Dagmar Midcap on the WGCL-TV set in 2008. CREDIT: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Just shy of a year ago, I met with Dagmar Midcap minutes after she had handed in her resignation at CBS Atlanta (WGCL-TV). At the Silver Skillet not far from the station in Midtown, she looked tired, depressed, defeated. She said a year after her boyfriend committed suicide, she needed to leave town.

She told me about taking sleeping and anti-anxiety pills, how she couldn’t focus on work and would have crying jags.  Within a few weeks after that interview, she had left Atlanta for good, moving to Los Angeles with Internet consultant Kyle Hudson and three dogs. (She said she and Kyle are just friends. “He’s like my brother,” she said.)

The change of scenery helped, she said. She already had a manager, Robbie Kass, who also represents former wrestler and current actress Stacy Keibler and Atlanta actress Jasmine Guy. He helped her get an agent at talent agency IMG named  Babette Perry, who also represents Phil Keoghan (”The Amazing Race”) Elisabeth Hasselbeck (”The View”) and Tom Bergeron (”Dancing With the Stars”).

“I missed the ocean,’ she said. (Prior to Atlanta, she spent time in Seattle and Vancouver.)

But Midcap continued to have health issues and nightmares. She sought alternative remedies including herbal remedies. That’s when she met Barry Kendall, a doctor who specializes in neurofeedback.

This is a controversial medical process in which individuals have electrodes placed on their head. They are then trained to change their brain waves to reduce a host of ailments, including anxiety and stress. This New York Times story last year notes that it’s seldom covered by health insurance and can cost at least $3,000 for 30 sessions.

Midcap has been going once or twice a week since March and said her world has improved significantly.

“My life has turned 180 degrees,” she said. “I”m shocked how well it’s worked. You don’t forget the people you love. The pain just has less control over you. It doesn’t debilitate you.”

She now spends her days doing yoga, walking her dogs and enjoying the beach.

She no longer has to take the anti-anxiety medicines to ward away bad memories of her ex boyfriend, whose name she doesn’t want revealed for the family’s sake. She said on July 27, the second anniversary of his suicide, she spoke to his parents for the first time in six months. “No tears, no breakdown,” she said. “I’m starting to remember the good. It was so dark and painful. I had to suppress a lot of it. Nobody talk to me about it. Now I can.”

After a few months off her blog, she reappeared on July 27, the second anniversary of her ex-boyfriend’s suicide.

I truly apologize for my silence in response to the thousands of kind-hearted people who reached out with words and thoughts of encouragement. I have not until recently, had the inner strength to respond in any meaningful way as the emotions were still too fresh and heavy to bear. For all the love that was sent my way, thank you – you may never understand how deeply it was felt.

I have taken the past year to reorganize heart, mind and body at the most profound levels. For me personally, simply standing at the waters’ edge has had extraordinary regenerative effects…

Where my renewed life will lead me is the adventure I look forward to most greatly. It might be back in front of the camera, it may be in the jungles of Costa Rica aiding wildlife conservation – or both…whatever that new path may be, my paramount desire remains to help safeguard our planet’s wondrous ecosystems while delivering joy and inspiration to all I can reach.

Midcap said she had saved enough money to last a year but she is now at a point where she needs to more aggressively seek a job. She has been networking, recently hobnobbing with Scott Sassa,  president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, a joint venture with Mark Burnett Productions.

“I’ve done a little bit of voice work and commercial work,” she said. “But it’s time to really get back in. I feel good.”

Ideally, Midcap said she’d like to host a TV show, perhaps something with animals, but would be willing to go back to doing weather. She cut out early on her contract with Meredith Corp. at CBS Atlanta and promised if she were to work at a TV station again, it would be in a market where Meredith does not own stations.

For context, if you’re reading this, you probably already know that Midcap came to Atlanta in 2007 and quickly made a splash as the station’s morning weather reader. Fans loved her warm voice, tight sweaters and comforting demeanor. She didn’t have a meteorology degree but didn’t pretend to be an expert on that front either.  She went from mornings to evenings within a year and soon CBS plastered billboards  of her all over town. Her sudden departure was a shock for viewers.

Kass, her agent, said they are seeking new opportunities for her and hopes something will come along soon.  He saw her on the news in Atlanta last year and approached her to be her agent because he sensed something special about her. “There are not many women,” he said, “who can fly a helicopter or ride a motorcycle. She’s fearless, not only in terms of what she’s capable of doing but in terms of her ambitions.”

Join my Facebook fan page and Twitter.

Tweet

By Rodney Ho, rho@ajc.com, AJCRadioTV blog