Marriage is:
A Writing Partnership

There's a lot to be said about our marriage. We've been together now for 17 years. Larry King was our matchmaker. I was on his show to introduce my first book, Full Circle. Charles Whitfield flipped on his TV and there I was. We had met 5 years earlier at a conference in DC. He realized as he watched me with Larry King, that he was coming up to Farmington, Connecticut where I lived the next weekend to speak at a conference. Charlie has a best seller that had come out two years earlier. It's called Healing the Child Within. It's still selling well in English and in 10 other languages.

That year we dated, his second book was released and he wrote his third book. When we moved in together, I wrote my second book as he wrote his forth. At this point we have 14 published books. The one two years ago, The Power of Humility: Choosing peace over conflict in relationships, we did together. Both our names are on that one.

Actually, our ideas and words are all over each other's books. We read each others' "stuff" and ask each other questions that spur us on to expand what we are writing. And I type our manuscripts. Charlie edits them. Over the years (if it's not a technical paper) we have moved toward sounding alike. Our goal is to write without jargon and clearly. Simple is elegant and we strive for that, although The Power of Humility tested us repeatedly.


The Power of Humility, or what we affectionately refer to it as "PoH" was a shared writing experience with another couple. They brought us the idea in a one-page map that changed our relationship for the better -- and took us five years to write. During that five years, Charlie wrote two books quoting over 350 scientific studies about depression and mental illness. I wrote The Natural Soul during that time because it was overflowing from PoH. PoH is really a map of transcendence using our relationships as our spiritual path.

Sometimes I spend all night at my computer. Sometimes Charlie is sitting in his chair, writing by hand at odd hours too. We watch the sun come up. We chuckle about the muse keeping weird hours. We finally have two pens that have flashlights in them so we can write in bed without waking the other if it is just a few words to jog our memory in the morning. We help each other during these "Writing Zone" times to stay present for the simple things in life; gardening, household chores, soccer (for him) and a gym (for me) plus independent films keep us remembering how important balance is. We also meditate together daily.

How did this happen? I don't know. We didn't start writing books until our 40s. And, this is a second marriage that happened in our 50s. I do know that what underlies this life we share together is gratitude. We've both got something to say, and being together enhances our writing and our writing enhances our relationship because -- just for starters -- it's impossible to be grateful and not be happy!

This and other articles by Barbara Harris Whitfield may also be found at writersnewsweekly.com

Read About My Book,
The Natural Soul
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About Barbara Harris Whitfield

Barbara H. Whitfield, R.T., C.M.T., is the author of many published articles and five books:

Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond (Pocket Books, Simon and Schuster New York, 1990);

Spiritual Awakenings: Insights of the Near-Death Experience and Other Doorways to Our Soul (Health Communications, Inc. Deerfield Beach, FL 1995),

Final Passage: Sharing the Journey as This Life Ends (Health Communications, Inc. Deerfield Beach, FL 1998), co-author with Charles Whitfield and Jyoti and
Russell Park of

The Power of Humility: Choosing Peace over Conflict in Relationships (Health Communications, Inc. Deerfield Beach, FL 2006) and,

The Natural Soul (Muse House Press. Atlanta, GA 2010).

Barbara is a thanatologist. (thanatology is the study of death and dying.) She is also a workshop presenter, Near-Death Experiencer and respiratory and massage therapist. She was on the faculty of Rutgers University's Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies for 12 years. Barbara was research assistant to psychiatry professor Bruce Greyson, the director of research for the International Association for Near-Death Studies (I.A.N.D.S.) at the University of Connecticut Medical School, studying the Spiritual, psychological, physical and energetic after-effects of the Near-Death Experience.

She is past president and a member of the board of the Kundalini Research Network and has sat on the executive board of the I.A.N.D.S. She is a consulting editor and contributor for the Journal of Near-Death Studies. She is on the faculty of The Center for Sacred Studies where she teaches a course with Charles Whitfield called Unity in Practice. Barbara was a key subject in Kenneth Ring's groundbreaking book on the Near-Death Experience, Heading Toward Omega. He writes about her again in his latest book Lessons From the Light.

Barbara has been a guest on major television talk shows, including Larry King Live, The Today Show, Man Alive, Donahue, Unsolved Mysteries, PM Magazine, Good Morning America, Oprah, Joan Rivers, Sonya Freeman, and CNN Medical News. Her story and her research have appeared in documentaries in the US, Canada, Japan, France, Belgium and Italy and in magazines such as Redbook, McCalls, Woman's World, McClean's, Utne Reader, Common Boundary, Psychology Today and many others. She presented talks on the Near-Death Experience to a group in the Capital in Washington, D.C. and also the United Nations in New York.

Barbara lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, author and physician Charles Whitfield, MD. They share a private practice, helping adults that were repeatedly abused and traumatized as children.