Loving Healing Press author Nancy Wesson has won the 2022 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Winner for her book I Miss the Rain in Africa.
Initiated in 1992, the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award has been presented annually to a Peace Corps Volunteer or staff member, past or present, for the best depiction of life in the Peace Corps – be it daily life, project assignment, travel, host country nationals, other Volunteers, or readjustment. Nancy Wesson became the latest winner of the prize for her memoir I Miss the Rain in Africa published in May 2021.
Instead of retiring at the age of 64, Nancy Wesson became a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda from 2011 to 2013. When she returned home, she embarked on a new phase of revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles. I Miss the Rain in Africa commemorates that transformational phase in life from volunteering to serve in Uganda to discovering and absorbing the changes waiting for her back home.
Looking back at the writing process involved, Wesson calls this book special for reliving her adventure that brought everything back in hyperfocus, and begged examination of what she’d learned. Although the experience itself was unique, the transformation it set in motion is available to any reader ready for their own exploration of self. At the same time, it was a challenging experience in more than one way.
“I ended up trimming the manuscript by half and it made it a better book,” Wesson remembers revising her work. “But the greatest challenge began when I reached what I thought would be the end and the muse took over, insisting we do a deep dive into the changes that resulted from returning to a life that no longer fit.”
Nancy Wesson’s experience in Africa still contributes to her life as she relishes spending a lot of time with her grandson.
“But I continue to seek ways to share the PC experience and the gratitude it instilled with a larger audience,” she tells as she looks ahead in the future of her creative journey. She is currently writing her next book using her long metaphysical journey to offer others practical ways to use their own intuition.
Visit http://www.nancywesson.com/ to learn more about Nancy Wesson and her work.
