Himalayan Awakening – A Woman’s Spiritual Journey

INTRODUCING MY NEW NOVEL

HIMALAYAN AWAKENING

Heart of a Warrior Book 1

Himalayan Awakening takes us on a spiritual and emotional journey with our middle-aged protagonist, Ronnie. When we first meet Ronnie, she’s all heart and no self-confidence, feeling powerless to effect change in her life. Her marriage has been over for a long time before her husband delivers the final embarrassing blow in public.

Reluctantly, Ronnie agrees to accompany her daughter on a volunteer experience into the snow-capped mountains of Nepal. A visit to an ancient monastery brings out spiritual and psychic connections that plunge her into an urgent and unexpected adventure. Ronnie is both challenged and affirmed at a level she never thought possible.

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN SEEKING SELF THROUGH TRAVEL

SHIRLEY VALENTINE

The main trope of the story, ‘middle-aged woman finds herself through travel’ is one I have always found to be deliciously rewarding. The 1989 film, Shirley Valentine, starring Pauline Collins is a great example of this and I could watch it over and over. We see her slowly emerge as a person, letting herself indulge in a little light romance with the handsome Greek fisherman played by the charming Tom Conti. When my own widowed mother went to the Greek islands on her European tour, I was quick to ask her whether she had had her own experience. Did she also go skinny-dipping with a Greek fisherman? to which she replied, “Have you seen what real Greek fishermen look like?”

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

Another more recent example was the 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth, played well by Julia Roberts in the film version, thought she was happily married until she was hit with a curve ball. Like Ronnie, she found herself suddenly facing the idea of a life on her own.

So many of us arrive at the point of deep unhappiness and discontentment and stay there, stuck and too afraid to allow ourselves to make bold choices. We don’t want to hurt our partner. We don’t want to hurt our children. We don’t want to let our aging parents down, and we don’t want to appear selfish and scandalous in our community. So, we sit, simmering in our own stagnant juices, going nowhere because we put everyone else before ourselves. Sheesh! Who can relate? Why do we wait until the universe provides us with a solution? How long are we prepared to wait? Is it selfish to put ourselves first?

THE SECRETS WE KEEP

How we face our challenges and thus how we ultimately grow as a person is at the centre of what I love to explore. This can be seen at the heart of everything I write, especially the deeply personal, The Secrets We Keep.

What we see in all of these stories is how life invites us to go on a journey that allows us to find our courage and our own identity.

KEEPING IT ALL HIDDEN INSIDE

I know a woman, let’s call her Beth, who finally confessed to herself in her middle years that she was a lesbian. She had been devoted and more or less happily married for over thirty years. She loved her husband, loved her grown children and grandchildren. She loved her whole family too much to speak her truth knowing the hurt it would cause. What did she do? She stayed with her husband, kept that part of herself buried. Eventually he was diagnosed with cancer. She nursed him for months until he passed on. By that time, she was 73.

After a respectable period of time, still in excellent health herself, she came out to her family. Two years later, she fell in love. Now in her late seventies she has remarried, this time to a woman and she is so happy, so vibrant and alive she is a joy to watch.

DID SHE DO “THE RIGHT THING”?

Did she do the right thing? Should she have broken up the family twenty plus years earlier? What is the right thing to do? I don’t know. We might all have an opinion on this, but more than anything, I think we need to respect each individual’s right to choose their own path forward. Whichever road we choose we can be assured there will be ups and downs and we will make mistakes. That’s how we learn and grow.

THE SETTING

Ronnie’s journey through Nepal is largely inspired by my personal experiences in the country. I then liberally seasoned the story with my own deep spirituality, my love of all things psychic and with my wild imagination.

KATHMANDU

Kathmandu comes straight from my own experience. It is a fascinating, vibrant, crumbly, polluted old city and I love it. I have been to Nepal twice, the first time trekking out to a remote village with my daughter, just like Ronnie and Dita. I huffed and puffed my way up and down the mountains, just as she did. You can read about my first trip to Nepal and the surprising connections that developed out of that here.

BHAKTAPUR

It wasn’t until my second trip to Nepal that I visited other sites included in the story, the world heritage listed city of Bhaktapur and the jungle of Chitwan. Bhaktapur is the ancient capital of the Newari people, the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley. It is breathtaking in its history, ancient stupas and traditional architecture. I had some pretty crazy experiences in Bhaktapur that have not been included in Himalayan Awakening. Maybe they will make it into Book 2, but they certainly add colour to my memories.

CHITWAN

The Hotel Jungle Crown Ronnie and Bikram stay at in Himalayan Awakening is the hotel I stayed at in Chitwan. It was, as I have described, a beautiful place with great food and first-class spacious rooms. There really was a woman, just before we arrived who was gored by a wild boar and a jungle safari can be almost as crazy as Ronnie’s adventure. On this second trip to Nepal which you can read more about here, I had my notebook, taking down some details for the story that was forming in my mind.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is a very real problem in Nepal. Even in a remote village, it is nec essary to put bars on the windows of the children’s refuge. Children disappear. According to Not for Profit organisation, Mountain Child (https://mountainchild.org), 23,600 Nepalis are trafficked, missing or victims of an attempted trafficking each year. Most of these are young women and children. Poverty also leads many girls to be tricked by the promise of a better life in India. They willingly go only to find themselves enslaved in the world of prostitution. I would urge you to do your own research and find a way that you can connect and help one of the Non-Government Organisations working in this area.

WORKING ABROAD

Thousands of uneducated and largely unskilled Nepalis go abroad each year to work in positions that are too often cruel, degrading and inhumane. These jobs are in factories, in domestic service, in mines, all organised by agencies who take a cut. Once abroad, the workers are often unable to return home for years. But this path is often the only way these people can support their families, and so parents can be separated from their children and from each other for years.