Description

By Antonia Urduja Roberts

ISBN: 978-1-78382-104-4
Published: 2014
Pages: 96
Key Themes: poetry, love, family, spirituality

Description

My most awaited readers may discover a wealth of longings, nostalgia, spirituality and love, love manifested in various stages of feelings, emotions and holiness. These are expressed in the poems. In fact, some of the poems are so deep in significance that the reader would be able to emphatize with the unstableness of the mind of the poet. But, there are a loadful of mystery hidden within the poems, short stories and short autobiographies.

A lot of my poems were written when I was active in our churchs activities, such as Saturday classes for the children in preparation for their first Holy Communion, jumble sales, churchs Slver Circle Club. Those were the times when I was suffering from post natal depression and fragmented personality. The short fictions depict some individualistic humour and the short autobiographies have some words of wisdom within them.

I hope the reader would learn something and enjoy reading this book, Lightning Pierced My Heart. And that they would emerge with a smile as they close this book.

About the Author

18th September 1944 was the birthdate of Antonia Urduja Talion. She was born in Calolbon, Catanduanes, an island in the northeast of the Philippines. Her father was a lawyer and a politician and her mother was a teacher. She was the eldest of eight brothers and sisters.

She was born with love and raised with the fullness of love. But, her mother was somewhat jealous of her because she was the beloved of her father and of her grandparents. Therefore, as she grew up, there was a love hate relationship between her and her mother which stressed out and confused her mind and heart. She became a restless child.

She received her schoolings in the Colegio de Sta. Isabel, now a university run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, in Naga City, Philippines. She also studied two years college in the University of Sto. Tomas, Manila, Philippines, before she left the Philippines at the age of 17 years in July 1963 to train as a nurse in the nursing school of the Krankenhaus Dritten Orden, Nymphenburg, Munich, then West Germany, run by the Third Order Francescan Friars and Nuns. This became her root home in Europe. She shared a room in the nurses home with German student nurses who spoke no English and imbibed the German mentality, therefore, her teenage life was spent amongst German teenage girls. Her soul and spirit were still restless, she was never satisfied. Now, she wanted to study Medicine in the Ludwig Maximillians
University in Munich. However, she failed the entrance examination which blew her self confidence out.

From then on, her restlessness grew even more intense as she yearned for that love from her family back in the Philippines. Coupled with that, her secret love, a medical student and her German tutor died an untimely death. Urduja was devastated. She expressed her nostalgia and longings in her poems and written stories. Her favourite rendezvous with the spirits of the realm who sustained her love and sanity was in the Schloss Nymphenburg, which belonged to King Ludwig 11 of Bavaria at one time. This castle was a good ten minutes walk from the German hospital. In April 1967, she had a nervous breakdown and was confined for two weeks in the Haar Nerven Klinik in a village outside Munich. Schizo Affective Psychosis was the diagnosis of her illness. Her psychiatrist advised her guardian for her to return to the Philippines for further treatment and rehabilitation. But, her restlessness grew even much more intense as she got better and then she left the Philippines again for the second time to go to London to train as a nurse. She refused to take her prescribed nervous tablets and had a second nervous breakdown. She was confined for nine months in the psychiatric ward of the then London Hospital in Whitechapel Road which is now the Royal University London Hospital.

When she was discharged from hospital, she worked as a night auditor in the accounts department of the Sheraton Heathrow Hotel, London and married Alan Roberts, an Englishman seven years her senior in March 1974. Antonia Urduja was a Catholic and Alan was a Spiritualist. The differences in their religious doctrines confused Antonias mind. In November 1976, Elsie came into existence and Antonia suffered from a post natal depression and when Sev, a son was born in November 1981, Antonias depression was controlled to a minimum. Her psychiatrist prescribed her some anti depressants. Caring for her children and watching them grew up as well as her passion for writing poems and stories enabled her to express the love, heat and contradictions of her feelings, emotions and spirituality. Her present religious beliefs developed as a blend of Catholicism, Spiritualism and reverence and closeness to nature inherited from her pagan royal ancestors of long, long ago.