Nancy Wait

Nancy Wait was born in Chicago and grew up in New York City. She studied acting at the High School of Performing Arts and Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh. In 1969 she went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and had a career in England during the 1970s, appearing in film, television and theater, under the name Nancie Wait. When she had a spiritual awakening in 1976, she decided it was time to return home.

 Back in New York she studied at the Art Students League and began a second career as a free-lance artist doing architectural renderings and portraits. She also painted from her imagination, and it was after her series of drowned people, and a second, even more powerful spiritual awakening in 1987, that she began to think of writing about her life. She went back to school to study writing, earning a B.A. from The New School and going on to Goddard College for an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction. However, it would be many more years before Nancy would complete her memoir, as new “clues” kept surfacing.

Nancy has taught creative writing and art. She has worked for the Center for Peace Through Culture and was one of the founders of a group of artists called Brooklyn Visions. Since June, 2009, Nancy has been hosting a weekly Blog Talk Radio show on Internet Radio called “Art and Ascension” where she interviews writers, artists and musicians. She reads from her own work as well as that of others. She believes that art can take us to places in the psyche that are inaccessible in any other way, and that we grow and expand in consciousness when we can express our deepest selves through art. For it is there we dispel the shadows and bring through the light of understanding to those hidden areas. Her slogan is, “Betrayal is sacred when the heart can encompass the whole,” because she has found through personal experience that there is always a reason why things happen if we look deep enough. Sometimes we may have to go back to a previous life, or even a previous death, to discover the meaning of our lives. The seeking is what is important. The quest that beckoned Nancy, how to keep the heart open even when you’ve been betrayed, has allowed her to keep trusting.

Nancy discovered the answer to her own mystery. She hopes that others will be inspired by her story, and perhaps begin to look at their own lives a bit differently. For it is not so much what happens to us, as how we deal with it. And if we can keep our hearts open, we are already half way there.

She is currently working on a second memoir called, My Journey Through Art to Ascension.