sandy foster morrison

As a card-carrying Texas psychotherapist - and supposed to be mentally stable -the death of my Scarlett O'Hara-esque mother and subsequent haunting rocked my world.

I meditate. I'm a lifelong student of world religions: traditional Christianity, to Gnostic Christianity, to Buddhism, to Native American earth religions, to Hinduism, and on and on. I travel to sacred places. I'm a believer, not a cynic. I'm positive, not negative. As my mother lay on her death-bed I felt certain she would return as a nice angel. I was wrong.

I always planned to write...someday. Maybe after the kids grew up and I grew out of the Junior League, or after graduate school, or when I was really old and retired from my practice of psychotherapy. I assumed I'd publish that nice, safe self-help book. Then - bag packed - I'd be on to the next adventure. I was wrong.

The memoir, Just Because You're Dead Doesn't Mean You're Gone IS my adventure. Entertaining? Sometimes impelling? Yes. Safe? Nice? No.

I still practice psychotherapy in San Antonio, Texas. I still seek adventure. For now my passport languishes.

The self-help in progress is titled Love Anyway.

The novel - with the working title, Cream in My Coffee - is set in East Texas. It's shaping up as a riff on family history, an unthinkable affair, murder, cover-up and most likely voodoo.

Nice is something I may never be. Being loving is harder...and better.