Careywood sculptor/writer releases first book
Sitting alone at a small, round table in the bookstore coffee shop, hands folded atop a yellow flier for her workshop, Catherine Gabriel exudes a sense of quiet calm and loveliness. Following a three-hour book signing, she is still smiling, and her clear eyes dance as she talks about her passions.
The “just the facts, ma’am” bio-sketch would mention that she lives outside of Careywood with her husband of five years, Corry Dodson, a woodworker and painter. Originally from Massachusetts, Gabriel has lived in North Idaho for 20 years. She has just published her first book, “Crazy: One Goddess’s Journey.”
She is a sculptor who began as a papier-mâché artist and is now working in oil-base clay on a series titled “Elements.” She has finished “Water and Earth” and has plans for “Fire and Air” next. She created and presents a workshop titled “The True Self: Creating the Life of Your Dreams” and will be publishing a small book and companion workbook this spring that will outline the contents of her workshop. Gabriel currently supports her writing habit and gets her “people fix” via part-time jobs as a bookkeeper in Coeur d’Alene. She is a multifaceted artist for whom a fill-in-the-blanks thumbnail sketch doesn’t do justice. Her humor, sparkle, passion and depth are revealed in her writing and her persona.
“Crazy” is about a divorced woman who re-creates her life from scratch. In an amazon.com review of “Crazy,” Robin L. Valaitis-Heflin writes, “Tess is stuck in a rut. At age 45, her body has started to go south, her dead-end job barely pays the bills and she’s still obsessed with her ex-husband who dumped her for a teenage bimbette. To make matters worse, Tess fears she’s going crazy.
“Why else would a strange, overweight, middle-aged woman keep popping in and out of her living room, seemingly out of thin air? The stranger calls herself Joan, proclaims she’s Tess’ trainer and proceeds to make herself comfortable, befriending Tess’ cat and drinking Tess’ coffee.
” ‘You and I are going to work together,’ Joan tells Tess.
” ‘What if I don’t want to work on anything?’ Tess responds.
” ‘You must want to work on something, or I wouldn’t be here.’
“Suspicious of Joan and her own sanity, but still intrigued, Tess begins her ‘training,’ undertaking a voyage of self-discovery and spiritual awakening that proves that the most worthwhile journey begins not with a single step, but with the courage to look within.”
Gabriel says, “Re-creating a life, pursuing one’s spiritual development takes guts. It’s not for sissies.”
Asked whether Crazy is autobiographical, she says, “Only in that I was divorced after a long-term marriage and re-created my life from scratch.”
The messages of spiritual awakening came to her through “normal osmosis. It happens to all of us, but we might notice the lessons only in retrospect, and we all respond differently.
“I’ve consciously been on a spiritual path for a long time. There’s a point where a shift is made and one decides that it is possible to understand more. I knew that I must have access to the same information that all these other folks were writing about.”
Gabriel’s goal in writing “Crazy” was to take the ideas of spiritual awakening and put them in the context of a story with liberal use of humor.
“My belief is that we don’t have to take spiritual development so seriously. Personal unfoldment takes place in the midst of our lives. Sometimes we miss it; often it’s funny. But when we’re moving toward personal fulfillment, the goal is to experience more joy, so we need to enjoy the journey.”
Her workshop, “Creating the Life of Your Dreams,” is based on a simple process that came to her roughly five years ago.
She says, “I completely re-created my life using this process. It’s powerful and very simple, and helps people get past their own emotional or mental blocks.”
Asked if she is living the life of her dreams, she answers, “Yes, at least the life of my current dreams, the most perfect envisioning I’m capable of. My dreams are subject to change at any moment, because life is fluid. If it’s rigid or boxed in, all movement stops. It’s the antithesis of growth.”
At the end of “Crazy,” Tess asks Joan, “How do we do that – ‘be’ rather than ‘know’?” Joan answers, “You do it by living what you know, instead of just knowing it. You do it by becoming the things you want to be instead of thinking about the things you want to be, or talking about them. If you want to be a patient person, don’t talk about patience; be patience. If you want to be a loving person, don’t talk about love; be love.”
She patted my hand. “It’s simple.” Catherine Gabriel is living what she knows, walking her talk. The sparkle in her eyes is a spark of that inner light escaping.