Recently, I returned to the Motown singing group that I participated in nearly 20 years ago, when a member was being treated for cancer. I asked how she was doing; her reply, “Good, knock on wood,” as she knocks on the wall panel. A pagan belief of benevolent spirits residing in trees.

This past week as spring sprung, I was hiking in the woods where tree roots often try to trip me but usually stay afloat in my 79-year-old skin. This day, I lifted my foot to the boardwalk, my shoe tripping me forward, hitting my right shin on the sharp edge, no blood, a black and blue arising for the occasion to which I rub for several moments to increase circulation and comfort.

That same day, I must walk outside to retrieve my laundry in the basement. A light rain caused me to slip on a large rock, falling backwards, my right elbow and lower back receiving the blows. I am able to raise back up easily and greatfully, asking myself why I fall two times the same day. Then, remembering how my car hit a deer in 2023, and then again, a deer hit my car in 2024. Twos.

A common superstition is the belief that bad luck comes in threes; is it good luck to have these come in twos?

Having recovered from a religious addiction, fear of hell, I’m happy to read the definition by numerology, including “emotional depth and partnership”, which I’ve decided to call the DOU, Design Of the Universe as a spiritual “supernatural causality”, however superstitions try to provide comfort and control amidst uncertainty.

My emotional depth has grown a deeper love for myself, and therefore compassion for others, in partnership with tears, grieving losses such as my Dad, garnering growing loving appreciation of him, in partnership with loving myself. Both superstition and supernatural contain a surprising partnership beginning with SUPER. Their contrast being that superstition involves irrational fears, while the supernatural teaches us connection to love releasing fears. Our truest nature.

Now, I sense that the universal energies which keep planet earth spinning is the force of love and comfort evolving. Fear being uprooted into trust in the DOU. A loving force.

Today is April Fool’s Day just after returning from a week’s vacation to waterfalls heaven. Adding a new National Park (to 50 I have hiked and camped in): Sandstone Falls in New River Gorge in West Virginia. In addition to exploring Blackwater Falls State Park in Maryland and Pennsylvania’s World’s End State Park, where I find Double Run Falls.  Really, World’s End?

My last hike was in Pennsylvania’s Rickett’s Glen State Park, new to me as well, although it is only two hours south of my home in Brooktondale, NY. As always, I look for heart rocks at the foot of every waterfall I visit, and I find one that is a purple hue early on of my long hike ahead. So, I laid it aside to retrieve on my return. I hike on to two more large unique waterfalls, finding a heart rock at each that are of dinner dish size, one for each arm to lift up and down for enlarging my biceps, I smile to myself. On my return, I unconsciously bypassed the first heart rock I had left behind, before I realized I was too far along to backtrack. At first, I am disappointed, then realize I have two in my hands, remembering the significance of the number two! Wahoo!

Today is the last day for submission of this reader’s write, when I park in the lot for the WIDE-AWAKE BAKERY. I open my jeep’s door and see only TWO pennies on the ground! I promptly pick them up, grinning with supernatural superstition.

“Drawing a line in the sand,” comes to mind. The most meaningful definition to me: “refusing to be untrue to yourself,” by way of google. Or as a psychotherapist might define: learning to set limits, (not as boundaries which are more rigid whereas limits are more flexible) to be able to grow a healthy loving relationship – especially with oneself. To become your best nature. LOVE.

Many ask, how can I as a Marriage and Family Therapist not take on other people’s problems, adding that what I do must be hard.

An important way I take care of myself is to be out in nature daily, walking to waterfalls is my favorite, lucky enough to live in a city that streams bumper stickers reading ITHACA IS GORGES.

During a recent two-week deep freeze covering the Mid-Atlantic States, our waterfalls graced greatfull eyes with lines frozen into magnificent vertical designs, sometimes adding greens and blues, colored by friendly algae.

When I cautiously ventured onto the southern tip of our 40-mile-long partially frozen Cayuga Lake, my eyes are glued to the lines, where cracks will someday give way to the sun.

As the temperature warms, I photograph, the chunks of ice thrown to the banks of the inlet, broken by straight lines. Then, I notice, up close, that the thick ice blocks have straight lines within.

Then, I am surprised to see a gleaming green feathered mallard duck sitting, resting on one of those crystalline white chunks, still warm. Like my heart. Frozen in love.

I’m obsessed with the truth! Being told.

At 16, I felt betrayed when the truth was shouted in anger by my mother: “He’s not your father!” For some years I could not remember what I did after hearing those traumatic words; I dissociated until I asked years later to be regressed, to retrieve those memories. Sadly, my dad who raised me with love extraordinaire – unusual un the 1950s and 60s – died suddenly of a heart attack at age 60, before I was brave enough to ask why he did not come to comfort me – both of us too scared.

(Like Republicans to stand up to Trump’s daily lies.)

It’s a sad state of humanity, that we don’t feel safe enough to tell the truth but learn to lie to get revenge – get even- as is readily acknowledged.

As a Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve been in the courtroom a few times to testify for clients falsely accused by the mother that the father sexually abused their child. When the judge asked me for my psychotherapy notes, I refused, and a warrant was put out for my arrest. I had agreed to write a summary, but that was not sufficient for the judge.

A couple months went by before a cop stopped me on route 13 (my lucky number) in Ithaca, NY in broad daylight and cuffed me. Once in the police car, he changed my handcuffs from behind my back to being in front of my lap. This happened two more times as I was driven through two other counties to where I was arraigned, given a $500 fine, then fingerprinted and mug shot taken at the jail. The police were respectfully understanding, while I felt surprisingly relaxed during the ride where there were two transfers of handcuffs, and police officers over county lines. Later that evening, my daughter Erin came to pick up her “ex-con” mom.

Late, when I appeared in court (2012) to support my client on the stand for a custody hearing and again refused to give up my psychotherapy notes as I have client-therapist privilege as do lawyers – I was dismissed as a witness, but I had already said enough to be heard for my client’s benefit. I left with sunshine on my back, and soon thereafter medical release forms were changed to exclude psychotherapy notes.

My devotion to the truth is born out in watching a TV series called BULL, even repeats, because he is a psychologist who unravels the truth with the assistance of his employees: a lawyer, an investigator, a computer hacker, while being a trial scientist as a voir dire expert. He can tell when people lie, by assessing their body language.

So, I’m bullish as I quote Henry David Thoreau – “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” For without truth, our love is thin as ice broken through on a (Walden😊) pond.

I know I will not be popular hearing what I have to say, even though I am known to love The SUN for maybe 30 years, looking forward to seeing The SUN in my mailbox. Even my first sentence is a distraction, delaying me writing: I hate the “F” word. It’s not that I don’t swear, I do: Oh shit! God damn it!

So, when I read the poem Pinkie Masters (December 2025) I’m distracted reading the 18^th line: “I have the hiccups like a motherfucker.” Really? The poem stops in midair.

“I still know a few things, you say. You said.” The last line of the poem, myself feeling intensely disappointed that our language, our anger is directed at sex. That’s what fucking is – right? And with your mother?? Oh shit!

Google defines fuck: have sex with (someone), ruin or damage (something.) “To express annoyance, contempt, infuriating.” In other words, expressing anger. Violence. Violation. Distorting any sensibility, or sacredness to sex – destroying any semblance of making love.

Until recently, I hadn’t encountered ‘fuck’ written in The SUN, or novels, old or new. Yet, this past month I read My Other Heart (novel published in 2025) which I very much like, as its detail of intimate conversations and thoughts between two Asian American girlfriends are unusually truthful. “You know with life, sometimes its good, sometimes it really fucking sucks. But I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned, and it’s always something I come back to, this whole living up to expectations and feeling invisible is also about who we are in our core. We can change that to a point because nothing stays the same, but it’s a matter of how much we’re willing to be controlled from the outside, and how invisible we are willing to be.”

Now I am deeply visible, as a psychotherapist still practicing at age 79 when clients say “sorry” after saying the F-word. I emphasize that it is okay in this therapy room, where expression should not be thwarted by limiting words.

Smiling, I add, “Feelings is the best F-word going!”

Addendum:

On a lighter note, I’m distracted by my need to find heart rocks, my attention taken away from the waterfalls I’ve hiked to see! Take in.

And I love being distracted, as I walk down the stairs of my apartment, to stare at one of the many people I love, framed in my photo gallery, like wallpaper.

Pregnant with my second daughter, Megan, I was determined to experience natural childbirth, without an episiotomy, and walk off the delivery table. Surprisingly, an obstetrician open to natural childbirth was hard to find in Cincinnati, Ohio. Another surprise was hearing the name of the physician who agreed to my wishes: Doctor Harry Roach. I did become the first mother to walk off the delivery table and sign out AMA (against medical advice) in 1974. More importantly, I felt proud when the nurse who returned Megan to me after cleaning her up, told me, “That’s the first time I had a newborn baby burp up breastmilk on my way to the nursery.”

Although small breasted, I produced plenty of milk; milk spraying out of the nipple not being suckled, able to collect milk to freeze, being available when I returned to work part-time nursing profession, when my first-born Erin was six months old, and Megan at nine months old. (Also, I felt privileged when Megan was willing to suckle another mother, to maintain her milk supply for Noah, her premature infant still in the hospital.) Breast pumps weren’t successful.

This past July 2025, I was lucky enough to rent half of a duplex home, a wide waterfall in my backyard, certainly a dream come true! Reminding me of natural waterfalls of breastmilk. Their full gown of white. So greatfull, Erin adding folds of fat when at three months of age, she had more than doubled her birth weight – don’t you just love baby fat? 😊It was challenging to get my fingers in between her folds.

But a most important waterfall happened the 2025 Monday before thanksgiving, while writing in my journal – reflecting on the previous weekend I had attended of ballroom dancing. While at breakfast, talking to a dance acquaintance, Mike, about our marriages; then sharing a past life as a prima ballerina which milked my tears to spill, Mike reaches to squeeze my hand. Tears fell as I wrote, “Mike’s loving connection: tears milking truer love for myself.” And then for others, like when I feel rejected by a few dance leaders.

I am not patient with plastics – pollution – ignorance. I feel helpless with those who lie daily – like Trump – who denies that the climate crisis exists. Impatiently, trying to convince my trumpster ex-husband of the truth. My consolation: NO KINGS protests rising up across the USA.

Simply living daily with PFAs, microplastics now found in our brains from the infested food that we eat, is not acceptable; can there be patience? I practice: replacing my plastic containers with glass; my garbage cans are now metal: it took much patience to fingernail-remove the large advertisement glued to its face. I have not bought water in plastic bottles for years.

Still, I haven’t totally emptied the recycling of the song I memorized to play on the piano, as a child: I am Not Worthy… the least of his favor. Meaning the Christian god, read of in the bible whose preacher recites from most Sundays, John 3:16, that you will be saved from hell (the scriptures say lake of fire) to obtain eternal life only if you believe in Jesus as your savior.

Jesus is no longer the “light of the world’ for me after taking 38 years to leave my church community. Too patient. Too fearful. Was our family’s religious addiction.

Now, I’m practicing patience while requesting the Town of Caroline Planning Board to shut off the one streetlight that floods my apartment windows, blotting out the natural light of the moon and stars shining over our small village. Over twenty years ago many tall streetlights were installed for safety: to prevent car accidents, or injuries to people walking along the road.

Presently, most homes shine outdoor lights at night. One streetlight turned off will not incur more risk, at the intersection of a dead-end street, where the speed limit is 35mph. I remind myself to “go with the flow,” like the waterfall in my backyard.

It just so happens that this week celebrates Halloween, where many get lost in costumes, and make-believe fears: tricks and boos. On October 27^th, I was treated to my first date with Joseph, after meeting on the dating app Our Time, for those over 55 years of age (I refuse to say old😊.) After a two-hour conversation during brunch, we like each other enough to go for a seven-mile hike to Sandy Run Falls, new to both of us. It is a 7-mile loop that we agree we are up for and enjoy 3 waterfalls along our way. Although we follow the orange blazes easily, we eventually realize we are not heading in the right direction as the sun begins to set. Joseph’s GPS does not identify the trails well but see we are too far from the parking lot to reach it before dark.

We do reach a clearing of deer stands, and a deer blind that Joseph says we could stay in overnight when the temperature dips into the 30s. Not acceptable. No livable. Even though I see an opening where telephone poles could lead us somewhere to a road…we are LOST. And we are at risk of hypothermia.

Joseph calls 911. We are assisted by dispatch who finds our cell phone location, at twilight. Greatfully, Joseph gave me his light jacket to put on over my light one. We, ‘patiently’ wait for an ATV to pick us up, take us to an ambulance for a ride to our car.

I laugh most of the way, telling the attendant, this is our very first time to become lost after years of being avid hikers. What a surprising first date! 😊

I have never liked the taste of alcohol, although when red wine was promoted to improve vascular health, long life, for some years I would mix a sweet red wine with sparkling grape juice for my supper.

In the 1970s, at a local bar, Nite Court, in Ithaca, ny, a handsome young man asked if I would go home with him. “No, I am not that kind of girl”, he replying, “that’s why you’re here.” I counter, “No, I’m here to dance.”

When I gave up my religious addiction, there were a few times I became that ‘kind a girl’; usually I wanted it to become more than just sex – to become a loving relationship. Sometimes it did.

I wanted to set my self-image to a higher bar.

In the 1980s, I set the goal of running a marathon a month for three years…using it as a motivation to stay physically fit and trim. I wore a t-shirt saying, “RUNNING FOR THE AVERAGE RUNNER.” No elite runner for me, running no more than 40 miles per week.

At mile 20, marathon runners often talk about hitting “the wall.” It is when your body says it is time to stop, to listen to your body. But no, you bear the pain, exhaustion, usually walking some of the last 6 miles. (of 26.2)

I’d ask myself, Dianea, why are you doing this? It’s crazy! My inner voice replies, ‘you love the recognition,’ the cheers and applause at the finish line.

The ‘gold’ medals I’d carry home with pride.

Gaining the woman’s national record for number of consecutive marathons – 36 in a row – eventually.

It wasn’t until the 1990s, when I became aware of my deeper need to be ‘seen’ and ‘understood’, ultimately loved.

I had set the bar way too high, physically.

Now, I share with long distance runners: marathons are abusive to your body, your joints, especially.

I’ve grieved the religious indoctrination, that I was born in original sin and have recognized the wrongness of the message of a piano song I memorized; I AM NOT WORTHY.

I’ve recently moved from a late 1800’s apartment where tall windows pour in grand light, as I do not use curtains, only valences you can see through. I chose to live there because the wide bedroom window glorified a view of a pond, a pocket of childhood memory that persists until you live it again.

April 2025, my landlord requested me to move with an eviction notice, ‘for the sake of renovations’, but my pocket of intuition says the landlord wanted more rental money. Because I shoveled the sidewalks and improved his property with flower gardens, I like to think he would think it would not be legitimate to raise my rent, me being a septuagenarian woman, with limited retirement.

I rode my scooter to places I’d like to live, and pocketed notes at various homes near waterfalls. Lucky me, I received a phone call from one landlord who said he was sick of cleaning the bathtub of his Airbnb and gave me the lease to sign, becoming the renter of his duplex where he and his wife live on the other side. Likewise, a late 1800’s house but not having as tall windows, yet a waterfall sings in my backyard, where one can swim as well.

My love affair of waterfalls exploded when my best friend, Gaylee, uses her book, 200 Waterfalls of Central and Western New York, to guide us on hikes to revel in their sweeping beauty until 2019 when she passed due to cancer, leaving me with deep pockets of grief, added to waterfalls of tears as I write a book honoring my “Dad Extraordinaire” lost in 1977, due to a sudden heart attack.

Dad wrote more than a hundred long detailed letters to me while in college and early marriage, from which I am writing Our Love Story!

At Ithaca’s Stewart Park, my eldest granddaughter, Denali, 31, sits on the bench alongside me, which I donated to Ithaca’s city park in memory: S. Michel Colbert-Kohl Dad Extraordinaire to Dianea Colbert-Kohl. Again, I tell her how her spirit seems to have escaped from a pocket holding my dad’s spirit – reborn to love me very much being like my dad.

Deeply sharing, eye-to-eye attentive listening, and yet different as she says I love you readily… at the end of our luncheon date, I think I heard it four times, whereas dad and I could only write those 3 precious words, not express them face to face. Pocketed fear.

Many are skeptical about past lives as was I, despite much research confirming healing from past lives therapy, until I connected to more than one lifetime in primal therapy. My crying, yes sobbing, confirmed and relieved the guilt I carried about dancing (too much, too often).

Still, I was surprised as Denali and I parted, (she lives in Spain) when I began sobbing while walking to my car and while driving. I open my pocketbook, grab a hankie where I blow my tears. Deep pockets of Design Of the Universe (DOU) sadness, honoring the love of my Dad and Denali – missing them!

Missing true love! (For myself as well.) *

*These moments seem like waterfall moments of truth.

I am the WHY girl. Just last evening, while eating dinner with a dancing friend, Virgilio sneezes, and automatically I say, “Bless you; where does that come from?” We shared two theories then I looked up on google: “way to keep demons away from sneezers’ soul”, along with other historical theories.

All growing up; I questioned the validity of the bible, fighting with my rigid religious mother’s rules; defending my dad, whom she humiliated while criticizing me.

I am the rebel of the family.

I am the proud driver of a Jeep hailing the license plate: CRYBABE – for more than 20 years…recently adding: Conserve Open Space.

Now, I’m on a rampage (maybe too strong a word, but a very good feeling) to rid sign clutter in Tompkins County, NY, ongoing for two years. ITHACA IS GORGES is a bumper sticker commonly seen in these parts. But now loud yellow orange signs are taking over, sprouting up like wildflowers; distracting one’s view from roadside wildflowers, trees, mountains and streams, or creeks as we say in these parts😊.

I want to enjoy the countryside. I do not like speaking in front of a group yet continue to stir up my apprehension monthly at the Tompkins County Legislature Committees concerning the environment: Tompkins County Transportation Council, Planning-Policy committee, Planning Energy and Environmental Quality. After calling and emailing the director of the highway department I was eventually ghosted. WHY I am ‘forced’ to speak 3-5 minutes only when public comments are allowed.

I ask WHY do we need Driveway signs for 8-9 miles of Coddington Road as driveways are seen one right after another all along these miles? WHY are large yellow signs up for DEAD END streets? As well as for other street names, when these streets have clear green signs at their intersection?

WHY? – I only hear silence.

And WHY do I often send Correspondence to the SUN magazine, asking to be interviewed (along with others) to focus on preventing anxiety, depression, and suicide in our youth, which continues to rise at an alarming rate?

I am a Marriage and Family Therapist, having written seven books focusing on the healing gift of tears. A sadness felt as nature is being trumped by signs.

For over 30 years, I have advocated for a HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP SKILLS COURSE to be implemented at Ithaca’s high school through many meetings and phone calls and petitions – the pot is still being stirred, while still on simmer.

TRUE to form…I want the truth to stick (out) when considering names for my children, not easily nicknamed. Their true names being called upon. Some parents think it is funny to name their child Robin Hood, or amazingly the obstetrician for my second daughter is named Harry Roach. Really! Although I liked the name Graham for a boy, I couldn’t see myself using it as he’d be called Graham Cracker, right? Teasing is too commonly mean. It hurts. Unnecessarily.

So, my first daughter is Erin – rarely called Ernie.

My second daughter is Megan who didn’t get so lucky– her dad creating “mugs” and a man friend called her Morgan?? What’s up with that? How come Nick got called out for ‘nick’ names? Silly questions?

Still, I want to be unique (special) when I become a grandmother. I don’t want to hear the generic ‘Hey, grandma.’ Or nana. Me and my two sibs called our grandmother grammy: a bit more unique?

So, I request my granddaughters Riley and Emily to call me Didi – just now realizing it’s a double whammy of what my dad called me – Di: only once did he address me ‘Dear Diane’ in one of the many letters he sent during my college years and early marriage; besides that one exception, it was always ‘Dear Di’ which many believe is endearing. Special.

I agree. Necessarily 😊.

Often, I called my young daughters “silly gooses,” an endearment that was and is authentic, as are their given names.

FYI: I just googled nicknames and read: “Alexinomia is associated with anxiety and avoidance behaviors with regards to saying names.”