I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion (Find yourself and live life at the fullest)

by Dawna Markova

Overview

It’s Never Too Late to Live Your Life

“I Will Not Die an Unlived Life is a little book with a big message. It can remind you of who you are and heal your life.” ―Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, author of My Grandfather's Blessings and Kitchen Table Wisdom

In the 1980s, Dr. Dawna Markova was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Here begins her path towards rediscovery and a purpose driven life.

Feeling lost? I Will Not Die an Unlived Life follows Dr. Markova’s journey to find deeper meaning in life. In her book she guides readers down a path where they can discover their value and purpose. When we feel lost, she points out, we can either continue to live habitual lives and resign our strength―or we can choose to follow our passions.

What is passion? It’s normal to feel stagnant, to be at a loss for energy. Dr. Markova reconceptualises feeling lost as a period of passion's rest. With this, she asks questions that challenge us to slow down and have more conversations with ourselves.

How to find yourself again. Poetic and inspiring, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life is a collection of stories with meaning. Following Dr. Markova's own journey at making her life matter, she offers readers insight into how to:

• Find personal balance
• Reclaim passion and purpose in life
• Focus attention and awareness on the present moment

If you enjoyed classic beach gifts like Gift from the Sea, or books like The Book of Awakening, Let Your Life Speak, Hallelujah Anyway, The Purpose Driven Life, or The Open Mind, then I Will Not Die an Unlived Life is your next read!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642504699
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	03/30/2021
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Inspirational speaker, writer, and researcher, Dawna Markova, PhD is CEO emeritus of Professional Thinking Partners, an organization that teaches collaborative thinking to CEOs and senior executives around the world. She has served as a senior affiliate of the Organizational Learning Center at MIT, and a consultant member of the Society for Organizational Learning and has received a Vision to Action award for her work originating the Random Acts of Kindness movement, the Foster Grandparenting and Peer Counseling programs, and the World Wide Women's Web.

One of the creators of the best-selling Random Acts of Kindness series, Dawna is the author of many other inspirational books, including Reconcilable Differences, Collaborative Intelligence, A Spot of Grace, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, The Smart Parenting Revolution, The Open Mind, How Your Child Is Smart, No Enemies Within, Learning Unlimited, and The Art of the Possible, as well as the Open Mind Audio Series with Sounds True. She is also a contributor to For She Is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes Of Women Writers, and Fabric of the Future.

Read an Excerpt

Two months wrapped in memory and meditation. I am sitting in what was my mother's chair at what was my father's desk on a pillow I bought for myself that says, “Welcome to Our Cabin.” When I look out the windows to the right or to the left, all I can see is the swirl and swoop of snow, and the shadows of big old spruce trees, a circle of silent sentinels. I am sitting in the middle of a blizzard and the sky overhead, like God's eye winking, is bright blue. A half-hour ago, big gray buffalo stormclouds completely engulfed the mountains. Such a vast expanse, wide enough to hold several weathers all at the same time. This sky is teaching me about what my mind can be and do.

It's past one in the afternoon and I haven't eaten yet. I'm not hungry. I'm waiting for a signal from the inside. My body must know when it needs food. I'm breaking so many habitual rules and instructions that lodged themselves in my brain decades ago. I've been peeling away the rigid beliefs and attitudes, rhythms and reasons that keep me numb and closed in as if they were cornhusks.

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am. It is as if the salt of years is running free from me. Like so many of us, my head has been stuffed full of knowledge, but something in me is still starving. So here, I seek to empty it of the stories, explanations, and interpretations I am clutching in the fist of my mind. When did it get so tightly closed that it became numb? And what was it holding onto anyway? I want it free. I want my heart and soul free. Free of and free from. Free of struggle, free from doubt in the canyons of my bones, free from running from the truth of knowing that something has been missing.

Unclutching, emptying, opening, then wondering, as if I am releasing a small bird. I look at my hands. The left one shows a pattern of four arteries like a river, while the right one is like a web. They are my hands and I haven't really noticed them since I was a child. Where do the images come from that they have been drawing on the empty pages of my journal? Where do my dreams come from, now that I am eager to give attention to their mystery? And where do the stories come from that gush forth onto the page even when there's no one to entertain? Something is happening. Questions float in the night like moths.

Wondering. What am I reaching for? What is the urge that calls me beyond the familiar into unexplored territory? What is smoldering inside me? My passion is missing. Where is my passion? Has it unraveled from wear and tear?

I found a paper wasp's nest hanging abandoned from an aspen branch in the woods yesterday, an empty husk. It spoke to me: I am gray and dry now. My round womb-like husk is layered with many thin but tough sheets of paper. I hide a honeycomb that once was filled with a hive of life. They swarmed in me, all around me. They were a colony with individual directions and intentions, but they were also one larger self. Now they are gone. I am hollow. I have served my purpose. I am a reminder of all the life that was born in me and moved through me. I hang here waiting to be found, perhaps to be cherished for all I have contained and been.

It haunts me. Is it a mirror for my passion? By passion I don't mean sex or desire. I don't mean what happens to you when you wear Obsession, drive a Porsche Carrera, weigh ninety-six pounds, and are lusted after by someone with a deep cleft in his chin. I mean the natural life energy that exists inside each of us, urging growth. A deep and natural pulse that tells us to live from the inside out, to reach in and reach out for all that is possible to know, to contribute, and to receive. I may have lost the feeling of it right now, but I am beginning to think passion exists in the relationship between things, between the self and the rest of life, between forces in opposition to each other, between polarities and paradoxes, between and beyond the river of either/or that seems to divide so much of our world.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

I Living Wide Open: Landscapes of the Mind 1

Chapter 1 A Second Innocence 3

Chapter 2 How Do I Live Divided No More? 15

Chapter 3 What Aileth Thee? 23

Chapter 4 As Is 31

II Living On fire: Landscapes of the Heart 39

Chapter 5 Catching Fire 45

Chapter 6 Falling Free 57

Chapter 7 Unimagined Bridges 67

Chapter 8 Rekindling the Flame 75

III Living On Purpose: Landscapes of the Soul 87

Chapter 9 The Spot of Grace 93

Chapter 10 Let Our Wounds Be Our Teachers 101

Chapter 11 Way Closes, Way Opens 109

Chapter 12 "The Name I Call Myself When I Want Myself to Answer" 121

IV Living On Path: Landscapes of the Spirit 129

Chapter 13 What Is Your Lineage and Legacy of Love? 135

Chapter 14 What Have I Been Given with Which to Give? 145

Chapter 15 What Are You Serving? 153

Chapter 16 Where Am I Meant to Be Shining? 161

Epilogue The Season of Renewal: A Living Landscapes 167

Inspirations and Appreciations 174

About the Author 177

Personal Renewal Workshops 178

To Our Readers 179

What People are Saying About This

M. J. Ryan

"In these times of rapid social and technological transformation, nothing is more important than learning the skills of personal renewal. I will Not Die An Unlived Life is the very best book on the subject. In a thoughtful and poetic form, it teaches us how to navigate our lives from the inside out, so that rather than being at the mercy of life’s changes, we are able to offer to the world the gifts that are ours alone to give."
—author of Attitudes of Gratitude and The Giving Heart

From the Publisher

“Like the lotus on its cover, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawna Markova is potent with meaning and graceful in form… In it Markova offers fresh approaches to bring to the exploration of meaning in our lives.”

—Maggie Oman Shannon, editor of Prayers for Healing

Editorial Reviews

"- "This is a little book with a big message. It can remind you of who you are and heal your life." - Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. author of Kitchen Table Wisdom - "In a thoughtful and poetic form, I Will Not Die An Unlived Life teaches us how to navigate our lives from the inside out so that rather than being at the mercy of life's changes, we are able to offer to the world the gifts that are ours alone to give." - M.J. Ryan, author of Attitudes of Gratitude"

Reviews