Through Darkness into Light: Traveling Through Life’s Difficulties with Poems to Share the Journey

By Ann Yates

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645365402

Ann Yates

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.

Book preview

Closure

About the Author

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