A quick note about the title of this series, From the Front Porch:

Here in the South, we love our front porches. They are where we get to know our neighbors and take a load off with our friends. Ideally, I would invite Missy here to my house, we’d sit with a glass of iced tea, and I’d interview her while a cool breeze moved through the oaks, accompanied by the sound of two rocking chairs squeaking on the floorboards. Instead, I’ll ask you to use your imaginations. I hope you enjoy the breeze!

Our very first guest for From the Front Porch: Creativity Interviews is Melissa Bradley-Ball. Missy and I were friends in elementary school (!), and we also went to the same high school together. I didn’t find out until decades later when we reconnected (where would we be without facebook?) that we had both started out as musicians in college and then followed similar career paths as psychotherapists. While I eventually stopped being a psychotherapist to become a writer, Missy kept going and has been doing some amazing things in her field. She is a woman I greatly admire, and I think you’ll see why in this interview.

 

Please welcome Missy Bradley-Ball.

Tell us a little about yourself. Perhaps what do you do for a living and where you live?

My name is Missy Bradley-Ball and I live in the Home of the Space and Rocket Center aka Huntsville, AL but have a private practice in Brentwood, TN. I am a psychotherapist, resilience coach and clinical trainer.

When are you the most creative? (Who are you with? Where are you? What are you doing?)

I am most creative when in busy airports or journeying between cities. There is something about the external noise and the hustle and bustle that pulls my mind inward enough to start chewing on metaphors and analogies of life. I love how everything around us can be a mirror and a guide in our lives. Creativity peaks when surrounded by strangers because if I was sitting next to a close friend, I usually want to talk and not write or create. If my close friend is a creative type, I enjoy the brainstorming of ideas. The right amount of solitude is necessary to fuel my creativity.

When are you the least creative? (Who are you with? Where are you? What are you doing?)

When I have had time off the road for several weeks, taking time with my family, my creative voice within begins to dim. I find this odd, but I am very concrete when enjoying the simple rhythms of laughter, love and savoring of time. Although I have tried to find ways to kickstart creativity in those quiet, rhythms, contentment seems to make me mentally and creatively flabby. I try not to analyze or philosophize with my closest of loved ones and the creative voice seems to need grist, a challenge — like canceled flights or something that forces me to adapt.

What inspires you and why does it inspire you?

I am inspired by the lives of people who have faced challenges and come out owning their empowerment and their authentic voice. It is the heroic journey of life…the Phoenix rising from the ashes. It inspires me because it is when we are most actively alive. It is when we have to choose the strong voice within: “I choose my yes journey.” “I choose to live.” “I choose to keep going.” This choice time is a choice of life and death…in the metaphorical sense and, perhaps, the tangible sense.

Share a favorite quote:

I have two favorite quotes. One by Henri Nouwen:

“I was forced into the basement of my soul to look at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it, not death…but life.”

Another is by Wayne Muller:

“Within the sorrow there is grace. When we come close to the things that break us down, we also touch the things which break us open and it is in that breaking open we uncover our true nature.”

What creative project are you working on now or do you hope to work on?

A workbook for people going through the later parts of healing after trauma based on the heroic journey. I would like to make it a weekend experiential and incorporating art, music, science and narrative. I love the idea of a piece of jewelry…like the new “Bravelets.” Something that people design a combination of elements with their Sacred Word or Symbol that represents their “Yes.”

Share a photo of something you find beautiful:

Grandbaby Gemma Elizabeth who laughs most of the time.

Name one of more of your favorite books. What do you love about them? If they changed your life in any way tell us why.

Wayne Muller:

“How, Then, Shall We Live?”

In Muller’s book, he tells the story of a tribe somewhere in the world that when a couple decide to have a baby, the wife leaves the village and goes into the wilderness to listen to the song of the baby yet to be conceived. As she hears the song, she learns all aspects of it and returns to her mate. As they make love she teaches the song of the child. When the child is conceived, they teach everyone in the village the song of the child and they all sing the child into the community, day in and day out until the day the child is ready to enter the community. As the child is born, the tribe sings the song of the child as s/he is birthed. During every celebration and every pain, the community sings the song of the child to help him/her to remember their true self. All new members of the tribe that are born learn everyone’s song. On the day that that child — now an old person perhaps –dies, the community sings the song of that person as they leave the tribe physically…but their song remains.

 

This is one of my favorite books because everything in it reminds me of my life. In many ways I learned my grandparent’s song…I never met them but I learned their story. I learned the song of my parents — one parent’s “song” was more cohesive than the other. My father taught me through stories…thru the stories of real people and their pain. He may have given me the lyrics of my own song, but I have to find my own music.

 

Another book:

Wayne Muller: “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood”

Although I had a pocket of specific pain in childhood, Muller looks at trauma as something that deepens a spiritual opportunity. Trauma survivors often ask questions about life that the great spiritual teachers of history have asked.

 

Any Laurie Natoro book because she makes me laugh out loud. On a particularly frustrating lecture tour with a very obnoxious passenger sitting in front of me, Laurie Natoro saved me from garroting him during the flight because she was so funny.

 

Any Susan Gabriel book (I promise I am not sucking up here) because the characters come alive and the lessons and transformations of the characters are powerful and the stories hold the subtleties of the internal struggles we all have.

 

Name one or more of your favorite films and tell us what you love about it/them.

Freedom Writers which is based on the true story of Erin Gruwell, a child of an aging and now jaded civil rights activist. Gruwell becomes a first year teacher in a school of challenged teens who had experienced poverty, racism of all types, trauma, abandonment and violence. At first she had difficulty reaching them and then she had them tell their own stories through journaling. Each one had a heroic story and choices to make. A beautiful story about resilience and the impact of a few who believe and a community is transformed.

 

The other is a recent film, Wild, with Reese Witherspoon. Also a true story about Cheryl Strayed who experienced trauma and loss, got lost in her own life choices and decided to jump out of the life she was living, determined to walk 1,100+ miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. After having seen the movie and read the book, the movie is by far the best because the visual metaphors of life. Cheryl Strayed survived the wilderness wanderings, the emotional desert time and was visited with animals which had symbolic meaning in Native American culture. A movie that needs to be savored and studied in order to get the richness.

 

And a final movie, Finding Nemo. Although it is a children’s animated movie about a family of clown fish, it is a movie about PTSD and transformation. A story of love, facing our greatest fears and also finding new life in spite of the losses we may have experienced. I am inspired every time I see it as I find where I am, personally, in the story and then I ride the wave of the transformation.

 

Name one or more of your favorite songs or pieces of music and tell us what you love about it/them.

 

Hands down, my favorite song, actually my life’s theme song is Gabriel’s Oboe the theme song from the movie The Mission. If there was a soundtrack that captured the essence of the heart breaking open from deep pain and also breaking open to receive great joy and love, this would be the song. The beautiful melody, haunting and inviting sound of the oboe, gives my heart space a visceral sense of opening.

 

Name one or more of your favorite pieces of art (painting, sculpture) and tell us what you love about it/them.

 

The sculpting called Freedom by Zenos Frudakis in Philadelphia, PA. It symbolizes transformation and freedom.

What were you like as a child?

• I have always been somewhat of a contradiction. I was told that I was curious and cautious, adventurous and introverted, a ham and people pleaser that spent a lot of time afraid. Had it not been for my father’s teachings of heroic journey, I would have spent my entire life hiding in pantries and cabinets to be safe from the world. My moments of great courage as well as being afraid of my own shadow symbolizes and instructs the work I love so much today. As a child I teetered between wanting to be a librarian, a spy and a teacher. Now I am an international clinical trainer, a psychotherapist with a lot of filled up bookshelves of beloved books.

 

What is your favorite place to be in nature? (In general, and also one or more specific places.)

There is a rock that I call Missy’s Rock (I think everyone claims it for themselves) at the St. Mary’s Retreat Center near Sewanee, TN which looks out for many many miles high atop a mountain. I can sit down there and within a few moments, be able to find courage, peace, serenity and perspective. A magical rock — winter, spring, summer or fall — a truly a sacred space that transforms whatever is meandering around in my heart, mind and soul.

 

Tell us about something you’re proud of having created, participated in, etc. (not your offspring, please! 😉

Having taught a group about hope, resilience, transformation and the heroic journey and to have someone contact me years later to find the positive impact of that training. Nothing brings more of a sense of purpose.

What are you grateful for? (Today or in general.)

I am truly grateful for having been modeled resilience by so many and that my father taught me through stories. I am grateful I have eyes to see the lessons in everything around me…if I become mindful. I am also grateful that in the last four years, I became a mother, maiden and crone — all at the same time. I have the love of my life in a wonderfully kind and funny man, a profession that is my life calling, an amazingly soulful grandbaby and a step-daughter that I love and friends that are my chosen siblings.

 

From James Lipton, host of Inside the Actor’s Studio 

• What is your favorite word?  Meow.
• What is your least favorite word? Hopeless
• What sound or noise do you love?  Nature. The wind making its way through the trees. Ocean waves as they find their way to shore. Water winding its way around the rocks in a stream.
• What sound or noise do you hate? People disrespecting one another, loudly, particularly on television “news” shows.
• What is your favorite curse word? Fuck. Nothing feels as cathartic when life is frustrating.

 

From JL’s Uncle Jessie Meme

A song/band/type of music you’d risk wreck & injury to turn off when it comes on the radio? 

Rap and heavy-metal. If I had the lyrics without the music, I might like them. It feels too chaotic.

A favorite show on television? 

Blacklist or Homeland

If you could have anything put on a t-shirt what would it be?

Everything is a lesson if we are a good student.

A favorite meal?

Feta cheese, hummus, celery, black olives, Greek chicken and rice

A talent you wish you had? 

Ability to move my hips musically. I took ballet for years…didn’t use that movement.

What’s on your nightstand? 

Coconut lotion, inhaler, highlighter (of course), a book and a cpap.

What’s something about you that would surprise us?

I went out to the Titanic Dive Site when the Discovery Channel pulled up many of the artifacts and four elderly survivors and also historians were on board.

In conclusion:

Please add here a 3-4 sentence biography in 3rd person:

Missy Bradley-Ball is a student of life. Adventurous and curious to the core, she has learned that there are guides in people and nature, if we choose to see. She finds analogies and metaphors sport, teaching her life calling and is passionate about the heroic journey.

Check out Missy here:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TheOmnibusCenter?ref=hl

The Omnibus Center – http://theomnibuscenter.org

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P.S. Please take a moment to welcome Missy to this blog in the comments section and let her know what you appreciated about this interview.  It takes guts to talk about our creative lives, and Missy was fearless about it. Be sure and check out her links, too. If you’re feeling too shy to comment, consider sharing this post with your friends on your favorite social media platform. Thanks! xo

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Susan Gabriel is the acclaimed southern author of The Secret Sense of Wildflower (named a Best Book of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews) and other southern novels, including Temple Secrets, Grace, Grits and Ghosts: Southern Short Stories and others. She lives in the mountains of North Carolina.