Through Darkness into Light

Ann Yates

Description

The intention of this book is to help people heal and move through their emotional pain to a place of better balance and peace. The author, Ann Yates, has done this by sharing both the darkness and light of her emotional experiences and journey in her poems and writings about mindfulness. She hopes her poems offer understanding and validation to others who struggle with similar experiences and feelings. Often, people are reluctant to talk about the deep darkness they feel, but once they do, the light can start coming in. That is the pattern of the author's poems, which has created the title of this book. Ann hopes her mindfulness writings will also support working with the deep darkness. Mindfulness can seem overwhelming, yet it doesn't have to be complex or require a lot of time to learn. Instead, the author focuses on a very simple mindfulness approach she developed called PACT, which stands for Pause, Accept/Acknowledge, Choose, and Therapy. It is free, always available, does not require special equipment or professionals (the therapy is actually something a person can do on his or her own), and is easy to learn and remember. The more the author uses PACT and the more she discusses its use with others, the more she sees how powerful and beneficial it is. She also discusses other simple and mindful approaches to work with emotional distress.

Sujets

• Popular psychology
• Mind
• Body
• Spirit

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645365402
• Langue: English

Extrait

T hrough D arkness into L ight
Traveling Through Life’s Difficulties with Poems to Share the Journey
Ann Yates
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-01-31
Through Darkness into Light About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment A Different Way Introduction: My Poetry as a Reflection and Reminder of PACT About the Writings Accompanying the Poems Fears Writing to Accompany Poem Fears Mourning the Morning Writing to Accompany Mourning the Morning Cancer Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Writing to Accompany Poem Cancer Is Not What I Thought It Would Be A Cave in My Chest Writing to Accompany A Cave in My Chest Shattered Soul Writing to Accompany Shattered Soul Your Body Knows Writing to Accompany Your Body Knows Addiction Writing to Accompany Addiction Cradle Your Head Writing to Accompany Cradle Your Head I Am Enough Writing to Accompany I Am Enough A Fish in a Tree Writing to Accompany A Fish in a Tree Rosco Writing to Accompany Rosco Solo Writing to Accompany Solo A Red Stain Writing to Accompany Red Stain The Truth of You Writing to Accompany The Truth of You Vulture Writing to Accompany Vulture You Touch Me Writing to Accompany You Touch Me Me and You Writing to Accompany Me and You Sharing My Truth Writing to Accompany Sharing My Truth Like a Tree Writing to Accompany Like a Tree In Closure
About the Author

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Ann lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where she works as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, providing medication and psychotherapy, participating and facilitating groups in mindfulness practices in the community, and teaching nursing students at the University of Alaska as her time allows. She “walks her talk” by using various methods of meditation, mindfulness skills, and spiritual beliefs in her daily living, including soaking up the natural beauty around her. She never intended to write poems but the poems came to her, born out of the challenge of cancer, which triggered a number of old but very powerful past traumas she had worked for years to resolve. In reading over her poetry, she realized it carries the theme of mindfulness and, more specifically, her own approach to mindfulness that she developed as a simple and easily accessible tool to use in times of emotional pain. With this in mind, she wrote about her experiences and her mindfulness approach to share with readers both her understanding of life’s difficulties and ways to better be with and manage them. Ann feels her poetry motivates her to continue to grow and expand into its truth, knowing it is a lifelong process with many challenges along the way.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to the amazing beauty, strength, and support our natural world gives us, with its mountains, oceans, forests, flowers, and wildlife, much of which continues to be eroded and endangered by our human physical needs for ever more buildings, fuel, and “things.” In contrast, I lean into nature for my emotional needs, for my sanity, and it has given me so much love, hope, and inspiration throughout my life. I need this planet to survive physically but I need it just as much to survive emotionally and spiritually. And that means using nature’s gifts carefully and respectfully while maintaining a balance of give and take. So I dedicate this book to nature, as a way to remind us, myself included, that we need our planet not only to survive, but to thrive.
Copyright Information ©
Ann Yates (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Yates, Ann
Through Darkness into Light
ISBN 9781643788562 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781643788579 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645365402 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953167
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge two people who supported me, with so much love and grace, through my times of powerful challenges and growth: Chris and Rick.
A Different Way
The pain I feel is so profound
It twists in my chest, all around
It drops in my stomach
Pulling me to the ground
My mind is spinning in regret and anger
I reach out blindly for some kind of anchor
Then somewhere within me I remember a way
A way so different from what most people say
I slow down, I pause, I don’t run or fight
And I see through the darkness a pinpoint of light
The light of accepting, allowing the pain to be here
I even move toward it and let it be near
Despite the heaviness of my fear
Using my breath and my faith from within
I choose to be with what is now and what has been
If there’s one thing I know (and I take this part gentle and slow)
It’s that my pain can take me where I need to go
Into the light of recovery
Introduction

My Poetry as a Reflection and Reminder of PACT
In reading my poems, you’ll find that each one is accompanied by writing that presents and explores PACT, a way of dealing with life’s darkness and difficulties. PACT is based on a mindful approach to life, and it is simple, very user-friendly and accessible, and helps one to find an emotional balance. The acronym stands for Pause, Accept and Acknowledge, Choose, and Therapy, each of which is further discussed and explored below in this introduction as well as accompanying each poem.
Before further presenting PACT, let me say I had no intention of writing poetry to reflect PACT and, in fact, I never intended to write poetry at all, the words just seemed to emerge from my experiences of emotional pain without any planning or intention from me. Only after creating my poems and rereading them did I begin to see the beauty in how they reflect the PACT process. The poems explore the darkness of life’s difficulties, all of which I have deeply experienced, and the lightness of finding a renewed balance through the PACT process, which I have also deeply experienced. Having gone through childhood trauma, including sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, I actively worked with years of therapy, sat daily in meditation practices, took an antidepressant, performed consistent exercise and relaxation routines, and was always working on fine-tuning my communication skills to best relate with people. I often felt I was breaking down a brick wall and building a new one at the same time, and it could be exhausting, even punishing work. It did yield success and rewards that I treasure, such as my professional work and home and lifestyle, but at the deeper emotional and spiritual level, it was limited.
I think much of that limitation, which I know many others experience, is linked to feeling alone and disconnected even when we are “securely partnered” and have an active social life, not just when we don’t have a lot of social engagement or supportive friendships. Why is this? When we experience abuse or trauma as children, we also experience being truly alone, powerless, helpless, and often unable to connect with others to process and recover from our pain, and these experiences can last well into adulthood. In May 2018, Cigna Corp published their study of loneliness in America, with the results of over half of Americans identifying as lonely (I write a bit more about this study with my poem A Fish in a Tree ), and I wonder how much of that loneliness is linked to the high rate of abuse, especially sexual abuse, children in America suffer, both inside and outside their homes.
It makes me think of the lyrics from JJ Grey & Mofro’s song “The Wrong Side,” in which JJ simply, but powerfully, tells of childhood “a wasting” and “slipping away,” resulting in carrying a “tell of sorrow” which he tries to forget but “can’t let go.” The wound of that “tell of sorrow” can continue to bleed, sometimes seeping and something pouring, regardless of our adulthood social connections, throughout a lifetime, and is part of that sense of limitation I experienced, as I discussed above.
But that limitation motivated me to keep seeking, and in that seeking, I kept coming back to acceptance as the key that I wanted to throw away (because who wants to be with that childhood pain and aloneness?) and still be able to walk through the door I longed to enter. It took me a long time to create PACT or to truly use mindfulness approaches, even during the years when I was well aware of the benefits of mindfulness: simply being with emotional distress in order to know it enough to move through it, accepting life’s difficulties (which I also like to call challenges) because they will always be there in one form or another, choosing to take a break with healthy distractions to cope with overwhelming feelings rather than grabbing at quick and unhealthy fixes designed to bring immediate gratification but no lasting benefit, and using the therapy technique of reframing to balance difficult life situations and emotional responses.
As I said, this concept of acceptance, a key step in PACT that cannot be sidestepped, is one I really didn’t like; in fact, it really annoyed me and, sometimes, still does! And, since survival is our brain’s number-one priority, it was easy for me to keep avoiding it becaus