Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.*

But what of the mysteries too worrisome not to be understood. The mysteries that must be solved or resolved somehow, because Letting go – requires it.

These are not the “marvelous” mysteries. These are the sad songs of the piper we followed who led us down the lane of sorrows.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.

So keep your distance then, Mary Oliver. Keep your distance. I will walk on, without you.

You, who have not yet walked in my shoes. These tattered soles from the long, long journey to find my soul.

And thus, solve the mystery.

And thus, live in a just (and marvelous) world, such as yours.

~ ~ ~

From the poem Mysteries, Yes by Mary Oliver:

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This is not just a cliché.

I went through a gruesome betrayal when I was seventeen – and of course it changed my life – but then everything changes us, including the good. My heart turned cold, but only for a little while, because I needed for it to be warm. I needed to love and be loved. So my heart warmed up again.

Yet it was a struggle to maintain trust, to keep the heart channel open to unconditional love. I won’t beat around the bush – it took years!

What worked for me was finding a reason why I might have drawn such an experience to me. I say this because it was the question I had to ask myself once I began taking responsibility for my life and everything that had occurred. I had to find a reason for why things might have happened the way that they did.

Okay, so it took me forty years. So what’s forty years? It’s just a number. The point is, I created a new story for myself out of the old. The facts remained the same, but I took my experience and transformed it into something that brought the light in. That brought my soul into play. That allowed me to come from the perspective of Soul Awareness. Soul Consciousness.

The soul has its reasons. All we have to do is live long enough, and keep asking questions.

Watercolor by NW 1990

Keep trusting that the answers will come.

Blessed are the ones who don’t need to ask questions or find answers. Yet I am blessed too, for daring the journey. For daring to ask why. And for sticking around long enough to find an answer. I always believed I would. When Spirit first entered my life, I taped a quote on my desk where I would always see it: Seek and thee shall find.

It is my hope someday to share my story with a wider audience. I can see myself now, shouting from the rooftops – The wound is a gateway! Betrayal is Sacred when the Heart can encompass the whole!

The Nancy Who Drew, A Memoir That Solved A Mystery  

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Also available on the Kindle and Kindle app -

Read an Excerpt HERE

Description: Who hasn’t wondered why bad things happen to them? The Nancy Who Drew plants a seed of hope that our painful experiences can have a positive outcome when we are willing to see ourselves on more than one level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_u281V-nQ

The Nancy Who Drew is a memoir that solved a mystery. During the course of writing her book, delving deeper into her feelings as well as the events that occurred, Nancy discovered a clue that would completely alter her perception of why things happened the way that they did.

This is the story of a shy and dreamy girl growing up in New York City in the 50s and 60s. When she  is cruelly betrayed by her mother, Nancy flees to London to realize her dream of studying at RADA and becoming an actress in England. Upon her return home seven years later, disillusioned with acting and eager to start a new life as a painter, her mother confesses that she conceived Nancy “in revenge for World War II.” Strangely, this resonates with Nancy, as if she has known it all along.

oil on canvas by NW (1987)

She becomes an artist, exploring her subconscious through drawing and painting. But it isn’t until decades later when she begins to write her story that she discovers the meaning of the images. Putting everything together, including childhood drawings of a dead girl and dreams of death, she comes to a new understanding of why she might have “created her reality.”

By sifting through the clues in her own life, Nancy learns about a girl who was killed by the Nazis exactly six years and six months before the day before she was born. Is this the girl who haunted her dreams in childhood? Is this the girl on her canvas? If it is, then her own life begins to make sense now.

Sometimes the only way to make sense of your life is to remember the one that came before.

Nancy Wait offers an inspiring memoir about rising from abuse to become her soul’s intention. She realizes that she has been given the clues all along.

Finally, connecting to a previous death, she comes to know that betrayal is sacred when the heart can encompass the whole.

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Oil on Canvas by Nancy Wait 1987

My story? It’s sad! Sure there were some wins, but the losses outweighed them. Until the end. Except this is only the first book. It’s not the end. I just skipped to the end to give you an idea of how it all resolved itself. The second book is about the resolving part. The part where I became a painter and did the canvas I call Girl Under Water. That was the painting that eventually solved the mystery.

The mystery was, why did it have to happen the way that it did?

There was a murder, see. Just like in most mysteries, there was a crime. Except that this crime happened before I was born and had nothing to do with me. Unless you believe in reincarnation. Which I do, of course.

The murder also happened during a time of mass killings. The worst mass killings in the history of mankind. The period we know as World War II.  The particular person I am concerned with was just one of millions who were slaughtered, but it doesn’t make it any less sad or tragic, being one among so many.

This book of mine is about solving a mystery. The mystery here though, is not about who did it. We know who did it. The girl killed during World War II, and the betrayal I went through when I was in my teens. Who did these things was never in doubt.  The mystery is not about catching anyone either. The mystery, my mystery, is why. Why did it have to happen?

I’ve heard some New Age people say don’t look for reasons. You’ll get all caught up in your head then. Eventually, I did solve it with my heart. I found resolution through forgiveness and understanding.

Yet forgiveness is not the end of the story. Because if you believe that you “create your own reality,” why would you create a situation that would cause you harm? That would leave you damaged? Eventually I had to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing to forgive, after all. I had to come into full soul consciousness, see myself as a soul. A soul that might choose a certain scenario in order to progress and learn—and eventually share what she had learned.

What I learned, in a nutshell, was why I might have chosen—no, scratch that—why I chose, as a soul, the circumstances of my life, including my parents. And what I want to share about my life, is that there is a reason for everything. All we have to do is find it. Or create it.

In Book One, “The Memoir That Solved A Mystery,” I laid out the mystery. Now, in Book Two, “The Nancy Who Drew Girl Under Water,” I’m laying out what I did with the mystery. How I got beyond myself. How I let go. I let go through Art. Through painting. Expressing feelings I could not express any other way. The first book, to me anyway, was sad. The second book I hope will be inspiring. It continues to be a work-in-progress, and I have no finishing date yet, but I hope to have it out this summer. Stay tuned.

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Do you think I could be a Nancy Who Drew?

I read all the Nancy Drew Mystery stories when I was a girl and I loved them. I loved her pluck and her sense of adventure. I guess I loved her fearlessness most of all. Of course I’m older now, but I still have fond memories. And now, since reading your wonderful memoir called The Nancy Who Drew, I was just wondering what it would take for me to be one too.

Sincerely yours,

A Curious Soul

Dear Curious Soul,

Thank you so much for being in touch. I’m glad to hear you enjoyed my book. First of all, you only need willingness to be whatever you want to be, and of course a strong sense of determination helps.

You didn’t ask, but let me add that you do not need to be named Nancy. Any name will do. But Nancy is derived from the name Ann, which means Grace, and I hope you will draw with as much grace as you can muster on any given day. Drawing is of course the next thing. For that you will need a tool and a surface, both of Your choice. It doesn’t matter what you draw with or what you draw on, as long as it you draw from within. That would be from within your deepest self, where all the answers await you. All the answers to all the mysteries, even for such a curious soul as yourself. I hope this helps.

Sincerely yours,

The Nancy Who Drew

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and new price on the Kindle - from now through April – $0.99¢

February 7, 2012 – Inaugural Show -

The Nancy Who Drew on Blog Talk Radio

5pm EST / 10pm GMT / 2pm PST

I cannot think of any more important topic during these crazy wonderful shifting times than healing our wounds and letting go of everything that has held us back in any way from being the true Divine selves that we are. I begin, and will carry on with my theme of Sacred Betrayal, finding the Blessing in the Wound. We can go to all the healers we want, but in the end, we have to be willing to heal ourselves.

I come to you as the author of a memoir I call The Nancy Who Drew, because it was through the writing that I finally discovered the blessing in the wound.

It is my intention to Spread the Healing and Shout Out the Sacredness of All Experience, no matter what it is!

http://thenancywhodrew.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheNancyWhoDrew

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Why did I have to experience what I did? That was my question since the age of 17. Not, “To be, or not to be…” or even why be… But why did these things have to happen to me? Did God hate me or something? Was I a bad person in a past life? Was I being punished? Etc. etc.

Would you believe – and yes, I know you’re dying to believe, as I was, that there is some kind of reasoning behind events – even if you deny it – for don’t we all wish to live in a rational universe? Because even The Jabberwocky makes sense – just listen to how Leslie Howard recites it in Pimpernel Smith – great movie (1941) in which he pokes fun at the Nazis. (Which may have been the reason they shot his plane down in 1943.)

What I Did was, I took my early life and made it into a narrative. A story. There had been some painful events to live through, and therefore they were equally painful to recall. Yet, as I worked through each draft, the person I was in my early life became less and less me and more of a character in the story. And the more I became a character, the more I became an observer. I think this quality, this becoming an observer in one’s own life, is probably the most important gift we can give ourselves on the path to becoming conscious of ourselves as a soul living in a body.

Why would a Soul, part of the Divine, want to experience pain unless it was to know itself better? Know more thoroughly all the aspects of life? Especially when those aspects of life lead it back to a deeper soul consciousness. I think that in order to come to any kind of resolution about the events in our lives, on some level we have to be okay with what happened. I’m not even saying we have to be healed already – just okay with what is, or what was. We need to have achieved an understanding, and certainly a forgiveness, in order to keep the glass as clear and unclouded as possible, looking at our previous selves with the detachment of an observer.

When I first began telling my story, I had no idea what the outcome would be. What sort of deductions I would make, what conclusions I would come to. And that was okay, because all I needed to do in the beginning was get the facts out. Write down what happened. This wasn’t enough of course, but it took many years even to do that. Meanwhile, the wheels were turning. Another set of wheels turned as well, asking the question I had asked all those years ago. The question of why?

That I found an answer was partly because I was looking, and partly because I was ready to hear it, and partly because there was something I could do with it now. The answer came because I could make something of it now. I could use it, and use it for good, and communicate it to others with this new skill of writing that I was developing.

And now I want to shout it from the rooftops! There is a reason why everything happens. Look to your soul. Look to your soul for answers. It is there we will always find the answers we seek!

Answers are always there, hovering in corners, behind doorways, hidden in drawers we haven’t fully examined yet. Just as the saying goes, When the student is ready, the teacher appears, so it must be that when the seeker is ready, the answer appears. The answer is also a teacher.

A memoir by itself cannot solve anything. A memoir will usually turn out to be whatever the intention of the author wanted it to be. I didn’t describe my intention as the desire for illumination. But when I began attending writing workshops and memoir classes, I did think of blueprints. As an artist doing architectural renderings I was familiar with blueprints. What, I wondered in mid-life, was the blueprint of my soul?

So, I retraced my steps. And I found a reason why things might have had to happen the way that they did. A reason why my soul might have chosen those particular experiences. I found the click where all the pieces suddenly made sense. I had to go into the shadows and the dark places, and shine a soul light. And that was when I was able to make something beautiful out of those steps. Once I realized where all those steps led to, there was nothing not beautiful about them.

Going deeper into the shadows was where the healing took place.

Looking back, what seems miraculous also seems what was destined to happen. For as I became more myself, more of who I truly am, I became One with my Destiny. And yet the whole thing still appears miraculous to me, that I was eventually able to put all the clues together, find a rationale, and such a perfect title – The Nancy Who Drew.

If you would like assistance in your writing, or feel some coaching would be beneficial to you at this time, please see: Services

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I began writing this Book Two last June after I published what I now think of as the first memoir, but it was slow going. I kept getting bogged down in the feelings the memories brought up, and was racked by all sorts of doubts, the main one being, how to present the story.

It is the story of what happened after I returned to New York after seven years abroad and took up painting. Sounds simple enough, but it was far from simple, because I only really became a serious painter out of spite. Out of hurt feelings and, well, spite.

Yet it was this journey, this journey that began in anger and through desperation, that took me through the dark passage and finally over the threshold and into the light.

It is the story behind my own personal experience of Art and Ascension, the title of

Oil on canvas by NW 1980s

the Blog Talk Radio show I have been hosting for almost two and a half years now. Then last month, September, I suddenly had the idea to tell my story out loud on the radio show. To write Episodes instead of Chapters. The format is called The Host Interviews Herself, because I found that the story and the writing and the telling, flowed like a river, streaming out of me when I opened my mouth and read it aloud. I was now the Host of the show, the Interviewer asking questions, and the Guest, answering. Somehow this sort of ‘taking control of the show’ was the impetus I needed to ‘take control’ of my story. Or rather the next part of it.

I seem to have found a way to turn on the faucet that fills up the pages. The first book took so long to complete, partly because I was learning how to write as well as coming to a realization of ‘voice,’ and what my voice was in terms of the text. In a way this telling the story out loud as it gets written is just an extension of the realization of voice on the next level.

(Detail) by NW 1980s

This second book picks up where the first one left off, after my Awakening and return to the States. I am also going to be taking advantage of the added benefit of being on Internet Radio, by playing music at those crucial moments that fit in with the theme. So hopefully it will be entertaining as well.

The theme is that of confronting the Shadow, and how I took it to the canvas, and dealt with my own darkness by painting it, transforming the dark into light.

LINK to Show ~ Episode One

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Watercolor by NW 1990

Every now and then, like today for instance, I come out the door and start walking down the street and suddenly wonder if I remembered to put a skirt on. So I looked down and there it was. I would not be arrested and carted away for indecent exposure, not today anyway. This type of questioning is not due to ‘memory loss’ as I have always been this way, even when I was very young and had nightmares about my skirt suddenly falling down on stage, or my teeth suddenly falling out – on stage. Typical actor nightmares I was told. But it was when I gave up acting and took up painting that the nightmare turned into a daytime occurrence. Coming out the front door and looking down to make sure I’d remembered to put on some clothes. What was this all about? It wasn’t as though I was the type that went around the house naked. (I never did that, though I think it’s fine if others like to do it.)

watercolor by NW 1989

Did I just feel naked period when I went outside? Or was it just the feeling of being exposed, in public, as if to be in public was to be exposed? It can be almost excruciating, this feeling of being so bare, so vulnerable to the gaze of another. I often wear hats and dark glasses because I’m sensitive to the sun, but it’s also because I like the protection. This is when I forget that I don’t need to protect myself with hats, glasses, or even clothes. I can just use light. White light or blue light, using my inherent powers of visualization to encase myself in a bubble of light before venturing out onto city streets.

That I am now of the age where I can easily pass unnoticed on the street, just part of the scenery, doesn’t seem to make any difference to my inner state. An inner state that came into being when I was very young. Of going out onstage, and no matter how many layers of costume I was draped in—feeling so exposed. Feeling naked, as if the audience could see right through me. I’m sure this was part of the excitement of performing. I outgrew the need to be on stage, but not, it seems, the need to expose myself. In the sense of peeling away the layers, of find something raw underneath. Raw and real and honest.

On one particular day I will never forget, I had been up early, painting. Painting in my paint clothes. Then I had to stop, clean up, and get dressed for work. I had a part-time job in the afternoons. But the change was too abrupt. I was outside the front door putting my key in the lock, and suddenly realized I felt completely naked. Had I remembered to get dressed? I looked down. Yes, I had. Yet it didn’t seem to make any difference. Because I had effectively been without my persona, my public covering, for so many hours already that morning, and it wasn’t so easily put back on.

And let there be no mistake here. I know that skin is merely another covering. I have experimented with showing skin. I have found out what that is all about. It’s not about showing skin. And it’s not about showing my insides, either. I’ve been on the operating table when the doctor had the video screen playing of the inside of my body so he could see where he had to go. It was in black and white and I didn’t have my glasses on, but I could see enough. It was extremely impersonal. It could have been anyone’s insides.

In fact the more we take off in terms of physical coverings, the more we appear like everyone else. Mark Twain was the one who said, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Sure, we’re different sizes shapes and colors, but the humanness of us all. That’s what I mean.

Drawing by NW (1980s)

The funny thing about all this is that I really see people. Because I have studied anatomy for artists and spent many hours drawing and painting from nude models, even modeled myself, I know what we look like without clothes and even without skin, without muscles or organs or faces. But seeing the inner nature? The feeling nature? I seem to have been born with the capacity. Perhaps all sensitive people are born with the ability to see into one another’s hearts. We know that children and animals have the capacity to see the truth of who we are, and some of us never lose that ability. Those of us who keep the child within vibrant and alive, forever playing, as it were.

So, even though I always get dressed for life in the morning, I don’t always manage to remember if I am sufficiently covered to face the day. To face public scrutiny even in the relaxed and informal area of Brooklyn where I live. So I have to look down. I have to check. It is one of my foibles.

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