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It began last year with a letter, a candle and a crystal on a plaque memorializing Ted Fields and David Martin, the two young black men gunned down by racist killer Joseph Paul Franklin.

And it would be the beginning of Terry Jackson-Mitchell's journey out of 30 years of pain, guilt and isolation.

Jackson-Mitchell, then 15, and a friend were jogging in Liberty Park with Fields and Martin about 10 p.m. on Aug. 20, 1980. She was hit by shrapnel. She also was vilified for even being with black men, blamed herself for their deaths and withdrew with memories etched in scars and guilt.

That letter, stone and votive, and the attention it attracted, drew Terry out of 30 years of living with her memories, her pain and her guilt. It hasn't been an easy year, she says now. It has been colored with sorrow, but also a new understanding of what she's endured and who she is now.

"I came out, and it affected my life drastically, in good ways and bad ways," she says.

Even before her story emerged, Terry had undergone counseling, through which she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

For 30 years, she'd left letters, stones and candles on the plaque on the anniversary of the murders. A year ago, though, she made the letter public and spoke openly about the crime and its aftermath for the first time in this column.

Now she wants to write a book about all that has happened in those 30 years, including the reunion last summer that brought Terry's family together with those of Martin and Fields for the first time. After so many years of rancor and blame, the families forgave each other and, at long last, held each other close.

Today, Terry is the same mother, grandmother and businesswoman she has been all these years. Now, though, she's enrolled in a writing class and hopes to show the way the world was in 1980, and how it is and can be now.

"Everything is transformed," she says. "I forgave Joseph Paul Franklin, I forgave Ted and Dave's families, and all the people who blamed me. But I never forgave myself for blaming myself, for taking all that blame and saying, 'Go ahead. I deserve it.' "

On this year's anniversary, she found herself trapped by a terrible migraine and couldn't go to the park.

That migraine, which she fought with meditation and yoga, delivered a message "from the other side, I swear," Terry says.

"Whether it was my higher self, or Ted or Dave, or a combination, it was saying, 'Isn't it time to start celebrating instead of mourning? Isn't it time for you to just live your life? You're not at that park, and you don't have to go back there to connect with them.' "

The years also have brought a growing sense of the racism that still exists in this and other nations, and of the caustic political environment that breeds all manner of division, Terry says.

"I believe the majority of Utahns aren't racist, and aren't hateful, and I really do believe we're evolving," she says. "But if we never talk about it, and never address it, it never gets fixed."

Last year's reunion coincided with a march to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Since then, Terry has walked away from the prison she says she built for herself.

"I did my meditation, I lit my candles, I did my incense," she told me. "I celebrated in my own pagan way. I don't want to get stuck in mourning; I'd rather find a way to celebrate what happened last year."

With that, Terry says, comes understanding of her suffering and those of so many others who have gone through the worst and survived.

"You don't know how to value happiness until you don't have it. You can't have the light without the dark," she says. "It doesn't define who I am. It defines how strong I am."

Peg McEntee is a news columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com and facebook/pegmcentee.