Owen Signs and Discusses Her ‘Way Back to Eden,’ Sept. 11

Author Zo Owen notes that the concept of paradise has been with people since the earliest days, and that every religion mentions it. ‘We were thrown out of paradise and we have to find it again,’ says Owen, explaining the title of her book of poems, ‘Finding Our Way Back to Eden.’ She will read from her book on September 11, 7:30 p.m., at Village Books on Swarthmore. ‘Paradise is the home we long for, but we need to know that it has never left us,’ says the 14-year Pacific Palisades resident, who also serves as a spiritual counselor. One of the poems, ‘The Black Queen,’ has become a favorite among the women who have read it. The poem goes, ‘Psyche visited last night. She says the Black Queen would have her due./This is not the loving mother or compassionate friend./ This is the unforgiving warrior who takes no prisoners,/who remembers transgressions and omissions.’ Owen explains that, like most women, she sees herself as a good mother and person. But there is another side, the part of her personality that can be demanding and won’t back down; an asset she considers necessary to grow and survive.   ’If we go for wholeness, we must look at all aspects of a person,’ Owen says, explaining that there is power to owning your dark side and that, on occasion, it is good to know you can call on it’especially when you’re going eyeball-to-eyeball with a nasty person. ‘Our humanity is as blessed as our spirituality,’ Owen adds. Another poem, ‘The Cocktail Party,’ is based on an interaction between a husband and wife that Owen observed. She writes, ‘The shame of it, lay/not in his withholding from her,/small kindnesses and courtesies,/nor in his thinly veiled attacks on/her opinions in the company of others,/no, anger, would have at least been honest.’ Owen thought about the couple, and the poem’s conclusion was based on her insight: ‘The shame lay in his not being courageous/enough to own, he envied her ability to feel.’ Her work has won praise from Louisa Calioco, the director of Poets Piazza, who notes: ‘Owen writes with depth, compassion and patience.’   The mother of three grown children, Owen says her poems reflect her own journey, which began as a registered nurse and medical administrator for Cond’ Nast wellness programs in Manhattan.   Owen, a divorce’ at the time, was sent to a 10-day conference in Arizona. While waiting in the Phoenix airport to fly to Prescott, before driving to the final destination at Pauldin, she met Palisades resident James Owen, a personal injury attorney, who was going to the same conference. They struck up a conversation, which continued on the plane, the car ride and then at the seminars.   It was the start of a year-long courtship between Los Angeles and New York, at the end of which they decided to live in same town in order for their relationship to continue. They decided that it was easier for Owen to relocate. ‘I gave up my job, put my furniture in storage, and left my mom, daughter and granddaughter on the East Coast,’ Owen says. A year later, she married Jim in Kona, on the big island of Hawaii.   After moving to the Palisades, Owen received her master’s degree at the University of Santa Monica, which offers degrees in soul-centered education. She began work as a spiritual counselor.   ’I don’t do [typical] therapy,’ she says. ‘I work with people who have started to look at self-realization, and ordinarily it is not a long period of interaction between us. We talk, look at where the person is at and then the person moves on.’ Owen has noticed that whenever she works with someone, she also finds out something about herself, which brings us back to her poetry. She has written more than 500 poems and, after the first line drops in, she says that something happens. ‘I know it’s an overused expression, that I was born to do something, but that’s how it feels,’ Owen says. ‘When I write, I lose time, I look up and hours are gone. I feel that this has allowed me to know myself.’ The author is already working on another book of poems titled ‘Blessings of an Ordinary Life.’