Read an ExcerptHERE

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.

Share this:

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

Share this:

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

Share this:

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

Share this:

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.

Share this:

It is to be hoped that we continually ask ourselves questions throughout our lives in order to know who we are. Journaling of course is excellent at detailing thoughts and feelings, events and happenings, but I think it is even better if we actually turn the pages back from time to time and see what we have written, analyze it. Without analysis, it’s just an itinerary, a travelogue. I came, I saw, I wrote about it.

Some of us have more questions than others. Some of us have more need to ask why. More need to figure things out, find resolution. Perhaps because our lives have been traumatic or upsetting. Those drawn to writing in the first place are those with a story to tell. An event or a series of events that happened to them or to someone they know, which is fascinating or troubling or simply interesting.

What I Did

I took my early life and made it into a narrative. A story. There had been some painful events to live through, and therefore 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. 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 in order to come to any kind of resolution about the events in our lives, on some level we have to be alright with what happened. 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.

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.

Share this:

Then when I was five I was extremely ill with a fever of 104. My mother cared for me around the clock, giving me alcohol rubs to bring down the fever. I wasn’t aware of any thought of leaving my body at that time, but I am aware of what might have helped me stay.

The first thing was being given a Madeline book, the first in the series when she had appendicitis and was taken to the hospital. (Only much later would I hear that my mother almost died of appendicitis.) So now I held a story in my hands of another very sick little girl – who recovered, I might add.

The second thing was being given a tool set. It was some kind of board with a tiny hammer and other things to build on and play around with, but most specifically this was a tool set. So, I was given tools.

Now I had a story and I had a set of tools. But the third thing was perhaps most important of all, because this was the thing I gave to myself. I was looking out the window. I had been put in my parents bed during my illness, and so now had this view out the window I wasn’t accustomed to. The blinds were up, or the curtain pulled to the side, and all I saw was this square shape of the window, and the sash cutting it in half, and the vertical line running down the middle that made a plus sign. This was the first time I noticed there was a pattern in the glass, and it happened to be a plus sign. A plus, for more. There was more life ahead. It didn’t all end where I was—which happened to be Skokie, Illinois.

The fever finally broke, and a few months later my family left the Midwest and moved to New York City. Where it just so happened that I was given an intense introduction to the arts in all its forms by both my parents. My brothers and sisters were offered the same education, but only my older sister and I ran with it, and I was the only one to make a career in the arts.

As it turned out, this is what saved me. Perhaps it saved me when I was five as well. The idea that there was more. More to life than family and the physical manifestation of my surroundings. There were stories of survival. And there were tools to make things with. And perhaps most exciting of all, there were signs in the window. This window that looked out into the world was itself a sign, telling me to see more. See a plus. Add things up. Always add, and keep looking for the signs, the symbols. And if I didn’t see anything right away, then wait. Wait, Nancy. There’s more.

Share this:

These were great words of advice. I ended up making a fool of myself on a regular basis, and while I often did take myself far too seriously, I always took my work much more seriously. But that was only after I found a connection to my soul. It was only then that I could see there was a difference between my personality life and my soul life, or soul consciousness, or higher self.

Now, my higher self, my soul consciousness, do you think it cared a fig about my silliness and making a fool of myself? It didn’t even agree with me that I’d made a lot of mistakes, a lot of ‘errors.’ From the perspective of soul, I was having ‘learning experiences.’ Things I thought I’d done wrong, my soul disagreed. My soul doesn’t know from right or wrong, up or down. It only knows love and acceptance. When I visualized all those Xs, those Xs for Wrong and Unacceptable, my soul said wait a sec, aren’t those lines just crossings? Like the way you used to cross the Atlantic Ocean all the time? Back and forth, back and forth. Crossings. Nothing wrong in that!

People have called me brave because I risked being laughed at when I wasn’t trying to be funny. Yet it took its toll, and hence my father’s words to me, because I was a desperate approval seeker. Or at least my personality was. My physical self.

The key, of course, is to come as you are, be who you are with love in your heart, and allow others to be who they are, without needing them to be any different.

Ultimately, it’s not about me, it’s about you, whatever it is you make of my work. This was true when I was a performer and a director said to me, “I don’t want to see you cry; I want you to make the audience cry.” As an actor, I was a vessel for the playwright’s words. His or her representative. As a painter, I was a vessel for the art spirit moving through me. And now, as a writer of memoir, I’m an interpreter. What’s done is done. It’s over and done with. All that’s left is my perception. The memories, and the perspective at which I chose to observe them. Which is to say, I made it all come right in the end.

That bears repeating. I made it all come right, in the end. But that was because I went left and right. Into the shadows and darkness, and out the other side. Seeing both sides, the light and the dark, and knowing they are one.

Just as the X is really a Plus sign too, just a little askew. I straightened up the X, and made it into a +

Share this:

Afraid to speak her feelings, fearful of repercussions.

Hiding behind a veil (albeit an attractive veil, but still a screen).

Then I became a painter, and things started to change.

My energy changed. I stopped being “a doll” – a China Doll, someone used to call me…

But then I found that in order to find my voice

I had to paint myself with a voice

I had to paint the balance between

detail of watercolor by NW

the masculine and feminine energies

to fully realize the genius of the Sixth Chakra

and still I had to wait, before opening my mouth so publically.

I had to wait, not until I got the words right, but got the balance right

between knowing and not-knowing

so that I could still stay, in the state of wonderment

and softness, and the softness of a receptive voice that speaks

while it listens.

Share this: