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Dame Joy Cowley must be one of New Zealand’s most well-known authors. She’s also a mother, suicide survivor, woman of faith, spiritual director and wise woman. Amongst other things.
Now almost blinded by macular degeneration, 88-year old Cowley is about to launch a new book of rhymes and nonsense, where shadow and light play a big part.
A long faith journey
Cowley’s own life has been one of shadow and light. So is everyone else’s, she indicates.
“We all get crucified and then resurrected, unless we get stuck in the tomb of self-pity and blaming” Joy Cowley says.
“We’ve got to understand that every gift we’re given has a shadow. Sometimes we see the shadow and don’t see the gift … but we also need to understand that the shadow is the area of growth.”
Life is a birthing process, she says.
“I have long since accepted that at this time of life, this is when the body goes into labour to give birth to the soul. So losing sight is the first indication of going into labour. And that’s a positive for me.”
She didn’t always know this though. She had some very dark times, which led to a deliberate drug-overdose.
That overdose changed her life as a young woman, Cowley says.
At the time, her marriage to her first husband had just ended. She had four children and was likely to lose two of them to her husband and his new partner. Not coping, she tried to die.
What happened next was a near-death, out-of-body experience.
“There I was flying, into a light, which cannot be described as we describe the sun or electric lights or anything like that.
“It was also presence. It was love … It was something I had known always. And I was going into it. I was going home.”
Then she sensed herself “falling back”.
“I could feel the weight of my body … and there were voices around me. I was in hospital.”
To her, it felt like 10 minutes had passed. In reality, she had been in hospital for three days.
For a time she was blind and paralysed … and ready for a spiritual search.
“I started looking at all the allusions to light; first of all in the New Testament, in the Bible — Jesus described himself as the light of the world — and then talking to people who had had near-death experiences.
“From a moment which was the worst time of my life, it became suddenly the most beautiful” she says.
Cowley says her faith shares characteristics with the Catholic Church, which she joined after a three-month trip around South America.
“I’d been learning Spanish. And I’d go and just go and sit in these beautiful churches … and there’d be a puddle on the floor … and there’d be an empty beer can somewhere else on the floor … and somehow that made sense to me.
“That’s me, deeply spiritual and messy.”
New book
Joy Cowley’s new book “A Lot of Silly: A Book of Rhymes and Nonsense” is a collection of amusing short stories and poems.
Feeling desperate?
• Need to talk? 1737, free 24/7 phone and text number
• Healthline: 0800 611-116
• Lifeline Aotearoa: 0800 543-354
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828-865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
• Samaritans: 0800 726-666
• The Depression Helpline: 0800 111-757
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News category: New Zealand.
