I grew up on a dairy farm in the hills above the town of Henley-on-Thames in the South of England. As the youngest much-loved child of a large, rambunctious family I believe I was somewhat indulged. We all helped our parents out but it was with my Father on the farm that was the most fun and a great place to cut loose a little. At an early age I could shoot cans dead center with an air rifle, round up cows on my pony and help with the haymaking.
Our father was something of a visionary and he handed on to all of us his love of the natural world and his concern about over-industrialization and the future of farming.
I shared his love of the natural world. To me it was a magical playground. I was born with the notion that there was something mysterious just beyond the periphery of my vision that I longed to grasp. Trying to make contact with I knew not what, as a very young child, I had imaginary friends who lived in either end of London’s Tower Bridge. Later on I would spend hours searching for clues in the family’s collection of leather-bound Fairy Tales, classic novels and the King James’ Bible.
I was a tomboy with a taste for fashion and an introvert with extrovert tendencies.
I held two distinct ambitions: To become a Veterinarian and indulge my passion for animals or be a backing singer at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. But fate had other plans for me!
I met my first husband at University in Wales. We were married eight years later at the kind of country wedding where even your elderly aunts dance on the tables to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. During this time I ran my own country clothing business called “Muddy Boots” and my husband was a rising star in the world of advertising copy writing. As he was creating a series of advertisements for Barclay Card Visa casting Rowan Atkinson as a spoof James Bond, I left the countryside to join him in London. By a strange quirk of fate I landed a job at The Ridley Scott Film Company in the days of “Thelma and Louise” although at the London office the focus was mainly on shooting commercials. The campaign for Barclay Card was an over-night sensation and set my husband on the road to an enormously successful career. The same, however, could not be said of our marriage, which took a nosedive and never recovered, although a deep friendship remains to this day.
I met my second husband while he was visiting England from Tokyo where he had been a Foreign Correspondent. Contracted to write a book about the Japanese, he was making his way back to New York to work on it. We spent some time in Paris together and then I joined him in New York in 1994. I divided my time between helping him with his work (which included writing a piece for National Geographic Magazine about The Hudson Valley) and working with horses in Millbrook, NY.
It was during this time that I met the British Fashion Designer, Annie Walwyn-Jones. We began riding horses together and became friends. When she asked me to come and work with her, I jumped at the chance. We worked together for ten years and had a fabulous time touring many places, selling her private label collection, in America as well as some major cities in Europe.
My second marriage ended after seven years and I spent the next seven years trying to work out what had gone so wrong with my life. A bad riding accident proved to be a turning point in my life. It slowed me down sufficiently to do some serious soul searching and I came to the conclusion things had to change. I went back to school at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York and graduated as a Holistic Health Coach.
It was at this time that I met my current life partner, Dennis Watlington, among the organic carrots, in an upscale grocery store in Salisbury, CT. I quickly discovered that Dennis also was a writer. An Emmy Award winner and filmmaker, he had just finished a book tour for his highly acclaimed memoir, “Chasing America.” When he handed me his business card, I was amazed to see that his family name was Watlington. Our farm had been three miles from the small market town of Watlington in Oxfordshire, and yet I had never met another person with that name.
Dennis had grown up in the projects of East Harlem and had survived poverty, drugs, incarceration and gang membership. Winning a scholarship to the elite Connecticut prep school, Hotchkiss made him a fascinating subject for best-selling author Gail Sheehy who dedicated a chapter to his unlikely story in her ground breaking book, “Passages.” While Dennis was at Hotchkiss, his girlfriend (later his first wife) was the lead singer of The Voices of East Harlem and performed with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Wilson Pickett and Ike and Tina Turner. My dream of spending time at The Apollo was a step nearer.
While Dennis was living on the streets of Harlem in his early teens and shooting heroin on rooftops, I was playing field hockey, working hard at school and saving my pocket money for Motown records. Our worlds were poles apart and yet by the time we collided in the produce aisle we had much in common. Dennis was a complete Anglophile, and a passionate Beatles fan, crediting John Lennon’s influence for turning him into a Warrior for Peace. His life dedicated to integration, diversity and civil rights was a source of endless inspiration to me while my mind, body, spirit work was equally fascinating to him.
Early on in our relationship, I invited him to join a session at The Horse Institute in Ancramdale, NY, where I had become a Facilitator after becoming certified in Equine Assisted Learning. Deathly afraid of horses when he arrived, he ended the day as a complete convert to the process of receiving feedback about communication skills from our equine facility.
Dennis and I have always supported each others work and in 2011 I produced his off-Broadway play in Woodbourne Correctional Facility using inmates as cast and crew. “Bullpen” is a play about prison, and we were staging it in prison with prisoners. It was extraordinary to experience art and life coming together in such a way that it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. People in the audience who had seen the original play with Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington and Giancarlo Esposito said that the Woodbourne version was every bit as good.
Six weeks after this triumph, Dennis suffered multiple strokes that left him virtually paralyzed and barely able to speak. We have spent the last three years working hard on his recovery. Although he is still in a rehabilitation center, he continues to improve all the time and is a source of inspiration to everyone in his orbit.
Exploring Inner Elegance has been inspired by this turn of events in our lives. Life rarely goes as planned, but one thing I am sure of is that when we humans end up in difficult situations, that is a time when we often exhibit the kind, caring and compassionate side of ourselves. As I journey through hospitals, doctors’ offices and nursing homes, there is much wisdom to be found and a great deal of elegance exists in the most unlikely places.
I hope to be able to share some of these experiences with you as you share yours with mine. Together we can make the world a more Elegant place.