Some folks may wonder how a television show that only aired 55 episodes in 1987, 88, and 89 could change someone's life. Well, this is how Beauty and the Beast changed mine...

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In late 1989, I was terribly depressed over what seemed like the unavoidable loss of my health (due to a blown out knee), my miltary career (also due to the blown out knee), and my marriage (due to my husband's preoccupation with beer). After months with my right leg in an immobilizer, my knee was frozen in place, the entire leg was atrophied and useless, and I had gained almost 100 pounds. Life seemed hopeless. It was easy to think about giving up.

Then one Saturday a dear friend called and said, "Turn on channel nine - NOW!" and there was the pilot episode, Once Upon a Time in the City of New York, beginning BatB's first run in syndication in my area. From that very first episode, Catherine became my icon - through her I found my own strength. I became proactive in my medical care and demanded (and finally got) reconstructive surgery. My physical therapist was my own personal Isaac Stubbs through over three years of tortuous stretching, muscle rebuilding, and learning-how-to-walk-again exercises. During that time, I watched BatB nearly every week, recording as many as I could. I lived for Saturdays at three pm! I owe everyone involved in BatB, and especially Linda Hamilton's Catherine, everything. Thanks to their message of strength and hope, I regained the use of my knee, lost 85 pounds, kept my career, and walked away from my unhealthy marriage.

More recently my life had begun to feel aimless. I fell back on BatB and watched my poor quality tapes over and over again and tried to make some sense of it all. I thought I must be crazy to spend all my nights alone with a VCR and a fictional TV series. THEN I discovered BatB fandom when I went online in August 1996 and did a net search on BatB. I gloried in the discovery that I was neither alone nor crazy! I was filled with new purpose. I started singing, drawing, and writing again for the first time in over fifteen years. I hadn't felt so alive since I was a teenager, and I turned forty in June 1997. But one thing was notably missing from my life.

In July 1997, I attended my first BatB fan convention - "Reflections" in Minneapolis MN. It was a tenth anniversary celebration, and I returned home delighted and thrilled, but with a huge vacancy in my heart after all of the love and camaraderie I had experienced at the con. Two weeks later, a man subscribed to the fan email list that I had discovered a year prior. We became friends, then more than friends, and soon, despite a number of hefty obstacles (not the least of which was the fact that we lived on opposite coasts of the United States), we met and knew that what we felt was real. Several months after that he put a few things in his truck, quit his job of 26 years, and moved to California to be with me. On Oct 11, 1998 Bill and I were married, exactly one year to the day that we set eyes on each other in our first face-to-face meeting.

So you see, the television show called Beauty and the Beast DID change my life... more than once. It changed Bill's life too, and I know there are others out there with stories similar to ours - real people whose lives were profoundly touched by this extraordinary show. Bill and I owe our happiness to BatB and it will ALWAYS be a part of our lives.

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Follow your heart... and perhaps someday you can live your dreams, too...

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