Uncategorized | Helen Healy

Tracking Down Borges

“Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning,” wrote Borges; “I feel it to be as eternal as air” And so it was when I visited in June 2015 with my friend Rosalyn, staying in a fabulous art deco apartment in Retiro. Buenos Aires is one of Latin America’s greatest literary cities with more booksellers per capita than any other…

Writing Away

A tribute to the joy of going somewhere far away to write and little else. I’ve been writing my book, Kiss Underwater, for over a year with varied interruptions including my consultancy business, travel, family, friends, life etcetera and was chomping at the bit to sit down and see where it was all going. October and early November were a…

Sweet Surrender

Below is a transcript of a talk I delivered at the Living Well - Considerations for living an ethical, thoughtful and happy life forum at the Mildura Brewery, on Wednesday 16 September 2015. Speakers were Rowena Keenan on Home Birthing, Sam Burke on Yoga, Dr Hieu Pham on Mindfulness, Deborah Bogenhuber on Slow Food and Helen Healy on Changing your…

Art and Complex Pain

(Feature artwork above: 100 days.... by Nic Plowman) HOW IT ALL STARTED In Autumn 2015, Pain Management nurse, Bertilla Campbell sat in a Lower Murray Medicare Local (LMML) staff meeting discussing the possibility of a project with clients suffering from Complex Pain. The aims of the project were to address the isolating nature of complex pain by encouraging sufferers to engage in…

The Stolen Child

A niggling feeling descended over me halfway through my walk. As though something was wrong and no matter how much I argued against it, by listing everything that was right, it sat heavily upon me. Being unsettled was annoying as my Sunday walk was an important start to my week. I usually welcomed the distraction of my screaming leg muscles…

Kiss Underwater – a novel update #2

Kiss Underwater a synopsis. Beginning in a harbour side cafe in Malta in 2012 the main character, a weathered man in his late forties, is gathering himself for a special meal to mark a change in attitude towards a shocking accidental death in Australian in the late 1990's. In the opening scene he symbolically raises a glass of Australian wine to acknowledge a ghost almost laid to…

On the Road to Cobar

In March I flew with Ramair to Cobar to meet with the team I would be coaching to plan and present the Mt Grenfell ten year anniversary of Handback to the traditional owners - the Ngiyampaa people. I developed an event management plan with a section detailing every job that would need to be done in the months prior to…

Sharing the Love

This writing every day and growing a story is all new to me. I've thought of it for years, daydreamed of a story, grown up characters in my imagination and dabbled when time allowed - which was not often. But now every day I write - mostly at the Art Vault. And I love it there. The bare white walls,…

Tell me all you know about guns

I have written the bare bones of my book started in a seaside Maltese cafe in April after noticing a weathered forty something year old ordering Australian wine each day. It has grown legs and walked into the ideas I had for my 'great novel'. I'm still going back and forward making subtle and not so subtle changes so it…

In praise of a wandering mind

A quote by the wonderful writer, Ann Patchett, comes to mind regularly these past five months as I struggle with the book inside me. The book I have thought about, toyed with for years. "I can't write the book that I want to write but I can write the book that I can write." The book I want to write…