Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
From Journal to a Book to a Healing Journey
What if the items gathering dust in your attic held the keys to unlocking your deepest healing?
In this heartfelt conversation, I sit down with Ann Mracek, author of Unpacking the Attic: A Path to Healing Your Inner Child, to explore the transformative power of confronting childhood memories through seemingly mundane objects.
Anne shares her personal journey of healing old wounds, where items like her grandfather's pipe became touchstones for reframing her past and releasing feelings of unworthiness.
Through journaling, self-reflection, and forgiveness, Anne turned her own healing process into a powerful book—one that encourages readers to confront buried trauma and rewrite their personal narratives.
We also explore:
🔹 The impact of childhood memories on adult self-perception
🔹 The significance of forgiveness in releasing past pain
🔹 Journaling as a tool for emotional healing and self-discovery
🔹 The art of manifestation and aligning heart and mind for future goals
Beyond her book, Anne takes us behind the scenes of her entrepreneurial journey and the birth of Amarantic Publishing, where creative control and passion converge.
She shares her approach to marketing through networking, public speaking, and community-building, offering insights for aspiring authors.
We also get a sneak peek into her exciting future projects, including a novel where love transcends time.
🎧 Tune in for an inspiring conversation on self-discovery, personal transformation, and the power of storytelling.
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anger. It's like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. When you harbor that anger and resentment within you, it just festers in there and it you need to find a way to refurbish, repurpose all of those old traumas and let go walk away, forgive the people that were back in your past and realize that you can manifest by visualizing this wonderful life that you want to live.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to Read and Write with Natasha.
Speaker 2:I have with me today Anne Miracek, who's the author of Unpacking the Attic A Path to Healing your Inner Child. In this deeply personal exploration, anne delves into the profound depths of human psyche, offering a compassionate roadmap for healing and self-discovery. Anne is also a children's author and a dancer, where she served as the director of the Abla Ras Rocks Belly Dance Company. All right, anne, nice to meet you, and I love the fact that you're a belly dancer. This is great. You're the first belly dancer on my podcast. Oh, there you are. You know that sound, of course. Of course, exactly. I'm not going to try mine on the show because it's not as good as yours. This is great. So nice to meet you, anne, and this is going to be a fun chat. So, anne, I'm really curious to hear about your book Unpacking the Attic and sort of the transformation that you went through. Do while you unpack your parents' ethics. So the floor is yours. If you can tell us a bit about this personal book.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'll tell you how it actually all got started. My parents announced that they were moving into an assisted living apartment in two weeks that's how much notice I had and they wanted me to empty their three-story 6,000-square-foot house and they thought I could do this in two weeks. Well, obviously that was an impossible goal. It took more like five months. In the process of literally emptying their house, unpacking the attic and everything else, I came across items from my childhood that seemed to trigger suppressed childhood memories and traumas. Okay, and it took me on a healing journey and how I began dealing with this as I started writing a personal journal. I started writing a personal journal recording these memories, recording my emotional responses to them and then, for myself, trying to put them in a more adult context, and I never really intended on sharing this with anyone. It's very vulnerable, it's very personal and yet vulnerable. It's very personal and yet the healing experiences were very real and transformative and as people in my inner circle of family, very close friends, kept asking let me read, let me read what you're writing, and they all kept saying, oh, sweetheart, you have to share this. This is transforming me, this is helping my journey and it's causing me to reflect on and heal my own childhood, and so that was the impetus for actually going forward with the book. But I found as I went through this process that the items from my childhood actually seemed to have an imbued energy all of their own, and they were transporting me back in time to memories that I could have never pulled up on my own. And if I might give you an example, I came across my grandfather's pipe, and this has become for me almost a symbol of the whole process, the whole healing process that I went through.
Speaker 1:We used to call my dad's father Pop, and his pipe still smells of cherry wood smoke, and I'm sure you're familiar with how a fragrance or a scent can trigger a memory. And this was one of the first big triggers for me, and I'll relate the story. We were visiting Pop in his flat and the only two words I ever remember him saying to me were sit down. We would go into his apartment. He would point to that red velvet couch and have me sit there while he and my parents went into the kitchen, and I would sit there while he and my parents went into the kitchen, and I would sit there, sometimes for hours, and I would hear conversation and laughter drifting into the living room. I would smell cooking coming in and I would just sit there and after what seemed like an eternity of a wait, he would come back out into the room, sit in his big green overstuffed chair, stare out the window and puff on that pipe and fill the room with that cherry wood smoke. And I was a toddler and all I ever wanted to do was sit on his lap, and he never looked at me, he never talked to me and he never gave me that cuddle.
Speaker 1:Well, as a child I translated that to mean I am unlovable, I am not worthy of my grandfather's love, I've been rejected, he doesn't want me, he doesn't love me. I must be a bad child and you know I'm three or four years old. But that's how. That's how I processed it. Well, I kept that with me for years. I kept that recording and I was always never good enough in my own mind. It didn't matter how many A's I got on grade cards, how many degrees I got Inside. I always carried that I'm not lovable, my pop rejected me and I'm not a good child.
Speaker 1:Well, as I began this healing journey, I remembered my mother saying pop lost his love of life when your grandmother died, and as an adult, when I was a child, that I didn't understand that that meant nothing. But now, reflecting, having the courage to stand there and look straight in the face at that memory and confront those emotions, I realized Pop was grieving, his heart was closed to grief and he had no room for a grandchild. It had nothing to do with me. It wasn't that I was bad or I had caused this in any way, and it was an ability to reframe and put into context that memory that began this journey. Well, my husband and I had recently traveled to China. Now stay with me, it's not random.
Speaker 1:So what happened was we were walking through beijing and there were all of these vendors with tables stacked full of these papers, of pictures of houses and pictures of cars and washing machines and all kinds of things that I was like. I asked her to her good well, do people buy these for the kids to play with like paper dolls? You know, I couldn't figure it out. It's like oh heavens, no Families buy these for their deceased. And he said in our religion we believe that when you pray with intent on the image of an item and then you burn it, that the smoke rises to the spirit of the deceased and manifests in the spirit world as a gift of that item to the person that you were praying for. So they were gifting their deceased relatives with new cars and homes and washers and dryers and all kinds of pictures of everything you can think of.
Speaker 1:But it got me to thinking and I decided to write, pop a letter. And when I sat down with the pen at first all I wanted to do was yell at him, demand an apology, tell him how mad I was at him for doing that to me as a child. But you know, what I ended up writing was I'm sorry, you were broken and you deserve so much more. We both deserve so, so much more. You missed out on one of the greatest things life has to offer, and that's to laugh with your grandchild. Yeah, and in the end I wrote I forgive you.
Speaker 1:And I lit that letter. It was in a. I remember I put it in a green ceramic bowl to represent his chair he used to sit in and as that smoke rose, it was such an emotional release for me. I mean I just felt completely freed of that distress and of that programming and I was able then to tell the little child in my memory find your voice, speak up for yourself, get up off of that couch. I gave myself the freedom to be my own advocate and to walk forward and to realize that there was nothing wrong with that little girl. So by going back in time, re-experiencing the memory and putting it into an adult perspective and context, I was able to free myself of that old limiting belief and rewrite it. And that is just one of 50, or actually more than that. There's 50 chapters. Many chapters have multiple stories but of how these triggered memories were worked through and healed and repurposed. And so now I actually love my grandpa. I have a great feeling for him.
Speaker 2:So this is fascinating, and I'm curious about the writing process. You said you started journaling and then you turned it into a book, right? How long did it take you to finish?
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting because that's also a part of the journey. Actually, I wrote the healing journal for myself and actually I put it in a file cabinet and it sat there for years and people kept saying you need to, you need to finish this and make it into a book you need to share. And I was like, oh, no one's going to want to read it and I, I don't know. I don't know if I want to be that vulnerable. Honestly, I was making all kinds of excuses but I think, honestly, it was just I didn't know that I wanted to make my personal life that exposed. Okay, and I sat on it for a long time.
Speaker 1:Well, I remember very clearly three o'clock in the morning one night I was awoken and it felt like I'd been shaken awake and I heard in my mind and my spirit the name of your book is Unpacking the Attic and I was like, thank you, what book. I had completely dismissed that journal sitting in the file cabinet and really forgotten about it. The next day in my inbox, in my email I'm sitting there checking in the morning there is a letter from Steve Harrison Publishing Company. I'd never heard of them. So my husband's like that's a sign you have to call. So I called, I talked to Joe, it was wonderful, and he said read me the introduction and read me the first chapter, which I did, and he was crying and he said you need to get this out into the world.
Speaker 2:So why did they send you the?
Speaker 1:letter. I have no idea. It just manifested my inbox and all I can think of was that that had to have been spirit-led. Oh, wow, okay, that the time had come that I was being pushed by my guides, by my angels, to put this out to help others, because, in the end, isn't that what we're really all here to do is to love and help each other. So that was nine months ago, almost exactly. So I have now birthed the book, baby Congrats. Yeah, I tell you, I think this was harder than having my daughter. Yeah, it is. It is hard. It was quite a journey, quite a process, and what I discovered was I had journaled so many of the memories, but I hadn't necessarily written down how I had healed from it, the process that I took myself through to heal. So that was the missing element. So that's what I added was the other half of that story was the healing process and how do you move forward?
Speaker 2:And how do you reframe and free yourself of this old recordings that are no longer servicing you? So you published the book nine months ago, and how has been?
Speaker 1:Well, I started writing the book nine, finishing the book nine months ago. I actually published it on Amazon last week.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, so it's pretty fresh, okay, aha.
Speaker 1:Wow, so it is finally now available on Amazon. This is that's new. Yeah, it took nine months to get to that point, but it is now fit a finished product up on amazon, yeah just as of last week.
Speaker 2:But you had. You had the publisher right.
Speaker 1:Well, what they encouraged me to do. They were my editors, they took me through the whole process, but I actually decided to start my own publishing company. So I am now Amarantic Publishing. I am a limited liability corporation, and that way I decided it would be better for me to retain all the copyright, and so this gives me the opportunity then to license it for translation and for audio, audiobook and for many other things that, if I had gone through a traditional publisher, would not be available to me, that's true. So I decided to hold on to the copyright, and that's that's one thing. Every author has to make a decision of um it. I took really what was probably a more difficult path as far as the amount of work for me, but in the long run, I believe that it will be something that I can manifest as a much better situation for myself. And how have you been marketing the book? Well, people that are wonderful with their wonderful podcasts, like you I have been talking to, and I have also right.
Speaker 1:I've been doing a lot of public speaking, like, for example, last week I went to a belly dance seminar, one of my old things that I used to do. I had my own dance company and I talked to several of my friends that I had known from my dance days and I was able to give a talk about the book and its healing properties and present that then to the seminar and then do a book signing. So that was quite lovely. I enjoyed that a great deal. Okay, so, public speaking, sharing with wonderful shows like your own, telling everyone that I know lots and lots of emails and I'm now actually in the process of sending emails out to many, many, many places to license the translation rights into many languages. The audio book and you know there's many opportunities that way, having my own publishing company because I do own the copy right now. So that was one of the reasons to go down this path. So I my children's book that I wrote and it's been up on Amazon. The second edition just came up. Actually it's called Friendship Flies the Sun, the Ancient Egyptian Legend of Scare Beetle, and it's an Egyptian story. All the illustrations I painted on actual Egyptian papyrus and my dance company used to perform it as an interactive children's theater production and I found that having that self published worked wonderfully. I had an offer with a traditional publisher for that but they were only going to pay me $3,000 for the copyright and by performing the book at Renaissance fairs, at all the local schools and doing book signings, I made more than $15,000 the first year on that book and I would have maxed out at $3,000 had I given away my copyright and we wouldn't have been able to perform it as the interactive children's theater production that we did or any of those things that we found so enjoyable.
Speaker 1:So sometimes it's the scarier route, but sometimes it empowers you to be more creative and to have more fun with it and to run with it and ultimately do better. So, yeah, we used to go to all the schools and they would have a unit about studying ancient Egypt and we would perform the book. We would have the kids come up on stage with us, we'd have them dance with veils and do the camel walk and then I would give them a little exactly how perfect, how perfect. I would give them classes and the Egyptian rhythms and how to play the finger cymbals, the zills, so it was very interactive and very fun. But that's just one example of my writing journey. So I always follow my passion and with the children's book, friendship Flies, the Sun, and now with Unpacking the Attic, I think those were ways in which I found I could share that love and that passion and that message with more people, with more souls that need to hear these messages.
Speaker 2:So I'm noticing a trend here. Like most of your marketing is in-person events. Is that correct? Did you do much social media?
Speaker 1:Social media Sure Ann Maracek at annmaracecom. Annemoracek author. On Facebook, twitter, instagram, all of those things you know LinkedIn. So I have my own website, annemoracek author. I also have the website MyBestFriendsLiveInTheWoodscom and that's where you can find my other, my other novel, actually my Best Friends Live in the Woods, which I'm producing on my YouTube channel as a resource for parents and teachers to teach mindfulness and compassion to their children and younger audiences in a very fun, interactive way.
Speaker 1:So all of the characters are animals in the enchanted forest and the main character, little Albert, is a raccoon, and Albert raccoon is adopted by mother skunk. And each chapter has a focus like, for example, um, appreciation, okay, how do we show appreciation for others? Or is bullying ever acceptable? Or how do we live in community? So each chapter has a specific teaching point and at the end of the story then there is a discussion and questions that rolls through the screen and helps encourage meaningful conversation and ask you questions on how you can relate these teachings to your own life.
Speaker 1:So I also compose all of the music. My actually my degrees are in music composition, so I compose and perform on the piano all of the background music for the stories and then we also feature those in long format music videos on the YouTube channel as well. So I do all the nature videography, and then we also feature those in long format music videos on the YouTube channel as well. So I do all the nature videography. And again, you know it's. It's a matter of what do I have to offer in love and gratitude to the world? It's about following that passion. So I have a passion for not only the child that still lives within each of us, but for the actual children of the world. And how do I empower them and how do I teach them how to live in community with mindfulness and compassion, in community and with with mindfulness and compassion? So all of these creative flows, I think, are interrelated in their soul's purpose.
Speaker 2:So let me think. So how was the reaction to the book? I know it's it's pretty new now.
Speaker 1:Right, it's quite new. Um, well, I will tell you that at the belly dance seminar, a lot of the women there were telling me that they have very similar experiences to the ones that I was speaking on and that this healing journey was something that they thought would be very helpful for them. And I will tell you, universally, I think there are basically five childhood traumas that everyone has experienced, and so there seems to be a universal human experience. So we all have feelings of rejection, abandonment. All of us have felt humiliation, embarrassment. Some of us, most of us, have felt betrayal and then also injustices, and I address each of those in the stories of my life and how to move forward and heal from those. And I think those traumas and those messages are feelings that all of us as human beings experience, are feelings that all of us as human beings experience. And so one of the things that I was expressing was let me take you on a journey, but not to exotic, distant lands, but to the shadows of your past.
Speaker 1:And when we have the courage to feel and relive the courage to feel and relive and then put in a bigger context with adult framing and understanding, we most oftentimes find out that the child that was experiencing those emotions was just the innocent victim, caught in between very complex problems of the adults that were in the situation with them. That 99% of the time I would say probably 100% it's not the child who was the causation of any of the things, of the circumstances surrounding the problem. And when we can reframe and understand in context, as adults, that memory, we oftentimes can find it within ourselves to forgive the people that were the adults in that situation. And I will tell you that forgiveness I know you've heard this, but I found it in my own life to be so true, it's so freeing. Yeah, those those old self doubts and those old narratives that were harming me, and those angers and those resentments no longer have free rent in my soul. Yeah, I forgiving, I have completely let go of those things.
Speaker 1:You know, anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. When you harbor that anger and resentment within you, it just festers in there and you need to find a way to refocus all of those old traumas and let go walk away, forgive the people that were back in your past and realize that you can manifest by visualizing this wonderful life that you want to live, live. You can create a new scenario for yourself and a new, fulfilling, wonderful life that you can walk forward and walk toward. You don't have to stay stuck replaying those childhood trauma triggers. It's time to let that go and move forward and visualize for yourself the future and the fulfilled, wonderful life that you want to live and move toward that and the universe will send wonderful opportunities and experiences to you. Like telling you the name of your book is Unpacking the Attic.
Speaker 2:It's a great title. It's a great title.
Speaker 1:This wonderful woman called Natasha who's going to let you talk about your passions. You know these are. These are marvelous opportunities that I couldn't have in my wildest dreams thought that would ever manifest when I was sitting there on my parents porch swing writing these journals while the moving trucks came in and out and the cleaning crews. So most of the initial book was spent sitting on their porch swing just trying to get the house cleaned out, literally unpacking the attic. Wow.
Speaker 2:So what does the future hold for you? What future plans do you have? So now you wrote the book, you wrote the children's book, you're still doing the music teaching, actually the theme song to a movie.
Speaker 1:It's called Through Eternal Time. Our Song Plays and I have started visualizing the novel, and so my next big project is to work in reverse. I already have the theme song and the movie written, so now I've got to write the screenplay in the book. But it is a story of a couple that find each other and one of them perishes tragically. But as she's dying she tells her husband remember our song, and through a million lifetimes I'll find you again through our song. And so they go through many, many lifetimes of refinding each other through that melody that somehow their soul retains, that melody, that music, and when they hear it again, they, they refine each other in the next life and in the next life and in the next life. Oh, wow, that's the project that that is playing right now in my heart. So I don't know how long it will take to manifest, but I'm flying to Orlando uh, soon to be with my grandchildren and Disney world. So I will take my journal and I'll ride on the plane.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned manifesting a number of times. How do you manifest?
Speaker 1:For me, it's a matter of aligning my heart and my mind so that I can visualize, in gratitude, the outcome that I wish for the life that I wish to pursue, the project that I wish to do.
Speaker 1:I already see in my heart and in my mind what this story will look like. I can already see the characters. I've already composed the music. The score is actually already copyrighted, so the score is done, the song is complete, and I think that by allowing myself to emotionally and mentally believe truly believe that this will come to fruition in some way, and trusting that the universe will empower me to do that and will send opportunities toward me in order to make this happen, you just keep working toward that goal. You know failure is not an option. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't pivot and that you can't adjust where your goals take you, but I always feel like I'm moving toward. I'm moving toward and I always ask myself how does this align with my soul's purpose and in what way will this help others? Because I think when we're focused on giving and projecting love and light into the universe, the universe will not be in agreement with that and present these opportunities to you. So that's been my experience.
Speaker 2:What do you say to the skeptics that they think, oh well, manifestation is a bunch of woo-woo.
Speaker 1:But what would you tell them? I will tell them that they are already manifesting their negative future, that those negative thoughts are what they're living. So whether you agree or disagree is absolutely irrelevant. It's the way the universe works. And if you're projecting negative, I never win. I can't do this, I don't have the funds, I don't have this, I don't have that.
Speaker 1:If you're always focusing on what you don't have, the universe will go okay. So you don't have that stuff, okay, I'm good with that. You can be negative. You can sit there and wallow in that negativity all you want. We have free will. But if you focus on I can see this bright, beautiful life that I want to live. I can see this project that I want to give to the world. I can bring this light down from the divine and shine that out. I can be true to my soul's purpose. I can give to others. If that's what you're manifesting, the universe is like oh, let's help you, that sounds great, we'll do that with you. So, whether you think you are or not, you are manifesting. Everyone is all the time, and the human heart and the human mind, when they're in alignment, are very powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is fascinating. So, before we conclude, how do you think authors should manifest their success? I'm going to want to focus the manifestation on authors.
Speaker 1:On authors yes, put down the sword and pick up the pen. Okay, so many authors are fighting, even with their own emotions, on all the reasons why they can't do it. Just put down the sword and pick up the pen. Just write, start writing and tell yourself that the flow of the universe will come through. If you have a message that is going to benefit and give and be, either, you know, entertaining or healing or teaching, or whatever your purpose, it will flow through if you let it. But you have to quit making excuses. You have to have that time and that sacred space you create for yourself to write. You have to do it. Do it, Pick up the pen.
Speaker 1:I've got a spot that I sit in, at my couch by my fireplace and that is where I write. And I get up at five o'clock every morning and I sit in my place and I get my pen and Iclock every morning and I sit in my place and I get my pen and I use a purple pen because it's my favorite color, as you can tell and I write and I write in purple, and I write in my journals and I have filled books and books and books full of journals, and whether any of that is what I end up using in my final project is irrelevant, but I'm writing, I'm writing, always. Keep writing and the flow will come through.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is fascinating. So this has been a great conversation, and so for anyone to reach you, they can just go to your website, and this is how they can reach you and get your books and everything.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, on Amazon, all you have to do is type in Unpacking the Attic or Ann Maracek, and it's annmaracekcom. It is Ann Maracek. Author. You can go to my Best Friends Live in the Woods on YouTube. You can go to mybestfriendsliveinthewoodscom and many ways to reach out.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly Great. Well, thank you very much. This has been fascinating and I'm going to keep manifesting. I'm going to see the life that I want right in front of me, and thank you for all the tips and best of luck with all your writing and creative endeavors and for anyone who's listening or watching. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing.
