Notes On Hunger

The first step toward awareness beyond myself came early in childhood as I explored the stunning Alberta landscape of Millarville, the small town where I was born. My parents taught me to pay attention to the surrounding world by calling my attention to the beauty that surrounded us. On my own, I gradually realized that attuning consciously to beauty in nature opened a portal to continual growth in the everyday world, as well as something beyond. I engaged in the slow process of becoming comfortable in the present while never leaving the mystical behind. I learned to listen to the still small voice within. A sense of being part of the All provided me with extraordinary resilience. An ever-expanding resource that flowed from this open well of inner listening is available in my writing.

My parents were Eileen and Dan Clarke, both born in Alberta, Canada early in the 20th Century to immigrant homesteading families of Irish and Scottish origin. My parents dreamed of someday owning their own farm. They were both public-school teachers. When I arrived in 1951, they already had a son, my brother David, born in 1946. They loved the land deeply and as teachers, they valued hard work, education and independence.

My father, an RCAF veteran during WW2, invested his discharge pay in qualifying to teach math and social studies. My mother taught 1st grade. When I was still very young, we left Millarville for Calgary where my father built houses, working on them when he wasn’t in the classroom. By the time I was 7 years old my parents were able to make the first down payment on their dream, a piece of land of their own in the glorious foothills of the Canadian Rockies. The farm was not far from the small, frontier town of Sundre where they both found teaching jobs. They were on their way to a well-earned, stable future, or so they thought. 

Their dream turned into a tragic nightmare a year later. On a glorious autumn afternoon just a few days before my 9th birthday a young drunk driver slammed into our old pick-up truck at an intersection near Didsbury, a small Aberta town not far from the farm. My mother was severely injured and never walked again. She died after tremendous suffering. Without her, my father, brother and I struggled to subsist in the northern wilderness. We were relatively new in the community we lived in, no relatives lived nearby, and the farm was quite isolated. We didn’t have a telephone. There was little opportunity for interaction or developing human relationships. 

My father escaped from his grief into the relentlessly hard labor of farm life and his responsibilities as a teacher. My brother worked alongside him. We all struggled with the demands of living in the harsh climate. I was very isolated geographically and socially. I spent most of my time alone, working in the house to prepare meals, do housework, and keep up with my school homework. By the time I was 17, I did not feel connected to any living, loving person. I could not laugh at all or speak more than a few words at a time. My grandmother and cousins did not live close by so I rarely saw them. I felt completely isolated and had no idea how to make friends. My father was extremely domineering, my brother remained emotionally distant and I felt that I belonged nowhere. 

In order to feel safe, I made myself as invisible as possible. I succeeded. Between the day of the car accident when I was just turning 9 and the day I graduated from high school in 1968, I became very inward. In general, nobody noticed me. I had few conversations other than in my imagination and with characters in the books I read. However, I began to feel the impulse to write my own words when I was about 12 years old. I began to write poetry. That was the beginning of a new path. I began to use words in written form to release my voice, and to my surprise I realized that it was through my words that I could be seen. I began to connect with beauty and in time that became my lifeline for making connections with other people. 

After my mother died, when I was not in school, I spent nearly all my time alone doing laundry, cooking, cleaning and trying to figure out how to make a home. My father, now a single parent, devoted very little of his paycheck to taking care of us. He spent his money supporting the farm. Perhaps another child my age could have coped better, but it was all much too much for me and the consequences were deep. The circumstances resulted in extended trauma and misery. Hunger, cold and loneliness emerged as my most familiar companions.

Driven by these severe circumstances, I turned toward the unseen world and consciously attuned my sensibilities toward spirit. Even though I felt utterly alone for a very long time, natural beauty was familiar. I continually reached out to connect with trees, healing plants, dreams, water, wind, sky and earth. 

Any other possibilities of life were very constrained. I began to sense the present of many gentle helpers, the Sidhe (nature spirits) and the angels. It was the attunement to spirit, natural beauty and the presence of these many gentle helpers that saved me. Looking back, I see how I was always protected and guided. I now realize how closely help drew to me and that I was met not just by difficulty. I was also met by the love of Christ, the protection of Angels, and the comfort of other ancient companions who also watched over me. Help came from my ancestors, the Sidhe, Crow in particular, and, more recently, the Buddha. In my memoir, Notes on Hunger, you will read the stories of these presences if you choose to walk along beside me on this journey.

The hardship of everyday life broke me during childhood, not all at once but over too many years of cold, hunger and isolation. Over the years many people tried to reach out, but I did not know how to respond. I tried hard to reach back but could not seem to connect effectively.

Nevertheless, I had relentless persistence and a strong desire to make a life. After I earned my first degree in 1974, I began teaching elementary school, I married in 1977 and had a child in 1981. Unfortunately, the marriage did not go well. My husband was often unemployed. Due to the unpredictability of adequate resources, It became nearly as much of a struggle as had been my youth. Although I longed to give my energy to my home and child, I continued teaching and raised my daughter as best I could. 

Difficulty was not the only constant in my life. My fellow travelers became a steady reliance on spirit, natural beauty, writing, and my teaching. Over the years, the voices of these compantions became increasingly interwoven through my words.

It was my connection to words that allowed me to participate in higher education. During my first semester at Red Deer College in 1968 when I was 17, I began to experience the grounded healing wisdom of good educators. Lis Atkinson and Gil Farthing found me through my words. When I handed in assignments they heard something that caught their attention. Later, I moved on to the University of Alberta to complete my undergraduate and graduate degrees. There, I took an undergraduate class with W.O. Mitchell, a beloved Canadian author. He helped me to evolve my gift for writing. In the late 1980’s I began graduate school at the University of Alberta. Extraordinary mentors of deep pedagogical presence emerged there, Daiyo Sawada, Lorene Everett-Turner, and Moira Walker. These mentors, 1968 through 1993, saw within me something struggling to survive. They led me through a M.Ed. degree. They guided me as I continued to move toward the quantum space of literature, history, philosophy, science and pedagogy. They encouraged my writing and supported my struggle. I began to realize that I was meant to, “Write what I learn.” 

In 1993, I completed a Ph.D. in Elementary Education and left Canada to join the faculty of Northern Vermont University in the US. I earned tenure and remained there as a professor and Graduate Coordinator until 2014. I taught that as a multi-faceted process, language play allows for the possibility of growth, opens the psyche and supports the development of resilience. In my educational publications you will explore with me the importance of emotional nurture, language stimulation and play in childhood.

I’ve found Vermont to be a place of extraordinary spirit, community and beauty where I continue to find my way toward ever-expanding consciousness in my everyday life. Slowly, I’ve learned how to walk with others. In 1997, I met and married John H. Townsend, the love of my life. Our marriage was very nurturing. He was gentle, kind and wise. I’ll tell you stories of our life together and his death in 2017.

My memoir reveals some of my challenges with my own embodied human experience. Through sharing my story, I hope to help others realize how to discover and embrace transformation one day at a time.

My pathway led me to explore my ancestral roots in Scotland and Ireland. My initial interest was stirred by my grandmother’s stories of the past. My interest extended when I saw pictures of people growing extraordinarily large cabbages in rocky, sandy soil, somewhere in Scotland. I kept that photograph in my mind for many years. I gradually figured out those cabbages grew at a place called Findhorn, a community near the Findhorn River in Moray. I formed an intention to visit when I could. 

In the fall of 2019 I visited the Findhorn Foundation in Moray Scotland for the first time. When I arrived there, it felt to me like I’d returned home. It seemed to me that I’d found the people, the place, and the living ethos of where I was always meant to be. The basic teachings of this community were to encourage members to practice inner listening, to make intuitive connections with nature, and to view all work as love in action. The desire to be part of a community filled with active, practical and spiritual love were threads I wanted to hold in my hands. They continue to weave into a bright, clear pattern, the elements of which are, “river flow, wind blow, earth know, fire glow, spirit grow.”