What Is the Soul and Why It Matters

Kathryn W. Carvey was born in Keyser, West Virginia, on 01/23/45. That, in and of itself, has been a source of specialness to her. She received a degree in Speech and English from West Virginia University in 1967. She continued her education at the University of Pittsburgh for speech education, the University of Charleston (WV), Marshall University(WV) and at the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies, receiving theater and secondary school qualifying classes. Finally, she settled on a MA degree in Clinical Counseling, with additional hours in Theatre. Kathryn's career as a secondary educator spans four decades and five school districts. From her start in the 1970s, she incorporated deep breathing, relaxation, meditation, and creative workshopping to her curriculums in English, Speech, Dance and Theater. She takes great pride in the theater program she launched in Keyser, West Virginia which began as an afterschool club and grew to one of the largest, most prolific theater departments in the state of West Virginia upon her retirement in 2010. Additionally, Kathryn is a certified yoga teacher who began her practice in the early 1970s under the tutelage of Nancy Turley. She worked closely with the producer of the West Virginia Public Theatre in Morgantown, West Virginia – for many years the only equity theater in the state. For many years Kathryn also freelanced as a radio and television spokesperson, lending her talents to a variety of vendors in the greater Charleston Metro Area. Kathryn's first book, "What is the Soul and Why it Matters" was first penned during her early days as a teacher while developing her diaphragmatic breathing and relaxing curriculum for her students. In the early 1970s, when she wrote the first edition she saw that there was no clear genre for books dealing with the soul, and began developing her theory. After rejection from a literary agent in New York because of the seeming lack of demand, Kathryn allowed her vision to be put away. Over the years she has slowly revisited her work, and finally completed its final edition in 2022, nearly fifty years after she first marketed it to the publishing industry. Kathryn's initial belief that "everyone is talking about the soul, but no one knows much about it," still rings true to her. Kathryn has been an avid student of both religious and philosophical thought leaders her entire life. Through her "hippie" days in the seventies she traveled the mystical route, a far cry from her Presbyterian upbringing or attempted Catholic conversion before her first marriage (she didn't see it through). Her modern orthodox conversion to Judaism in 1979 finally provided the deep context and meaning she had searched for, although Kathryn truly adheres to the simple belief of "love one another".