BOHNTINSKY, Dori 1951-

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "Bon-tin-ski;" born December 17, 1951, in San Jose, CA; daughter of James William Ewart (a teacher) and Dorothy N. Fraser; married Charles L. Bohntinsky (a director of training and development); children: Elise (deceased). Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: California State University—Hayward, B.S., 1974; San Jose State University, M.A., 1976. Politics: "Eclectic." Religion: "New World."

ADDRESSES: Home—Hayward, CA. Offıce—P.O. Box 20248, Castro Valley, CA 94546. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Alameda County Medical Center, manager of department of speech pathology and audiology, 1980-2002; freelance writer and workshop presenter, 2002—. Also affiliated with Consultants for Enhanced Communication.

MEMBER: International Labyrinth Society, American Speech Language Hearing Association, California Speech Language Hearing Association, Northern California Speech Pathology Leadership Forum (chair), Castro Valley Women's Club (chair of home-life committee).

WRITINGS:

Standard American English Pronunciation Training (workbook with audio tapes), Fairview Publishing, 1994.

Pragmatics for Effective Speaking (workbook), Fair-view Publishing, 1998.

Once upon a Lunar Eclipse (poetry), International Library of Poetry, 2000.

The Healing Room: Discovering Joy through the Journal (nonfiction), In-Word Bound Publishing, 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Daydreams to Awakening, on "self-discovery through journaling," for In-Word Bound Publishing, completion expected in 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Dori Bohntinsky commented to CA: "As a speech/language pathologist since 1976, my career has focused on helping people communicate. My career began in clinical settings, helping children with delayed language and speech and adults with a wide variety of communication impairments resulting from neurological damage. In the early 1990s I expanded my work by writing a workbook and audio tape program to assist the non-native English speaker in speaking English clearly and effectively. In the late 1990s I expanded my work to training the native English speaker to communicate with greater clarity and effectiveness by writing a workbook on pragmatics. Between 1976 and 2000 my writing was technical and I gave technical workshops.

"In 2000 my life changed. In January, 2000, I lost my fourteen-year-old daughter following a four-month-long illness. During the fourteen months that followed, I also lost my mother and then my father. I drew upon my clinical experience and writing skills and wrote a journal demonstrating my process of healing from significant loss. During this process I realized that I was writing a book to help people communicate with themselves and to help others communicate with someone going through tragedy. In 2002 I took early retirement after working over twenty years as a manager of speech pathology and audiology at the Alameda County Medical Center. My current motivation is to help people improve their own self-talk and enhance their ability to communicate with themselves. I find it interesting that my career path changed from helping individuals talk to each other to enhancing people's inner dialogue.

"My work has been influenced by free thinkers and writers such as C. W. Leadbeater, Helen Blavatsky, Albert Einstein, Gary Zukav, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Betty Bethards, James Van Pragh, Doreen Virtue, and many other lesser-known authors. However, in searching bookstores and the Internet I have found no author except one who wrote with a style similar to mine. The author is Marguerite Porete, who wrote The Mirror of Simple Souls in the late 1200s. My style, which is mainly journaling, involves self-disclosure in a unique way. It includes descriptive observation of personal events and then freely flows into insightful prose. Some writing is interspersed with poetry, which is also used as a form of journaling to gain insight. I write to better understand life situations, myself, and to demonstrate to others an approach for enhancing self-awareness through writing. My motivation is to encourage people to touch any pain so they might discover the joy that comes from insight regarding any uncomfortable or painful event. I also teach journaling workshops and use my writings as examples of an ability that I trust all people possess."