Feeds:
Posts
Comments

All the stories I write are a compilation of the numerous events I have heard in a lifetime of interaction with people. As a nurse in maternal and newborn care, a Minister in a spiritual organization dedicated to a path of openness, and a health and wellness counselor, I have worked with people from all over the world. I thank them for sharing their stories with me. I am deeply grateful to them for trusting me with their confidences and I hope their struggles and triumphs are heard in the words.

I have been writing stories since I was a child, and reading others with equal interest. Story telling is a part of my cultural heritage. I have seen that sharing personal anecdotes is a way of helping people to easily connect with and understand complex human issues. I have never accepted the status quo. As a wife, mother and grandmother, it is important to me to access information through many venues because I accept that we are all different and our styles of learning and understanding are as multifaceted as the issues. I have lived in different countries long enough to be aware of how culture is ingrained in us and helps to form our character. Culture is at the heart of our souls. Currently, I live in Canada with my husband Harold. We have two sons David, Paul and four grandsons. My sister, Gertrude King, and I operate a women’s health and wellness service in a small community. I continue to work as a nurse helping new mothers negotiate the ups and downs of early motherhood. My ministry work consists of officiating at weddings, funerals and baptisms or baby naming ceremonies. Each role offers a unique way for me to touch people and to learn from them. I feel blessed to have found my eternal muse, an energy which has given me the steadfastness to complete what I start, something I have not done consistently.

I am moved, to write from the heart, by the music I listen to every day. This story, in particular was inspired by songs written by Jane Sibbery and ably performed by k.d. lang. ‘The Valley’ and ‘Love is Everything’ and of course, Please Help Me I’m Falling, made popular by Hank Locklin. The lyrics of Please Help Me I’m Falling challenged me to find a reason for someone to be in a situation like that. My favourite author, Daphne duMaurier wrote a similar type of love story called Frenchman’s Creek.

As I move through my autumn years, it is imperative to me that lifelong goals be fulfilled with as much energy as I put into my early career. Maturity allows me the wisdom to be more open and understanding, seeing the value in facing life’s challenges with courage, not always accepting that the status quo is best.

Fate is that unseen hand which bends us towards a destiny of its own making.  We are awakened to its possibilities from early on.  Do we listen?  Perhaps we hear it calling in the distance but more immediate pressures and options  keep us from fulfilling its promise.  We are caught in webs of every day life which seduce us into believing that our chosen, free will,  path is the right one.  Free will holds no promises, only experiences.  We ignore the possibilities of our fated journey, choosing instead, the option to engage in the seduction of the immediate.

Destiny is just another word for destination, except for a certain sense of the mystical in the journey.  So our explorations through life should have an energy which  is guided by both fate and free will.   In that way we reach not only our destination through the free will journey but also our destiny through the fated pathway.

In the end, we just want to say that ‘I love what I do’.  We have to believe that every day when we get up, we know  life holds great delight  because what we  are  doing is the very thing which draws the very best from our hearts and souls.

Gira con me

This is the title of a song brought to life by Josh Groban.  It has a beautiful haunting melody which was instrumental in giving me a framework for another story.  Songs play a integral part of my storytelling.  There is something about the ebb and flow of certain music which inspires a kind of frenzied passion for writing.

I had a chance to listen to the song today for the first time in awhile.  It immediately brought back the story to which it was attached.  Clearly, the power of music, is to bring life to mind because it binds memories in our senses.

I long to write another story now.  I am searching for an inspiring theme. 

My favourite performers for providing that kind of link through the power they exhibit in writing or in performing is astounding.  An interesting song which helped me with The Shadow of the Blackbird was a piece sung by k.d. lang, an outstanding and award winning Canadian performer.  She and the author of the song Jane Sibbery, both sang Love is Everything.  k.d. had the power to move me in ways I didn’t understand with her voice and Sibbery could not move me with her voice but her words were remarkable and engaged me in other ways.

Songs must give colour to life, fill in the blanks and empty spaces so that we are made whole when we listen.

Life changes

Just as I have come to wonder about the value of writing, my online stories are on an upswing.  It always amazes me that people enjoy reading what I write.  It isn’t really writing that I do; it is storytelling and I hope to do it as well as I can.  Romance is one genre but there is some excitement in writing about adventure, fantasy and some science fiction.  I grew up in the era of cliff hangers on radio, soap operas, serialized stories.  They are fun!

Timing

As I was thinking about this story and the time frame, late 1980’s-90, it is hard to believe that twenty years has gone by.  The timing isn’t as amazing to me as the change in life.  I look at my story characters and realize the names represent friends and colleagues I particularly wanted to remember but more than that, I am struck by change.  Life was so different.    The advent of electronic media has changed the way that people interact with each other.  Social media is so instrumental in the way couples meet.  Chatting on line occupies so much of courtship. 

Is it better that we are not interacting at a physical level during our discourses?  How do we engage our senses enabling us to see and experience emotions?   Can we still read people any more through our senses?

Probably not!

 

05 Into The Mystic

This is my sanctuary, a spot where I can relax and watch the river flow outside and gather the energy I need to write.  The winter covers the ground and all is quiet.  With a fire burning brightly and music humming from the stereo, it is easy to engage the senses and value the beauty of nature.

Welcome

I am always moved to write stories based on musical verses and tunes which play on in my heart after the song is completed. Each song we listen to has a story embedded in its verses or questions which beg to be answered. What would make it difficult to find ‘the will to be true’? The Hank Loughlin tune ‘Please Help Me I’m Falling’ left me with this burning question for so many years. It took me twenty years to hear another song sung by k.d. lang and penned by Jane Sibbery, whose title provided a very simple answer: Love is Everything. Why did it take so long to reach a very obvious conclusion? Who knows? Maybe it was just like the act of falling in love itself. When the time is right, and two people realize they belong together, love is everything and drives us to a certain destiny.