Before I was diagnosed with non-epileptic seizures, most nights, I awoke with that worms-crawling-in-my-legs feeling, and many nights I awoke with my right leg and arm thrashing about the bed. My head twisted to the left and I was afraid I might not be able to breathe. When it stopped, I got out of bed and paced the floor for the rest of the night, worrying. I was terrified, even more terrified when it happened to me at work at the oddest of times. I recall that someone had laughed and said that I had gone over the rainbow. It wasn't funny then and the remembrance isn't funny now.

My closest friends from work brought me to the emergency room, where I was poorly treated. I was admitted and given enough medication that caused me to totally black out for five days. I recall absolutely nothing.

While I was in the hospital I underwent both an MRI and a CT scan. Both tests appeared normal, but I appeared anything but normal.

The diagnosis was made; it stated that I was having pseudo seizures and that I was crying out for help. I was wide awake when I heard those words.

My entire body dropped and I emotionally wrapped my arms around myself. I agree; I was crying out for help. I was begging for relief from my pain. I was pleading to know what was wrong with me. I implored their aid to put an end to these seizures. Fear, like a wound, opened up inside my spirit.

The seizures continued. I suffered depression deep enough to nearly drown in a well of pain.

PNES. To finally have an appropriate name for my condition exhilarated me! I was so relieved to finally give it a name!

What I am sure of is that this condition is treatable. While I continue to have seizures, I know that I am not crazy and that I will be okay.

However, while giving the seizures the name PNES helped me immensely, my reaction to every seizure then and every seizure since… I HATE THEM!

I hate the shaking. I hate the jerking, bending, and twisting. I hate the crying. I hate the swearing. I hate the burning pain and spasms. My body, mind, and spirit continued to cry out, but this time for loving support.

There's something comforting though when persons with any condition come together with others who share the same issues.

That is how The Color of Seizures came to be.

Between front and back cover, this book is a place to go to find loving support. It is a place to begin to find well-being. It is a place to be with others who withstand the challenges that these non-epileptic seizures bring. The Color of Seizures offers those with PNES a chance to find balance.

Being healthy encompasses all our parts, not just our physical body. When our emotions are in turmoil or our mind is bombarded with obsessive thoughts our health is compromised and we already know the result - seizures. It is important to create balance in our lives by nurturing our entire selves. It is paramount to our total health to meet our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical needs. If we feel balanced, we will experience joy in what we do. We will have a sense of purpose and feel that our lives have meaning. We will treat ourselves with love and respect. We will also be loving and respectful with our loved ones. We will feel calm and less stressed and anxious. That can lead to a quieting of our seizures.

Within the pages of The Color of Seizures you will find interactive activities. The activities are simple, inexpensive, and fun ways to make a connection with you.

There are reflective questions which are opportunities to examine and express your emotions and feelings.

The Personal Three Day Retreat that follows is a guide to give you an opportunity for quiet self-care. It is designed to be uniquely your own experience. The guide is only that - you will find suggestions and opportunities for your own choices towards wellness.


Together, we say as a community of friends:
PNES… Finally, it has a name!
We are comforted and comfortable.
We feel acceptance.
We are not alone.
It is not the end.

Be blessed with healing in your body, mind, and spirit.
May your seizures be quieted.         Kate  

The Color of Seizures..Living with PNES

Sea Of Impulse - Our eleventh tale in the ongoing Sarah's Saga

"Sea Of Impulse", by Jeff Underwood & KateTaylor

La Maupin, otherwise known as Julie d’Aubigny, reached for it all. This 17th century human comet is somehow connected to the fate of Sarah’s mother and her dear friend. The connection, its discovery, is critical. A life, maybe lives, depends upon it!
For all who feel it, La Maupin’s sea of impulse, her unconcerned, almost conscienceless, behavior may prove toxic for others in the present. And its effect must be short circuited to prevent any misery and death.
Parallel to La Maupin’s drama, the story of the attempted revival of a business is told as well. Sarah’s clan is in pursuit of relics again. And it is the Languedoc of southern France and Castle Montsegur which may reveal the only key to that business surviving.
I am mesmerized as the two tales merge, grow, collide and deal shocks to all involved. Merovingian influence rises but for a second and then Cathar spirituality and the relics that hail from that attempt to take over.
But is it a religious relic even that might heal the wounded enterprise which Sarah’s aunt began years ago? Is a relic of any kind found? And does La Maupin steal the show as she spins a frenetic influence that is so powerful that it leaps nearly four hundred years from past to present with vile consequences?

"We acknowledge the eternal fact of history’s fascination & its insights into life lessons.

We would be remiss if we didn’t give an ovation to sexuality- its value, beauty for love & romance, procreation as well.We hushed it but couldn’t leave it out altogether.
After all, where would mankind be without it?

Kate & I also applaud one of our fictional characters too: Lahava, Sarah’s mother in this the eleventh book of Sarah’s Saga. She is magnificently human, tenderly flawed, & always gives it her best in everything." - Jeff Underwood

Available on Amazon.com

Sea of Impulse

I perch at the edge of my chair as Sarah explains her visit to her close friend, Jeff, while he lingers hopelessly within the clutches of a psychiatric institution. Oddly, she believes him. And again, not as author but simply as passive listener to her family’s saga, I believe her. He is clear-eyed now and renders a tale unto Sarah that is fantastical. He and his wife are in France. He is a relic hunter. That is genuinely his profession, or was, and he discovers a trinket whose contents absorb his mind and body instantly. Once opening the tiny relic, he involuntarily is made captive to an onslaught of images so fraught and full of dark sights all in the name of France’s ancient formation. His wife especially has no idea of his unearthly ravings surrounding the Kings Childeric and Clovis. Magic, madness, and history on the brink clash over and over in a light show that explodes behind Jeff’s eyes. So what of him? What of his wife? What of the creature that brought this all into being? I don’t understand it yet. If I tell you all that I have heard, might there be hope? Might you have an answer? Help Sarah. Help me. But please, if not us, help Jeff.
Sting of the Golden Bee

A little girl hides behind a frightened young woman’s skirt. A distance away, two men talk. One of those men puts money, what would be the equivalent of $35.00, into the much younger man’s hand. A woman who has been standing an even further distance away is motioned to come closer. She reluctantly puts out her cigarette and sidles up to the woman and child pair. The stranger man nods to the woman; the young people nod to each other. The no longer frightened young woman nudges the little girl from behind her skirt and then places the little girl's hand into the alien woman’s hand. She will become the little girl's new friend. This friend coos and smiles to the little girl with an effort, promising sweet food and a shiny bicycle. The little girl only smells the foul cigarette odor on the breath of the other. And so, another child submits to the awful circumstances of hard and harsh labor in the cocoa fields. She is four years old. Her name is Yene. She will suffer for two years. Meet Professor Catherine Anne Campbell. Students at Basrouge University in Johnston, Pennsylvania have filled seats in her lecture hall for years to learn about Women's Rights. How does it come to be then, that a stubborn, willful woman from Johnston, Pennsylvania would meet a shy little girl from Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa? Once she becomes aware of the abominable conditions of a child as she toils over the cocoa pod, Cathy's passion to enter those cocoa farms to investigate and to save the children virtually imprisoned there causes her to make many a move. Cathy makes her move to rescue Yene. She takes her from Côte d'Ivoire into Mali. Anywhere in the world, taking a child without permission, even without malice aforethought, is damning. Capture might easily place Cathy in harm’s way. Will she face a trial in the Cote d’Ivoire? Will she be caught by rogue others who might beat and brutalize both her and her newly found treasure, Yene? Can Cathy escape the country? If so, will Yene accompany her? Yene is held captive to cocoa. Can she truly find release? Trust me when I say, chocolate will never ever taste the same

Captive To Cocoa

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Honor's Implacable Soldier

The gentle and peaceful Cathars called insolent, impious bastards? Read about a not so Christ-like Pope Benoit XII...