Meet Anne Nayer

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anne Nayer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Anne, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?

As a child I always delighted in picking out the perfect present – the blue mesh stocking for my mom who hid her horror and thanked me, the mocha cakes for my father and all the art projects and cards I drew for friends and family and still do. I loved watching people be as delighted as I was. I also saw how both of my parents took time to help other people without expectation of reward. My father, a physician, saw patients who paid him in artwork and embossed steak knife sets and my mother revelled in helping nursing students find their way and would talk to us about the fellow students in her French sewing class making wedding dresses as if they were family. She had photos of babies of random friends and kept in touch with her friends and family, including me and my sister Louise. Growing up in New York City, the bus we took to school passed by the Bowery and I’d watch the homeless men and women warming themselves by the oil can fires. I dreamt of growing up to do something to help them like my maternal grandparents had done at the Beacon Light Mission, a place that served food to the ‘needy’ in Harlem in the 1920’s and I did end up running food kitchens and emergency shelters in Manhattan in the mid 70’s. While my family was upper middle class, the values I grew up with were service and art and those have been the themes and the threads woven throughout my life – helping others as a psychotherapist and making art of many kinds, painting, music, puppetry and most recently writing. Money, perhaps because I grew up with enough, has never been the driving force in my life and I know that its an energy and a loop. the more I give the more I receive.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I have been a psychotherapist for the majority of my adult life and I still see clients two days a week. This has and continues to be immensely satisfying. I have reduced the time I spend seeing clients in order to focus on writing and have completed a memoire in vignettes written over the past 4 years. I am at the point of getting ready to send it to agents and small presses and picture it being published in 2025/2026. It’s working title is “I Would Follow Myself Anywhere”. I also lead writing workshops here in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands where I have lived for nearly 40 years and am excited about next writing projects which will be writing short stories. I have been published in Mudflat Shorts and Mudflat Poets and in Vine Leaves press anthology of short pieces. I look forward to seeing my work published in journals and to seeing my book(s) in print. Currently I share my writing on Facebook, I also write a weekly radio spot for NPR called Postcard from Paradise. It’s a 5 minute spot of musings on the intersection of the mundane and the sacred as I see it presenting in my life – inspirational, funny storytelling with a message woven through it. I have been doing this for 10 years. I love running into people who recognize my voice and tell me that they tune in every week. My radio and coaching brand name is Coach Paradise because I do actually live in paradise with a view from my deck out to sea with palm trees swaying in the breeze.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. A love of and a curiosity about people/human nature.
2. A love of play – creativity/art making/puppetry and the ability to have fun.
3. Writing.

Advice:
1. Get out there and listen. Ask questions. Be curious and suspend judgement. Ask what you can do to help. Investigate yourself and be curious about your own reactions to things. Maybe see a therapist.
2. Tap into the child in yourself and let her/him out to play. Remember what brings you joy and find a way to incorporate it into you life on a regular basis even if its simple and everyday – cooking, dancing around the house, making art, sports, nature etc..
3. Write – just do it. Find a class. Join a writing group. Keep a journal. Listen to people’s stories.
tell stories.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. It is hard to choose one book out of a life time of reading but this one had a big impact on me and I continue to share it with friends and with all of my clients. The ‘Untethered Soul’ walks you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions and helped me to begin to free myself from the tyranny of my mind. I never really understood how my mind held me hostage. I believed my thoughts. This book, along with other books and many teachers helped me realize that my thoughts had their origin in old default programs, mostly negative – the internalized voices of parents, teachers and society that did not have my best interests at heart. Realizing this has helped me understand that I am not my thoughts. I can thank my mind for ‘sharing’ and ask that it ‘take a nap’ so that I can continue on in the direction I really want to go. Its a work in progress but just realizing this truth and becoming an ‘observer’ of my thoughts has liberated me from so many negative, limiting beliefs and allowed me to begin reprograming my mind with happier, more productive, creative, positive thoughts and, since the book is also about meditation, I have learned how to take a vacation from my mind and sit in peace and stillness and reset everything.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: annenayer1
• Facebook: Anne Nayer

Image Credits

All the photographs were taken by me or friends who do not need photo credit.