Everyday Creation
This show has to do with different kinds of creation: human, divine, and a third kind that connects the two. Our human creativity is easy to talk about because clearly we're prolific creators. We make music, we write, we cook; we establish businesses, we design gardens, we invent things. The list goes on and on. Another kind of creation is divine. We feel its presence when, for example, we contemplate birth, death, our life purpose, or have a quiet realization that there's something bigger than us. The third kind is perhaps a little more difficult to grasp and yet, with a little practice, it's easy to put into action. This is the personal power each of us has to direct our thoughts, words and actions every day toward what we want in our life and world, rather than what we don't want.
This sounds heavier than it is. For me, this show is an acknowledgment that while we're all here to learn and grow and do our best, there's still plenty of opportunity to relax, laugh, love, and enjoy this playground we call life. So my hope is that you'll get some enjoyment and illumination out of these episodes. Here you'll find interviews with delightfully creative individuals; short stories about some who have passed away; and essays about personal power.
I'm Kate Jones, host and creator of Everyday Creation. Thank you for following my show.
Everyday Creation
Goodness, Resilience and Paying It Forward
This episode is an excerpt from a longer interview with the novelist Patricia Falvey, a former accountant who now writes historical fiction. Here, we talk specifically about her latest book, "The Famine Orphans," which sounds like downer of a story but isn't because the focus is on the characters' resilience and their resistance to being victims of circumstance. We also comment in general how we all have the power to spread more kindness and joy in the world.
To hear more, go to the full interview titled "Author Patricia Falvey on Being Brave, Resilient, and Focused on Your Dream" (Episode 116).
The other excerpts are titled "Five Books and Counting: the Novels of Patricia Falvey," "The Courage to Embrace Your Second Act" and "Always a Writer at Heart."
To learn more about Falvey's books, visit patriciafalveybooks.com. And if you read one or all, please write a review.
This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.
Kate Jones:
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This is one thing that I do wanna
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say about "The Famine Orphans" is that
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there's a lot of grimness, of course. From
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the title on, you know you're gonna get
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tough stuff in there. However, you have a
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really good balance between
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the darkness and the light. There's hope. I
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appreciate that. Because even in the worst of
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it, there's hope.
Patricia Falvey:
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Well, I think one of the things I
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wanted to emphasize too with these girls was
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the idea of resilience,
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And we all have that. We just have
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to dig deep to find it, but they
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were put in enough situations where they had
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to be resilient
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and there's a joy in the ones that
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really
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make it and have good, prosperous times and
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so on. Even the ones who've had it
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the hardest, you know, may well rise up.
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And I think that was part of it
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too, that I really wanted to show that,
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yeah, they were victims in a way, but
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they fought against it.
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And to the extent that they had
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whatever it took to do it
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in different ways,
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they had different talents, different expertise, different whatever,
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but
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it was still resilience
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that got them
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to a place where
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they were thriving
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ultimately.
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I worried about the title of it. I
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was thinking, ugh. Famine.
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Orphan.
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Doesn't sound like a real happy summer read,
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but I tried to inject just some fun
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parts and fun characters. I love the two
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characters that I came up with in the
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outback.
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Yes. Malachy and Phineas, and I thought they
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were great fun.
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Even Kate says that it might not be
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that dull with these two here. And Bridie,
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I think, is somebody who comes through and,
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you know, tells it like it is.
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And the music, there's always music
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and singing throughout. In fact, I came across
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just
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since I went to Boston last week at
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the Irish Cultural Center, there was a lady
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who came up to me and she said,
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"Have you heard the song 'The Orphan Girls?'"
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And I said, no, I didn't know there
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was one. It's done by the choral society
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of the University College Dublin.
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And I found it on YouTube, and it
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is just absolutely
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beautiful.
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It's a video of these girls all walking
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to the shore
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and they're sailing to Australia.
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It's like spine chilling. It's so good. And
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I'm hoping to try to figure out a
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way
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to get permission to use it in some
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way with the presentation of the book.
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We shall see. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. We shall
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see. But it is uplifting.
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By the way, there's over a hundred
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reviews on Goodreads
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for "The Famine Orphans," and it has
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four point,
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4.3
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stars. And
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Amazon so far is 4.6
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stars.
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And those are pretty good reviews. And many
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of these, the women, mostly women who read
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it, they really cheered on the orphans. And
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they said they thought it might be a
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bit, you know, of a downer at first,
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but it wasn't,
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that they were they were there with the
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girls every step of the way.
Kate Jones:
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Yeah. These girls, they were so young. Kate was 16.
Patricia Falvey:
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She was 16. And the youngest one in
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her group was 14.
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Mary, she was the one... Yeah.
Kate Jones:
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Oh, Mary, and she was in love.
Patricia Falvey:
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It's like, there's nothing wrong with having
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a good cry. A friend of mine, a
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guy actually,
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wrote to me the other day and said,
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"I just finished that book in tears."
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But it was, like, not happy tears, but
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it just feels good to be so emotionally
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connected to something.
Kate Jones:
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Absolutely. There are
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moments of grace when people are kind to
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these girls.
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And even the one person who was
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the head cook or whatever she was at
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the big house and
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she started out awful, and then she actually
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did something nice.
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Yeah. Those little kindnesses
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are so very important.
Patricia Falvey:
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They make you feel that there's still
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goodness in the world. That came
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up when I was speaking at Suffolk
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University
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group on Friday,
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and they asked the question, "What have you
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taken away from all of your
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experiences
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50 years ago at at Suffolk?" I'd be
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overstating it to say Suffolk saved my life,
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but they started my life. They gave me
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my start.
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And I said
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the lesson that I take from it is
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that no matter how difficult things seem,
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if you have the faith and the persistence,
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there is always somebody
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or something somewhere that is going to give
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you a hand up.
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And I said I try to do that
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in my own life. It's kind of like pay
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it forward
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because I feel like I was helped greatly
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not just by Suffolk, actually, but by other
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people that came into my life along the
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way that have helped me. And,
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you know, I feel that obligation to pay
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it forward, and I think more than ever
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now, we need to be doing that.
Kate Jones:
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Absolutely. Yeah. And it may not seem that way,
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but we are all in this together, connected,
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and what we do matters.
Patricia Falvey:
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It affects everybody. And you don't we don't even realize
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how much power we actually have to help
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spread good and love and peace in the
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world. I mean, we just think we're helpless
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and we're not, you know?
Kate Jones:
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We are not.
