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Conscious Women, Conscious Lives
An interview with author Darlene Montgomery
by Tim Miejan
Canadian Darlene Montgomery knows no borders when she puts pen to paper and transforms
the way we think about dreaming and telling stories. Author of Dream Yourself Awake
(Abbeyfield Publishers, 2000), she is an internationally respected authority on dreams,
spiritual perspectives and ideas. She is an author, facilitator and clergywoman whose
stories have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul, Chicken Soup for the
Canadian Soul, WTN website, Vitality Magazine, Synchronicity Magazine and the Eckankar
Writers Newsletter.
Her latest book, Conscious Women -- Conscious Lives: Powerful and Transformational
Stories of Healing Body, Mind and Soul (Hushion House Publishing, 2004) is a collection
of stories by women across North America on their healing experiences.
Ms. Montgomery spoke with Edge Life by phone from her home in Toronto.
Your latest book, Conscious Women, Conscious Lives, offers powerful stories about
transformation from a personal challenge. Did the book arise from a personal experience?
Darlene Montgomery: It arose from my own life challenges in a sense, watching
my own life and my own personal experiences overcoming obstacles, but what really
started it was when my own mother succumbed to cancer. Now, she did live, but at
the time we thought that she was not going to live. They told her that it was going
to be terminal, and because of the fact that her brothers had died of the same ailment,
we really thought that she was going to go. So I took it very hard and I got to feel
the feelings that people feel when they're losing a parent -- and that's where the
healing theme of the book came from.
But she ended up recovering from that.
Montgomery: Yeah, she did sort of have a miracle in the end and she's still here
today.
Well good. How does one recover to find life purpose after a devastating experience
like the death of a child or a the experience of a spouse after a painful divorce?
Montgomery: More and more as I have worked on the second edition of this book,
it seems to be a theme that people who come through whatever tragedy find it is a
turning point in their lives. I've had recent stories come in about women who actually
were blinded in a couple of occasions, and these two women both recovered their sight,
but it became a turning point for them. When you go through something as dramatic
as losing your sight or losing a child, you lose attachment to the traditional things
that we all spend so much time fixated on, like shopping. We turn our attention from
our self, suddenly, to others. I think it becomes a matter of turning from self-serving
to serving others.
And then that pattern continues on afterward?
Montgomery: I would say yes, in the themes that I've seen. It becomes their life
mission. In one case, a woman who lost her son and donated the organs now goes around
talking to others about that subject and helps to raise awareness. Each person in
some way seems to find some new direction because of their illness or tragedy or
loss.
What does this collection of stories offer women who read them?
Montgomery: It seems to be that when people read the book, they in themselves
get a healing whether it's just from some unclarity in their life or that they've
been feeling depressed. They seem to get a healing by reading this book about somebody
who's gone through something very, very devastating, which I never would have really
imagined would have been the case.
So it's more than just relating to the person, but it actually affects their own
lives?
Montgomery: Yeah, for some reason. They do relate to the person, but in a way
they can take their own meaning from the story, and by reading a number of the stories
in sequence, for some reason, it seems to change their perspective. When they see
that someone else overcame something so traumatic, I guess what it does is makes
our own problems look less difficult. Maybe they see that someone survived that,
so then maybe I can get through this, you know?
Right. What did you experience while collecting these stories from women across
North America?
Montgomery: It took five years to collect stories for the first book. First of
all, there were certain stories meant for this book, and certain stories that were
not meant for it. If I tried to put stories in that weren't, it just wasn't going
to work out for me. I experienced sort of a revelation of my own about the power
of stories. I also was able to meet a lot of women all around the world and to realize
that there's some commonality between all of us in our story, that there's something
about our stories in our lives that connect us all together.
What role does storytelling and the sharing of stories play in the evolution of
our species?
Montgomery: It creates a continuity. It creates a sense of universality. And
I would say the fact that there's sort of an immortality in soul, that we are not
just a physical body, that there's a continuity that goes back and a similarity to
human beings even as you go back to the earliest point in time.
And the stories don't change all that much. Stories are still about survival. People
who lost a child 200 years ago respond very much the same as the people who lose
a child today. We are very much the same human beings in how we face our challenges.
There are certain people who just have a certain heroic spirit, I guess you can say,
and you can see that throughout this book.
We all know how the planet faces instability and uncertainty now. What are the
particular challenges facing women as a collective group at this time?
Montgomery: To go past their identity. We've had an identity that we've clung
to, often around getting married, around being supported by another human being rather
than ourself, and the change that is going on now is that we realize that we have
something more to offer, that we are here to give something on an equal ground and
equal footing with men, that we have to join forces and all of us work together.
The feminine and the masculine need to now work together in a kind of a marriage
for us to survive as human beings.
And I guess the challenge for women would be to do it authentically and not have
to adapt to the male way of doing things, like in the business place, in order to
succeed.
Montgomery: Women have their own challenges around handling power, because it
wasn't traditional for women and there still hasn't been a U.S. president who's been
a woman. So we realize that it's still a semi-new role for women to take on a power
role and to do it in a balanced way. The Indian cultures talk about having a balanced
medicine shield. Well, if you're in a position of leadership then you also have to
learn the lessons of that position and walk your talk. And I think that women, just
the same as men, have to walk their talk and live the lessons that they're teaching
others.
When were you called upon personally to begin sharing your stories to help empower
other women?
Montgomery: I think it came to me as a young child, but when it really came as
a conscious awareness was through a dream that I had in 1990. The dream revealed
to me that I have this particular mission around stories that transcends everything
else that I do.
A lot of the work I've done over the years has to do with teaching others to recognize
the power of dreams, so a lot of my guidance comes from dreams -- just as this writing
thing came from my dream. It actually came through a dream I had about a circle of
geese that was spinning very, very quickly, almost like a helix of energy. And there
was a being, a great being, that came and took a feather from the throat of one of
the geese.
It took me several years to understand what the feather meant. It was quite a large
feather, in fact, a quill. As some of your readers may know, quills were made from
goose feathers -- and the goose medicine in traditional Indian folklore represents
the storyteller.
There were many, many messages for me in that one dream. It was a very powerful and
revealing dream for me.
I'm guessing it's one that you remembered pretty vividly after it happened.
Montgomery: Yes, it's always stayed with me. And not only did I remember it,
but it actually changed my life from that moment on. I stopped being able to do certain
things. For a time, I couldn't read from a book. I would look at the pages of a book
and not be able to sort of transcribe what I was seeing. Everything suddenly changed
in my life for a time, and then it eventually came up right again, but that dream
was very, very transformative for me.
What guidance do you have for that woman who is on the verge of empowering herself,
but she's afraid to take that step?
Montgomery: The only way to get past our fears is to face our fears and to do
the very thing that we are afraid of. So if you have a particular nagging fear, then
I would say go and do the thing that you're afraid of. If it's writing, if it's speaking,
if it's driving, whatever it is for you, the only way to really get past the fear
is to go through the fear. The rewards of doing the things you're afraid of are absolutely
amazing. Every great change takes a leap of faith, so there is an element of faith
involved.
It seems the blueprint for our evolution is demanding that we no longer live individually,
but we begin to think collectively. From your experience, how can we begin to cooperate
creatively to support one another?
Montgomery: By realizing that we all have a part of the puzzle and that there
are times when we need to receive and there are times where we need to give in order
for us to have balance in our life. There is that giving and receiving element of
life. There might be a piece of the puzzle that someone else has, but you don't have.
We can all connect up and use the wisdom of each of our lives to make a whole.
If you're going on a long voyage, you need to take everything with you that you need,
plus you need to have somebody with you who has done the journey. As we rise up the
ladder, we need to follow those who know how to get up the ladder, and then make
space for those who are coming up behind us. It's an upward journey.
Was the dream you talked about what inspired your first book, Dream Yourself Awake?
Montgomery: Yes, actually that was where it all stemmed from. It came from that
particular dream and one other dream. It started a dream mystery that I had to solve.
What can you tell us about waking dreams and sleeping dreams and how we can use
them to awaken to our purpose?
Montgomery: To me there is a blueprint in our dreams. We come in with a spiritual
assignment right from the get-go and our dreams are trying to tell us and give us
messages to help us along on our journey. Dreams are always for our benefit, to give
us an overview. Some people think that dreams are scrambled symbols, but, in fact,
they are messages from our own higher self.
I believe that life is really a dream, that we're just on levels of dreaming. God
is constantly speaking to us through nature, through anything -- through road signs,
through a radio show, through a baby's laughter. If we are aware and awake, then
we're going to see that there are messages for us everywhere and we need to realize
that we are no different than our ancient relatives who read nature and looked to
the animals for wisdom. These animals are still trying to give us wisdom today.
I guess the challenge is to stay awake and not to slip into...
Montgomery: Unconsciousness.
Yes, living unconsciously.
Montgomery: Yes, to live consciously takes much more courage. It's a lot easier
to go on automatic and just to fade into watching television shows and living through
someone else's reality. To live our own truth takes great courage. I think you can
see that there are more and more people on the planet who are exemplary of this type
of thing, like Oprah Winfrey. There are just endless reams of heroes, if you look
through our civilization, who are showing us that following our authenticity will
get us to a better place.
Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't talked about?
Montgomery: It's an extremely important thing for people to share their stories,
in whatever way, shape or form. We learn and heal our self through the sharing of
story. It's an important tool for transformation.
And it doesn't necessarily need to be in a big form. Maybe it's just a grandfather
talking with a grandchild.
Montgomery: That simple, kitchen table wisdom of just sharing is something we
don't always recognize that we have to offer another person -- some simple wisdom.
For more information on Darlene Montgomery, visit www.lifedreams.org
Tim Miejan is editor of Edge Life magazine. Contact him at (651) 578-8969, toll-free
1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail editor@edgelife.net
Copyright © 2004 Tim Miejan, all rights reserved. |
| Dec 2004 |
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