Reflections on Life’s Illusions
Welcome to Reflections on Life’s Illusions, a website dedicated to exploring writing and photography as spiritual practice. Emerging as part of the creative process that generated the book of the same name, the writing found here responds to the question of how the stories we tell about experience shape our perceptions of what it means to be alive. The photographs tell those stories in a different way, framing a momentary image that points in the direction of the artist’s heart-felt experience. All the writing and images are the result of the search to uncover how we can become more aware of the messages contained in the deepest, often unconscious stories we tell ourselves. May these words and images provide you inspiration to look deeply into your own mind and heart to discover the mystery beyond words from which wonder and awe arise and create life and love. What is that mystery and what is it calling you to do?
The Book
“It is not our business to solve all the world’s problems. It is our business to learn to be aware of as much as we can . . . and to act as wisely as we can.”
As growing children the baby boom generation experienced a vast array of cultural extremes, from McCarthyism’s anti-communist paranoia to the Vietnam War, Watergate, systemic racism, second wave feminism, the birth of rock ’n’ roll, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement and more. This memoir reflects on the dynamic relationship between the development of personal and cultural consciousness in order to highlight a path to resilience for anyone seeking to heal Earth’s living systems.
Reflections on the effects of childhood awakening to cultural grief, following the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, mingle with reflections on the cultural impacts of rock ’n’ roll, the hippie movement and the atrocities of Jim Crow racism. From challenges faced in search of personal identity, meaningful relationships and a rewarding career to the repercussions of a life-changing hike through the mountains of Peru, a focus on the outer journey throughout the book is coupled with attention to a corresponding inner journey to reconnect with wonder, joy and awe against the backdrop of a nation increasingly at war with itself.
Reflections on Life’s Illusions maps a path of discovery, illuminating what it takes to thrive personally and professionally while working to foster resilience within the turmoil of Western culture and the matrix of life on Earth.
Now available anywhere books are sold.
About the Author
Jane Gallagher lives with her husband in the green woodlands of Vermont’s mountains where she writes. She retired in 2016 from nonprofit development consulting to New England based nonprofit organizations working to address social and environmental injustice at local, regional and state levels. A mother of two and grandmother of three, she holds a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Carleton College in Minnesota and an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University in Massachusetts. When not writing or reading, you might find Jane out working in the flower garden, hiking, biking or cross-country skiing, contemplating nature and life’s endless mysteries, or enthusiastically playing games of imagination with her grandchildren.
About the Author
Jane Gallagher lives with her husband in the green woodlands of Vermont’s mountains where she writes. She retired in 2016 from nonprofit development consulting to New England based nonprofit organizations working to address social and environmental injustice at local, regional and state levels. A mother of two and grandmother of three, she holds a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Carleton College in Minnesota and an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University in Massachusetts. When not writing or reading, you might find Jane out working in the flower garden, hiking, biking or cross-country skiing, contemplating nature and life’s endless mysteries, or enthusiastically playing games of imagination with her grandchildren.
Contact
Please direct all inquiries to:
Reflections on Life’s Illusions
P.O. Box 131
38 North Main Street
Waterbury, VT 05676