take this wrong, but sometimes I just have to step away from it a bit. Anybody who has suffered grief knows this. There are times when it is inescapable, when it is a huge monster that sits on your chest and makes you unable to breathe. There are times when the holes of loss are so huge in the fabric of our lives ... times when an aching loneliness is all there is. These are horrible, horrible times, and yet I know their value. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and if you can survive grief without letting it kill you off, or kill a part of you off, it enables you to love more deeply, because you know the cost. It increases your sensitivity to the beautiful things in life.

But still, the thing that makes us able to survive grief is the fact that it wanes as time goes by. I woke up sobbing the morning after my mother died. Now when I think of her, there is an ache, and tears the well up in my throat and my eyes, but it is a gentle sorrow, rather than that sobbing that tears me apart and the grief that ... well, I'm going to have to keep looking for the words for it, cause I haven't quite found them yet.

One of the things you don't get when your child is missing is really being able to move through the stages of grief and go on with life. But in some way, you have to create that illusion, just in order to survive.

So I'm working, and I'm taking care of my family, and I'm dealing with life, and believe me all of those things can be hugely challenging all on their own! I am trying to work on my book. I am no longer writing the true story of Michaela's kidnapping and life afterwards, but I am working on a novel. I think it will be a really good book, but for now, I can tell you that it's my therapy. It is where I pour all my feelings, all the pain that has nowhere to go. The main characters are loosely based on me and my youngest daughter. The me character does have a missing child, and as far as that goes, of course it is based on Michaela, although the missing child in the book has a different name, and not everything is based on fact. As for the story itself, it revolves around the themes of loss, and how it impacts us ... hopefully in the case of my real family, even though we suffer our difficulties, we find positive ways to deal with the aftermath of loss. But what if it caused us to miss a step along the way? What negative effects might that cause? More to the point, what are we to learn from grief, and if we don't learn it the right way, in what ways might its lessons come back?

Right now the name of the book is Waiting for the Sky to Fall, although I'm not completely satisfied with it. If you have any ideas for the title, let me know.

So I can come back here, just to let you know I'm still alive. There are lots of things I'd like to talk about. I am still struggling with religion, and questions of faith. I just finished reading a really good book, called Cutting for Stone. Actually, I listened to the audiobook, from audible.com. I do that a lot these days because I spend so much time commuting. The story is about twins born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia, and the narrator has just a light accent that was beautiful to listen to. But the writing was so good. The prose was spare, not at all flowery, and yet it managed to convey such depths. It's a test of an author's talent to write about sex. There were only two important sexual encounters in this book, but Verghese conveyed them with taste and delicacy. (Unlike A Discovery of Witches, an absolutely horrible and horribly written book!) It has some important themes that are also expressed with delicacy. The twins were delivered by their father, a doctor, who almost killed them during childbirth, in an attempt to save their mother's life. Well ... I can't tell you how that theme develops, because then I'd be telling you the plot. You will just have to read just about to the end of the book to see that for yourself.

So here I have been blabbering on, and not really saying anything. So that's another thing ... I have actually written several blogs, which I haven't published, because I felt as though I sounded like a blabbering idiot. But oh well. Sometimes that's what I am.

Anyway, thank you for being here, and thank you for caring.

Love you all.

Nancy Grace Show for Michaela

2011-02-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, February 3rd, Michaela will be featured on the Nancy Grace Show. That's 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST) on HLN (Headline News network, sister network to CNN and somewhere around there in the cable channels). Nancy Grace is doing 50 days of missing people, one a day.

Before I say anything, just to be sure I am not misunderstood for even a second, I am immensely, enormously, forever grateful to Nancy Grace for doing this. I am very thankful to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for suggesting to them that Michaela be included among those featured. It is so wonderful, and I am so happy that Michaela will be a part of this.

But I've gotta tell you ... it's really hard doing it. Last week I had a little tiny phone interview for a five-minute bit last week on the Nancy Grace show, and I can tell you that the moment it started I just got this sinking feeling. Here I am again. They are asking me to go back and tell them what happened that day, and I just want to curl up in a ball under the desk. I don't want to go back to that day. I don't want to relive it. I don't want to have to bring up those words and speak them one more time. I don't, I don't, I don't.

But I do it anyway. I did then, and I will again tomorrow, in a LIVE interview from a studio in San Francisco. And you know, there is really only one reason why I do it. Honestly, it isn't even so that "one person" with information will come forward and give us that lead, although I supposed if it really was that one person with that one lead, it would be worth more than I could ever put into it. But my reason is far greater than that.

Nancy Grace is doing 50 days of shows on missing persons. I think it has been reasonably well broadcast that this is happening ... and it's been going on for a little while now. This isn't the first missing person show in the series, so people have had a chance to find out about it. And I have one hope. If Michaela is still alive, maybe she has heard that Nancy Grace is doing these shows on missing people. Maybe she is watching them, day after day, looking to see if she is on there. Maybe, just maybe, she will watch this show, and maybe it will bring her home.

Michaela, if you are out there, if you tune in tomorrow night, if you look will see me right where I am. You can be there with me in that moment. If you see me cough (which you might!), I will be coughing at that moment. If you look into my eyes, you will be looking into the eyes not of a photograph, but of your mom. If you listen really carefully, you will be able to hear my heart beat, for you.

Please, come home.

Love

2011-01-24T12:26:00.000-08:00

I spent a pretty sleepless night last night, and as I lay awake one of the thoughts that kept coming back is why do we bother with this thing, love? Think of all the pain and heartache we could avoid if we could just avoid love.

Today is Michaela's birthday. I will try to gather my thoughts later, but right now I am too sad and too tired to write anything. I guess I will just conclude one thing ... love is worth it. It is worth every price we have to pay for it. It is worth fighting for, living for, even dying for.

Like the popular quote that goes around facebook -- "Everybody is going to hurt you. You just have to figure out which ones are worth suffering for."

And on this day, I will once again answer the question, would I choose never to have loved Michaela so I never would have suffered the pain I have? No. I love her. I have always loved her and always will.

Dear Michaela,

2010-12-24T22:09:00.000-08:00

It is Christmas Eve. This is the 22nd Christmas that I have spent without you.....

I know I haven't been around here much lately, haven't written much lately. This year has been a very difficult year. It started out completely raw, filled with a grief that engulfed and consumed. There is only so long you can live in that state, though. Then you have to move into the denial, into the burial of the feelings. Distraction, distraction, let me think about anything, let me look at anything except for this thing that is so dazzling, let me even feel pain as long as it is fake, made up, as long as it is not this thing that wants to swallow me whole.

If you are out there, alive, you probably know what I mean. And if you are not, you probably have an even greater understanding.

This Christmas Eve ... well, I'm sitting here alone right now. There are people home, but they are not here. And I don't feel joy. I don't feel excitement or anticipation. I just feel sadness. It's a time for tears.

I know ... well, maybe this doesn't help you. Maybe I'm just supposed to be strong and yada yada, to make you want to come out if you are out there. But the heck with what I'm supposed to be. I only am what I am. I am sad. I miss you.

Merry Christmas, baby girl,

I love you forever.

mom

Dennis Oliver: how the icy spot inside a reporter thawed

2010-11-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

In my last blog, I wrote about the death of my friend, Dennis Oliver. I mentioned that he was a reporter who covered Michaela's story with such tenderness, he ended up becoming a valued friend. But I don't want you to have to take my word for this. Below is a column that Dennis wrote for the Hayward Daily Review newspaper after he had been covering Michaela's story for a number of months. It was titled, "The horrible icy spot inside a reporter has finally thawed."

There is an undeniable cynicism that is born in reporters whose job it is to write about crime and human suffering, a nervous laughter that comes form an icy region that forms inside once we have spent a certain amount of time hearing about nothing but the bad things that happen in the world. We laugh at murder, and horrify our family and co-workers with the gory details of crime scenes that no editor in his right mind would allow us to print. Half the pages of our notebooks contain things that are unfit for publication, because they are the part of the truth that we have the responsibility of keeping to ourselves.

We watch the friends and family of crime victims suffer through the worst of times and do no more than to ask stupid questions like, "How do you feel?" Then we make such assurances as, "I understand," before going to print with a day in their lives -- in black ink on white newsprint -- for thousands of people to read. Emotionally, we are not supposed to feel anything, and if we believe that for long enough, it often becomes the truth.

We make ourselves believe that we are walking blocks of ice. We build walls to protect ourselves, and the walls keep us from going insane.

Those are probably the reasons that I was caught off guard the evening of November 19, 1988, when I was called to work on what was supposed to be my day off, to cover what I thought would be just another crime -- the kidnapping of a little girl from a corner grocery story in Hayward. I did not know at the time that I would end up spending the ensuing month in the living room of Michaela's parents' Cornell Avenue home, watching the scope and magnitude of the search for their nine-year old daughter intensify -- and witnessing their once-normal lives crumble, with pieces and shards falling in all directions.

The first time I saw Michaela's mother cry, on the third day of the ordeal, I just sat there and wrote something absurd in my notebook, as if I would have forgotten that it had happened unless I did so. That notation is on a scrap of paper somewhere in a drawer of my desk now, and I have not looked at it since the time that I wrote it down. I have not pulled it out because, somehow, the image of real tears and real feelings about what was supposed to be just another story has remained vivid in my mind.

The drawer contains a mountain of information about the story that melted the icy spot I had worked so hard to keep frozen solid. Sometimes I hope the drawer and toss more scraps of paper into it, but nothing ever comes back out. Often, I have gone through times when I haven't wanted to admit that the drawer is there. Sometimes I try to convince myself that it isn't, or that the things that are written on the scraps of paper inside have not really happened or were never really said.

"I'm not going to pretend that I know how you feel, because I really don't."

I have said those words to Michaela's mother a number of times, probably because so many people have insisted to her that they do know. Her daughter's picture is on milk cartons and billboards. About 1,000 people she doesn't know came to a birthday party for the child. Michaela's Christmas presents sat in a milk crate under the Christmas tree and are still waiting for her. People Sharon has never met before that awful Saturday in November have taken up a post in her dining room. Her phone rings day and night, and sometimes there is only faint breathing on the end of the line.

I do not know how she feels.

It was on January 24, 1989, Michaela's 10th birthday, that I knew for sure that the ice spot had melted. I had my notebook in my hand and all around me people were crying. We had watched Sharon blow out the ten candles on her missing daughter's birthday cake at a benefit concert held for the girl at Neighborhood Church. I wondered if I should write something in the notebook or just concentrate on rubbing my burning eyes before someone noticed that I was crying. When I looked around, though, I did not feel ashamed, even though I was supposed to be an objective observer whose icy professionalism does not thaw. It was the second time I had seen Sharon cry, but this time it was in front of 1,000 strangers. They all seemed sympathetic.

Objectivity. We reporters strive for it and sometimes try too hard to achieve it. When we attain it, there is no emotion in the things we write, and perhaps at times it causes us to lose some aspect of the truth. I have learned that there will be times when you can drive yourself insane if you try to keep your objectivity intact. There are times when we should feel the hurt of others, instead of making notations that we will only lock away in a drawer, never to look at again.

For two months, I tried the best I could to remain an iceberg in a turbulent ocean of hurt. Battered by a wave of the ugly truth, it is my job to report that I have failed.

I do not feel guilty.

Farewell, Dennis

2010-11-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

I learned today that my good friend, Dennis Oliver, passed away yesterday. Dennis was a reporter with our local newspaper when Michaela was kidnapped, and he covered her story with nothing short of tenderness. Everybody was asking me to describe Michaela, and I was fumbling for words. How could I possibly describe her? There were so many words that sounded so trite, and could never capture her essence. But Dennis asked if Michaela had ever written anything. As a writer himself, he knew that one of the best ways to get to know someone is by reading what they have written. It was this question that first brought to my mind Michaela's poem about the Doors of Steel, which could have been prophetic.

In his quest to get to know Michaela for himself rather than just to get a few lame words from her mother, Dennis became deeply emotionally involved in Michaela's case. Almost a year after Michaela's kidnapping, he stepped out of his role as crime reporter, and wrote an editorial piece for his newspaper, about how Michaela's case had broken through the his own heart and taught him to care.

He set a very high standard for reporters, and in the years since he left our local newspaper, and journalism in general, the standard he met has rarely been even remotely approached by other reporters, and I have so missed it. Even though he was no longer a reporter, Dennis was the first person I called when Jaycee was found, and he has always been among the top of the list of people I would have called had Michaela been found.

Dennis moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe years ago, and it has been a long time since I've seen him. But we have kept in touch. Occasionally, I have had dreams about him, and when I mentioned it to him he said he was visiting me in my dreams, not consciously, but on some level. It's funny, but I had a dream about him just last night, and today I thought about sending him a message on facebook, thanking him for the visit. Then I learned he had passed away yesterday. My dream, which was clear when I woke up this morning, had faded pretty much out of memory by this afternoon, and I began wracking my brain trying to remember it because I realized, perhaps he had come by to say goodbye.

Or not goodbye ... farewell. Because I do believe he does fare well now, in another place. I believe now that he knows the answers to the mysteries of what happened to Michaela.... Sixteen years ago, Pat Chavez from Missing Children's Project, who had also been such a blessing to me after Michaela had been kidnapped, passed on. I was there in the hospital on the day that she died, and I swear I could feel the presence of all the children she had tried to help, waiting to escort her. And the amazing thing is that shortly after she died, several long unsolved cases were suddenly solved.

Dennis had many interests and many loves in his life, but I know that Michaela lived always, always in his heart. So if he has any power in the world to which he has gone (and he had a pretty powerful presence), perhaps he may use it to try to bring about a resolution to this situation, just as he went out of his way to investigate and try to bring a resolution to it in this life.

To Dennis's family and friends, to those who shared his life with him, my heart goes out to you.

And to Dennis, I can only say that you will live in my heart forever, until we meet again, and beyond.

Dear Michaela ... remember what is true

2010-11-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got an e-mail from somebody who said she had been a kidnapping victim and had been kept by her kidnapper for a long time. She talked about the brainwashing that goes on, and how the kidnapper convinces you that your family doesn't want you anymore, and even that you aren't who you once were.... I told her that you know about those things, that we had talked about that in our conversations about child safety, and that I had told you that you should never, ever believe anybody who tried to convince you of those things. And yet I know that under the pressure of the circumstances, it is possible for all that you knew so certainly to come into question, for you to forget that you believed me, and for you to believe something else....

More than that, I am writing to you because there is something that happened a few years after you were kidnapped which is haunting me. Shortly after the second anniversary of your kidnapping, a man came forth who wanted to help find you. He called the Hayward Police Department, actually, and the detective there gave me his phone number. He wanted to do your astrology, to see if he could figure out what happened to you. So he did your chart ... your natal chart, your transits, your progressed chart, your return charts ... anyway, he would come over once a week and we'd go over this, and it took a lot of weeks. Then once your astrology was done, he offered to do mine, which took some more weeks. Then he offered to teach me astrology, and I accepted the offer, and that created a relationship that could have lasted for forever, because there is a lot to learn in astrology ... and he knew it all, even the most minute scientific and mathematical details which I never quite mastered.

During all this very long time of doing astrology lessons, we became friends. The once a week lessons became dinners and weekend trips to Berkeley to visit the bookshops. He got to know my kids. And on one occasion, he brought a camera -- quite a fancy camera, as I recall -- and took photographs of your brothers and sister, and maybe of me as well, although I can't remember. The pictures were taken at Hillview Crest, your school. People didn't have pocket cameras or cell phones in those days where they were taking pictures all over the place. Anyway, he'd said he would give me copies of the pictures, and eventually I asked him about them, and he just brushed it off and said, "Oh, they didn't come out."

Eventually, it turned out that this guy was not really what he seemed to be. There were a lot of things about him that I was able to eventually question -- no things that were really terrible, but just odd things that all put together caused me to ask question. And some other things happened as well. It turned out that he was more like a spider spinning a web, an endlessly patient spider. What his ultimate ends were ... well, we don't know.

In all the time I knew him, I had never suspected him of being involved with your kidnapping. We have an eyewitness, and a description of the kidnapper, which has allowed me to rule out a lot of people. I've always been thankful for that, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to trust anybody ... and yet perhaps that has been a problem as well. After I had cut off contact with this person, he kept trying to contact me. Mostly he would send me things in the mail. And I had a friend he would call. All these things were presumably connected with his continued work on your case. Finally, my friend said to him, "You'd better leave her alone. She considers you a suspect in Michaela's kidnapping, and she is going to report you."

His response was the weirdest thing of all. Here we were, years after your kidnapping -- at least three years, maybe four, and he tells my friend, "Well, I have an alibi. I know where I was on the morning of Michaela's kidnapping. I was at the bank, and I have the receipts to prove it."

That was a red flag if ever there was one. I mean, who except a potentially guilty person would even know they had been at the bank on the morning of November 19th three or four years earlier, much less still be in possession of a receipt still, in order to prove it?

This guy lived on the other side of the Bay, and I now work on that side of the Bay. A few weeks ago, I saw a man walking down the street, and my immediate thought was, that is a bad man. Specifically, I looked at this guy and thought, he is a pervert, maybe a pedophile. There was another man with him, and then I looked at the other man, and I couldn't tell for certain, but the other man could have been the spider man who had invaded my life. He looked a lot older, but he would be a lot older.

And suddenly I started thinking ... I started thinking about how he had come into our lives and had learned things about us. And I started thinking specifically about the photographs. I thought, what if he had taken those photographs, and had taken the things he had learned about us, and he (or someone else) had shown them to you, to prove to you that these people who had you knew us, and that we were okay with them taking you.

Just the thought of that absolutely breaks my heart. Michaela, one thing that kept haunting me over and over again after you were kidnapped was the thought of you feeling abandoned -- the moment when you realized that help was not coming. That I wasn't going to save you. The thought of you giving up hope was crushing to me. I have said it now in a million ways in a million places, but the one thing you can count on always being true, Michaela, is that I love you, and I have never stopped loving you. If anybody took you and told you any different, they are lying. This is the truth, these words here. No matter what stories they may have come up with, no matter what proofs they may have concocted -- none of it is true.

I know that you were a fighter, Michaela. I know that you were smart. If these people invaded my life in order to help control you over two years after your kidnapping, that just proves it. But if so, it was a lie. And if you are out there, that fighting spirit is still there inside you. You were able to fight for the truth, because you knew the truth, and you still do. I love you. I have never stopped loving you. I have never stopped longing for you. If you are out there somewhere, COME HOME. You can leave a comment at the end of this blog, and it will come right to me, but it will not give me any way of answering you personally or getting in touch with you. But if you leave your contact information, I will contact you. Or send me an e-mail, at missingmichaela@gmail.com.

You remember that book I used to read to you guys? It was about a mother and son, and through all the stages of the son's life she kept loving him? Remember the words? They are for you ... "I love you forever, Michaela. I like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

Please ... come home.

Love you forever,
mom

New site for Michaela

2010-10-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have started a new facebook page for Michaela. Due to multiple computer crashes in the last few years, I am having to re-find many photos of Michaela, so they are not up yet, but I have put up a lot of videos you might be interested in, and I hope to include many more photos and videos in the future.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michaela-Joy-Garecht-Still-Missing/166157480075046?v=wall

Dear Michaela,

2010-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have written in this blog, and an even longer time since I have written to you. I hope you know that doesn't mean that I have stopped thinking about you, because it doesn't. I think about you every day. And okay, you and the rest of the world may think I'm wacky, but someone suggested that I try to talk to you through dreams. She said that whether you are alive or not, that it might be possible. So here I am, going to sleep at night and inviting you to come and talk to me in my dreams. The biggest problem is that I don't usually remember my dreams, so I don't know if it's working, LOL. But if you find yourself dreaming of me lately, this might be why.

Last night I had a dream -- I remember only a little bit of it -- but I was talking to your youngest sister, who was born five years after you were kidnapped. We were standing in the kitchen, and I noticed it was getting kind of gloomy outside. I continued what I was doing, but then I turned back and saw that it was completely dark outside, in the middle of the day, and I realized that we were in the midst of a total solar eclipse. I called your sister over to look at it, and I was a little afraid because it was so dark -- darker than night usually is, because people didn't have their lights on, and the streetlights weren't on. We were here, in our house (which was Nana's house), so you know we have a really good view of the Bay Area, which is usually lit up at night. But I reminded myself that it was a natural thing, and would soon pass, and it would be light again.

Of course, this has meaning in so many ways, but when I am seeking you in my dreams, what might it mean? That the darkness will pass, and the light will come? One day we will know. One day we will see clearly. One day we will have all the answers, and understand. We just have to wait it out and try not to be afraid.

So I have some family news to pass along. Your little baby brother, Robbie, is getting married! He got engaged last month, and they are planning a wedding for next August. And you can consider this to be your official invitation to that wedding. You remember Robbie, don't you? He was only seven months old when you were kidnapped. You used to like to hold him, and you drew a picture of him wearing his striped pajamas. You were nine years old at the time, and you wrote on this picture that it was for Robbie to open when he was nine years old. The really weird thing is that I was going through some papers, and this picture actually fell out of Robbie's baby book ... when he was nine years old! So he got it, right when you meant for him to get it.

I have to wonder, what does it mean when things like that happen? If you are not in this world, are you somewhere watching over us, directing small things like that -- making that paper fall out of the book as a sign, so that we can know that you are here? So that we can remember that you love us?

It has been over a year since Jaycee was found now, and since my hopes rose that you might still be alive and might come home. I do still believe that you might be, but even if it is not true, even if you are not alive in this world, I do believe that you are alive somewhere.

Tomorrow is the first day of November. Did you know that the full moon in November is called "the mourning moon"? Every year, you know, we go to the place where you were kidnapped, and we tie ribbons on this scruffy bush/tree thing that grows exactly next to the parking spot where the kidnapper parked his car. Usually they are yellow, for that song, "tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree if you still want me." But sometimes they are other colors. Sometimes other people tie ribbons on their trees at home and send me photos. I have yellow ribbons tied to our front porch railing. They have been there for almost a year now and it is amazing, because they really still look brand new, like I just tied them yesterday! To me, that is a picture of my love for you.

It has been almost 22 years since I have seen you, and yet, Michaela, my love for you is not diminished, and you do not ever fade into memory. The face I see in my mind is often the face that is in photographs, but I can still remember the soft warmth of your touch. I can still remember what it felt like the night before you were kidnapped, when a bad dream sent you into my bed, and I reached out to identify who was crowding me and ran my fingers through your hair. I remember when you were born, your first breath. I remember holding you up to the window early the next day and saying, "Look, baby, your first morning." I remember, I remember. I will never forget.

You are in me and through me and always will be. I grieve for your loss, and for my loss, and I grieve most of all for the suffering you have had to endure. But I love you now, today, always and forever, and my love will never, ever diminish.

November 19th, Michaela, at 10:15 a.m., which is the approximate time you were kidnapped, in the parking lot at the market. I invite you to that as well. I hope to see you there.

I love you forever,
mom

Your comments

2010-09-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just looked in my "comments awaiting moderation" box and there are tons of comments in there that I haven't seen! Generally I moderate them from my e-mail, and I guess not all of them have been getting forwarded to me. So if I have been "ignoring" your comment, I apologize! I will try to get through all of these over the weekend!

My mother's death

2010-09-16T09:50:00.001-07:00

What I learned from my mother's death....

http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-mothers-death.html

Another discussion of faith (revised) ...

2010-09-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is said that if you want to keep your friends, you should steer clear of discussions about religion or politics. Over the course of the last year, I've had some pretty violent upheavals in both my religion and politics, and I know that many people have been disappointed with me because of that. But I beg your forgiveness, if for no other reason than because I am not claiming to have discovered any truth that the rest of you should accept. In the subject of religion, I have a truly wondering heart, a restless heart, and I am doing nothing but earnestly seeking my path.

Recently I have been reading (and posting on my facebook) some articles regarding author Ann Rice's recent unconversion from her Catholic faith. I think that the thing I found most fascinating about her is that her conversion to faith reminded me so much of my own. In her book Called Out of Darkness she wrote:

In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from (God) for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profmound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I'd been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him.

This is a simply much more elegant way of saying what I said when I returned to faith in God some six years ago. I told God that I had a lot of doubts, a lot of questions, but that I wasn't going to allow those things to come between us. I was going to just put them in a box and lay that box at his feet, and he could answer them if he wanted. And the questions I had really were very much in line with the questions Ann Rice posits. When I felt myself being drawn back to Christianity, I literally told God, "I don't want to be a Christian because I believe in gay marriage." I also had all those bothersome questions which revolve around various issues of justice, including that matter of people going to hell because they didn't "believe" in Jesus. And some other issues, of greater or lesser importance.

So in this last year, I guess you would have to say that I left the faith. It wasn't an intellectual thing. It was like an internal explosion. It is true that there were all those questions still sitting there unanswered, and I think that part of what happened is my world was enlarged outside the walls of my Christian community, and there were people whose questions I knew I couldn't answer -- and those questions were there, even when they hadn't asked them. But I didn't say, oh, I have these doubts so I'm going my way. It is almost impossible to explain the internal revolution I experienced in this last year. Well, in retrospect I can explain it as transiting Pluto conjunct my natal second house Venus in Capricorn, which basically transformed my entire value system, but this occurred long before I'd returned to astrology so there were no preconceived notions in operation there. It is just beyond words. It no doubt began with Jaycee being found, and yet that was just the pebble tossed into the stream, which created a ripple that spread out in concentric circles and turned into a tsunami sweeping through my life. I have never experienced anything like it. Perhaps everything that happened afterwards can be explained by PTSD, but I don't think so.

So the really interesting thing is that when I turned away, I did not give up my belief in God, in the Divine Principle. I didn't really think it was possible to hold onto Christianity, though. I remember having a discussion with someone about whether or not it was okay to be gay, and she was quoting the Bible to me, and I finally said, well, perhaps that is not the final word on the matter. So she told me that if I don't accept the final authority of the Scriptures then we really had nothing more to discuss on this matter, and that was it. Of course, I can discuss this based on the Scriptures, but I'm not sure it does anything to prove the final authority of those Scriptures. I can point out that the Bible says that women should not have short hair, or wear "men's clothing," and that they should keep silent in church and should ask their husbands questions when they get home, if they have any. Yet we find explanations for why those things aren't applicable today. For the short hair thing, for example, one study Bible I read stated that in that area of the world there was a pagan cult in which the priestesses all wore their hair short, and so the admonishment against short hair on women was for those people at that time for that reason, so they wouldn't be mixed up with the pagan cultists, but that today it's okay. So I'm sure we could come up with some of the same explanations for the Biblical admonitions against homosexuality, couldn't we? There are a number of things in the Bible that we overlook or change because that was then and there, and this is here and now.

But anyway, I'm sure I've said these things before somewhere in this blog or other places. What really struck me about Ann Rice's deconversion was that she stated that she was leaving Christianity but not Christ. And what struck me even more was the responses I got to my discussions of this topic on facebook. I was really amazed to find that some of the people who were most adamantly supportive of Christianity were people who I knew to be astrologers or gay or otherwise on the fringes of what Christianity considers acceptable. This is the first time that it occurred to me that there might be room for Christianity in my more embracing spirituality ... but how, where? Perhaps I should sit down and read the Bible and try to see what it might be saying again? Were my preconceived notions coloring it when I read it before? Or do people just pick and choose? Because I am not sure I see much sense in that. But who knows? There are undoubtedly many things I don't know, have never considered, and I am really interested in hearing from people who would like to educate me.

So before I leave the topic of Christianity, I just want to say that a lot of people talk about the church not being loving, and that is absolutely not true of the church with which I was involved -- not as an entity, not as a denomination, and not as the individuals in the larger church embraced in numerous denominations. They are not evil, judgmental people. They are the most loving, warm hearted, embracing and accepting people in the world. They even still love me. Well, most of them anyway. And I am so glad about that, because I genuinely love them. If they talk to me about faith, they do it with love and compassion, but they are also able to talk to me with love without even mentioning my beliefs.

My son and his fiance are both devoted Christians who plan to center their lives around youth ministry, and honestly one of the things I miss most about my faith is that shared faith and purpose. I could almost be talked into returning to it just solely for that ... and yet not. But their love, their compassion, is boundless. Their hearts burn with the warmth of love, and you are drawn to it in the relative coldness of the world, and you want to warm your hands, and warm your own heart, in their presence. So for all those who talk about the hypocrisy of Christians, I say a bit fat "Pfffffffffft!" Having come out of the evangelical/fundamentalist church (Foursquare denomination, to be exact), I don't see that. I see imperfections in people, of course, but this is not the same as hypocrisy. The overwhelming thing I have seen in church is honest love.

But onward we go, and where has my path taken me? My friend Chris believes that there are "many paths", and I tend to agree with her. But where is mine? My feet long for a road to walk. Dancing in the meadows is fine, but my way is to desire some structure, a place to put my feet, a way forward that leads towards the goal somehow. I desire spiritual knowledge and education. And I desire spiritual fellowship.

I have been a spiritual seeker much of my life, so as I set out, I explored some of the things that had intrigued me before. Previously I had been interested in Kriya Yoga and the writings of Pramahansa Yogananda, made all the more intriguing by the fact that there was a pretty active Ananda community here in the Bay Area. So I started re-reading Autobiography of a Yogi, but it no longer seemed to resonate with me. There were things in it that I found silly. There were the cracks of organized religion. I haven't totally written it off, but at this point it hasn't drawn me.

Then there is Buddhism. I recall saying frequently that I thought Buddhism had something superior going for it, but given the fact that I really knew nothing about it, I don't know that I could speak with authority here. I had the notion that it didn't try to convert you to anything, which may be true. I had returned to an in-depth study of astrology, and particularly the school of evolutionary astrology, and some of my favorite teachers were Tibetan Buddhists. So I started looking into this. A friend gave me the book, Finding the Buddha Within and I started reading it. But here are two problems. Both Yoga and Buddhism require meditation, and I just have not been able to meditate. For one thing, I cannot still my mind. For another, I cannot find the time to make a concerted effort to do it. Hmm, excuses I know. But as I kept reading, I came to this point of understanding that the goal of these spiritual paths lies in a relative obliteration of the self. We are to abandon our self, our ego, and become one with the Divine. Now I know that should appeal to me, but it doesn't. I guess I have not reached a point in my spiritual development where I am ready to become truly enlightened. I am not ready for heaven. I am still grappling with the earth plane here. I am still trying to un-knot my psyche. I feel as though I have a purpose here, and I want to find that -- my purpose, which doesn't feel like obliteration of my ego so much as it does embracing of it. In acknowledging that, I have had to allow myself to feel waves of shallowness and self-centeredness ... but hey, I let it pass. It really is not shallow, to try to understand the purpose of my existence here on earth, in particular to understand what it is I am supposed to do, what I am supposed to GIVE to the world in this lifetime. And it's not self-centered either, because I understand it is not all about me. Even writing this blog ... somehow I am sharing what I am learning, or at least what my questions are, with at least a handful of people, and perhaps help some through that. And is it egotistical? I suppose that depends on your definition of the word. If it means arrogant, it is not that, because the whole reason I need to search for myself is because I haven't found myself; my ego is in pieces and needs to be put together; it is lost in the fog and needs to be found. I am a broken person. I need to be fixed. Grief and suffering. Those are some of the major themes of my life. What happened to my daughter, what happened to me ... they are not meaningless if they are part of the path, if they have a purpose in the world. If it is just some accidental occurrence, if this one life is all there is, then it is all a big fat waste. But I don't believe that. The light of my daughter's spirit is too bright. My knowledge of her as a gift not only to me but to the world is too certain.

But I couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be this basic difference between the Judeo-Christian point of view and the view of the eastern religions, and that is on the nature of man. The Judeo-Christian point of view is that man is inherently evil, and that blood sacrifice is necessary in order to pay for his sins and make him worthy to enter into the presence of God. In the Old Testament, it was the blood of bulls and goats. In my book, as an animal lover, those Old Testament festivals must have been pretty horrific scenes. In Christianity, our sins are paid by the sacrificial death of one man, Jesus. And because of man's inherently evil nature, when he leaves this life he cannot enter into the presence of God unless he has accepted the symbolic washing away of his sins in the sacrificial blood. If he dies without doing that, then he is subjected to eternal torment.

But in the eastern religions, my understanding is not that man is seen as inherently evil, but that man is seen as inherently embodying the nature of God, that if we reach deep, deep within, past the ego and all its attachments, that we will find and be one with God inside of us. And if we don't manage to do that in this lifetime, we will come back again, and again, until we are ready to let go and become one with God.

I think this was a major part of my difficulty with Christianity. I really don't think man is evil. Of course, I believe there is evil in the world! I think we all have the capacity for it, that we are all imperfect and make mistakes, but for the most part, for most of us, the hearts within most of us are good. I even think that most of our unpleasant behavior doesn't come from evil, but rather is a manifestation of our pain. I believe, for example, that anger is generally our sorrow, turned around and thrown outside ourselves so that we don't have to feel it for what it actually is. But I don't think I have met or heard of too many people I would consider deserving of eternal torment. Having God within us, waiting to break through, seems to feel closer to the truth of things.

I have recently begun to read Sue Monk Kidd. I haven't finished reading her yet, so I don't know what I will conclude. If I conclude anything major, I will let you know. She is another person who interests me, because she came out of a conservative Christian background -- started out as a Baptist, an inspirational author for the conservative Guideposts magazine. And now she has left that background for an exploration of what I've heard referred to as "the sacred feminine." I'll let you know if and when I grasp that concept also. But I am right now reading Traveling With Pomegranates, which she wrote along with her 22-year old daughter, while on a trip to Greece. I am absolutely awed by the book so far, simply by the tenderness of the writing about the relationship between the mother and daughter, and also the writing about those moments when you come face to face with yourself, and with the meaning of your existence. I have also ordered her book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, about her journey from Christianity itself. Interestingly, she recently allowed to be published a collection of her earliest spiritual writings, Firstlight, which she wrote from a Christian perspective. Personally, I have a hard time right now making peace with those things I wrote as a Christian, so I find this to be intriguing, because Monk had the same worry and yet found it to be a good experience. Perhaps in that might lie some of the answers to my questions of integrating my faith(s).

At any rate, if I find any answers I'll let you know.

The one spiritual path that I have fully embraced is astrology. Astrology as a spiritual discipline has a really great advantage. It is not a religion. Yet true astrology is definitely about the spiritual path. In the natal chart, the purposes of your life are revealed. In your transits and progressions, the unfolding of that purpose is revealed. It isn't going to predict your future, as in telling you what events are going to occur, so much as it is going to tell you what the lessons are you are learning. Astrology in my life has been at its very best when I have been ignoring it. It is those key junctures I look at in retrospect, at which I am absolutely amazed to find transits that paint a perfect picture of the energies that were at work in my life, that I gain the most respect for the spiritual science of astrology -- and that I also come to understand my life's meaning. I have done charts for others as well. In all this, I have kind of found myself falling into another place I've been before, and that is a kind of tentative acceptance of multiple lives ... reincarnation. It just makes so much sense in so many ways. It has explained so many mysteries. The school of evolutionary astrology to which I subscribe assumes this, and reveals the past lives through the natal chart in ways I have seen to be remarkable. I have seen some possible insights into what happened to Michaela as well, but not being able to prove them I am not going to write about them.

So I know that marks me as a nut to many. But okay, I am a nut.

These things are actually difficult for me to write. I want to be loved, just like anybody else, and I know there are people who are going to not love me because I am a nut. But perhaps there are those who may be helped by this part of my journey, although even more than that, I am really hoping to hear from any of my wonderful readers who may have found their own answers for this journey. I assure you I welcome and will read any and all of your comments, and will publish all that lead to any kind of constructive discussion.

Thanks all, and God bless.

I'd know you anywhere

2010-09-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

You all probably know that I love to read books about missing kids, and you know I only halfheartedly recommend most of them, but this latest one that I read was really good, and really thought-provoking. I have posted a couple of quotes from it on my facebook -- not even necessarily because I agreed with them, because I'm not sure I do, but just because there was something in them I felt compelled to copy. They were:

"There is no magic that can keep a child a child, or shield a child from the world at large. That was where the trouble almost always began, with a parent trying to out think fate. Stay on the path. Don't touch the spindle. Don't speak to strangers. Don't touch the rose."

"A line from a poem came to her, something about the people who never got suffering wrong. Yet in Eliza's experience, everyone, even most victims, got suffering wrong. That's why it was better never to speak of it.

This story is about an adult woman, Eliza, who was kidnapped as a young teen, and held captive for six weeks by her abductor, before she was rescued -- and actually rescued with the assistance of her kidnapper. In reading this book, I just couldn't help but wonder if the story wasn't inspired in part by Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping. I have a writer's mind myself, and I know news stories often spin off into threads in my mind, and I want to create a reality and explanations around them.

In this book, the kidnapper had actually kidnapped and killed several other girls. In fact, he kidnapped a girl while he was holding Elizabeth (Eliza's actual name, which she changed after her rescue). And he murdered that girl while Elizabeth sat in his truck nearby. Eliza is haunted by the fact that there were points at which she could have gained her own freedom, but hadn't, and there was a point at which she could have saved the girl who was murdered, and didn't.

Throughout the story the questions swirl of why Eliza was not killed when the other girls were, and also why she didn't save herself and the other girl. And of course, as you can probably guess, the answers to those two things are linked. She survived because she was compliant. Part of being compliant involved not escaping when she might have, not getting help for the other girl when she might have. Nor was it simply the compliance itself that saved her, but the feelings her kidnapper developed towards her because of it. It is directly stated that the other girl was killed because she wasn't compliant, because she was unpleasant and because she fought back. And all this unfolds in conversations that Eliza ends up having when her kidnapper, who is facing imminent death by lethal injection, manages to contact her.

So you can all probably see where I am going with this, where this leads me. When Jaycee was found alive, one of the fears I stated out loud was that if Garrido had taken Michaela first, he might not have kept her alive, because Michaela would not have been compliant. She would have fought. At least I'm pretty certain that she would have. It was her nature, and it was her training. You know, those child safety classes always teach the kids to fight. Kick, scream, scratch, any number of a million defensive techniques that they advise the kids to use against attackers, kidnappers. But I have to wonder, how often do those techniques work? A child is never going to be a match for the strength of an adult male. Never. Are we teaching them incorrectly? Would we be better off teaching them to be compliant but always be on the lookout for a means of escape, and to take it?

This is what I think of when I read that first quote, the one about parents trying to out think fate. "This is where the trouble begins." What does the author mean by that? I couldn't tell, even from the context. The narrator certainly seemed to advocate trying to keep kids safe, and teaching them not to talk to strangers, etc. What could it be referring to except for our insistence on teaching kids to fight back against abductors? Even though this had not been raised at that point in the book, is that where the trouble begins?

I don't know. I honestly don't know the answers to these questions. It makes me think that I have no business trying to teach kids to be safe, or trying to teach parents to keep their kids safe. At the end of the book, Eliza talks about the burglar alarm system that her family has installed, its beep beep beep when it is activated, and how she knows that even that is not going to keep them safe if someone actually means them harm. The other day I was talking to someone about wanting to keep a person safe by having them stay home instead of going on a trip at a particular time, and he said no, don't tell them to stay home. If it is meant to be, the plane will crash on their house.... I don't say these things in order to bring you down, by the way. Perhaps I say them in order to free you a little bit, to help you move from living in fear to living in faith.

Ultimately I just say them to let you know that I don't have the answers. I wish I did.

And I have to end this post, as so many others, by addressing Michaela. If you are out there alive somewhere, Michaela, and you have stayed alive by compromising and being complacent, for goodness' sake do not feel bad about that. Do not feel guilty, do not feel unworthy. As Eliza says in the book, if she survived because she was weak, then she was glad she was weak, because she is happy to be alive. Michaela, if you are alive, I would only be glad that you are alive. Nothing else matters. There is nothing else that cannot be healed with enough love, and not only my heart but the world as a whole holds enough love for you that we can overcome anything.

I love you, sweetheart.

mom

The Investigation Continues

2010-08-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know that the investigators are still working on Michaela's case, this is from the investigation I spoke about in my previous blog:

http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/Exeter-Dig-101103064.html

My attempts to bury my head in the sand

2010-08-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, can I reiterate that this last year has been exceptionally difficult? I'm sure I've described it so many times already that nobody wants me to do it again. At the worst of it, I was seeing a therapist who suggested I take anti-depressants. I actually considered it, but ended up deciding against it. It's not that I want to be miserable, but I want somehow to be real. My problems are not caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain. They are caused by life, and I think it is appropriate to react to life appropriately. Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't take antidepressants if you feel a need for them, for whatever reason. But for me, I guess I feel that life is not without purpose, that the things that happen are not random, and that somehow we are supposed to learn, to be transformed, to become stronger through what happens to us, and hopefully out of that we will even end up with something to give back to the world.

Nevertheless, I find that the mind does have a built-in failsafe. Over the years, I've seen that when I start to reach a point of overload, I shut down without the assistance of any pills. Sometimes it's better, and sometimes it's worse. There was a period of time many years ago when I honestly just felt numb. It didn't last, of course. I ended up getting pregnant with my youngest daughter, which tore those floodgates right open and let it all out! Right now I'm not so much numb as just ... well, I guess it's kind of like having your head in the sand. See no evil, hear no evil, and I'll get by thank you.

I'm directed outside myself to a great extent. So have I told you about my work? I'm a paralegal, and I work primarily in immigration law. I work directly with the immigrants themselves. I work with people who are trying to bring their family members here legally, and I also work with people who are in removal proceedings and are trying desperately to stay in this country. And I have to tell you, I get very attached to my clients. I really and truly care about them. I am working full-time now, five days a week, with split days off so I never have more than one day at a time off work, so my focus on my work and my clients never really lifts. And that is probably actually really good for me -- to think about other people instead of myself.

I have also been doing a lot of astrology, and I don't mean the sun sign astrology you read in the newspaper. I've been doing natal charts, and relationships charts, progressions, transits and returns. It is an endlessly fascinating intellectual exercise, and a great deal of that is for other people as well. And I've been thinking about a lot of things, trying to figure out the answers to some of the big questions about things like faith. (I will be posting a blog on that soon and will be asking for input from readers, because I certainly don't have the answers!) And I've been reading. I've been listening to books in the car while I commute (that is a couple of hours a day on average), and I've got several going at home at any one time as well.

The down side of this is that it's tapped my creative spark. I need to get back to working on my book. When I began it, it was because I had so much pain inside I was afraid it was going to destroy me if I didn't get it out somehow, and putting it on paper is a way to do that. Now I just need to do it because I know I am supposed to do it. Sheesh, I think I've known this since first grade! It is one of those things I actually need to be obedient and disciplined about, I think, in order to avoid being cornered into it by circumstances. I mentioned anxiety in my previous blog, and I honestly think that part of the reason I feel anxiety is because there are certain things in life I know I should be doing, and I'm not ... and one of my basic beliefs is that if we don't do what we are supposed to be doing, we will get a rude shove to get us back onto the path.

So I need to get going on it. And hey, God, if you want to help me on my way, send large amounts of money so I don't have to work so many hours! Or get somebody to help me with the house work so I have more free time! I have recently added to my time burden by taking a class, but I need to take it.

With regard to Michaela's case ... well, recently the Hayward Police Department and the FBI engaged in a big operation out of town, which involved numbers of people, and interviews and investigations, and searches and yes, digging. I was told about this in advance, but then I promptly put it out of my head, so I was actually surprised when I got a call from one of the officers at HPD on that day. So I really have to do this, you know? It's been almost 22 years, and during that time this sort of thing has happened on a number of occasions. Some of those occasions have wrapped me up in them and torn me apart, including that really big occasion last year. Luckily, the media didn't get involved this time. I mean, the media is great -- they are mostly really great people, and I do believe they honestly care about these cases they report on. And we do need them, in order to keep these unsolved cases out there before the public, so that we can solve them. We need our lost children to be remembered, to keep them alive.

But dealing with the media is exhausting. I think that is part of what really wiped me out last year, because the magnitude of the media attention far exceeded even those first days after Michaela was kidnapped. And the media doesn't allow you to bottle up your feelings. They are always asking you to reach down inside and bring them out. Imagine, if you will, doing anywhere from three to ten interviews a day, and each time you are being asked pretty similar questions -- all hard questions about your missing child, and whether you think she is alive or not, and what you feel about the investigation that is going on (like when they are digging in the ground looking for possible gravesites). Each time you have to answer those questions as though you have never answered them before. Each time you have to dig inside into those tender places and lay them bare. Each time, over and over and over, for day after day after week after week. It was worth it, because it did bring Michaela back to the public mind and heart in a huge way, and it has brought in leads and information which could end up leading to the case being solved.

Of course, one of my major reasons for wanting to keep Michaela before the public is because if Michaela is out there, I want her to see it. And I thought, with the magnitude of the media coverage last year that she couldn't help but have seen it if she was out there. But you know, that's not true. You know, there are families who only watch children's programming and some dramas and comedies. If you don't watch the news, you would have missed it. Probably the best shot we had was a photo of Michaela on the cover of People magazine. But it was a small photo, and it was not a good one. It was a school photograph which we hadn't even received at the time Michaela was kidnapped, so she had never seen it. We used it originally because it showed certain features well, but now that is not the most important issues. And just in this moment it has occurred to me that in the future it would probably be better to use a photograph Michaela would have seen hanging on the wall at home, one that she would recognize if she was out there somewhere.

But anyway, the whole thing exhausted me ... and it depleted me financially as well, since I had to actually take time off my paid job in order to do all that. So I wasn't wanting to repeat it this time. But the funny thing is that yesterday I actually came down with an infection which required a trip to the doctor and a prescription. What's funny about that is that I have found in the past whenever I have tried to ignore something like this, I have gotten sick. One year I decided to bypass November 19th, the anniversary of Michaela's kidnapping. I decided I'd just go to work that day, and I did. And I ended up getting really, really, extremely sick with bronchitis, which laid me out for way more than one day. So now I always take November 19th off work. It's my own personal holiday. And January 24th, Michaela's birthday. Even if I don't do anything, I know that my health and sanity require that I pull my head out of the sand and face the truth that this nightmare of grief and loss in my life was not a bad dream I can try to ignore ... it is real. It is a part of my very essence, and if I try to ignore it ever in any way it just comes back and forces me to slow down, stop, and just simply face it.

People often talk about hope. Well, I could tell you things that would make you all think I am crazy! I have true stories for which I'm sure the National Enquirer would pay big bucks! But I'm not telling those stories. I could never completely give up hope on Michaela. I've read lots of novels about missing children, and I can tell you that the most common mistake they make is that they have the parents of the missing child holding memorial services based on the slimmest evidence. They find an item of clothing, and assume from that that the child is dead. Baloney! Even an item of clothing with blood is not going to convince the parent of a missing child that she is dead! It could have been a bloody nose for crying out loud. Never, never, ever are any of us going to be holding a memorial service until it is absolutely proven to us that our children are not alive. We will not ever bury them until there is something to bury. Even if someone confesses that they killed our children, unless they can show us the remains, we will always hold that glimmer of hope that they were lying and our children are alive out there somewhere. Hey, it's happened.

Well, I have AT&T coming today to install U-verse to replace my current cable and internet provider, so I will be offline for a large part of the day, except for what I can get on my phone. But I thank you so much for coming to visit my blog. I have been so blessed to see how many people returned here once I returned here. So God bless you all, and once again, let me end with this ....

Michaela, wherever you are, I love you.

Michaela's case

2010-08-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

Well, you know there is never a lot that I can specifically say with regard to Michaela's case, but I know you all like to be reassured that it is still active. It is. Things are going on, and if the person responsible for Michaela's kidnapping is reading this, they will find you yet. And those who know and haven't told -- well, you may or may not be able to be prosecuted as an accessory, but the media will want to know about it ... and your neighbors and friends. Honestly, wouldn't you really rather be known as the person who helped bring a resolution to the case?

And here now I feel bad for sounding so mean. I think there must be something wrong with me.

But anyway, there are in fact those people who are trying to help bring about a resolution to the case. There are people who are talking to the investigators about things they know, things they think might be associated with Michaela's case. Honestly, there are several avenues that are very promising, and I really wish I could share the details with you, because they are exciting, but some I can't and others .... well, maybe I'll check with the police department. In each case, you'd say (like I do), "How can this not be it?" And yet we know they can't all be true. That is part of the frustration in working on the case.

But the investigators at Hayward PD, the FBI, and others are all still looking for you, Michaela, and for the man who did this to you.

The other day I was driving home from work, listening to an audible book of "Duma Key" by Stephen King. There was a part where a little dog got hit by a car and died. Hey, I might have not read the book at all if I'd known I'd have had to read this part. And now I'm going to torture you with it. The main character in the book knows the dog is going to die, and sends the little girl who owns him away to get help so she doesn't have to watch, and he stays with the dog ... with the intention of putting the dog out of his misery. He describes the dog turning his eyes up to him with an expression of hope, and licking his wrist. I'm driving down the street crying at this point. Anybody who has ever visited my facebook page knows that I am a sucker for suffering animals. And hope? Who can resist it? Who can see it and not want to respond by giving what is hoped for? Well, I've lived with the destruction of unmet hope for a long time, so maybe I'm just overly sensitive to this. But how could this man see the hope filling this dog's eyes and not just rush him to the vet and try to save him, regardless of what he thought his fate was going to be?

But from thinking about the suffering of this dog, my mind moved to the suffering of people, and from there it moved to that area I don't allow myself to visit terribly often, and that is Michaela's suffering. I couldn't stay there, not long enough to allow any real pictures to form. I don't know what happened to her, and I just cannot allow those thoughts. But I lingered long enough to see her eyes, and to wonder for the millionth time how anybody could have allowed her to suffer, much less have willingly caused it?

I think that person need to be caught, and made to explain.

Never trouble trouble

2010-08-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

I want to write a brief blog to thank all those who have continued to faithfully visit this page, even when I haven't been visiting it myself, and especially those who have sent me messages and e-mails. I really appreciate your care and concern. I guess that emotionally I have reached that place where I am back to trying to bury my head in the sand. You know you can only feel really intensely for so long and then you reach the point where you have to either shut it down or it will shut you down. Too, too much feeling going on in this last year. Recently I read an article in the Oakland Tribune. It was about the fact that little Hassani Campbell has been missing for a year, but it opened with me finding out that Jaycee Dugard had been found. Just reading those words transported me back to that day ... almost a year ago now. For a few moments all those feelings from that time flooded over me, and the tears came to my eyes. But then I had to shut it down.

I find I am left with a lingering sense of anxiety. I haven't strayed too far from home since all this happened last year. I have these nameless worries, this kind of feeling that I need to stay close to home in case.... This isn't all specifically related to Michaela, but just to the realization I can't shake of the uncertainty in which we exist. You can wake up in the morning and when you go to bed that night your entire world can have shifted. Even more, you can wake up one morning and discover that you aren't even remotely the person you were the day before. I've had that happen in this last year also, and that is really disconcerting! And as strong as we believe our country is, and as advanced as we may believe the human race has become, economies can collapse and wars can be fought.

It's a little scary.

But on the other hand, I have also taken to counting the "perfect moments" in life. And most of the moments actually fit into that description. You look around you and everybody is well. No fires are waiting to be put out, or at least not any fires that are bigger than your water supply.

Two of my mother's favorite sayings were, "Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you," and "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The last one is from the Bible, of course. And what is basically means is that you shouldn't worry. Now my mother grew up in London during World War II, so she knew what it was to live with uncertainty and the possibility that a bomb could fall on you any minute. As a child she'd been given the opportunity to go to the countryside, as so many children did, but had chosen to stay with her family. And once you decide on your course, there is no point in worrying. You just keep putting one foot in front of another. Another verse from the Bible points out that none of us can by worrying at a minute to our lives ... or a dollar to our bank accounts. Take it from me, I know how difficult it is to not worry. In the middle of the night seems to be the prime time for it, also. I tend to wake up in the middle of the night in a panic attack over one thing or another. But I have had to learn to tell myself that losing sleep over whatever the issue of the moment may be is not going to do anything to make it better. I will often turn on the television to give my mind something to occupy itself besides the swirling thoughts, but I will stop those thoughts.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this post is, besides just keeping in touch with all of you. I guess I might also add that yesterday at work I sent a message to one of my clients telling her that I needed to talk to her and asking her to call me immediately. She did call, sobbing over the phone, telling me that she knew I was an angel from God because she was just about to take some pills and kill herself, and then she got my message. And I know she's not the only one in the world who feels that kind of desperation. But life changes constantly. Why is it that it is so easy for us to worry about what may befall us tomorrow, and so much more difficult for us to really embrace the notion that tomorrow will be different, and if things are really bad now, most likely they will be better tomorrow. Just hang on!

I promise I will try to get back here more often. Lately I've been reading about Anne Rice's struggles with faith, and there are a lot of things she has said that I would really like to talk about. So I'll try to be back soon. In the meantime ... thanks and God bless every one of you.

I'm still alive!

2010-07-29T07:04:00.000-07:00

I had a really nice e-mail from a blog reader yesterday. She wanted to make sure I was okay, because I hadn't posted anything in awhile. So I thought I'd share with everyone that I am still alive. I have been working full-time for the last month or two. Not only am I working five days a week, but I never have two days in a row off. So whenever it's my day off, it's been just long enough since my last day off that all the regular chores need to be done over again. And I have a long commute across the San Francisco Bay. There is construction going on at the freeway interchange on this side of the bay also, so my commute is veeerryy long.

It is a very welcome blessing to have the extra work, but I am not finding much time to do the other things I enjoy, like writing, or even going to the gym! :-(

I have, I must confess, also been spending a lot of time with astrology. And no, I don't mean sun sign astrology. I started studying astrology close to twenty years ago, and I have found it to be extraordinarily enlightening. I'd gotten away from it for years, but late last year I picked up an ephemeris, just out of curiosity to see what the planets had been doing last September, when the finding of Jaycee had turned my life so upside down. What I saw was that transiting Pluto had been on my natal Mercury, and then onto my Venus. I just couldn't have painted a better picture of what life had been like at that time. So I picked up my astrological studies again. I was able to solve a lot of little mysteries in my life. Of course, astrology is not going to do anything magical, like reveal the name and address of Michaela's kidnapper. But it does reveal something of the spiritual implications of things. If you are going to be dragged down into the dark, it is always good to have a light shone on what it is you need to see there, so you can get what you need to get ... and hopefully get on with it. Right now, I also have a ton of astrological charts to work on for other people, which is keeping me busy as well. I actually started a second blog, for the purpose of writing about astrology, but I honestly haven't had time for that either.

It has been good for me to turn my attention outward, to other people, other things, whether my work and my clients there or other people's astrology. It is so hard to believe that in less than a month it will be a full year since my husband woke me up in the morning to tell me that Jaycee had been found. It's been a very difficult year. The other day I was realizing how astoundingly important the little neighborhood I work in has become on an emotional level. You know, those places that become so charged with emotion that just going back to them overwhelms you with feeling? I feel that way about Fairway Park in Hayward. Of course, that is where I lived when Michaela was kidnapped. But it isn't the house that I lived in that is emotionally charged so much as it is the streets. The same in the area of San Mateo where I work. I think that is because these are the places I went to walk when the heaviness of my emotions just became too much to bear. I would walk, and discharge all those feelings into the air, and then they just stayed there ... forever, it seems. I know that when I drive down Mission Boulevard through Fairway Park, there is a walking trail there, and it just literally covers me in emotion.

The funny thing is that even though the emotions were quite intense and unpleasant, the charge they left is one that draws me in with an almost palpably healing energy. Hmmm. I wonder why that is? Well, I'd guess that it is because it is through those horrible experiences that we heal parts of ourselves we perhaps didn't even know were broken. This is the one solid belief I hold these days -- the belief in the evolution of the soul. It is not all for nothing.

I know that what you all want to know is what is going on with Michaela. Well, I can tell you that the case is still being investigated, and just tell you once again that what makes solving it difficult is not that we don't have enough information, but that we have so much information that it is hard to get through it -- and so many directions to go in that it is hard to tell which ones are dead ends and which ones have a pot of gold at the end. This doesn't mean we aren't still looking for people to give us information. Hopefully, one day somebody will give us the little piece of information which will let us know just which of those several roads we need to move on.

Well, it's 7:00 a.m. now. It's my day off, but it's time to get my youngest daughter up for the next to the last day of her summer theater workshop. Thank you so much for continuing to visit my blog even when I haven't been here, and please remember this is always a two-way street, and I enjoy hearing from you as well.

God bless.

Jaycee's 20 Million Dollars

2010-07-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the news reported that the California legislature had set aside $20 million to be paid out to Jaycee and her family as a settlement for the lawsuit filed against the State on her behalf, alleging that the State had been negligent in its supervision of parolee Philip Garrido, which had resulted in Jaycee spending eighteen years in captivity.

So many thoughts go through my mind at this, both bad and good. But let's just start with the most spectacularly good thought ... just look at how amazingly and unpredictably life can change! A year ago, Jaycee was living in the Garrido household -- undoubtedly not in the abject squalor that the media portrayed by showing photographs of what it looked like after the search by law enforcement, but not in the very best of conditions either, I'm sure. And as far as she could see, this is how life would always be. If she had sat down with a palm reader and had been told, "I see great fortune in your palm," she'd have said, "yeah, sure." But here we are a year later, and she has been living in what I understand to be pretty nice conditions for awhile now, and suddenly she finds herself to be a multi, multi millionaire.

I mean, who would have believed it?

In my life, when things have been really bad, I used to fall into something I called being "stuck in time." It always felt that as things were, they always would be. But people, this just isn't true! Are you having a hard time right now? Well, don't despair. You just never know when some miracle is going to come along and change your life completely.

Now as to the righteousness of the idea of Jaycee getting $20 million, I have to tell you that I am not at all sure I agree with it. If they are alleging that the state employees were negligent for not figuring out that Philip Garrido had a false fence with a whole other world hidden behind it, is that not at all balanced by the outstandingly excellent work by the state employees last August -- beginning with the U.C. Berkeley cops who felt there was something peculiar enough about Garrido to initiate the investigation which led to Jaycee's recovery -- and ending with the probation officer who was persistent enough to obtain Jaycee's actual identity, which she originally worked hard to hide? If it weren't for the astoundingly good work done by these employees of the State of California, Jaycee would still be living with Garrido. And I do mean astoundingly good. So a nut comes in wanting to hold religious meetings on the campus of U.C. Berkeley -- it takes some amazingly good instincts to decide that his relationship with his two daughters needs to be further investigated, and to take the steps to initiate that. And the parole officer -- well, Jaycee had a carefully constructed story about who she was and what she was doing at the Garridos, and again it took great instinct and persistence to get past that.

There are always mistakes made in investigations -- some worse than others. Quite frankly, in Michaela's case there was a major error committed at the very start which could quite possibly have been the thing that cost my daughter her life and/or freedom. We had an eyewitness to Michaela's kidnapping, and the police were called in immediately. The problem is that the police did not take the information about the kidnapping from the eyewitness. They took it from a checker at the grocery store who had taken what the eyewitness had said and had decided she had seen the kidnapper drive by earlier. So the police took the initial information, the initial descriptions, from this person who was not an eyewitness, and it turned out that the information was incorrect. This person described a man with a moustache driving a burgundy colored car. Later that day the police got around to questioning the only actual eyewitness, and she said that the man did not have a moustache, and the car was not burgundy. It was butterscotch, or tannish-gold. So in those crucial early minutes and hours, when they would have had the best chance of catching the kidnapper, and of rescuing my daughter, they were looking for the wrong person, in the wrong car.

Now when I stop to think about this, really think about it ... well, I just don't know if I can describe the feeling that rises up in me. Mmmm ... rage, that could be the word. This completely stupid mistake, secondary only to the evil of the kidnapping itself, likely cost me the very most precious thing in the world -- my daughter, my firstborn, the golden light of my life. And what it cost her is absolutely unimaginable, but it is at least as much as what Jaycee suffered and possibly far worse. And I do quite frankly want to yell and scream and cry my heart out.

And it's probably something that could be considered legally actionable also. I could probably sue.

But what good would it do?

And if we are going to relate this to the award to Jaycee, one of the things that would have kept me from filing a lawsuit against the City of Hayward for this terribly stupid mistake is the fact that most of the Hayward Police Department has treated Michaela's case with loving care. Not everyone, not always, but the investigators at the beginning, led by Detective Kenny Gross, were wonderful. Our investigator now, Inspector Rob Lampkin, is great. That initial mistake may have been unacceptably costly, but who should pay for it? The same people who are putting their heart and soul into doing things right for Michaela? That doesn't make sense.

Money doesn't cure the pain, doesn't buy justice, doesn't bring back time, or love, or innocence. It wouldn't teach anybody a lesson, because everybody already knows their lessons. I am sure that all police officers are taught that when they take a statement about a crime, they should take it from the eyewitness, not from somebody who didn't even see it happen. Parole and probation officers know what they should be doing also. All the knowledge in the world, all the verbal and financial spankings, are not going to keep people from making stupid mistakes, however costly they may be. I do believe, however, that people learn from those mistakes, and I believe that just plain sorrow and remorse will do far more towards making people try to do better in the future than lawsuits.

For Michaela's case, I know that what is really needed is more resources. The Hayward Police Department needs more money to hire more investigators, so those assigned to Michaela's case can have more time to thoroughly investigate the many really good leads that we have. Anything that further depletes the already limited resources is simply counterproductive, to Michaela's case, and to every person who lives in the City of Hayward.

I understand another yet family has recently filed a similar lawsuit against the State of California, because their daughter was murdered by a parole violator. I understand the pain. I understand the anger. But hey, what happened to the days when families of the missing or slain worked with legislators to change the laws, to help prevent what happened to their loved ones from happening to other people in the future?

The entire country is suffering right now. The State of California is broke. The day after the story about Jaycee's financial award broke, we are reading that the governor has ordered that all state employees suffer a salary cutback to minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, at least temporarily. California is a VERY EXPENSIVE place to live. Where I live, at $7.25 an hour, the average person would not make enough in a month to cover the rent on a one-bedroom apartment, much less support a family. Our schools are in dire straits. Teachers are losing their jobs, and kids are crowding into classrooms of 35 or more students. Support personnel at the schools are being let go. Cities are slashing their police and fire services. And let's just bring it down to the most personal level. People who are out of work are not able to get jobs at all, or at the very least they are not able to get jobs that pay enough to support their families. Unemployment benefits are running out before the solutions are found. Anxiety and desperation abound over these things. In this atmosphere, it seems just absolutely unconscionable to take $20 million and give it to one small family when so many other families are suffering so badly because there is not enough money.

Now I do believe that Jaycee deserves something. She and her daughters have had a rough go of it, and I think they deserve a leg up in life. If an award of even $5 million had been made, I would have probably applauded it. Like I said, California is expensive, and that amount would probably have given them enough to buy a house, free and clear (or even a small compound of houses), to pay for their education, andenough to live on until they get it together. It might even have been enough for them to be able to invest in a business to provide their livelihood. I don't really think it's necessary for them to receive such a grand amount that they never have to lift a finger for the rest of their lives. I don't even think that is good for them.

And honestly, I don't even know that you can implicate Jaycee and her family in this. I seriously doubt that Jaycee or her mom said, "Hey, let's get the State of California to pay us $20 million." I am absolutely positive that some attorney suggested that they sue the State and just ran with it from there. And how much is that attorney getting from this settlement? A LOT OF MONEY. He is going to get way more than he deserves, based on time and effort, and hey, he didn't suffer at all for it. Oh, and I guess now we know why Jaycee's bum of an absent father is suddenly suing for parental rights. Yep, the vultures descend.

I honestly do not want this to be construed as a criticism of Jaycee or her family. And she may take that money and do some really wonderful things with it. She may use it to start a foundation and reach out and help others in need, and you know, that would be great, because I think there is nothing more healing for a victim than to be able to help others. (And if anybody is listening, I'd suggest a foundation with a far broader reach than missing children. There are already more than enough missing children's organizations in this world.)

It's really kind of funny, because whenever I have thought about the possibility of Michaela being found and coming home, I have always worried about where she would sleep. We have moved since she was kidnapped, several times. Our family has expanded and contracted and expanded again, and every room is full. I've spent a lot of time mentally rearranging the people in the bedrooms to figure out where everyone can fit and be happy. And I have thought about how much time I could take off work to spend with her if she was found, before I would go broke and lose the house altogether! Jaycee was gone for longer than any other missing child that I know of, but there have been a number of kids who were found after being gone for a long time. Most of them have gone home, to their family homes. They have been out there giving press conferences, thanking the public. They have continued their educations, gone to public schools and colleges. You know, this is what I always envisioned for our family when Michaela comes home. And I still do.

The Desire for God

2010-06-20T11:03:00.001-07:00

http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2010/06/desire-for-god.html

Dear Michaela,

2010-06-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

It has been many months now since Jaycee was found and my hopes soared that you, too, would be found. It has been a brutal few months. I think that the grief and depression I fell into from this were deeper, if possible, than what I experienced when you were kidnapped. It was a place that was so raw, so painful, so heavy, I could not stay there and live, so eventually I crawled back onto safer ground. And once there, I began once more to start burying my feelings in the oh-so-many-ways I have learned to over the course of my life.

You are always in my heart, always in my thoughts. Not a day goes by that I don't think about you, and I will never stop looking for answers. But my hope ... well, I've said it before ... hope long unfulfilled is one of the most difficult things to hold onto. So I let myself fall back into that state of resignation to the likely fact that you will never return to me.

Recently, though, I have been discussing you in an astrology e-mail group. One of the people in the group took a look at your chart for the time of your kidnapping. I have posted those comments on my other blog at http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2010/06/astrology-reading-for-michaelas.html. But essentially, he said he didn't see your death in your chart.

And again, I was talking about the circumstances of your kidnapping. I talked about your poem. I repeated your words, that the poem was about "people who had been kidnapped and were being held captive." People who were still alive. If you ever told me anything about what happened to you, you told me you were still alive.

I just need to know, Michaela. This astrologer suggests a new set of parents, as though perhaps you became attached to whoever has you, like Jaycee did. Maybe you want to protect them, like Jaycee did. But I am just begging you, pleading with you, please don't forget about me. Please don't forget the bond between us. Please, please extend to me at least a degree of that caring and spare me from this continual, continual pain of yearning and not knowing. If you don't want to come home, just let me know that you are alive, let me know that you are okay. Please!

I love you forever, Michaela. I know that you love me, too. Please, speak to me.

mom

Waiting for the Sky to Fall -- Summary

2010-05-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Waiting for the Sky to Fall is a novel I am writing, which was inspired by the impact Michaela's kidnapping has had on my life, and on my family. There is a dual story line, narrated by the two main characters in the story. Those are Annie, the mom, and Zoey, the teenaged daughter. Like me, Annie is the mother of a missing child. Her daughter, Allie, was kidnapped several years before Zoey was born. Annie suffers not only from the grief of missing her daughter, but grapples with the knowledge it has given her about love's truly fearful nature. In her own life, she experiences this in her relationship with her daughter, and in her daughter's life. She is also struggling in her own relationship with her husband, having to sort out what is real and what is not real, why she feels the way she does, or in some cases doesn't feel the way she does. The essential question for Annie is what is love, and is it worth the price you pay for it, and how do you find the courage to embrace it? Allie's story regarding her missing child and marriage are like the background music for the rest of the story.

The primary plot line, however, involves Annie's daughter, Zoey. Zoey has an intuitive awareness of what her mother has experienced, an innate knowledge of matters of the heart, their depth and cost. As the story begins, Zoey is just beginning to experience love herself for the first time. The boy she falls for has his own issues around loss and abandonment, due to his father's death by suicide. These issues grate against each other and create problems in their relationship. I don't want to go into too much detail about what happens after that, because hopefully one day you will read the book and I don't want to have given away the whole plot (which, of course, might shift once my characters take hold of it more fully), but there will be a break in the relationship, which will cause something really bad to happen. That really bad thing will help to strip away some of the false ideas and assumptions that were created by the issues these two kids have. They both learn, more things happen, more things are learned. The ending may be happy, may be sad, but it will definitely have both elements in some combination.

Sorry to be vague, but that's about the most I am able to reveal at the moment.

Michaela's kidnapping and astrology

2010-05-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

If you are at all interested in what astrology has to say about Michaela's kidnapping, I have posted an entry on my other blog about astrology which begins to touch on Michaela. I will post more about it in greater depth at a later date.

http://thewanderingjourney.blogspot.com/2010/05/astrology.html

The scent of memories

2010-05-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

Occasionally when I come home, I will walk in the house and I will smell my mother. It is a scent this house always held when my mother lived here -- a scent made up of the cosmetics she used. It has been well over six years since my mother was in this house, and it has long since completely dissipated. But just occasionally, it is there, and I think perhaps my mother has just come to visit, just come to remind me that she is still watching over me.

Today, twice I had little waves of the scent of Michaela -- once a distinctive smell, like of the diapers she used perhaps, and once of a more general smell that just plainly reminded me of a late winter/early spring morning in the house I lived in when she was born. Both were very striking, and unusual. Perhaps it was Michaela, come to visit me.

Oh how I wish I knew for certain what happened to her, whether she is at peace in another place, or still lost in this world. I can never stop looking for her, because if she were to still be alive, to give up on her would be abandoning her. And I don't want to hear that she is dead, that she was murdered. But I just so much want to know that in this moment in time she is at peace, that she is happy.

Dear Michaela (Happy Mother's Day)

2010-05-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

Today is Mother's Day, and I can't help but wonder if you are out there somewhere, a mother with your own children. In my heart, I can't see how this could be. If you were alive, and had children of your own, how could your mother's heart not remember me? They say that you can never really understand what it is like to be a mom until you have children of your own, but I think you always knew. Last night I watched the movie "Baby Boom" and I remember watching it with you. I remember that you cried, and I think it takes some kind of special knowledge of the bond between a mother and child for that movie to make you cry. Afterwards you hugged me and said that when you grew up you wanted to be like me, and stay home with your own kids.

Oh, how many feelings that brings up. First, the sorrow over the likelihood that you were robbed of the opportunity to have and love your own children. Second ... well, it is hard to put into words, but it just goes back to the strength of the bond that existed between the two of us, between you and me. And still, I am incredulous as to how some random stranger could come along and steal you in spite of that bond. You know, it's like it should have been at least as strong as those magic bike locks that keep people from walking off with your bicycle when you lock it to a pole. I know, it doesn't make sense, but it just doesn't seem right, you know?

So on Mother's Day I will spend the day with your brothers and sisters (except for Alex, who lives kind of far away now), and I will enjoy the day. But I will never forget that you are the one who first made me into a mommy, who transformed by heart and my life with the grasp of your tiny hand around my finger.

I will never forget. I will love you forever, Michaela.

mom

Update on investigation

2010-05-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

I know everybody is always interested in knowing what is going on with Michaela's case. I don't really have news regarding leads, but I did meet today with Inspector Rob Lampkin and he introduced me to at least part of the dedicated crew that is now working on Michaela's case. This crew, working under Lampkin's direction, is comprised of police reservists. These are volunteers who undergo a course in police training and then work for free! I couldn't ask for better than such dedicated people to help on Michaela's case.

People ask me still, "Don't you have any leads at all?" And I keep having to answer that actually the exact opposite is the case. We have lots of leads -- lots of really good leads. There are at least five scenarios now, with different people, places, and circumstances, that each sound so good, so perfect, that if you didn't know about all the other leads you would be thinking, "This has got to be it!" Running these leads down to the point where you can be satisfied that they are or are not "it" is the difficult part. These wonderful volunteers will be a huge help in assisting in this process.

In the last year or so, tremendous strides have been made in the working of Michaela's case. The files have been organized and have been or are being catalogued into computer databases. The information sharing among the various agencies is being enhanced. There are so many people who are working so hard, with such dedication! One of the volunteers who has worked on organizing the files has become almost a human database herself. You mention a name or a place that has come up in the investigation, and she knows it.

I apologize that I am not able to share the specifics of the investigation with the general public, but that would only compromise the investigation. As always, though, if you have any information, please leave a comment here (they always go to my e-mail before they are published on the blog, so nothing sensitive will accidentally end up here if you do leave a comment), or send me an e-mail, or an e-mail to Inspector Rob Lampkin at Hayward Police Department, at Robert.Lampkin@hayward-ca.gov.

And also as always ... thank you.