First, a few of my personal details:
Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston; 1954 Baby boomer; native West Texan then resident of Idaho, California, North Dakota and, now, Oregon; white skin; woman; grew up upper middle class and now wealthy; married to my high school sweetheart, Howard, with two grown children.
There are, of course, lots of stories behind each one of those details. Some are my stories. Some are other’s assumptions. Some are mystery.
As a youngster my biggest concern was how to be a good little girl—definitely not prejudice or sexism or class discrimination.
Until curiosity catapulted me on an unexpected pilgrimage and changed the course of my life. Unsettled and exhilarated, I discovered myself as a resident in a global community that included ancestors, diverse contemporaries and future generations.
I came from a family lineage of writers and have always explored life through pen and paper. In 2005 I began to write a book. The process of writing itself became its own transformational journey. Seven years later my book was born—Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.
Big Topics at Midnight, the book and the conversation, are for people ready to resign from
- a knee-jerk compulsion to be good girls/boys
- deep slumber to the realities and richness of the diverse world
- fears that have drawn too tight a circumference around their lives.
After the book, I wrote a website. But I wanted to have a place to continue to look wide and dive deep into the big topics—race, class, gender, spirituality and our connection to the earth—and to have conversations with others like you. And Big Topics Blog was born.
Let the conversation and transformation begin.