Things You Didn’t Know About Denise
What most people don’t know about me
(in no particular order)
- As a kid, I LOVED making mud pies…it felt like my superpower.
- My parents lived in a renovated chicken coop when I was born.
- When I was elementary school, my family moved into abandoned army barracks.
- I hitchhiked around what was then Yugoslavia by myself when I was 19 years old.
- I was thrown in jail in Dubrovnik Croatia for sleeping on a park bench. But I was eventually let out, with lots of laughter and good will.
- I had a one-woman art exhibit of my painted drums in a gallery in Covent Garden in London.
- I went 8 months of my pregnancy without seeing a doctor or a midwife. What was I thinking?
- At the London airport Ringo Starr helped me with my suitcase. (I didn’t know it was Ringo when he helped me. He was just a kind bystander.)
- As a kid I used to raise snakes, crawdads and frogs. I kept my crawdads in the bathtub. They scratched the enamel off the tub.
- I’ve written 19 books, which are in 29 languages.
- I went to a Rolling Stone concert and spent almost the entire concert standing on my chair and screaming. I was sure Mick Jagger was looking at me.
- I’ve had a real UFO experience. I don’t expect anyone to believe me. But it happened.
- My first job was at a greenhouse when I was 16 years old. I made 1/3 the amount of money and did twice the work as the boy who worked there (who was my same age). I was told that it was fair because eventually he would have to provide for a family. I’m so glad that times have changed.
- Until I was in my 40s I never knew that Kleenex was a brand … I thought that was the name of tissue.
- I had a ticket and a ride to go to Woodstock, but at the last minute decided to stay at college and study. (Sadly, I never graduated.)
- I’m barefoot most of the time, even in the winter.
- If the zombie apocalypse ever comes, I have enough dehydrated food and canned tuna fish to last until the next millennium.
- I’ve taught in 25 countries.
- I’m an introvert, bordering on being a recluse. Luckily my husband is also a bit of a recluse, so we recluse together.
- I love vintage Samurai movies.
- I was camping by myself, on a small isolated island off the coast of Croatia, and was strafed with bullets by a low flying plane. Luckily I wasn’t hit. Evidently the island was used for target practice.
- I rode an elephant near the Burma border in Thailand.
- I’m one of the few people in the world that successfully regresses up to 3,000 people at a time into their past lives.
- I lived in a Zen Buddhist monastery for over 2 years.
- Once when I was teaching, I returned to the lecture hall, I got a huge standing ovation by several hundred people. I thought, “Oh my god! They love my workshop!” until the organizer ran up to the stage and whispered that I had left my microphone on when I used the bathroom… and they heard everything.
- I was once a finalist in the Miss Tomato Queen Contest.
- These are my favorite lines in any movie. It’s from the Bogart movie, ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre’. “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
- I’ve been up the Mekong River in Vietnam in a wooden boat.
- I was a tambourine player in a short-lived band called the Periwinkle Town Union.
- When I was going though labor with my daughter, I played Gregorian chants.
- I have swum with wild manatees.
- I like sauce on just about everything. My daughter says I’m sauce-driven.
- I used to rent a small island in the Pacific Northwest to take people on Vision Quests.
- Flying over the Amazon, I watched a huge lightening storm below me for almost an hour.
- I was once thrown out of a movie theater in Hawaii because they didn’t believe that the leaves I had adorned my feet with qualified as shoes. They didn’t.
- My uncle used a cattle prod on me to keep me from joyfully running out into thunderstorms. It didn’t stop me.
- When I was with the Aborigines in Australia, I was rubbed with Aborigine sweat and red and yellow ochre dirt, so the spirits of the land would think I looked and smelled Aborigine and not harm me. It worked.
- I don’t enjoy parties with more than 5 people.
- A monkey tried to steal my purse in Bali.
- For a short time I was a den mother to Boy Scouts.
- I had an experience with an angel – a real angel – that saved my life.
- I’m teaching myself to play the djembe.
- I was once swimming in the ocean and a huge sea turtle swam along side me for about ten minutes. It was amazing.
- I love vultures. I think they are severely misunderstood.
- Whenever I look at the stars, I feel homesick.
- Winnie Pooh opens my heart.
- Just thinking about pizza makes me happy.
- I never get tired of visiting Venice.
- I have been a drum maker and was the first person to teach drum making in Australia.
- Sitting in small chapels in villages around the world makes me feel close to spirit.
- Light streaming through stain glass windows slows me down—way down.
- I walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco whenever I can.
- When I started to read the book Shogun I didn’t put it down until I was complete. (And I have trouble reading because of dyslexia.)
- I love beer, but I don’t drink it.
- I taught an angel workshop in Johannesburg and many of the people in the workshop showed up with guns.
- I was a paid dance partner in my youth.
- I don’t have a favorite color. It changes all the time.
- I put hot sauce on just about everything.
- I was honorarily adopted into a Moari tribe in New Zealand. I was told that I’m a tohunga (healer) and a namer, meaning that I can give people their spiritual name.
- I was a cheerleader in high school.
- My first spiritual teacher was a Hawaiian kahuna, she used to take me into the lush forest to give food to the menehunes (elves)
- For a short time, I was once a member of the Fuchsia Society. I was more-or-less thrown out when I wanted to talk about fairies.
- When I was 17, I had a dramatic near-death experience and as a result began to see energy around people and plants.
- I was dining with a Samoan family and ate what I was told that was raw dog! (I was told that it would be an insult to refuse and I didn’t want to insult them.) As soon as I ate it, they all burst out laughing; it was raw fish. (I never had raw fish before, so that was almost as bad.)
- I can never remember the answers to the security questions that I created.
- We moved to our current location because of an unexpected encounter with an angry lake spirit.
- Vacuuming gives me deep satisfaction.
- I slather essential oils all over myself every night before bed.
- I can curl my tongue and raise my eyebrows independently.
- I make incredible omelets.
- I did a standing-room-only, one-woman play in Amsterdam.
- I suffer from a lack of self-esteem, dyslexia and ADHD. However, I have discovered the gift in each of these things.
- I got married naked, under a waterfall, to a man who I didn’t know very well . . . and we are still married almost five decades years later.
- I have 40 pairs of pajamas. I should be embarrassed to have so many, but I’m not.
- I got thrown out of an airplane once. Okay, I had a parachute on… but still the guy literally picked me up and threw me out the door. He said it looked like I was swimming through the air trying to get back to the plane.
- In Africa, the spiritual head of all Zulu, Credo Mutwa, told me that I had been kidnapped by extraterrestrials when I was a kid. I don’t believe it, as I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have forgotten something that momentous.
- As a kid, in the summertime my favorite thing was to wake up early, make myself a sack lunch, and spend the entire day alone in the woods.
- For a short while, I sold Fuller Brushes, door to door.
- I eat peanut butter straight out of the jar.
- Being very insecure about my writing skills, I signed up for several writing classes. (This was after I had several best sellers.) I failed miserably in both classes.
- In a hotel in Shasta, Oregon, in the middle of the night, a ghost walked through the room. She was as surprised to see me, as I was surprised to see her.
- Late night saxophone jazz relaxes me like nothing else.
