Author Shares Power of Awe and Wonder
Part One
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
As an award-winning author, Val Walker is inspired by the prevalence of awe and wonder in everyday life. She magnifies these phenomena by encouraging others to celebrate exceptional experiences that stand outside of time.
Walker is celebrating the forthcoming release of her latest book, Healing Through Wonder: How Awe Restores Us After Trauma and Loss.
Recently, VOICES caught up with Walker to discuss the essence of her latest book, specific instances of awe and wonder, the eight wonders of life, and more.
The Neuroscience of Now
“One of the most basic things that we find when we have a sudden moment of awe,” Walker begins, “Is that an unexpected experience lifts us out of our rumination, our spinning around in our own heads. The most beneficial aspect of awe and wonder is that, even if it is a fleeting little encounter with something that takes your breath away, you can be transported outside of yourself and into the present moment.”
“What neuroscience shows, and my book delves into, is that we spend a lot of time in what is known as the default mode network of our brains – where we are always chewing on things and turning things over and over. The network is there to help us survive, to help us prepare for things, to help us think things through.”
“A moment of awe and wonder can deactivate the default mode network,” Walker continues,” And snap us out of our pragmatic thinking patterns for a few seconds. This allows us to reset, so that when we go back to whatever we were hung up on before, we tend to see it in a different light. One of the most healing things for grievers as well as trauma survivors is to get ourselves out of rumination.”
In her book, Walker profiles numerous people from various backgrounds – each with a story of awe and wonder which had a profound effect on their life.
The Awe of Nature
“One of the people featured in my book is Robyn Houston-Bean, founder of The Sun Will Rise,” Walker explains. “When she was at her son Nick’s grave site, there was a dragonfly that kept buzzing around and getting involved and it simply would not leave her alone. She took a moment to acknowledge the oddity of the moment and that was when she had a breakthrough experience. She was overcome with a sense of connection to more than her own grief and more than the tragedy at hand.”
“In her awe and wonder moment, she thought that perhaps the dragonfly was representative of Nick’s spirit and he was communicating with her through the dragonfly.”
“There are all sorts of spiritual ways one can look at a situation like this,” Walker says. “I don’t preach about what the specific implications may be. I simply encourage the teller of the story to embrace the magical moment. Robyn came out of the experience with the inspiration to share the story with other people. It helped connect her with others while lifting her out of the isolated bubble of her own thoughts and grief. She was able to take on a perception of a much wider world and find the courage to keep going.”
The Awe of Synchronicity
“Another person I write about is named Carol Bowers,” Walker continues. “Her awe and wonder story is about an experience she had during a particularly difficult time in her life. She was in early recovery and on her way to a gathering where she would have most likely relapsed. A song came on the radio that sang, ‘Hold on for one more day.’ That moment snapped her out of that trajectory and made her think, ‘Woah, wait a minute. I don’t have to do this.’”
“She felt like it was a miraculous, spiritually driven message to her. She felt like somebody above was looking out for her. She told the story to me quite beautifully and in my book, I do my darndest to be in the moment with her and take the reader along for the ride.”
The Awe of Kindness
Walker shares another story about a young man named Ricky who was dealing with the early signs of schizophrenia coupled with profound grief. “He was using substances after his best friend had just taken his own life,” Walker says. “Nobody, including him, knew about his onset of schizophrenia. His family didn’t recognize his struggles as such; everyone just thought he was very upset. He was directed by the voices he was hallucinating to get in his car in the middle of the night to drive 200 miles away to visit his deceased friend’s grave site and then go to his friend’s parents’ house.
“Somewhere along the way, he was in a terrible accident with an 18-wheeler semi-truck. As a Black man in the middle of Texas, Ricky was sure that he was going to be arrested and thrown into a mental institution. Out of the mist and smoke of the accident, he saw a woman walking toward him. She approached him with incredible gentleness and genuine concern. She said, ‘Are you OK? How can I help you? I will call you an ambulance.’”
“For a moment, he thought she was an angel. He couldn’t believe that a blonde-haired white woman had come to offer him assistance. He described the look on her face as one of concern and love. That was his moment of awe and wonder because her genuine concern took him out of his paranoia, fear, and grief over his friend. Because of that woman’s kindness, later that day he had the courage to tell his family about his symptoms of schizophrenia and his substance use.”
“He was able to get a diagnosis and treatment and later became a peer advocate for people with mental illnesses. He became a presenter for NAAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), spreading the message of, ‘Are You OK?’ – the same phrase the woman said to him at the car crash site. Ricky narrates his story with great detail.”
Gratitude and Inspiration
“As I composed these stories,” Walker continues, "I was becoming more in awe of the writing experience and the way the interviews were lining up and synching up for me. I was also in awe of the fact that the people I profiled trusted me enough to be deeply generous and honest with their stories. I feel very blessed.”
“In my book, I recommend numerous ways in which people can step out of the default mode and engage their awareness with the present moment instead of being locked into the bubble of thinking about the future. You can step outside and take a walk; you can read a beautiful poem or listen to a piece of music. You can deliberately plan these moments into your day so that you can give yourself opportunities to experience awe and wonder.”
In her work, Walker cites inspiration from many sources, one of them being the work of Dr. Dacher Keltner. “Keltner is one of the most well-known researchers on awe and wonder,” Walk explains. “He identified eight wonders of life – gateways for tapping into the wonder around us. In my book, I reiterate these elements by offering a comprehensive guide to wonder and demonstrate how readers can deliberately nourish themselves through each of these universal sources of awe.”
The Eight Wonders of Life
- Moral Beauty (Awe of People): Acts of courage, kindness, self-sacrifice, and human excellence
- Nature: The beauty of the natural world
- Collective Movement (Effervescence): The energizing sense of unity from groups of people moving together in unison
- Music: Emotional inspiration from shared musical experiences, harmonies, and rhythm
- Visual Arts and Design: Emotional responses to architecture, paintings, illustrations, movies, sculptures, and intricate patterns
- Spiritual Experiences: Transcendent connections to something larger than oneself
- Epiphanies: Big ideas – a-ha moments – from science, philosophy, and literature
- Life, Birth, and Death: Childbirth, death, and near-death experiences
“The storytelling of these wonders,” Walker concludes, “Also evokes awe and wonder in the moment when we are sharing them with one another. One of the main points of my book is that these experiences give us hope and meaning while making us more resilient. But I go a step further than the researchers I cite by demonstrating the importance of sharing our experiences rather than just sitting on them and keeping them to ourselves.”
In Part Two of this story, Val Walker delves into how her forthcoming book, Healing Through Wonder: How Awe Restores Us After Trauma and Loss, offers unprecedented insight into the six features of an awe experience and how everyday people can put more awe and wonder back into their lives. Please stay tuned to the February 2026 issue of VOICES for the rest of the story…