Page 1 of 11 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Delphine Bowers 
February 5, 1998 
Cassette 4, Side 1 
 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  00:01 
Thursday, February 5. This is tape four with Delphine Bowers. 
 
Delphine Bowers  00:06 
[Tape stops and starts]. But I'd have a [?sheet thrown?] in that room because the light bothers my 
eyes when I do the computer.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  00:14 
It was, it was glorious red. Just glorious red. We're talking about the sunrise this morning. It's so 
nice to see the sun again and have it stay up. So what, what synagogue do you go to?  
 
Delphine Bowers  00:32 
Well, it doesn't have a place. It's Bet Alef, is the name of it, and we don't want a building. It's a 
meditational synagogue, meditation, meditational [?temple?]. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  00:47 
So is that what you meant, is that the meditation you referred to?  
 
Delphine Bowers  00:51 
Well-- 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  00:52 
Just now, when you said you meditated? 
 
Delphine Bowers  00:57 
I don't know that I follow necessarily just what they say to do. I read, and I think I meditate 
naturally a lot. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  01:12 
Does it go by the Kabbalah at all or? 
 
Delphine Bowers  01:15 
Page 2 of 11 
 
Yeah, it's the basis of it, it's the idea of, because, you know, the Kabba-- cat's tail's in my mouth, 
not conducive to clear speech. I'm in the process of putting things together, and I don't know 
where I am. I, It's hard, it's not because it's too private, it's because it's, it has no form.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  01:48 
To talk about?  
 
Delphine Bowers  01:49 
To talk about, and that I-- There's a meditation that you do where you become conscious of your 
entire body and the feelings in your body and of your chakras. And then I begin to get the feeling 
of being connected to all things. And then, if it goes on long enough, I become all things and it's, 
I'm not sure what that is. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  02:19 
Very advanced, it sounds like to me, with my little knowledge of, I mean, my feeble attempts at 
meditation. That's beautiful. Sounds beautiful. 
 
Delphine Bowers  02:32 
When I was in Brazil, one of the high points of my spiritual life. When I was in Brazil, I went on 
a, oh, one of these trips that's organized as a spiritual trip. And we went to a place called 
Salvador of Bahia. And Salvador of Bahia is a city built on two levels. There's a big, high hill 
and there's a low place, and there is a road that comes down the hill, to the low place, with lots of 
shops. But going up the hill, everyone takes the elevator, there's an elevator that goes up the hill. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  03:09 
Wow. 
 
Delphine Bowers  03:11 
And waiting for the elevator, you stand all jammed in with all kinds of people, while you wait for 
the elevator. And I had on one of those vests with all the pockets on the inside, so I wasn't 
worried about being ripped off. It's a great place to get, to lose everything you have. And there 
were several different languages being spoken, and there were people of all different colors and 
sizes and degrees of cleanliness and colors of clothes. And I really got high on the experience 
because I, it's as if my skin dissolved and I was, I was a single cell in an organism, and I really 
got the idea of the connection, and I loved it. And I talked later, I went with my friend Georgia, 
and talked to her about it. She said, "I hated it. I was beginning to lose my identity." I said, "So? 
So what? That's good." You know, I was, I lost my identity completely because it was this 
feeling of really being connected. It's marvelous. And I thought, this is what people work for in 
their meditation, is to overcome the illusion that we're separate. What a wonderful experience. 
And Georgia, lordy, she could see stuff I couldn't see. She saw auras and she saw spirit people, 
she did all kinds of stuff, she didn't want to lose her identity. And I can't see diddly boo. I don't 
see anything, but I liked having my skin dissolve. [To the cat] What about you? What do you 
think? Cat won't answer.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:17 
When did you go to Brazil?  
Page 3 of 11 
 
 
Delphine Bowers  05:20 
1988. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:22 
So 10 years ago.  
 
Delphine Bowers  05:23 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:23 
And through what? Was it just with Georgia that you went or was it--  
 
Delphine Bowers  05:30 
No, it was, it was a tour. And Elaine Gall, who was the woman who bought the Aurora House 
and who really started that, that community that I have since left. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:41 
The Aurora House?  
 
Delphine Bowers  05:41 
Which is-- 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:42 
Oh, that was the co-op? 
 
Delphine Bowers  05:44 
No.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:44 
Oh. 
 
Delphine Bowers  05:45 
No, it wasn't. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  05:46 
Oh, what was that? 
 
Delphine Bowers  05:47 
That's a big old house on Aurora, at 47th and Aurora, that she bought because in the therapy we 
do, people do a lot of releasing. They may cry and they may make a lot of noise, they may beat 
pillows and scream and do that kind of thing. And in an office building, that is not looked on 
kindly, and she had a basement that we all rented space from her and did stuff, but it was too 
much, I mean, we needed offices where we could do that. So, she bought this house and rented 
us rooms where we could have our practice. And it worked out very well. The, there was a big 
kitchen and, where we could hang out and have coffee and heat up stuff. And there was a living 
Page 4 of 11 
 
room where people could use as a waiting room and wait. And there were about, about there 
ended up being about 10 of us there. There were about five rooms, and most of us shared them. 
And Elaine and several other people were going on that Brazil trip, and persuaded Georgia and 
me to go too. And it was great, very interesting. It was a nice trip, but I was, I was not very far 
along in my therapy. I mean, I, well, I was, I've been in therapy forever, but I wasn't very whole. 
And then I went to Bali and I went to Egypt. You went to Egypt first for the 1111. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  07:39 
What's that?  
 
Delphine Bowers  07:40 
Oh, it's a big deal. Supposed to be a time when the fate of the, this world, I think, was being 
decided, whether or not this or that or the other thing would be opened or I don't, I don't know. I 
don't understand it, never did understand that, but it was very intense and very nice, I learned a 
lot. And I don't like Egypt, and I don't want to go back. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  08:02 
What about Bali? Did you like Bali?  
 
Delphine Bowers  08:04 
Oh, I loved Bali. It was very like the Philippines. They're about as far below the equator as I was 
above the equator, and that same wonderful, steamy heat that, I like it a lot. And the people, their 
language is not the same as the Filipino dialects, but the inflection's the same and their accent is 
the same, the way they speak English is the same, and the vegetation is the same. So I really 
liked Bali. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  08:41 
Did you ever go back to the Philippines? 
 
Delphine Bowers  08:43 
No. I probably never will. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  08:47 
Do you miss it at all? 
 
Delphine Bowers  08:51 
I was, I haven't been there since I was 17. No, I don't, I don't miss that colonial lifestyle. I loved 
the tropical vegetation, and the climate, and that steamy heat is just marvelous. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  09:13 
I asked because your face lit up while you were talking about it. 
 
Delphine Bowers  09:16 
Yeah, I liked that, but I didn't miss the way my life was when I lived there. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  09:25 
Page 5 of 11 
 
Sure. Had you done any traveling before you went on these huge trips?  
 
Delphine Bowers  09:32 
No. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  09:33 
So this, so this must have been exciting. 
 
Delphine Bowers  09:35 
Yes, it was. Because Jack never wanted to go any place or do anything, so, I mean, and he hardly 
went to a movie. That isolation's real, very real. And so, God, [yawns], excuse me, I'm so tired 
because I didn't sleep last night. After, the week after we were in Egypt for two weeks, we went 
to, Georgia and I went to Greece and drove around the Filippoi east, and that was just wonderful. 
We were at lots of places where people did not speak English. And now, she's wonderful, she 
could go up to some guy and tell them where we wanted to go, and they could talk, even though 
she didn't speak Greek and they didn't speak English, and she'd come back with the map that 
would be accurate. And I would go and try to do that, and all I could think of is, I'm not going to 
be able to understand this man and so of course, I wouldn't. This was very interesting, because 
this was, this was how, this was the way she was spiritually. It was a spiritual exercise for her to 
be able to connect that way, so. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  10:54 
How did you find the people of the Aurora House? How did you, how did you get into the kind 
of therapy that you do? 
 
Delphine Bowers  11:02 
Well, when I was, had an office on East Lake, shared the, my office with some other women.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  11:08 
And this was your first private practice? 
 
Delphine Bowers  11:10 
Yeah. I was so depressed, I was just beside myself, I was just hanging on by a hair. And one of 
the women said she had the name of this person that really did the kind of therapy that she 
thought I would like, that they held you and they rocked you, and at that point, that sounded 
wonderful. So, I started seeing Elaine, and she was very busy. If she had not been able to take 
me, I'm sure I would have killed myself. I don't believe I would have gone looking for someone 
else and--  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  11:43 
Do you think she knew that? 
 
Delphine Bowers  11:46 
Probably, I think I told her. And I got a great deal from her, and it was also a very bad situation 
in many ways, because she's the same age that I am, and we were very competitive. 
 
Page 6 of 11 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  12:06 
Professionally?  
 
Delphine Bowers  12:08 
No, just in every way. And I still think she was more competitive than I was, but I was happy to 
fall into it and play the game. I mean things like, I was talking to someone once about-- and our 
backgrounds were really, strangely similar, we were only about two months apart in age. I was 
talking to someone about having been in the Philippines in prison camp and she said, "Well, I 
was in prison too during that war. I was in boarding school in South Africa." She'd been raised in 
Central Africa by missionaries, and they had sent her to, during the war, and sent her to South 
Africa to boarding school. And, "I didn't get along very well with the girls. They were all rich 
and snobbish," or whatever she said, and, "It was like a prison for me. So I was in prison too." 
Well, this is just sort of crazy competitive. This didn't even make sense, I could remember 
thinking, uhh. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  13:08 
How did that work out then in therapy with her?  
 
Delphine Bowers  13:11 
It didn't. Because, you see, she would put me down, and people would say to me, "How can you 
stand it when she talks to you that way?" And I, but if you're used to being abused, you don't 
even notice it. And I'd say, "It's, yeah, no big deal." And it was, it took me years to be able to get 
to the point where I could stand up to her. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  13:37 
Yet it helped?  
 
Delphine Bowers  13:38 
Yeah, well, it was, yeah, it helped. But I'm sure that had we not had that dynamic, I would have 
had to have far less, and wouldn't have had to have someone repair me afterwards. And we both, 
we'd hook each other terribly. And then in the Aurora House, I would delight in enraging her. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  14:08 
So, so after she was your therapist, you worked together also? 
 
Delphine Bowers  14:12 
Yeah, well, but there were far too many, it was, it was boundaries, there were no boundaries. She 
was my therapist, she was my landlady, she borrowed money from me, she ran a consulting 
group that I was a member of. And she would say things to me like, "I can't wait for you to finish 
therapy so you can be my friend." And I didn't want to be her friend. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  14:45 
So she, so you learned the type of therapy that you began to practice from your own sessions 
with her?  
 
Delphine Bowers  14:51 
Page 7 of 11 
 
Yeah, and it, Al and I were talking about this the other day, we have-- 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  14:56 
Your cousin Al, no. Who's Al?  
 
Delphine Bowers  14:56 
Al's a man I work with.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  14:56 
Oh, okay. 
 
Delphine Bowers  14:58 
We still do one group together-- that we are, have come a very long way from the way we were 
in therapy. He was, he was in therapy in another group, and he was the assistant in the group that 
I was just winding up. And then I was working with another man, and decided I didn't want to 
work with him anymore, and figured I'd just do my groups by myself. And then Al was working 
with a friend, and she liked him, so I asked him if he'd work with me. And so that's how we 
started working together, and that was in 1989. We don't do things the way they used to, we 
don't, I mean, I stopped making parent contracts a long time ago. We would make these mom 
contracts that were supposed to, you know, really attach to your therapist as if she were your 
mom. And I had a mom contract with Elaine, but it never really worked, because she wasn't the 
kind of mother I wanted. And it was, she was very like my stepmother in many ways, and we 
just, we hooked each other terribly. She didn't like the way I dressed, she didn't like the, my, how 
spontaneous I was, she, just a lot of stuff she just didn't like about me. And-- 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  16:33 
Are you still in touch with her? 
 
Delphine Bowers  16:36 
She would like very much for us to be friends, and I am not allowing that. I, we email back and 
forth a little bit, but that's it. And she's a very lonely woman. I have a very full life, very happy 
life. She had a lot of friends, and they all moved away at once. It was really hard on her, and she 
hasn't, she hasn't made new friends. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  17:10 
When you say a full and happy life, that's such a huge transition from feeling so depressed 
before, and I'm curious about the details of that. It's beautiful, I mean it, It makes me so happy to 
hear that. 
 
Delphine Bowers  17:31 
Do you, let's see, we have one more session after this?  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  17:34 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Delphine Bowers  17:38 
Page 8 of 11 
 
Because probably the most important growth things have occurred in the last three years. That I 
believed at the, when I was at my practice in the Aurora house, that everyone accepted me and 
loved me, and that, you know, people would walk by my door and they'd stop and give me hugs 
and everything was very nice. And then something, there were a series of circumstances and the 
way I reacted to them that ended up by my being ostracized and my not having anything to do 
with those people now. And it was a very rough lesson, it's a very rough lesson, and I don't know 
whether I want to get started on it at this session, because I don't know how much time we have 
left. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  18:33 
Well, we have half of this tape, and then the, and then the other side, but-- 
 
Delphine Bowers  18:37 
 Well, then we do have time.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  18:39 
Okay, and I mean, it's up-- 
 
Delphine Bowers  18:40 
To get started. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  18:41 
--to you. Yeah. 
 
Delphine Bowers  18:54 
I have ruined by, by talking, by being sort of unconscious, I, because this-- I don't know how to 
preserve confidentiality with this, and I don't know quite what to do. I'm thinking here, what do I 
do? I mean, my impulse is to throw caution to the winds and say, go ahead and hope that you 
will mention no names, let you do your work.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  19:25 
We can always go back and delete something that you would like not to have said. And I can 
also, you can use pseudonyms if you'd like or-- 
 
Delphine Bowers  19:38 
Okay. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  19:38 
--I mean, it's up, it's up to you, this is your story. So, however, you'd like to do it. 
 
Delphine Bowers  19:44 
Because this part is really important, and I can't pretend it didn't happen, and I don't want to 
disguise it, mask it in such a way that it loses its intensity. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  19:54 
Right. 
Page 9 of 11 
 
 
Delphine Bowers  19:57 
So I mentioned the man who was the assistant in our group, the group that I was in as a client, 
and I wasn't-- He came into that group as an assistant, probably about 1987 and I, the fall of 
1987, and I left in the spring of 1989 after my mother died. And we had lunch every day, every 
Wednesday we had lunch after group. And Connie Dawson usually was with us, and she was 
from Portland. She'd spend the night with me. She'd come from Portland. After she ran a group 
in Portland, she'd drive here to Seattle, she had a key, and she'd let herself in, and put herself to 
bed, and then we'd get up and go to group. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  20:43 
This is a group that you led, or it was a group that you were part of? 
 
Delphine Bowers  20:46 
That was a group I was a part of and so was she. And then she, after group, we'd have lunch with 
Al, and then she get in the car and go home. And I had surgery in January, and he was really, 
very supportive. He'd been very depressed himself and was on unemployment, and not doing a 
whole lot of working. He had fired himself from the company that he was a partner in. Looked at 
it and said, "Well, the reason, the thing that's wrong with this company is that I'm here," and I 
don't know how much of that was true. I really, honestly don't, but that was what he did, and it 
was time for him to get out. But he didn't set anything up for himself to take care of him, and he 
was without funds. And so he would come up here and sit and talk to me by the hour, when we 
were, when I was recuperating from surgery, and take me on walks, helped me to get-- 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  21:47 
What kind of surgery was it? 
 
Delphine Bowers  21:49 
Well, I had had a gallbladder repair, and they had done a really bad job, and had put a, I have a 
great big, huge scar all the way down my front, and it had herniated. The scar had herniated. So, 
it was a hernia repair. But it was not fun. It was very bad. And when I left group, within, and we 
started working together in January, the way we did it was, it was, was kind of neat. He and the 
man that I worked with before, his name was Sherman, and so while I was in the hospital, Al and 
Sherman did the groups to-- group together so that the people would get used to, begin to get 
used to Al. And then, when I came back, we had a session when there were all three of us, in 
which Sherman said goodbye to the group, and Al and I did it. And we, we, we've been, we did 
until last, this last December, we did four groups together every week. Spent huge amounts of 
time together, and we fell in love-- I fell in love with him.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  23:01 
With? 
 
Delphine Bowers  23:02 
With Al. And he was my dear, dear, good friend. And we were not in a committed relationship. 
We were certainly committed in terms of if either one of us was going to be sexual with someone 
else, we would let each other know. But he really was looking for someone to live with, and it 
Page 10 of 11 
 
would not have worked for him if we lived together, just too different. And I would have been 
very happy to have the relationship continue just the way it was, but he was looking for 
someone. So, we were lovers off and on over a period of several years. And it was fine, and we 
continued to be very close friends all the way through this and to work together. And three years 
ago, he found the person he was looking for, and I was very hard on me. I was not happy, but I, I 
knew that I wanted him to have whatever he wanted, and I also knew that my falling in love with 
him was really not part of the bargain. That wasn't supposed to happen. And so we continued to 
work together, and we were spending about 20 hours a week together. It was a long time. Well, 
the fly in the ointment was that there had been a man in the community whose name was Lee 
Ford, and he was a PhD psychologist, and the whole community sort of revolved around him. 
Elaine thought he was wonderful, and would quote him and brag if she went on a skiing trip with 
him, and that kind of thing. And I went to him for a couple of years, seeing him half an hour 
every other week was all I could afford, because he was expensive and he was helpful, but I 
didn't have any illusions about him. I believe that he was sexual with his clients. I believe that he 
was sexual with his clients or with people that were essentially in a client relationship with him, 
the roles in that community were so blurred that it was very hard to be ethical. I mean, Elaine 
should never have borrowed money from me while I was her client. And the idea of her being 
my therapist, and my land lady, and everything all at once is just crazy, crazy, crazy. You just 
don't do that. I blur some, some boundaries, and there are people that are critical of it. There is a 
wonderful woman who cleans for me, who's also in group with me, but I do the kind of therapy 
where I'm pretty self disclosing.  
 
Jenny Kurzweil  26:10 
What's that mean?  
 
Delphine Bowers  26:11 
I mean, I don't have many secrets from my clients. If they want to ask me anything, they can. 
Because I think that most of them, I, it's, partly it's a reaction to having been to the psychiatrist 
that never said anything, when I needed to find out what normal people did in the very worst 
way. So, the shit hit the fan with Lee. A young woman that he was having an affair with for two 
years, they started the instant she got out of group, there was no time space, and I'm sure he was 
grooming her for this all the time she was in group. He got tired of her and wanted to end the 
relationship, and she had had to keep it a secret, because he didn't want to get in trouble with the 
authorities, with the state, and so that meant she couldn't tell her friends. All of her friends were 
people she'd been in group with, and she couldn't tell them about her lover, so she had to keep all 
that secret. As a result, they felt her drawing away, and would say, "What's the matter with 
Laurie, she just doesn't seem to really be there when we're together." Well, Laurie was head over 
heels in love with their dad, [?which was his dad?], and they were, when they found out they 
were mad because she was fucking dad. I mean, it was a mess, a real mess, and he had done a lot 
of intense baby work with her, where, this is truly taking advantage of someone. Well, the 
woman that Al fell in love with had been in a group. He did four groups with me, and he did a 
group with Elaine, and a group with Eleanor, and a group with a woman named, two groups with 
a woman named Carol Wright in Bellevue. And the, when he first went into that group as a co-
therapist, Hila was in there for the last six months, and she was another therapist, so she was 
winding up perfectly, and she was there, and she had an office in the same suite of offices that 
Carol did. So he would sometimes see her when he went to do the groups, and they'd say hi, but 
Page 11 of 11 
 
they didn't date or do anything socially for like, a year and a half. Well, wasn't okay, that's not 
okay by the state. The state says two years, the social work people say never. Once a client, 
always a client. I have some mixed feelings about that, because I think that that's saying you'll 
never grow up. She was 55 and he was 62. And she was a pediatric nurse practitioner and had a 
practice of her own, as well as doing healing touch and I, I, I don't think I would have done that. 
I don't think I would have entered in a sexual relationship. But I don't know, every time I say I 
never could do that, then I do. But the community decided that he was just likely bored, and I got 
a lot of pressure to stop working with him. And I said, "I don't see him as a menace to clients." 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  29:56 
This is your best friend they were talking about.  
 
Delphine Bowers  29:58 
Yeah, and so we moved out of the Aurora House, moved our office out of there, because we 
shared an office too, because people were walking by the door turning, the people that stopped 
and hugged us were turning their heads and not speaking. And I didn't, didn't want to be there. It 
was just too often. So, yeah, we moved down near Gas Works. 
 
Jenny Kurzweil  30:37 
Where you are right now? 
 
Delphine Bowers  30:38 
We've been there for, for, we've been there for two years, or is it three? I guess we didn't we 
didn't move there until August.  
 