Art of Life and Curiosity

12/18/24 • 17 min

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Sam – Today we are going on a self-improvement journey. Mairead Ashcroft is going to share her story with us. Now, just a heads up, it does touch on some delicate material but her ability to share her experience openly and honestly with us is one of the things you’re going to love about her.

If you’ve tuned into Newsgram in the past then you know this program at its core is all about finding and showcasing interesting people living their lives in unique and interesting ways — and of course writing a book about it.

Today’s book is one that breaches many different modalities and you’ll figure that out from the title, “Art of Life and Curiosity: Creative Mental Health, Wellbeing and Life Balance Exploration” by by Mairead Ashcroft

Mairead Ashcroft (Abuse): So I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And it happened to be with a member of the Catholic Church. And it took me 17 years to put this man in prison. And during that time, I used my own mental health techniques to keep myself sane, really. So everywhere I went, I brought pens, paper, some pencils, and I would draw my feelings everywhere I went. So that would be in courtrooms, police stations, going to see my own counsellors, going to catch the train home from these appointments.

Sam – Did you catch that? She’ was journaling for seventeen years about justice and all the feelings related to her situation. If it were me, it would lead down a very dark spiral but that was not her experience.

Mairead Ashcroft (Circles): It was quite harrowing. It took, like I said, 17 years. But while I was doing that, I noticed that I was drawing a lot of circles. So I started to investigate circles and the importance of circles in mental health, the importance of circles in humanity, and the importance of circles in our history and in cultures from all around the world. And I found that the healing circle was just prolific in cultures all around the globe, right back to caveman times. So I looked at the similarities between those historical and modern similarities and put together this book in a way for people to explore what does the circle mean for them? And where do they see these healing circles in their everyday life without even realizing? So it’s about becoming curious about how the circle and how ancient mythology, the cultures around them, that we live in a multicultural world, how this multicultural world helps them now in their own lives.

Sam – Interesting right?Let me take a minute to explain the healing power of circles because I didn’t immediately get it but when you take a minute to think about it it makes more sense. In one of my college writing classes the teacher was obsessed with our chairs being positioned in a perfect circle. If you’ve ever undergone group therapy then you know about healing circles, where everyone sits in a circle to share their experiences. It fosters connection, and promotes mutual support. I’m sure you can think of examples where circles have played a role in your life, or how art might help you process what words cannot.

Mairead Ashcroft (Art Therapy): So we’re talking about creative arts therapy. So that could be movement, music. Think of any of the arts. They express our emotions. It expresses our deepest, sometimes hidden feelings. When you listen to lyrics of songs, even not just the lyrics, some of the tonality of music, some of the tonality of colors, some of the mood of dance, without saying any words, will express to you a whole story. Art therapy is a way of expressing your story when words are just not enough.

Sam – Because not everyone has the capacity to articulate their experiences with words. Sometimes you have to draw a picture.

Mairead Ashcroft (Pictures) And for me, it’s not music or movement, but it is the actual putting of image on paper that works for me. So much so that when I was in court, in my victim’s impact statement, I actually put a piece of art in my victim’s impact statement that was put up on the screen. And in the courtroom, the whole courtroom had an in-breath. Like, everybody felt. The words weren’t doing it, but the impact was, wow.

Sam – They say a picture is worth a thousand words...

Mairead Ashcr...

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

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Sam – Because not everyone has the capacity to articulate their experiences with words. Sometimes you have to draw a picture.

Sam – They say a picture is worth a thousand words...

Mairead Ashcr...

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The Keeper of Families

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Today I have another remarkable story for you about a book created out of the diaries and recordings left by a loved one. A story that tells the remarkable double life of an American woman named Jean Heringman Willacy.

Sue Heringman – I was going through her papers and found this incredible treasure trove of detailed diaries of her life in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and with those diaries there was also incredible photographs and there were drawings by Afghan refugee children and I think most priceless were cassette tapes that she made of recordings of when she was out and about in Afghanistan and also in the refugee camps and finding all of those things, I felt that it was really important to get them into a book and to get the book.

That is her daughter Sue and yes, compiling all that material into a book is a great idea. Sometimes it’s easier said than done. The final nudge to get going on this project came from the last entry she found in her mothers diary. Here are her words read by an artificial voice actor.

Quote read by voice actor – I have a lifetime of memories and experiences during my years in Afghanistan and would deeply love seeing something rewarding from those days.

Sue Heringman – So I really felt I owed it to Jean and to her adopted extended Afghan family to make every effort to transcribe all this diary material, which in the first draft ran to 600 pages, so you can imagine.

And that’s how it began. Sue, not unlike her mother, has led a life filled with international experiences. Born in Los Angeles, she attended High School in Arizona and college at the University of Iowa. She followed her mother to the UK, where attended college in London and that’s where she lives now.

Sue Heringman – When my mother came to live in the UK, then I went to the University of London and following that I was in Spain working for the University of Southern California, so that’s me and I live in the UK now, not far from where my mother used to live, so it’s really nice.

If that’s a bit confusing don’t worry about it. My Goal was to show you that these women are not afraid to travel and when you have the heart of a wanderlust, and adventurer, then exciting things are going to happen.

Sue Heringman – This was about 1967. She was traveling to the Hindu kush mountains and just arrived there and she fell in love with the country and also I have to say was an Englishman who was a fur trader in Kabul at the time and so that’s where she wanted to settle and make her home, so she lived in Afghanistan up until these first, the Soviet coup, which was in 1978, the Czar revolution, and she was one of the few foreign eyewitnesses to that military communist coup. She stayed on, yeah, afterwards for another year until 1979 when the Soviets then invaded Afghanistan, so there’s a lot of relevant material in the book.

You can say that again. Eye-witness accounts and photographs of the communist coup, Live recordings from the streets of Kabul, a first-hand experience of what it was like living in a Soviet puppet state. I would say that is some pretty interesting stuff. Let me backup for a second. In that last soundbite you heard her say “She was traveling to the Hindu kush mountains”. This mountain range straddles the borders between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India and she just happened to be going there?

Sue Heringman – Yeah, when she first went, when she first went, Kabul was a completely different place. It was considered to be the Paris of Central Asia and girls could wear mini skirts and women could work, even be judges, and so that happened up until the communist invasion, Soviet invasion, and then everything changed, of course, and that’s when my mother went to Pakistan

It was a different time. And, if you’re going to visit Pakistan you may as well drop in on the refugee camps and talk to some of the people living the life of a refugee in exile.

Sue Heringman – I don’t know many people who would say, I dream of going to the camps in Pakistan, sheltering on the border with Afghanistan, and to help those people who have been fleeing for their lives, and that’s basically what she did. She wasn’t affiliated to anybody, any group, NGO, and she just went about it quietly in her ...

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A Tomb Guard Remembers

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If you’ve never been to our nation’s capital I highly recommend it. We once took a family vacation in early April, which was unusual for us because the kids were in school, but we were able to be there for Cherry Blossoms season which made it extra special.

In addition to walking the National Mall, one of my favorite memories was walking through the Arlington National Cemetery and visiting the tomb of the unknown soldier. Put this on your list if you plan to visit. As we journey there today on our virtual trip I want to set the scene by taking you back to Memorial Day 1982 when then president Ronald Reagan said “I have no illusions about what little I can add to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words cannot repay the debt we owe these men. Theirs is a noble cause”.

One of the most visited grave sites is that of former president John F. Kennedy who just weeks before his assassination in 1963 said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” And I think that’s exactly what Pasquale Varallo is doing. Pasquale Varallo once served as a Tomb Guard and in 2018. On the anniversary of the end of WWI, – a full century after the signing of the Armistice of 1918, he put together a tributecalled “ A Tomb Guard Remembers” and thanks to the help of his good friend Jen Gordon it is now a book.

Jen Gordon – A Tomb Guard Remembers was written by my friend Pasquale Varallo because he was a former tomb guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the late 40s after the Second World War for about eight or ten months before he went into the regular military. And he stayed a part of the Tomb Guard Association his whole life until he just turned 94 about two weeks ago. He’s still kicking strong.

Sam – That’s incredible and it’s really a testament to the bond Pasquale feels with that sacred place. Just to give you some perspective, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a monument located in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. It has been there since 1921 and is dedicated to unidentified American service members who died in war. It is a symbol of honor and sacrifice for U.S. military personnel who have given their lives in defense of the nation. If you’d like to visit there is no cost and the changing of the guard takes place every hour. I think you will really enjoy seeing it. Anyway, the book is a powerful collection of poems and songs written by soldiers who fought in the war, some even by Pasquale himself and the loved ones who waited for their return.

Jen Gordon – Because he was such a big part of the Tomb Guard Association, and he has published books in the past, mostly on his own of poetry, they asked him to put together an anthology for the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that took place in November of 2021. So what he did was he went through a whole lot of time he spent going through poetry that had to do with war, whether it was written by soldiers, by soldiers who’ve come home, by family members left behind while their loved ones were at war, starting as early as the Revolutionary War up through the First World War, which is what the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier starts at. He put together this book, and he really wanted somebody to kind of have another set of eyes on it who was good with English and writing.

And through a mutual friend, we got connected. And we met one day at the library one afternoon on a Sunday, and he showed me his story, which I fell in love with. And I helped him put it together in book format. So in the height of the pandemic, I decided that I was determined to get this book published for him so that he could see it in his hands while he was still able.

Sam – Isn’t that amazing? It was written during a period when people had a lot of time to reflect — thanks to the pandemic. It is an incredibly moving tribute to military history but you don’t have to be a history buff to appreciate it. If you enjoy poetry, war history, or just a good story, I think you’ll find something meaningful in this book.

Jen Gordon – I think it’s just so diverse in that way, because you get a little taste of the...