Dear Anita,

I hope you are well?  I have been thinking of you but just not had the strength to post sooner, the past week turned out to be very strenuous indeed.

I would first like to refer back to your post of 30th July.  I am sorry my intensive expression of empathy was too much for you, and I think you are very brave to have decided to nevertheless try receiving a little empathy from me.  I will do my best to keep my expressions plain and would like to encourage you to correct any comments you feel to be overly emotional in order to help me get a better feeling of where you stand in dealing with empathy and emotional vocabulary, because I do understand that it is not easy for you.  I think it is a good thing to try and allow new experiences though, because from what I understand, I believe this helps lead to neural reprogramming, and that sounds like a good thing to me if it can help to re-write the effects of your dreadful past.

I am a very heart-guided person, and naturally tend to be poetic and emotional when I feel things like inspiration, empathy, etc., but whilst I know you like reading poetry too, I can imagine that it feels very different when those emotionally loaded words are referring to you, and you have that minefield past to navigate through before you can get to the words.  So you can count on me to respect and honour your needs as best I can.

I think it is lovely to think that we are roses for each other!  Do you have a favourite rose?  Let me know if you do and I will find a photo and keep it with my notes of our “talks”.  I love roses so much, I don’t know if I have a favourite one, I like very palest pink-white scented, old-fashioned ones like “Souvenir de la Malmaison” and “The Generous Gardener”, but the most delicious rose I ever smelled (and hope to buy this autumn!) is called “Nahema”.  It’s not so nostalgic shaped and rather pinker, but the perfume is heaven on earth.

I hope to write again later tonight or tomorrow with more details about my week, but I just have time at the moment to let you know that my dear little four-legged angel is doing a lot better.  It was an odyssey to find the right vet for her and an expensive project but my husband paid without complaining as he loves her very much too.  I would have liked to whack one vet who really hurt her unnecessarily, poor thing, but in the end we found a wonderful young lady who immediately knew what is wrong and what to do, and within 3 days my dog was able to try and get up again by herself and can walk again a little in the meantime, and is even up to wagging her tail a bit after a week now.

She had been in such pain that she even bit my husband at one point, which she has never done to anyone in her 17 ½ years, because it hurt her so much when he picked her up, but there was no other way to move her.

It turns out that she had nerve damage in her spine caused by arthritis, and this lead to some muscle loss of her back legs too.  Amazingly there is a medicine which repairs the nerve damage and you could really see the effects within a short time.  Now we have to take her for acupuncture and osteopathy to correct some bones, and then she will get a bit of physiotherapy – and will hopefully stay a bit longer still!  I don’t feel able to say goodbye to her yet.

I will be post again as I would like to tell you about my first visit to the therapist, and other very challenging experiences I had this week.  It never rains but it pours, as they say.

Take care, my dear friend,

Juanita