‘I shall take responsibility and try to love my cancer into submission or accept that what will be, will be. No fear of death. If there is nothing, there is nothing. But if there is something, well how interesting is that; the next great adventure’.

Angela Jeffs 1941 – 2022


ANGELA JEFFS 1941 – 2022

It is with deep sadness that I am writing this. As many of you may already know, Angela died on November 12, 2022.

If you read her blog here you will already know that she had Myelofibrosis, a cancer that ended her life way too soon. She felt (and wrote in her August Blog) that she still had so much left to do and say.

Please read and share her writings found here. She left a huge legacy to us in her writings for us all to read. Her books, her blog and many of her Japan Times interviews (that can be found with a quick google search). These are her gifts to us.

If you are on this site then you probably already know what an amazing woman, writer, activist, friend, and teacher she was. But for us, her family, we also knew her as mum to Lee and myself, grandmother to my son Max and partner to Akii, her loving husband of over 30 years.
Thank you for visiting this page. As one of her friends said the other day, “The world needs more Ange’.” And it certainly feels much emptier without her.

More spiritual than religious my mum said she was not scared of dying. She wrote last summer, “I shall take responsibility and try to love my cancer into submission or accept that what will be, will be. No fear of death. If there is nothing, there is nothing. But if there is something, well how interesting is that. The next great adventure!”

Happy Adventures. The Universe is so lucky to have you.

OBITUARY FROM THE JAPAN TIMES

With Thanks to Dan Rosen

INTRODUCING ANGELA

Angela is an established writer and writing guide who returned to the UK in 2013 after 26 years in Japan.

Freelance since 1973, she worked in London as the editor, managing editor, consultant editor, consultant managing editor, development managing editor and book packager of numerous magazines, partworks and book titles.

After moving to Japan in 1986, she transitioned from editing other peoples’ words to reporting and creating her own. Though writing on subjects as varied as gold markets and menopause, she concentrated mainly on travel and people.

Since March 11, 2011 she has mostly directed her writing towards activism, recovery, letting go and moving forward. She continues to help others change and improve their own lives via the therapeutic creative writing programme Drawing on the Writer Within.

 ANGELA’S PROGRAMME OF CREATIVE WRITING

DRAWING ON THE WRITER WITHIN (DOTWW) began life in Tokyo in 2004 as experimental drop-in writing classes at RBR (Right Brain Research Center for Creative Arts). Incorporating Proprioceptive Writing (PW) the work rapidly developed into a transformational 8-week course, INITIATION, leading to three more: EXPLORATION, AFFIRMATION, CONFIRMATION.

The right-brain approach taps creativity and thinking outside the restrictive box of logic and rationale. It helps individuals of all ages and backgrounds resolve whatever holds them back from remembering who they are and what they were born to be and do.

Angela organises and facilitates classes, courses, workshops and retreats; she also offers her services as a writing guide on request.  In the main, however, she is concentrated on her writing, drawing on her own writer within.


Writing In The Sand