Sudden Joy
A Journey into Consciousness
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I came into the world just two months and two days before the market crash of 1929, just in time to join my family – and the whole world – in trying to survive the deprivations of The Great Depression. But those of us who lived in the Texas Panhandle were handed an additional challenge, a diabolic kind of “icing on the cake” of trials and tribulations with the great dirt storms that transformed a once-fertile wheat producing farm area into a life-shriveling Dust Bowl. Forty miles south of Amarillo and twelve miles north of Pampa, our small town of White Deer, Texas differed from every other small town in the area only because of the statue of a white deer on a tall pedestal in the middle of the intersection on the two-block-long main street. The sharpest memories I have of the first decade of my life are of our town being buffeted by winds of such ferocity that a grown man couldn’t stay on his feet, and by dirt and sand so black that in order to breathe, people walked around with a handkerchief or dish towel over their face. Often in the middle of the day, children would be loaded onto buses and driven home from school, even if they lived only a block away. The lights on the buses couldn’t penetrate the darkness, which at noon looked like midnight on a moonless night. The worst of the dirt storms stands out in my memory. We called it Black Sunday.
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About the Book
After an extraordinary mystical experience during the birth of her daughter and then the death of her young sister-in-law, Neva Ellen is left wondering about the meaning of life. She slips into a deep depression, but a five-month stay in a state-run hospital for the insane helps her find answers. After leaving, however, she moves from town to town and ends up raising two small children alone. Her wise decision to return to college for three years leads to a career as a teacher and a more settled life. Then, one morning at age forty-nine, she awakes to a new world, a new reality. She feels euphoric, filled with love, a sense of being one with the universe. But six weeks later, alone and not understanding what’s happening, she checks herself into a hospital. A week later, she receives a diagnosis of manic depression and a bottle of pills. Several years later, determined to recover, the author goes off her medication, researches her illness and begins seeing a therapist. What follows is a miraculous spiritual awakening.
About the Author
Neva Ellen was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1929. She survived ten years of constant severe dust storms in what is often referred to as America’s “Dust Bowl.” In her early twenties, she met her future husband on a Dutch freighter on the way to Europe and they moved to Southern California. She raised two children and taught English in elementary and middle schools for nineteen years and English as a second language for twenty years. She lives in Missouri with her son and daughter-in-law.