As part of our ongoing series, Choosing Compassion Over Fear, I am featuring some of our most cherished friends and colleagues to discover how they have navigated the landscape of doubt, insecurity, tragedy, and fear to move toward becoming their truest selves. Today, we are honored to present a very special excerpt from Dawna Markova. Dawna is an internationally renowned thought leader and personal growth expert. Her latest book, Living a Loved Life: Awakening Wisdom through Stories of Inspiration, Challenge and Possibility, invites us to do whatever is necessary to create a life we can love and to love the life we have.
Dawna Markova followed her precious grandmother ‘s footsteps to become a midwife, but rather than babies, she helps birth possibilities within and between people. She has lived many incarnations in the past seven decades as a teacher, psychotherapist, researcher, executive advisor, organizational fairy godmother and author. In her newest inspiring and evocative book, Living A Loved Life: Awakening wisdom Through Stories of Inspiration, Challenge and Possibility, she braids together stories drawn from her grandmother’s wisdom, her own life challenges and from the thousands of people with whom she has worked.
Instead of hugs, Dawna’s grandmother used to kiss the unique marks at the very end of her fingertips, calling them “promise prints.” She said they proved that never before and never again would there be another like her. She said that the moment each of us is born Life makes a promise to the world that only we can fulfill. With this wisdom, Dawna grew to understand that discovering how you have, do and can matter is what makes it possible for you to love your unique existence.
This is a particularly important book in these dark and fragmented Humpty Dumpty times, when even Krazy Glue can’t hold the pieces together and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men seem to have convinced so many people that they really can’t and don’t make a difference. To midwife her latest book, Dr. Markova asked herself several evocative questions: How do I find a way to live a life I can love now? How do I help make it possible for those who will come after me to do the same? What do I need to remember, as in re-member, to bring together all that has been torn in two? How do I re-collect the wisdom earned through my own and others’ challenges? What is the most effective way to pass it on?
Woven braids of twenty-seven stories inspired by her Grandmother’s wisdom, her own life challenges and the possibilities birthed by the people with whom she has worked form the loaf of this inspiring 42,000-word book. Dr. Markova describes why she wrote it now : “Grandma taught me that there is both perspective and wisdom hidden in our the greatest difficulties. It can help us realize how we matter as well as what really matters to us. I learned from her that certain unanswerable questions can encourage one’s mind to open and wander, like a kite in a wind, allowing stories to emerges rather than struggling helplessly to find a single certainty on which to land. These stories can be an untapped reservoir of capacity, a connective force, a steady light in the depth of darkness to guide us forward. Through them you can be involved in the dance of spiraling generations in which the old empower the young with their wisdom and the young empower the old with the energy of new possibility.
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About Dawna
Dawna Markova followed her precious grandmother’s footsteps to become a midwife, but rather than babies, she helps birth possibilities within and between people. She has lived many incarnations in the past seven decades as an author, teacher, psychotherapist, researcher, executive advisor, and organizational fairy godmother. One of the creators of the best-selling Random Acts of Kindness series, Dawna is the author of many other inspirational books, including: I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion, Reconcilable Differences: Connecting In a Disconnected World, Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking With People Who Think Differently, and A Spot of Grace: Remarkable Stories of How You DO Make a Difference. This interview focuses on her lastest book, Living A Loved Life: Awakening Wisdom Through Stories of Inspiration, Challenge and Possibility.
Find Dawna on Social Media:
https://www.dawnamarkova.com/ (Website)
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/180600.Dawna_Markova (GoodReads)
https://www.facebook.com/dawna.markova.9 (Facebook)
https://twitter.com/dawnamarkova (Twitter)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawna-markova-ph-d-29281a7 (LinkedIn)
https://www.instagram.com/dawnamarkova/ (Instagram)
Dawna’s Book:
Living A Loved Life: Awakening Wisdom Through Stories of Inspiration, Challenge and Possibility