Nurse
adds to her repertoire with new thriller
by Kristine Berey
First-time author Nancy Grant didn’t choose nursing as a career. Nursing
chose her. With her mother and sister in the profession, it seemed only natural
that she should follow. Although her original impulse was to go into Fine Arts,
that dream was quickly dismissed as impractical, put aside and forgotten.
For years, Grant alleviated the fear and suffering of her patients at the Montreal
General Hospital. As head nurse in the burn unit, she was the one who held patients’
hands after the doctors were gone, and helped them get through a horrifying
time in their lives. Many times they recovered, sometimes they didn’t.
“I’ve seen people die,” Grant said.
Although she knew her job was invaluable and she made a major difference in
people’s lives, Grant felt something was wrong, that somehow she wasn’t
complete. “There was always something missing, but I didn’t know
what,” Grant said.
In her mid-40s, Grant went through a difficult time. “ My life lost meaning
in a very profound way,” she said. “I thought it was menopause.
Here I was, doing valuable work, yet I didn’t feel valuable.”
It was only in retrospect that Grant realized what was wrong. Although she gave
more than her best at work, she had neglected an essential part of herself.
“Looking back, I see it as a re-birth, but at the time it felt more like
being a scrambled egg,” Grant kidded. “My sensitivity wasn’t
acknowledged,” she said.
At 45 she suffered a severe burnout, serious enough to warrant leaving work.
She likens it to being anorexic. “You lose total perspective on what you’re
doing as a person and where life should be going. I had to sit down and figure
out what I was doing.”
In the quiet period that followed, Grant re-evaluated all her priorities. “Unless
you know about your values, you can’t make the choices you have to make,”
she said. By luck, or what Jungians would call synchronicity, she chanced upon
a book called The Artist’s Way, a soft-cover book that had been languishing
on her bookshelf for years.
“The author suggested writing three pages a day, whether you felt like
it or not,” Grant said. For her, that was too intimidating, so she began
with three lines a day. Slowly, her fast-paced thriller, Race Without Rules,
due to appear this month, began to take shape, line by line.
Characters were born, and gradually took on a life of their own. Soon, Grant
couldn’t wait to find out what her characters would be up to each day.
“I didn’t want to take classes and be told how to write,”
Grant said. “I didn’t want to put pressure on my creativity —
it was like an unborn child.”
A sequel is already underway.
Grant still works as a nurse, now at a CLSC. She works with school-aged children
on issues including depression. “Kids demonstrate depression very differently
from adults — there needs to be more money for research into children’s
mental health,” Grant said.
Liberating her creative side has changed Grant’s attitude, allowing her
to remain in a nurturing profession. “I don’t feel it’s all
me, anymore,” she explained. “I see my colleagues as tremendous
resources. Once you feel you’re not the be-all and end-all, you can be
there as a support, and inject hope into a situation. People have their own
journey, but you can facilitate, with your energy, information, and—creativity.”
Race Without Rules is available at www. llumina.com, www.amazon.com, and selected
book-stores.
For information, contact natgrant@sympatico.ca
