"Deadlines and Lifelines--My Healing Voyage" by Raven Chiong
– The medical words rain down, soaking me to the core.
The tides are turning, I can tell.
Raven Chiong earned her Master of Arts in Exercise and Sport Science from the University of Florida. A lifelong student, life coach, and educator, she qualified for the first-ever Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984 and paid it forward with her 19-year cross country coaching career. After her competitive running and coaching career, she ran her pen across the pages of this life. Raven was the author of Ode to the Still, Small Voice—A Memoir of Listening. She was a proud mother to four rescue dogs.
Author’s Talk
written by Carroll Taylor
Raven Chiong
On the back cover of her book, Ode to the Still, Small Voice: A Memoir of Listening, Raven Chiong wrote: “In 2020, Raven vowed to excavate her poems from reams of shoeboxes imprisoned in dark closets and release them into the light in service to the world. The poems you hold in your hand are offerings of the heart transcribed in times of both unrelenting sorrow and elusive joy.”
By late 2022, Raven completed her manuscript of prose and poetry and found a publisher. Sadly, she developed a persistent cough. In January 2023, her doctor gave her devastating news: She had Stage IV lung cancer and six months to live.
In the weeks ahead, Raven worried that she would never live to see her book published. She continued to work online at home rescuing animals with Best Friends Animal Society. Through energy healers, acupuncture, and a strict, healthy diet, she added four more months to her prognosis.
She wrote poetry and prose. She hiked in her beloved North Carolina mountains and kayaked in Lake Chatuge, even if only in intervals as her energy permitted.
In April 2023, her book was published. Friends in the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West held a book-signing celebration.
Raven believed her friends and her beloved rescue dogs kept her going, even when she was exhausted. The honeybee was her mascot, and she established a monthly poetry group, Bee City Poets, in Hayesville, NC. She attended every meeting until November when she became too weak to attend and entered hospice care.
So much more could be written about her remarkable life and her relentless positivity. She was a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, North Carolina Poetry Society, Utah State Poetry Society, and Florida State Poetry Association. Her poems and stories were published in countless anthologies. In the Utah State Poetry Society, she founded a group, Willow Wind Poets. She was an annual presenter at the Kanab Writers’ Conference on “Writing as a Spiritual Practice” and led Plein Air writing and hiking groups in the high desert.
She invited everyone along on her health journey with her unflinching, heart-felt narrative and photographs posted on her CaringBridge page. She showed her friends and family how to live, and at the end of her life, she showed them how to die with courage and dignity. Her credo was “No Separation.”
On the evening of December 11, 2023, Raven passed away peacefully in her sleep. Her rescue dog Buddy was by her side. Raven was wearing her special sweatshirt that read, “Published Author: Est’d 2023.”
This story is read for the author by Terri Kirby Erickson
Terri Kirby Erickson
“It was my honor to read Raven’s story.” - TKE
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry, including her latest book, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53). Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA, The Poetry Foundation, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and numerous other literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and magazines. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, Nautilus Silver Book Award, and many others. Ms. Erickson has dealt with a plethora of health challenges in her own life, including Crohn’s disease and for the past few years, symptoms of Parkinsonism, which was the inspiration for her poem, “Magician, with Parkinson’s,” the recent winner of the “Board of Regents Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize” for the best poem published by Annals in 2023. She lives in North Carolina with her husband of 32 years and has a grown daughter.
