Chapter One

 

 

1.  Can you describe the most influential snapshots from your childhood?  Did your family suffer any tragedies or ongoing trauma when you were growing up?  If so, how did it affect you and your family as a system?  If not, how would you describe your growing-up years?   

 

2.  Where are you in the birth order?  How has that position affected your personality, your

     sense of self, how other relate to you?  How does it differ from your siblings?  If you are an

     only child, how has that affected your identity?

 

3.  Which generation are you a part of – Baby Boomer, Generation X, Millennial? Gen Z?  How

     has being born and raised in that era affected your identity and worldview?

 

4.  What was your religious or spiritual upbringing during your growing-up years?  Did you go

     to church/synagogue/mosque/other?  Were you raised agnostic or atheist?  How did that

     experience affect your worldview?  How has it evolved?

 

5.  What was the very best thing about your childhood?  What are you most grateful for from

     those formative years?  What have you had to discard along the way?

 

                             Chapter Two

 

1.   Can you identify with living in a state of denial – either about a relationship that on some

     level you knew was not authentic or in some other realm of your life (an addiction, for

     example)?  What are ways that you have compromised yourself because you were too afraid

     to fully own the truth?

 

2.  Because each one of us carries our own unique set of DNA and our own unique set of

     circumstances during our childhoods, each of us will have a unique programmed self.  I call

     mine Maggie.  That is the part of me that absorbed all that was going on in my family when

     I was growing up.  She learned to be good and still and quiet, to conform to what was

     expected of her.  My Maggie-self is a rule-follower.  She does not think on her own.  She is

     not adventurous.  She does lives out of fear, guilt and shame.  In Dream terms, Maggie is

     always under the authority of what I call my Hungry Ghosts – the Bookkeeper who keeps a

     constant tally of Maggie’s behavior, the Preacher who constantly demands that she be

     perfect, and the Protector who forever scares her into playing it safe.  Your fated self may

     be very different from mine.  Can you identify the characteristics of your Maggie-self?  The

     characteristics of your inner childhood authorities?  What are they?  What would you name

     them?  Can you see how and why you took on those characteristics?  Can you see how

     these aspects of the self always work in tandem?  In what ways do you still live out of that

     fated identity?

 

3.  Can you see how I carried some of the assumptions that I adopted as truth when I was a

     child into my adulthood?  Into my marriage?  If you go up high and look down on the

     timeline of your own life, can you see the direct links between your childhood assumptions

     to the dynamic that you currently have with your spouse or have had in past relationships?

 

4.  What are some examples from your own life when you consciously moved out of your

     Foyer and into your Studio – when you consciously move out of your fate and into your

     destiny like I did when I refused to have sex with Josh on our anniversary?  In other

     words, can you point to a moment in your life when you acted solely on your own, outside

     the bounds of your childhood programming?  If so, what prompted that kind of

     independent thinking and action?

 

 

                              Chapter Three

 

1.  Have you ever acted out of pure ego-gratification, when you deliberately broke a rule or “colored outside the lines” like I did at that fateful New Year’s Eve party?  What part of you was satisfied through that act of self-indulgence or defiance?  How did you feel later?

 

2.  Can you identify with both my Maggie-self and my Nancy-self during this stage in my life?

     How would you describe each of them?  How would you characterize the differences

     between your Maggie-self and your Nancy-self as they have played out  in your life?  Which

     one do you identify with most of the time?  How have those two parts of yourself reacted in

     response to your Canvas Rupture?

 

3   The intensity and the shock of my first Rupture tie directly back to some of the

     assumptions I adopted in my childhood, both from my religious upbringing and my

     family’s dedication to keeping the family business quiet.  If you have experienced a

     Rupture in your own life, one that shredded your whole sense of self, can you tied the

     intensity of it back to the influences or experiences from your formative years?  If you

     have not yet experienced a Rupture, what is your experience of reading about mine?

 

4.)  In the last chapter, I described the first moment that I realized I could no longer keep

     denying the validity of my own experience – that was when I refused to make love on my

     anniversary.  In this chapter, when Frank kept asking me, “Nancy, what do you want?”  I

     experienced another layer of denial being peeled away.  Have you ever experienced your

     own denial about something getting  peeled off in layers?  What was that like for you?

 

 

                             Chapter Four

 

1.  This chapter is about the differences in our fate and destiny.  Can you describe the differences between the two?  Every Rupture offers the choice between continuing to live out of our fates, or abandoning them to step into our destinies.  In reflecting on your own life, can you see which choices you made between these two potential paths with each of your Ruptures?  Where did those choices lead you?

 

2.  After my first major Rupture, I was so undone that I had to ask my whole family to come

     and stay with me until I could find a new footing in my life.  Have you ever had to ask for

     some serious help from the people close to you?  What was that experience like for you?

 

3.)  In your mind, how is choosing to step through a Rupture in the Canvas a way to

     participate in your own evolution?

 

4.)  I approached the Greek Orthodox monastery in Blanco with openness and curiosity.  Have

     you ever moved into a space of pure openness, where you let of all your normal  

     assumptions about life and how it’s supposed to work?  What prompted that kind of

     abandon in your life and where did it lead you?

 

5.  What role does prayer have in your life, or not?  Have you ever surprised yourself with

     prayer?  Have you ever had a prayer answered?

 

 

                             Chapter Five

 

1. What actions in your past bring you the greatest sense of shame?  How do you relate to the part of you who behaved in those ways now?

 

2.)  When I “acted out” at that New Year’s Eve party, a part of me was rebelling against a strict,

     religious upbringing.  I was rebelling against an outer authority.  The first stage toward

     healing started to sink in when I realized that my act of rebellion didn’t free me from

     anything. It tied me in knots.  Can you relate to a time when you began to realize that you,

     and not something or someone outside of yourself, were the cause of your own suffering?

 

3.)  The title of this chapter is, The Treasure.  During this time in my life, I discovered that my

     greatest treasure of all was my connection to a Loving Presence.  Do you know what your

     greatest treasure is?  How did you come to recognize it?

 

4.  Do you know what I mean about the differences between acting out of guilt and acting from

     a place of inner truth?  How do you relate to those differences?

 

5.)  In this chapter, I have explained that an act of self-indulgence was a necessary step in my

     personal evolution.  Ironically, that self-serving act turned out to be the opening to a whole

     new level of awareness for me.  Through it, I discovered that I had an inner truth meter.

     Have you experienced making a choice that you thought would take you in one direction,

     but which took you someplace entirely differently, that took you to an experience with a

     hidden gift in it?  What does this tell you, if anything about the nature of life?

 

 

                             Chapter Six

 

1. Have you ever had to start completely over in your life, to claim a whole new identity?  Was it exciting?  Terrifying?  Both?  How did you face that?

 

2.  When we dare to follow The Great Artist through the Rupture in the Canvas we never know

     what life will be like on the other side.  What we do know is that it will be qualitatively

     different from anything we have known before.  Think about the major Ruptures in your

     own life.  Can you identify some of the qualitative differences between your life before and

     after your first Rupture?  How did your life change as a result of it, energetically,

     practically, and spiritually? Consider who or what the authority figures were before and

     after, or look at what you valued before a Rupture and how that value system changed after

     it.

 

3.  Life on the Back Side of the Canvas is all about living more out of one’s experience of the

     truth rather than out of an image of how the self or one’s life should look.  If you have lived

     through at least one major Rupture, in which specific ways did it change your relationship

     to truth?

 

4.  Once I started praying my Nancy-prayer, I began to look for outward signs and clues from

     my Guides.  I interpreted the mama bird as a message from the Source of Loving Wisdom

     that my new life with my kids was built on solid ground, we were all okay, and I was not

     alone.  Do you resonate with this sort of relationship with whatever you call sacred, or does

     this feel foreign to you?

 

                            Chapter Seven

 

1. I make a distinction in this chapter between three sources of information about the Divine:  1.) formal religion, 2.) what my mind tells me is true, and 3.) an experience of something as Sacred.  Do you identify with those three ways of understanding/relating to Something bigger than we are?  Be specific.

 

2.  Have you ever experienced a powerful meditation or vision of some sort?  If so, did it/they

     have any lasting effects on you?  Or do you feel uncomfortable with this type of

     experience?

 

3.  What was your reaction to my vision of Heaven?  Can you connect with the idea of each of

     us playing our part for the rest?  Why or why not?

 

4.  What was your reaction about reading about my description of following white stones in the

     moonlight to lead me through the wilderness on the Back Side of the Canvas?  Do you

     identify with this idea?  If so, what white stones have you discovered on the Back Side of

     the Canvas? If not, how would you describe your experience of life on the Back Side of the

     Canvas?  Yours may be very different from mine.

 

 

                                Chapter Eight

 

1.  My first Rupture slashed through some very specific personal assumptions about my life, relating to my self-worth and my ideas about love and marriage, while my second Rupture focused on aspects of my larger worldview.  If you have experienced more than one Rupture, did they seem to address different aspects of your life or stay within the same theme?

 

2.  It seems that opening up to all possibilities, even ones that our rational minds don’t

     understand, can be an important portal to new insight.  What happens to you viscerally

     when you viscerally when you think about laying aside all assumptions, both programmed

     and rational, and moving into a pure, open, creative space?

 

3.)  What do you think about the ideas of reincarnation and life lessons?  How do your beliefs

     and experiences shape, affirm, or challenge your worldview?  Have any of your

     Ruptures challenged those beliefs?  Have they challenged others that are particular to your

     worldview?  What are they?

 

 

 

                             Chapter Nine

 

 

1. Have you ever experienced a disease or physical ailment as a message-carrier?  If so, what message did it bring?  How did you discover the message inside?  Do you think it affected your healing at all?

 

2.)  Do you relate to the idea that the planet Earth is a schoolroom?  How does that affect your

     reactions and choices as you go about your life?

 

3.)  In this chapter, I was surprised by how my past and current selves played their parts for

     each other.  What do you think about having different aspects of the self, in other

     dimensions of time and space, aiding in each other’s expansion?

 

4.)  I experienced moving from a casual belief in reincarnation to a lived experience.  Have

     you ever moved from believing in some aspect or reality to actually experiencing it?

 

5.)  This second Rupture brought to me the experience of a part of the self, my Soul-self, that

     exists through a series of lifetimes.  I recognized this aspect of the self as the one who

     retains all life lessons throughout the whole series of individual lifetimes.  Does this

     resonate with your worldview?  Why or why not?

 

 

 

                              Chapter Ten

 

1.  Have you ever had to make a decision that had a great effect on someone else – and then rethought it over and over again?

 

2.  When my dad moved into his decline, my mother and sisters and I adjusted to it moment by

     moment.  Has your family or group of friends ever had to work together on behalf of

     another member?  Have you ever had to shoulder a crisis by yourself?

 

3.)  Once I got a hold of myself, stepped out of my Maggie-self and into my decision-making

     Nancy-self, I moved into that space of deep humility and asked for help.  This situation with

     my dad was beyond anything that I could handle or understand on my own.  Can you

     remember a time when you completely surrendered your drive to change something

     and/or the rightness of your position?

 

4.)  When I finally did recognize that I wasn’t going to be able to make sense of this situation

     with my dad, I prayed my Nancy-prayer—"I know nothing.  Show me.”  I instantly got a

     response that blew my mind and opened my heart.  That message from the Voice stays

     with me to this day.  I have had to apply it to so many other difficult situations.  What kind

     of reaction did you have to reading about what the Voice said to me?  Have you experienced

     anything similar?

 

 

                            Chapter Eleven

 

1.  Have you ever struggled to identify and then ask for exactly what you want?  If so, what made it so difficult?  What have you learned about yourself from that struggle?

 

2.)  As I work my way through my Ruptures, I am relying more and more on my Nancy-self to

     be an active choice-maker.  In this situation, my Nancy-self had to quiet my Maggie’s fears

     to ask my dad if he truly saw me, separate from my identity as one of his daughters.  In

     what ways has your Nancy-self acted boldly on your behalf?  In what ways have you

     reverted to your Maggie-self and succumbed to the voices of your Hungry Ghosts?  (No

     shame here.  We all go back and forth.  That’s an inevitable part of the process.) If the parts

     of your programmed self are very different from mine, how have you experienced them

     and their relationship to each other on the Back Side of the Canvas?

 

3.)  When my father’s dementia limited the normal channels of communication with him, I

     started experimenting with heart-to-heart messages.  Have you ever communicated with

     someone this way?  What has been your experience with it?

 

4.)  This chapter exposes how a part of me was still stuck in childhood assumptions about

     myself, which are based on a deep childhood wound.  Can you identify one of your deep

     childhood wounds?  How have you worked with so far?  How does it still affect your life

     today?

 

 

                            Chapter Twelve

 

1.  This chapter exposes how falling back into our old childhood assumptions about ourselves is our default position.  In other words, we will automatically live out of those assumptions unless we consciously choose to be led out of them.  Can you identify with that frustrating process of going back and forth between your Maggie-self and your Soul-self?  What kind of situations trigger that kind of dynamic for you?

 

2. )  When my dad was surprised to see me instead of Robyn, I got a knot in my stomach.  His

     desire for Robyn triggered memories of all five of us sitting at the dinner table, with

     Daddy’s gaze fixed on Robyn—and my feeling ignored.  Can you recall a recent experience

     when you felt an old familiar stab to the stomach?  What were the circumstances?  Could

     you attach a memory to it?

 

3.)  At the end of this chapter, I moved into my therapist’s position to describe my

     understanding of the paradoxical role a re-triggered wound can play in our lives.  We most

     often identify with the pain of a revisited wound, but paradoxically, it’s playing its part in

     the healing, too.  Can you see this happening with your childhood wounds in your life?

 

4.)  Once again, prayer was a vital part of my Memorial Day experience.  Reflect once more on

     the role that prayer plays in your life.  Has it evolved as a result of any of your Ruptures?

 

 

                           Chapter Thirteen

 

1. Have you had a personal experience with a loved one going through a slow decline?  Who was it and what was that like for you?

 

2.)  A few days before Daddy died, I had a prophetic dream of a horse-drawn cart carrying a

     coffin.  Have you ever had a prophetic dream?  If so, what was its message?  Or do you have

     a hard time believing in such a thing?

 

3.)  When my family gathered around my father as he was dying, I silently sent him heart

     messages like I had done the whole time he was in the nursing home.  But I also silently

     encouraged him to go ahead and let go, telling him that I had done it before and that he

     would like it.  How do you respond to this kind of experiment with energetic

     communication?  Have you ever had such an experience?  What brought it about and did it

     leave any lasting effects on your life?

 

4.)  I experimented one more time with sending Daddy a request, again heart-to-heart, right

     before I went to bed the night he was dying.  This is another example of my Nancy-self

     willingly stepping past the boundary of the Canvas on her own, without The Great Artist

     having to rip through it.  Have you experienced anything similar during or just after a

     Rupture?  If you are in the middle of a Rupture right now, can you think of ways that your

     rational mind might be hindering you?

 

5.)  Have you ever experienced a visitation from someone who has passed?  What was

     experience like for you?  How did it affect you at the time and how has it affected your

     worldview?

 

 

                          Chapter Fourteen

 

1. Go up high and look down on the timeline of your life.  What do you see from that vantage point?  Can you see a thread running through it?  How would you describe the theme or set of themes running through that thread?

 

2.)  Have you ever been fully forgiven by someone else?  How did that come about?  How did it

     feel at the time?  What did you learn from it?

 

3.)  Have you ever fully forgiven someone?  How did that come about?  Was it from trying

     really, really hard or choosing to be the bigger person?  Maybe deciding what they did

     wasn’t that bad after all – or did it evolve into your awareness over time like it did in mine?

 

4.  Is there something from your past that still feels unfinished?  Unhealed?  Unforgiven?  Is

     there a metaphorical box in your garage?  What does it feel like you need to do to feel at

     peace with it?

 

 

                             Chapter Fifteen

 

1. Do you believe in love at first sight?  In Soulmates?  What is your experience with falling in love?

 

 2.  One of the mysteries of the Universe is the phenomenon of coincidence or  

     synchronicity.  In my life, randomly running into Dave Bair occurred far more times than

     could be predicted by statistics.  How do you explain this?  Have you experienced anything

     similar?

 

3.  Another mystery was my continuing to hear an inner Voice, who responded to my repeated

     question about who my Soulmate might be, with the repeated answer, “Dave Bair.”  I

     repeatedly dismissed it, thinking I knew better than it did.  What is your experience with

     getting an intuitive hit on something?  Did you ever act on one?  Did you ever override one

     like I did?

 

4.  Were you surprised to see my Maggie-self take over after all I had experienced on the Back

     Side of the Canvas?  Have you ever witnessed yourself doing the same?  What does this tell

     you about the process of psychological/spiritual evolution?

​​

​

                          Chapter Sixteen

 

1. Do you think of yourself as intuitive?  Why or why not?

 

2.  Donna’s intuitive reading exposes the realm of knowing that speaks in images rather than

     in words, like the dreams and visions I have shared with you throughout this book.  Have

     you had any personal experience with symbolic intuition?  If so, describe.

 

3.  In this chapter I shared my continued struggle with the tension between honoring a rule or

     living out of my personal experience of the truth. What types of life situations trigger your

     old, fear-based patterns?

 

4.  When my Nancy-self gingerly decided to move into that space of openness by telling the

     psychic group what I was struggling with, new and unpredictable options opened up for

     me.  Ate there moments in your life when you consciously decided to let go of a set of

     assumptions that your had previously believed was sacrosanct?  If so, what was your

     experience following that decision?

 

 

                         Chapter Seventeen

 

1. Ruptures by definition expose certain beliefs or assumptions that we have labeled as true, which are in fact, not.  If you have experienced a Rupture in your own life, can you name the assumptions or beliefs that it tore apart?  If you have had more than one Rupture in our life, did they carry similar themes or were they all different from each other?

2. I have noticed in my own life and in the lives of my clients that the intensity of our suffering is equal to the intensity of our resistance to the truth.  An example of this was the painstakingly slow start to my relationship with Dave.  Can you see ways this has been true in your own life?  What truths have you resisted, and why?

 

3.  How do your particular Hungry Ghosts still hold power over you in your life?  Do you

     struggle with how much power you give them or has that struggle calmed down over time?

     What sorts of experiences re-trigger them?

 

4.  It is important to note, that before every one of my Ruptures, my Nancy-self risked moving

     out of the Foyer and into the Studio.  How has your Nancy-self helped to make way for your

     own Rupture(s) to occur?

 

 

                           Chapter Eighteen

 

1. What do you think about Bob’s suggestion that Dave and I take a two-month sabbatical to pray, meditate and journal about our relationship?  Have you ever had to take some time away from a relationship or project to get to charity around it, to listen to guidance?

 

2.  When I was caught in the confusion and angst about my relationship with Dave, I thought

     the choice I had to make was between abiding by a rule or violating it, between risking

     hurting other people or following my heart.  What was the real choice about?  What does

     this tell you about levels of awareness or consciousness?

 

3.  In his classic, Meditations, (1634, first English translation), Marcus Arelius wrote, “The

     obstacle is the way.”  Can you see how that has certainly been true in my life?  Can you see

     how it has been true in yours?

 

4.  The whole struggle with Dave exposes again how my identification with my Maggie-self

     causes me to shrink away from what could bring me more life.  The fear of breaking a rule

     or acting on my own behalf, especially with the risk of hurting someone else, are two ways

     I have leaked Life-Force.  Can you identify some patterns from your childhood that can still

     cause you to deaden yourself, leave yourself, or lose your power?

 

5.  Conversely, can you point to some times in your life when you consciously chose to act out

     of your own experience of truth?  What were the effects of that choice?

 

 

                         Chapter Nineteen

 

If you have had enough distance from your life-shattering events – only after you have exhausted your need to kick and scream,  only after you have allowed all the feelings to be expressed and held with compassion – think back on all that you have gone through and write down what you’ve discovered along the way.

 

1.  Start by making a list of all the images on your Canvas that were taken away from you.  What got ripped away or shredded into nothingness?  Then note what you found on the other side of that devastation.  What new awareness, perspective or questions arose for you on the Back Side of the Canvas?  Here’s a clue:  Awareness happens spontaneously when what is blocking it is removed.  When our picture of reality is ripped open, the truth emerges of itself.  (Although, this can certainly take some time.)

 

2.  Are you aware of your current over-riding life-lesson?  If so, can you see how each of your

     Ruptures has reinforced it?  If not stay curious about it.

 

If you aren’t in a position to do this just yet, no worries, but keep this exercise handy for a time when you think you are.  Remember Rilke’s advice to the young poet:  Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart…. At present, you need to live the question.  Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.