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Calixte Stamp

Thu, 09/12/2019 - 12:04

Nov. 20, 1957 - Sep. 7, 2019

Monte Farber

Calixte Stamp, a therapist who lived and worked in East Hampton and New York City, died on Saturday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. She was 61 and had been diagnosed with breast cancer some years ago.

Ms. Stamp was born in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 20, 1957, to Cecil Altmann and the former Brigitte De Vallee. She attended the International School in Geneva, Switzerland, and spoke several languages.

She left home at 18 to attend Barnard College in New York City, where she majored in anthropology. She “called New York home for the rest of her life, though she traveled around the world twice since moving there,” wrote her stepdaughter Amie Stoppard. She related a story Ms. Stamp had told her about her college experience: “ ‘People would ask me, ‘What kind of job are you going to find, with all of the courses you’re taking — Buddhism, comparative religions, philosophy, astronomy, and astrology?’ To which I would reply, ‘I’m not studying to get a job, I’m studying to grow.’ ”

Ms. Stamp worked for the environmental artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, on their “Umbrellas” in New York and Japan and on the “Wrapped Reichstag” in Berlin.

In 1987, after “embracing” her own recovery from multiple addictions, she “continued her pursuit of all aspects of conscious life and healing by becoming a trained therapist and addiction counselor,” Ms. Stoppard wrote. She also trained in experiential therapy, trauma repair, energy healing, and psychodrama.

In training with masters, she developed “her unique take on self-healing that assisted her patients to open their own hearts,” her stepdaughter wrote. She worked with both children and adults.

She was married to Christopher Stamp in 1979. The couple moved to East Hampton in the early 1990s and set up a psychotherapy practice together. “Their love for the 12-step program community of fellow seekers” transformed their lives, Ms. Stoppard wrote.

Ms. Stamp also had a passion for organic essential oils and aromatherapy, and eventually she and a friend, Nancy di Pietro, started a high-end beauty line called Green Essence. She loved music, and that love was “nourished,” her stepdaughter said, through her friendship with a number of well-known musicians, including Roger Daltry of the Who, one of many bands her late husband had discovered and managed.

“She was a collector of beautiful things, which filled her home, its walls, and her closets,” Ms. Stoppard wrote. She also loved “getting people together to celebrate, in every sense of the word.”

“She was the most generous person I’ve ever known and I’ve met a lot of generous people,” her friend Monte Farber of Springs said.

“You would have to live many lifetimes and meet millions of people to ever meet another person like her,” said Ms. Stoppard.

Ms. Stamp loved animals, and helped many small animal shelters around the world in memory of her Maltese, Lola.

In addition to Ms. Stoppard and her stepdaughter Rosie Stamp, both of London, she is survived by six grandchildren, a brother, Bernhard Olivier, and a sister, Ileana Berneau, both of Geneva.

A celebration of her life will be held on Saturday at noon at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor.


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