About Nancy Chadwick

NANCY CHADWICK is an essayist, memoirist, and fiction writer. She got her first job at Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago. After a decade there, and later, another decade in corporate banking, she quit and began to write full time, finding inspiration from her years living in Chicago and in San Francisco. Nancy is the author of Under the Birch Tree: A Memoir of Discovering Connections and Finding Home, The Wisdom of the Willow, a novel, and has also written essays that have appeared in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Meaningful Conflicts – The Art of Friction, Writer’s Digest, blogs by the Chicago Writers Association Write City, and Brevity.

Sensing

in the moment, senses tapped, breathing deep and defined, discharging the creative flow a whirlwind blow of air pushes out the furnace through portals in my walls replacing a chill about me with dry warmth. the roof cracks and splinters from the cooling of heated air aloft in the attic. the circa 1920 wooden school clock propped on the foyer [...]

2013-12-18T19:58:11+00:00December 18, 2013|Categories: spiritual writing, Writing|Tags: , |

From “Under the Birch Tree”

The blueprints tell me the once new house would never be as it was in 1964. The thin white lines drafted on blueprint are no longer virginal. The floors have been released of their coverings and footprints are disintegrated into the now thin air. The furniture has been relocated out of the house to new rooms and inhabitants are sitting [...]

2013-11-20T17:38:10+00:00November 20, 2013|Categories: book writing, memoir, writers, Writing|Tags: , , , , |

Reflections @ 51

Here I am sitting in the back room of my modest 1800 square foot (that includes the screened-in porch) home with  my two beagles, “beagle bookends,” I affectionately call them. I notice how quiet the air is, cool with some dryness autumn evolves, seeping through the ambience of my otherwise cozy and comfy ranch house. I find the stillness of [...]

2013-11-04T18:49:01+00:00November 4, 2013|Categories: book writing, memoir|Tags: , , , |

Are we home?

What is home? Is home necessarily a physical place? Is home a state of being? Does it have emotions? Is it linear or does it witness change? Does home move like a river, characterized by its ebb and flow? Is it ever elusive? When we think of the answer to a commonly asked question, “So, where’s home?” we automatically spout [...]

2013-10-15T20:47:06+00:00October 15, 2013|Categories: book writing, home, life lessons, memoir|Tags: , , , |

The Bathroom

The Carlisle house. The upstairs bathroom, the kid’s bathroom, was at the top of the stairs and in the middle of the hall. A bathtub with showering capabilities and a toilet were provided on the opposite side of the double sinks and counter. I experienced life’s measurements in the bathroom. The muddy blue double sinks were separated by a light [...]

Remembering Summer

As the hours of daylight slowly lessen and the heat of sun directly overhead shifts to a dim lower angle, I acknowledge the evolving seasons as summer evolves into fall. As a schoolkid on summer vacation, time was my companion and I used it to live in those moments. My summer memories on Carlisle were made outdoors where I had [...]

2013-09-18T21:00:55+00:00September 18, 2013|Categories: book writing, memoir, Writing|Tags: , , , |

Writing as Spiritual Practice

I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a pink hardcover [...]

2013-09-04T20:24:31+00:00September 4, 2013|Categories: book writing, life lessons, memoir, spiritual writing, Writing|Tags: , , , |

In the beginning

My tree attraction wasn’t for just any tree. It was a particular birch tree I had grown to know in my early years – developing a kinship with its youth – planted on the same plot as I. Its delicate arms played in uncomplicated innocence, inviting me to circle around it. The poet Robert Frost wrote, “Birches” where, “I like [...]

2013-09-03T16:09:24+00:00September 3, 2013|Categories: book writing, memoir, spiritual writing|Tags: , , , , |

Gone “unliked”

It has been a little disconcerting to learn my "like" button went unused for my previous post. It's the first post I've written since I started blogging where I didn't get at least 1 "like." What was wrong with it, I wonder. I re-read it and quite frankly, I didn't like it either. Why? I looked back to those posts where [...]

2013-08-28T19:33:49+00:00August 28, 2013|Categories: memoir|
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