The Good Thing About Mortar Shells: Choosing Love Over Fear
by Jennifer van Wyck
About the Book
“THE GOOD THING ABOUT MORTAR SHELLS IS THEY MAKE HOLES IN ALL THE WALLS AND SO THE BIRDS CAN MAKE NESTS.”
This is the response Jennifer gave to her father when he commented on the birds singing in the background during their international phone call. She was on the roof top of her apartment in Syria during the civil war. A place everyone was running away from and a place where she was working as a humanitarian, trying to advocate for love and compassion.
If you want to understand how you can overcome fear by choosing love, Jennifer demonstrates in this book, that even in the darkest places, there is kindness, compassion, hope, and the possibility for happiness.
She shares stories from her life and her humanitarian work during the Ebola Crisis, in Haiti and Syria. She draws from her work with hundreds of clients as a psychotherapist, to give you practical techniques of how to face your fears, overcome pain and suffering and most importantly how to choose love.
About the Author
Jennifer van Wyck MSM is a psychotherapist, humanitarian, author, inspirational motivational speaker, spiritual teacher, energy worker, and grounded intuitive guide. Jennifer is passionate about helping people reach their fullest potential by helping them to connect to their inner wisdom and magnificence. She has worked with thousands of people from all walks of life and believes that no pain is too small to focus on, learn from and overcome. Drawing on her unique experiences as a humanitarian, psychotherapist and energy worker, she weaves all her skills to create programs that profoundly and effectively address the root struggles of her clients. She works with those who have survived natural disasters, epidemics and war zones, while also assisting western clients and humanitarians all over the world through her online therapy sessions. She is the director of van Wyck consulting which was created in 2008. She has developed, implemented and supervised effective programs to address a variety of struggles, from trauma to stress management. She has received a Meritorious Service Medal from the Canadian government for her work during the Ebola outbreak, and she continues to devote her life to choosing love over fear. She is available to lead retreats, workshops, speaking engagements and of course 1:1 therapy, and is in the process of developing online courses to further support people in connecting more deeply to love. As she enters into her 40’s she’s excited to delve more into the universe that is the collective unconscious while at the same time continuing to love adventure, living life to the fullest and shining her light.
For more information or to contact Jennifer, please go to: www.vanwyckconsulting.com
Interview with Jennifer van Wyck
Please share a bit about your journey to become a published author.
I have known that I needed to write a book for the last 6 years. Before that, I had been repeatedly told I should write down all the crazy things I have lived through. However, it was not until this year that my intuition told me this was the right time to finally put all my attention and focus into writing a book. I made a new year’s resolution to do this and was telling some friends about my new intention. One dear friend, Alyson Jones, thought it was a wonderful idea and introduced me to Julie. Julie had helped her write her own book a few years ago. I contacted Julie and thought she was a great fit, so signed up for private coaching. Julie helped me take all the ideas, concepts, techniques and stories that were floating around in my head and make them into something coherent. I could not have written this book without Julie’s guidance and emotional support.
Julie and I started working together in January. I was supposed to be deployed on another mission and was going to try and squeeze in book writing in while also working as a humanitarian which would have been difficult. But because of Covid-19, my deployment was cancelled, and I was quarantined in France for over 2 months. This gave me the perfect opportunity to work eight hours a day almost every day on my book. I was able to finish it within six months! It worked out more perfectly then I ever could have planned.
I feel so proud of and excited about what I have been able to write. I feel like it is a wonderful summary of most of my life lessons to date and a funny, interesting account of how to choose love over fear. I also included examples of what happened when I did not. Although it is a bit nerve wracking to share such intimate parts of my life, I am beyond happy with how it turned out!
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How does the writing process work for you? Do you schedule a time every day, work madly when inspiration hits or?
For me, I would start each day by meditating, anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours. Then I would write, usually 5 days a week. Once I started writing, I would get into such a flow that I would continue until late at night, often more then 8 hours. I wrote almost all the book during confinement, so I was uniquely able to focus all my attention on it!
What did you find most difficult about the writing and publishing process? What was the easiest?
For me, the most difficult was knowing what is interesting and what is not. My life is my life, and so it is normal for me. I would constantly think that people would not be interested what I have done. It came out in simple things like I would still drink my coffee even though it had bugs in it, because it always has bugs in it. If I did not, then I would never be able to have coffee. However, when I would off handily mention something like that to Julie, she would inform me that this is not something that everyone experiences!. I found the same thing when living in a war zone. You get used to hearing gunshots and explosions. You cannot react to it every time or you would never get anything done. Julie offered a good reality on whether the stories I shared would be interesting to people.
The easiest was writing. “Love over fear” has been my mantra for the last 5 years. I am extremely passionate about it. As a psychotherapist I am constantly looking at my own behaviour and reactions. As a spiritual teacher, I am always meditating and trying to deeply understand what love is. Both these things have given me lots of insight into what works for myself and clients, and what does not work. Additionally, my clients have been such phenomenal teachers for me. They have required me to not only really embody this way of life, but also break it down clearly, as well as create techniques that help them experience their own truth. I love my job with all my heart, so putting everything I have learned down on paper was wonderful. I did not experience writer’s block even once.
What title (or titles) have you released?
The Good Thing About Mortar Shells: Choosing Love Over Fear is my first book. It is all about how to choose love over fear – except you cannot just pretend that fear does not exist (believe me I tried). Before you can choose love over fear, you must face your fears, understand them and then heal them.
I also strongly believe in the wisdom of love that is in everyone. Part of my purpose in life is to help people connect to their own inner wisdom or intuition. I started the book with the different ways our intuition can talk to us, so you can more easily understand what your intuition is and how to connect with it. Then we build on that to help you face the three different types of fears. Throughout the book I give practical techniques on how to get wisdom and guidance from your fears so that you can heal them and overcome them. These techniques are extremely powerful and are what I use daily.
Then we finish by how to choose love over fear in each moment. I share some powerful ways of how to completely shift your thinking so you can regularly see the love and beauty in everyday life. I really believe that it is not what we do, it is how we do it. I do not really care what decisions people make for their life. Everyone has their own path and own inner knowing. I trust my clients to follow what is true for them. However, I care very much HOW people are making decisions. If it is out of fear, then their life will just be miserable and become more. If they make decisions out of love, then their life will be richer, fulfilling, joyous and a blessing to everyone they meet. What more could we ask for?!
Do you have any new books in the planning or writing stage?
I do not have any new books in the pipeline, although there have been little tingles that maybe another one will need to be written in the future. For now, I want to continue to focus on my humanitarian work, speaking engagements, workshops and my private practice. Then we will see where life leads me. I am very committed to following my intuition and so I want to remain open hearted and flexible as to where my intuition leads me.
What would you like readers to know about you?
I would like my readers to know that I am deeply passionate in doing what I can to assist on a global level. If my readers see an opportunity that will help achieve that, I am very open to collaboration and innovative ideas. I want to be of the most service, as much as possible, in the most effective way as possible. It is why I wrote this book and why I love doing speaking engagements, workshops and working with my clients one-on-one. It is also why I have chosen to be a humanitarian for the last 10 years.
However, being a humanitarian is difficult not only on your body (the living conditions can be quite difficult) but also on your heart. I do not see myself being a humanitarian for the rest of my life. I would not emotionally be able to do it, but I would love to work in other ways to assist others.
I really believe we are all in this together! So, if you have also done a lot of your own work and want to expand the love that is inside you to assist those around you, please let me know. Let’s make miracles happen!
What is the one message you would like your readers to get from reading your book?
The main message I’d want people to know is that when they choose love, even though sometimes you have to let go of everything else to do so, your life becomes way more beautiful and magical than you could ever imagine.. At the core of all of us is infinite perfect love. We do not need to do anything to be that, we just need to let the layers that are covering that part of us fall away. Trust yourself! Know that you have all the answers inside of you! Shine your light so that others are also inspired to shine their light. Together we can embody the magnificence of love until it is the only thing any of us can see in the world.