In this interview Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom, author of Lusciously Nurtured, shares her personal story of living with, writing with and learning from Fibromyalgia as well as her thoughts on wholehearted soulfulness.
This is the 21st guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!
Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.
I’m delighted to have Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Dawne and I connected via Instagram and we decided to shape this post as an interview. It has been thrilling to see Dawne write and publish her book ‘Lusciously Nurtured: A Personal Journey of Soulful Self-Care and Intuitive Healing Living with Fibromyalgia’. In this interview, Dawne shares her personal story of living with, writing with and learning from Fibromyalgia as well as her thoughts on wholehearted soulfulness. Read on!
Hi Dawne, thanks for joining Quiet Writing and sharing your wholehearted story via this interview.
To begin, would you like to tell readers a little about yourself:
Based on the Jung/Myers-Briggs personality indicator, I am an INFJ which means I am a bit of a complex character, deeply introverted with extroverted behaviours. I am an idealist and dreamer at heart but can be extremely organized and focused. My super-powers are empathy and intuition which makes me a highly perceptive person. However, these two qualities also work to my detriment at times, as does idealism, as you can well imagine. As a result, I like a lot of space and quiet time, and I value my freedom immensely.
I also have profound concerns for humanity and world affairs and the protection of those basic freedoms in our societies, that appear threatened today. In this body/ avatar, I am 85% South Asian in origins, having over 14 genetic strains in me from most continents, except Australia (Sorry). I was born in Trinidad & Tobago, a tropical island in the Caribbean, subsequently living in the UK for over 25 years and now in Sweden with my Swedish husband, Dan and basset hound Klara. I am essentially a creative and although I am very capable of understanding abstract theories, I enjoy representing them creatively. I am told the INFJ’s ideal city is Paris, for its culture, history, style and beauty. I certainly do love beauty and adore creating beauty on many levels in my life, but maybe I love London a little more, might have to visit Paris a couple more times.
It’s been exciting to read your beautiful new book, ‘Lusciously Nurtured: A Personal Journey of Soulful Self-Care and Intuitive Healing Living with Fibromyalgia’. You talk in your book about ‘wholehearted soulfulness’. I know wholehearted is a word that has evolved to have special meaning for you too. Can you tell us what ‘wholehearted’ and ‘wholehearted soulfulness’ mean to you and why they have been important in your healing journey?
Wholehearted for me means living from the heart/ core/ centre and vibrating my life through the heart. The Biblical representation of the word Heart is not just about feeling but the “ruling centre of the whole” or “the place from which desire springs.” (Google) When I was in my early 20s, a seminarian shared this concept with me that the heart is the seat of decision and it stuck with me. So, yes feeling but also decision and commitment to the core, which was for me, at that time living a meaningful life driven by integrity.
Wholehearted also encompasses integrity and truth which is a willingness to learn about myself and who I am in this time, space and reality. For many years my mantra was “Go in the direction of your dreams and live the life you imagine…” (Whitman) This wasn’t just about my physical life. It also encompassed the way I wished to feel and my long-held desires, of sustaining my life through life-giving work and expressing myself in a holistic way in the world. This could be summed up in the poem I wrote to myself which I explain in the book, Lusciously Nurtured:
To rear bees/ To plant trees/ To write poetry/ To be
When we talk about desires, we are referring to our ideal way of living and being. Two primary aspects of my wholehearted life were to heal myself from Fibromyalgia, by resting more and growing and eating our own food; and to write with the hope that it would become a foundation for my sustenance.
Wholehearted Soulfulness is the commitment I made with myself to follow my dream and make this life. My poem was a summation of that dream: a reality formed through co-creative action with Universal law and Spirit guidance. It has taken turns and twists, but that’s okay, we are on course.
Is wholehearted living hard? Sometimes it is because I am stubborn and may need to be reminded of a thing several times, but at other times incredibly easy, once I am not pushing and being willful. I believe there is a difference between working hard and putting in 100% effort and being willful and domineering. Striking that right balance is important to wholehearted living.
Your journey has been around recovery from burnout and living with the effects of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Your book provides valuable information for people working through the impact of these conditions. Is it also relevant to people with other chronic illnesses or autoimmune conditions? Or even people who don’t have any illnesses of this type?
Thank you, Terri – I really do hope it provides valuable information for sufferers of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS. However, this book can be read by any sufferer of chronic illness and autoimmune conditions because it is dealing with the relationship that you are having with your body and developing that close physical relationship into a deeper psychological and spiritual relationship with Self.
Self is Soul – now there’s a bumper sticker moment. (Ha-ha)
But self is also determined by the make-up of the brain and the environment, so we must scratch a bit deeper down to find the Self with the capital S. Yet, once you begin listening to what might be called Deep Intuition, Spirit Guidance, the Inner Word, we begin to tap into the font of knowledge. And the font can provide answers to many other forms of illness. Now, I am not saying you are going to hear voices telling you to take X medicine, but you may be led to someone who speaks a language you understand or you may be drawn to find out more about a medicine that actually works for you. So, we return to the idea of co-creation and sometimes, you may take a wrong turn and must start again, but that’s okay. Nothing is wasted. We are here to learn stuff.
For the ordinary person, I hope this book could provide a comprehensive guide to self-care, so developing an awareness of oneself and one’s needs. In addition, this book encourages such a person to compose their own self-care practice, so that, they can begin to avoid some of the pitfalls that bring many to burn-out. It can also provide an understanding, to those involved in a high-paced lifestyle. These folks may be on the brink of becoming chronically ill and this book might alert them to take stock and redirect their course. For carers, family and close friends of patients with chronic illness, I would advise this book as an aid to understanding their predicament and possibly, getting knowledgeable of many issues the sufferer cannot voice themselves.
Congratulations on writing and self-publishing your book and sharing your story. It’s not an easy task and takes commitment and showing up. What was it like writing and self-publishing ‘Lusciously Nurtured’ especially with the effects of Fibromyalgia impacting your life?
It took me four years to write and publish this book. In the last two years, I have been intensively editing and I am still editing so the paperback will be better. In addition, I have been learning about indie publishing, thus finding the best fit for me. It’s a long time, so it required patience and being patient with my body, with life and with my inner demons.
As you’ve mentioned it required commitment, so I worked on the book every day, but I had to adjust my expectations. So, every day I tried to write or do something towards the work but not every day looked the same as I battled with fatigue, pain and foggy brain. For example: writing 500 words a day was not a realistic expectation but rather, write a couple of sentences today, edit tomorrow, rest the next, read, write a page etc. So once again, co-creation with the body. Yet, you do have to be incredibly disciplined and thoughtful.
As I got better physically, of course the writing got easier, both in the physical sense of sitting for a certain number of hours, say at a computer. Also, the head got clearer, but the demons didn’t always quieten. One of the demons I discuss in the book Lusciously Nurtured, is perfectionism. Quality versus perfection is very important to the writing process. As an INFJ character with idealism and a profound sense of justice, self-judgement is not far behind and I had to remind myself, time and again, that perfection was not the intention for this book. Quality and producing my best work were top priority for me but this book was about the message. The message was aimed at helping people to have a resource for self-care and self-healing. It was meant to raise the awareness of intuition and the power of intuitive healing.
The thing that most writers easily forget is that mainstream published writing is not about perfection, it’s about marketability. Literature is about perfection and they hold this over our heads like a sword, so when authors are declined, they immediately think “I am a crap writer.” However, in today’s world, mainstream publishing is having to adapt itself to the changing demands of literature and reading in a computerized society. This is causing a rise in indie publishing and the traditional market is already changing to these demands. So, write because you have something to say, it may be important to someone. And in the act of writing, I am improving myself always and one day, one day ……. who knows (smile)? That’s how I get the beast of perfection to take a back seat.
How have you worked your strengths and weaknesses to blend and find wholeness?
A lovely question. My answer is simply, I can live with broken.
I guess, my lesson has been that wholeness is a mythology, it’s a great aspiration but a myth, nonetheless. I am partly thinking of the Japanese art of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi (Golden Repair). In 2015 I injured my back so badly, I was in constant pain, day and night. I could not sit, walk or perform simple tasks for myself for a long time. The only thing that felt comfortable for the body was lying flat on the floor, on my back.
I had seen many health officials for treatment, but none of their advice or interventions had worked. Some even made me feel worse. Did I feel broken? Yes, I did: far from being whole or healthy. Yet, lying on that floor, I began listening to my body and allowed my body to tell me what was needed to heal. Thus, intuitive healing began. One day whilst lying there, I heard the blackbird singing so clearly it was as if her song was just for me. And in that moment, happiness pierced my heart so suddenly, I wept, because I had realised that all that was broken, or perceived as broken in my life, could not stop the joy and fulfilment that was there for me.
And nine months later, after my accident, I was pain-free.
How do I blend my strengths and weaknesses to find wholeness? I don’t believe that I have to “fix” or “create” anything in myself to be whole. It’s taken me over 50 years to reach that place. I am enough and I am “perfect” even in my brokenness: it’s part of the story.
What cultural, societal, health and ancestral issues have impacted on you feeling whole and how have you dealt with them?
You may have noticed in my description of myself I call myself an avatar. My soul has no cultural, societal, health and ancestral issues. My body does. My body has many health issues still, even though my fatigue and pain are much improved, and my viral symptoms quietened. I am now in a loving relationship with my body and I hope to continue healing as much as this life allows me and I will continue to write about it to help others. I tend to deal with things one at a time, so I look for what is calling to me the most. Right now, it’s my weight, because I am at first stage diabetes, so I am dealing with food choices and exercise programs that aid my goal, without damage to my body or dis-ease.
My cultural and societal issues affect my life from the outside in and these are issues to do with unconscious and possibly conscious prejudice in society and organisations. I am not just talking about for example racism in the publishing industry, but also sexism, ageism, gender inequality, and nationalism in our societies today. I am at odds with all of it because I see myself as a global person. I am certainly not nationalistic, but I am patriotic. I am a socialist and abhor any form of fascism. I have faced sexism and ageism in my work of education (of all places!), and I have called it out- Foul! I say in the game of life.
How do I deal with it? I accept the fact that I am at odds and I am at odds for a reason because the Universe wants to shake things up and I am a mover and a shaker. Let’s get the game on. However, I am a quiet mover and shaker, maybe I am giving too much away (laughter) but I think subversive is what I am. To be truthful and serious, the future is about change and we, (women, creatives, intuitives) must be active in that change. The way I want to be active and revolutionary is through the art of creativity and writing.
I am not saying that I don’t have my own issues with regards to racism and sexism within me. For example, as a woman of colour in the self-care business, there aren’t many of us. There is patronism and it’s very difficult to break into cliques and circles and be taken seriously. We also don’t have credibility as unconscious archetypal roles for women have become stereotyped, so I have a lot of questions. I also think the societal pressures of the 80s and 90s to spin in politics has entered the fabric of our lives and speaking out for truth becomes a rant. So, you are constantly fighting against these stereotypes and attempting to bring your authenticity into the arena. I believe it’s a process and must be lived a step at a time. Wholeness, therefore, becomes teaching, learning and negotiation.
My ancestral issues and healing are in a very personal space, now. It’s not a shadow or a secret but rather it needs to be in darkness and quiet for a while to take shape and begin to shoot. It’s something in gestation and I am excited about this.
Artwork by Trinidad & Tobago artist Brianna Mc Carthy @macabrii
You share lots of tools, tips and practices in your book. What 2 or 3 wholehearted practices would you highlight for others?
Meditation, getting quiet and silent – there is a difference there – you can quieten the body and mind. but you must also listen. Listening is very hard, so it takes practice. Every day if necessary and many times a day. This is the only way you will begin to hear your inner voice.
Physical Exercise – This can be combined with getting out in nature. Walk, run if you can, but walk in Nature. Swim, do yoga, play a sport, whatever you do try to spend some time in nature and notice things.
Keeping a Journal – Start with a gratitude journal if you haven’t kept a journal before. You are not writing War and Peace. Just empty your mind in your journal and go with the flow. If you end up becoming addicted, just keep learning and expanding your knowledge. It will begin revealing things to you.
And if you are doing all these things and you are loving yourself without apology, then you know, you know anything is possible in the game so go out and share it, be kind and help/ support someone else.
The only way to wholehearted is to know yourself and be yourself.
What’s the one message you’d like to leave with our readers to finish?
I want them to know that they are loved.
This love is closer than breath so spend quality time with yourself.
The Great Mother cares, even if everything around you feels like chaos. Out of chaos, the Universe was created with mathematical precision beyond our understanding.
Karma is one lifetime. Live your life well and be content. You are always choosing, so choose what you love the most, don’t give yourself second best.
Where can people find your book, Lusciously Nurtured and how can they connect with you?
People can connect with me via Goodreads, Instagram, Facebook or via my website.
About Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom
Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom is a writer, teacher, and blogger with an excellent academic background. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she has lived in London in the UK and now in a small village in Sweden. She enjoys walking, meditation, travel and unexpected, magical moments. She loves animals and is an avid foodie. Her favourite place is sitting in her garden.
4 Things to Know about me
Earth or Water: Water
Desert island book: Too many/ The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobrewski
Want to see 2020: The tulip fields of Holland
Favourite alcoholic drink: Vodka Martini/ Olive twist
Photographs all by/provided by Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom, and used with permission and thanks.
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