My friend--

So much silence for so long, but do not think that it has been so long that I have forgotten you. YOu are in my prayers, and I do mean inside them. How can we think that the Eloim,
who know everything, need our human speech to tell them of our physical agony or needs.

I prayed this way when I was a child--praying to find the children's schoolbooks, library books, not to be late for school--many, many almost trivial prayers--that I would remember my sunday school talks, that my father would go away--not a trivial request. I am 58 now and instead of these specific requests, I open my heart. I feel the hurt and feel the presence, I have a certain trust and great love--but do I, in the seeking of my young nieces know that God exists. They are unsure.

The greatest change since we have talked is that I realized one day that the children I have been unable to see for so long because of the bitterness of their parents toward me, their
conviction of the danger I posed to their children--these children are mostly grown now.

Even the youngest are young adults. My brother married a true saint he met on the internet. His children were so neglected and abused, though I do love and think of his first wife, who had no better and even far worse. I love her still, though I worked with the social workers to take her children away.

The day that the Smith Act was revoked--this made polygamy legal when practiced for
religious reasons, I could not talk to or find their Jewish Social worker. I persisted until I found her answering machine. She had been moved to another department. THe YEarning for Zion raid happened exactly 14 years later--when the children born after the revocation reached the age of 14, so their births were not covered by the Smith Act.

Mormon women retain a closeness after divorce and I was very afraid my brother would remarry and since he was in very deep denial I was afraid of my sister in law endangering the children during some mutual custody arrangement. They required him to divorce
his wife if he wanted to ever have custody again.

The child who decided to stay with her foster family just got married--she had a beautiful family and I think she and the child I had removed are doing the best--you can see trauma
in a child's face and the ones who were too much for any foster family--the youngest ones still need a lot of help, but they at least have a mother who loves them and is emotionally stable and giving, willing to sacrifice so much to take on a large family of abused children,

She seems to love my brother very much and I am very glad--he never deserved this, he really wanted to help his wife--we all did, she was so terribly traumatized. But we were young and didn't understand that life isn't that simple. Things are much better now. Their mother isn't allowed even supervised visitation. She is remarried and I am praying that she has no more children.

Things are better for me, though I can't talk to my mother or brothers and sisters. I think that they are afraid of me. I seem to ha e an uncanny power, but really it was just that I was an inservice social worker in Utah and so was listened to and had an influence that they could not have. I had 12,000 supervised inservice hours. WE had a PHD Psychology professor who did his doctorate on comparing different schools of thought. Looked at that
that way, he found that none of them worked better than any (some worked worse).

So I talked to him privately. He advised me to find someone whose clients or patients were improving and apprentice with him or her--hence the many inservice hours. He said alot of people we t into the field and hated it--the inservice hours were before the internship and so they could not afford to train in another field and could be damaging. I planned
to go on and get my masters in social work, but as you know, I got very ill instead and am still very ill.

I have a huge family of nieces and nephews and their family and they all know that I was the one who set thing back on a safer path, that I loved my family enough to sacrifice the love of the children I reared. But they love me. I have 1000 pictures of my family and growing. A niece who never knew me as her older brothers did but is a singer and journalist.

I love them, but am feeling overwhelmed by their love. I never expected this. We all were up too late last night and we talked awhile and said goodnight. That means so much to me. They love their parents sooo much and I am glad--they just hurt me too badly. Some tears cannot be mended because the fabric is too weak. The kids want to help me if they can.

So I am more ill, but things are better in other ways. You, comadre, are in my thoughts always. Do they have that word in Castillano?

I want to say more, but need to save some energy for breakfast.

We are so seldom on the web at the same time that it may be months or more before you see this. There are Sufi's who are not Muslim in America--I don't know if you know this.
I have been a friend of Irina Tweedy since the 80's--we have wondered how you could have signed up for Xanga exactly when I did. I never told you that I thought this was why.

I am also very much a Christian, though MOrmons of my generation don't like to say we are CHRISTIANS BECAUSE OF THE EXPULSIONS AND GENOCIDES BY OTHER CHRISTIANS--It left us with a "whatever they are we aren't" attitude toward other Christian denominations.
Read your Koran and the writings of great Imams--whatever the tensions are now politically there is no reason to change. Religion in our era has been a shattered mirror.
We each have a part of it, large or small, but only by learning from each other can the mirror reflect a true image of love and piety.

I love you, as you know--ketja