ILLUMINATION Writers

Interview with Aurora Eliam

Featuring creative writers of ILLUMINATION

Purpose of the Story

In this story, I share with you an interview that I conducted with Aurora Eliam, CMP. I have been following insightful stories of Aurora before she joined ILLUMINATION. It was a privilege for me to have Aurora as a writer for our publication from the first day.

Aurora’s stories are authentic and relate to many of us. Many stories written by Aurora have informative, thought-provoking, inspiring, motivating, and uplifting for me. Several stories of Aurora were distributed on topics such as #psychology and #mental health.

Aurora is a reputable writer on ILLUMINATION., engaging meaningfully with our writers and supporting their content.

Let’s explore the background and the mystery behind Aurora’s successful writing practice!

Tell us a bit about your background, Aurora.

My background, like all of us, is quite diverse. I spent the first 18 years of my life on a commercial farm in North Carolina.

We had 180,000 chickens, 40-something horses, and a gaggle of other animals, so I’m no stranger to hard work. The area where I grew up was quite remote, so I spent much of my youth holed up in the woods, reading voraciously or marveling at the natural world that so supremely influenced my early years and set the stage for the coming decades. I would routinely read everything that I could find at the library, and as a child of neglect and abuse, they filled a well in my soul with the prospect of freedom.

I was the first in my family to attend college, where I started to explore higher education classes that interested me, such as zoology, psychology, biology, and physics. I fell in love with education and I still take 1–2 classes a year, mostly online. A

fter I graduated, I knew that I needed to get away from the place where I was raised in order to grow, reflect, and find joy in my soul again, so I got the old atlas out of the closet, closed my eyes, and it just so happened that my finger landed on Washington, D.C. I found a shared house, packed up my old Camry with my beloved ferret Nico and my small number of possessions, and exactly five days later, I left our family’s farm and set off to create my own destiny.

Since I was now a broke college graduate needing money for survival, I quickly found a job as a waitress at a cocktail bar, although waitressing seven days a week until 2 AM wasn’t sustainable.

As luck would have it, I got an interview as a Media Coordinator at CNN, where I ended up working for 5 years, before moving into communications management for various local businesses and national businesses for 13 additional years. I really had no idea what I wanted to do and felt like I’d missed my calling; working corporate jobs devoid of any real meaning had started to wear on me.

Then when my son was born, motherhood and chronic pain eventually pushed me into a freelance writing career, and I’m so glad that it did. Today I feel light years away from who I was all of those years ago.

Why do you write on Medium?

A year before finding Medium, I decided to radically change my life. I left the corporate world and started taking on writing contracts. I built my own website and just started to write, producing my own content, and in the process discovering that I was a writer.

Through happenstance, I came across Medium in September 2019, started publishing some of the previous articles from my website, and never looked back. It’s been particularly rewarding to write on Medium because it has pushed me to embrace authenticity and continually dive into the world of spirituality and enlightenment to facilitate healing and compassion.

What are your values as a writer?

My top values are honesty, authenticity, compassion, love, and forgiveness. It is important to me that I always write and respond from a place of love and understanding. I also think, “How can my experiences help the reader? What helped me? And how can I support others on this winding road of life?” I always seek to lift others up and be a reliable wellspring of light.

What are the top three books that affected your life?

I found The Bhagavad Gita in the first years of what would become a very long and arduous dark night of the soul. Prior to my discovery of this ancient text, I was experiencing chronic pain while working a stressful full-time job. It was manageable (in a torturous sort of way), until one day when I felt like I was being burnt from the inside out, lost the complete use of my left side, and for a while my right, too.

I couldn’t feed myself, perform any basic tasks, or do anything at all besides read when the pain wasn’t too awful. During these dark days, The Bhagavad Gita continually called to me. And on a good day, I’d journey to the library, check out the ephemeral text, and then read it as I struggled to eat from a plastic container with my non-dominant side. This book helped me through these hard times, comforting me and waking my soul to spirituality, something that I desperately needed at the time.

On the note of spirituality, another top text that has affected my life is A Course in Miracles. A few years ago, I realized on a conscious level that I am a mystic, a healer, and a clairsentient. My soul was reignited, the pilot flame burning brighter than ever before, and this text showed up in my life at the very beginning of my conscious enlightenment phase.

This book changed me when I learned that by accepting the expression of love in our daily lives, whether in the area of relationships, career, or health, love is a potent force and the key to inner peace. By practicing love, we can make our own lives more fulfilling while creating a more peaceful and loving world for our children. I’m still studying this book and have been doing so for three years; I expect that it will take a lifetime to fully learn and apply all of the lessons and learnings gleaned from this masterpiece.

A third book that changed and influenced my life was The Long Walk to Freedom

by Nelson Mandela. I remember staring at the book binding as I read the title, and I instantly knew that this book would have a profound effect on me. I’ve read and then reread this masterpiece at least 10 times, and the copy I have is now in three pieces.

One of the most striking parts of this book (and really, it’s all magnificent) was the beginning that details Mandla’s early life, breathtaking in its imagery and the retelling of the transformation that occurred in him. Something about the classically elegant and engrossing prose left me with the sense that I really knew Mandela, and it gave me a deeper understanding of mankind, political awakening, and finding continual rebirth throughout one’s life.

What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are reading, writing, rehabilitating traumatized animals, inventing new recipes, exploring nature, studying genealogy/history, and doing physical therapy and yoga.

How do you connect with your readers?

I connect with my readers by sharing honestly and authentically who I am and the knowledge that I have accumulated over the course of my experiences. I love to support others, as it brings me great joy to read a piece, share it, and give positive feedback and encouragement. I keep a running list of my favorite writers and readers, and I’ve started blocking out chunks of time where I don’t write but instead focus on connecting with my readers by responding to their comments thoughtfully.

Why did you join ILLUMINATION and how do you find it so far?

Thanks to Dr Mehmet Yildiz, I was invited at the beginning of the publication and found great value in a tribe that supported one another and interacted in truly meaningful ways. I also feel like ILLUMINATION breathed new life into my writing; before joining the publication, I was quite isolated working from home in a remote area, and thanks to ILLUMINATION I have made friends from around the world, expanded my knowledge base, and learned what it means to be part of a supportive online community.

ILLUMINATION has also shifted my focus to really thinking about how my life lessons and experiences can help others and add value to the world. I feel like ILLUMINATION is helping me to discover my niche, or maybe to discover that I don’t necessarily need one. It has truly added momentous value to my life.

Who are the top ten writers you follow on ILLUMINATION?

There are so many wonderfully wise writers on ILLUMINATION, but here are just a few writers that I routinely read: Trista Ainsworth, Lori Brown, Livia Dabs, George J. Ziogas, Paul Myers MBA, Amy Cottreau, Selma, Amy Marley, Michele Thill, Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D., Keno Ogbo and really many more.

What are your top five stories that you want to share with your audience, and why?

Here are five stories that I wrote from the heart. Each was healing for me to write, and as part of my life’s work/mission, I appreciated being able to share all of them on Medium’s platform.

The Definitive Guide to Forgiveness —

I Followed My Rescued Pit Bull Around to Document His Day —

The Essential Art of Choice —

How Complete Immersion in Nature has Healing Power —

How to Shift Your Brain from Anger to Compassion —

What are the success factors for you as a writer on Medium?

For me, success comes from development as a writer, realization, and connection to other like-minded individuals. It’s about positively contributing to the lives of others and staying committed to the current path that I’ve chosen while still being open to new endeavours. I also wanted to make extra money to send my spirited child to programs and camps that will benefit his development, and I’ve been able to do that. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to learn, grow, create, and connect with others on this platform and within ILLUMINATION. So success for me comes down to growing and positively influencing the lives of others.

What do you recommend to the new writers on ILLUMINATION?

Just write, write, write. Post at least a few times a week and don’t get disheartened by slow growth, especially at first. I still have slow periods, but I look at them as a positive thing because this allows me to step back, learn more, and listen to my heart and the hearts of others. I would also say that joining ILLUMINATION, especially as a new writer, is one of the best things that you can do on Medium. Avoid thinking of Medium as an instantaneous path to wealth — it rarely pans out that way. So just keep going, take breaks to rejuvenate yourself, and don’t be afraid to try something new and be a little vulnerable. And also be as kind as you can, because we are all thrown into this gauntlet of life together, and so it’s more beneficial to support others than to tear them down.

What are your future plans as a writer?

With my son starting kindergarten and me doing everything that I can to help him thrive, I’ve been taking future plans slowly. I think this is because things rarely turn out how we envisioned, so it’s important to be adaptable as life changes along with us. I also have three animal rescues right now and plan to add more in the coming years, so a lot of my future plans as a writer (and in general) hang in the delicate balance of promise, passion, and perseverance.

With that being said, my current plans are to continue writing on Medium — averaging three articles a week, at least for now. I also want to update my freelancing website, to take on a few more writing clients, to try my hand at writing books, and to continue to learn, discover, and create as much as I can. Sometimes I feel like I’m still searching for something, but like most things, hindsight is 20/20, and as long as I remain committed and authentic, things will unfold in the fortuitous way that life often does.

Thank you for your valuable time Aurora Eliam, CMP. I enjoy reading your remarkable stories on ILLUMINATION every day. Your writing style and choice of content are appealing and inspirational to me. I appreciate your wonderful support to our publication, writers, and readers.

You can check writer bio for Aurora Eliam, CMP, from her creative pen.

You can find some of Aurora’s curated articles from the attached link.

If you are a writer on ILLUMINATION and would like to be interviewed, please send a request via this link with the title of “Interview Request”.

Other Interviews

You may also check other interviews I conducted with inspiring writers of ILLUMINATION recently. These stories can provide a great opportunity to know more about our creative writers and connect with them.

Timothy Key

Desiree Driesenaar

Holly Jahangiri

Dr John Rose

Ming Qian

P.G. Barnett

Jill Ebstein

Bill Abbate

Terry Mansfield

Ann K Frailey

Woei T

Charles Roast

Julia E Hubbel

Aric D Mayer

Chris Hedges

Paroma Sen

Jeff Hanlon

Besom & Bletherskite

Sherry McGuinn

Sylvia Love Johnson

Maïa Belart

Henery X (long)

Chowa Sekai

conny manero

Sumera Rizwan

Karen Madej 💛

Anita Lesko

Marianna Saver

Suntonu Bhadra

John Cousins

Annelise Lords

Tree Langdon ♾️

Aisha

Kevin Buddaeus

You can find inspiring profiles of ILLUMINATION writers from this story.

You can find inspiring interviews with ILLUMINATION writers from this story.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

About the Author

Thank you for subscribing to my content. I share my health and well-being stories in my publication, Euphoria. If you are new to Medium, you may join by following this link. A small part of your membership fee will not only support my writing but your reading times can support many great writers on this platform.

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In addition to self-improvement, leadership, technology, and health, I also enjoy writing about essential molecules such as alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, lithium orotate, digestive enzymes, magnesium, creatine, choline, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, CoQ10, NADH, TMG, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, and other nutrients for health and fitness.