Author encourages women to slow down, make most of life

By Mary Ann Wyand

Paula D’Arcy’s happy life with her beloved husband, Roy, and 21-month-old daughter, Sarah, ended in a split second in 1975 when a drunk driver crashed into their car on a highway in Connecticut.

The accident killed her husband, who was driving, and her daughter, who was strapped in a child restraint seat behind him.

D’Arcy, who was pregnant, sustained serious injuries but survived the car accident.

When she woke up in the hospital a few days later, there wasn’t even time to begin asking God why such a heartbreaking tragedy could happen to her family.

That week, her parents took her to the funerals of her husband and daughter.

Several months later, she gave birth to their second child, a daughter she named Beth Starr.

Now an internationally known Catholic author, retreat leader, grief ministry speaker and psychotherapist who lives in Boston, D’Arcy found a new life and ministry by picking up the pieces of her broken dreams and reaching out to help others who are grieving the loss of loved ones.

She was the keynote speaker for “Hopeful Women,” the fourth annual women’s conference held on March 4 at St. Christopher Parish in Indianapolis.

More than 275 Catholic, Protestant and Jewish women from cities in central and northern Indiana as well as Ohio listened attentively to her spellbinding stories that centered on the importance of taking time in the busyness of daily life to get to know “the unbroken place within.”

D’Arcy described the joy of inmates tending small gardens inside a prison last summer, and the happiness of an elderly New Orleans couple who danced in each other’s arms inside their hurricane-ravaged house last fall because they were thankful to be alive.

She also discussed her friendship with Morrie Schwartz—a retired college professor from Boston and the subject of a best-selling book titled Tuesdays with Morrie written by Mitch Albom—and how Schwartz coped in positive ways with the painful, debilitating symptoms of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

St. Christopher parishioner Collette Fike of Indianapolis introduced D’Arcy by explaining that her eight books and one-act play reach across religious boundaries with compelling and insightful messages.

“Her work as a counselor also included working with a man named Morrie Schwartz—of the book Tuesdays with Morrie—and Paula tells her part of that story in her book Sacred Threshold,” Fike said. “She also is president of the Red Bird Foundation, which supports the growth and spiritual development of those in need, including those in prison and in developing countries around the world.”

Smiling often, D’Arcy reminded the women that they can find renewed hope by examining what they have been given in life and learning to appreciate those gifts.

She asked the women to consider the questions, “What sound is my life making? What is the speed of my life? Is there ever silence or enough silence?”

Silence must involve true listening, D’Arcy said, not just the absence of noise and busyness.

“Someone once suggested that it would be shocking to view your own life like a movie, but without sound,” she said, “to simply watch yourself, to see how you’ve chosen to spend the hours of your days.”

Perhaps it would be difficult, she said, to see the hours that sped by filled with concerns of so little consequence without noticing the fleeting beauty of daily life.

D’Arcy said she reads poetry to reflect on hope, joy and beauty in life.

“I began reading one poem every day,” she said. “I am amazed at … the way the Spirit reaches through my small opening, leading me to new vistas. … Silence becomes a core conversation of life.”

But sadly, she said, “it’s possible to live your whole life and never have this core conversation because we move through life so quickly. I heard a woman say last week that when you’re … moving at 60 miles an hour, the only thing you will encounter is other people going 60 miles an hour.”

It’s important to listen for the sound of what is genuine in life, she said, because then life will continue to change for the better.

“Our minds are never still,” D’Arcy said. “We’re always listening to something. What do you listen to all of the time? [Do you ask] ‘Am I special? Do people like me? Am I loved?’ … These questions become an unbelievable preoccupation in our lives. There’s a constant litany of voices in our heads, all these things that are really peripheral in our lives, which is the way we move through life, on the periphery, never getting to the core conversations.”

Negative emotions consume a lot of energy, she said, but the key to positive living is learning to listen to what is already present in your life.

“How often do I want what somebody else is holding?” she asked. “I can’t listen to my own life and have a core conversation about it because I’m wanting someone else’s good fortune, someone else’s looks, someone else’s long marriage.”

Every woman does this, D’Arcy explained, from wanting a different hairstyle to wishing for a lifestyle that seems more exciting or fulfilling to dreaming about having the perfect house.

But sometimes adversity knocks on the door of your house, she said, and you have to answer the door whether you want to or not.

“The worst knock on the door that I’ve ever gotten was in my 27th year,” D’Arcy said, “when that drunk driver came roaring into my life. … I did not want to answer that door. It took me many years to really understand that there were actually angels at that door ready to lead me to a place I had not gone—through the horror and the emptiness—to a place inside that was unbroken even though everything else in my life was broken.

“When I got that knock on the door, it seemed to me as if my life was over,” she said. “I remember writing in a journal that ‘I will never see hope again. I will never see beauty again. My life is finished.’ ”

People who are grieving cling to their broken dreams, she said, because they don’t believe they can live without them.

“We’re not unhappy because of our circumstances,” D’Arcy told the women. “We’re unhappy because we don’t know who we are.”

She said it takes time for grief-stricken people to find the power that is within them to survive even the worst circumstances in life.

“The angels that were at my door were [trying] to get me to look at what I still had,” D’Arcy said, “which is the greatest gift there is—my life.”

People love to have “all their ducks in a row,” she said, so they develop patterns that make it hard to accept changes in life.

“Listen and look at your life in a new way,” D’Arcy said. “See what it really holds for you. … May the beauty of your life become more visible to you. … May you respond to the unbroken within you.” †