title: Checking Out: An In-Depth Look At Losing Your Mind
author: Catherine Graves
description: Catherine Graves is busy raising two children and volunteering for various causes, most recently the Phoenix Childrens Hospital Foundation, Florence Crittendon Center for Girls, Barrows Neurological Institute, and the Craniofacial Foundation of Arizona, among others. She lives in Phoenix with her family. Checking Out: An In-Depth Look At Losing Your Mind is her first book.
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  ![Images](../images/00012.jpeg)
  
  
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  ## WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 29 NOVEMBER 1499
  
  
  ![Images](../images/00015.jpeg)
  
  
  In the moment of waking I am innocent, my conscience clear of any wrongdoing.
  In that first dazed moment, as my eyes open, I have no thoughts; I am only a
  smooth-skinned, tightly muscled young body, a woman of twenty-six, slowly
  waking with joy to life. I have no sense of my immortal soul, I have no sense
  of sin or guilt. I am so deliciously, la