The Spiritual Education of a Beauty Queen and finding herself in Hollywood
In this episode of “Boomer TV: Embrace Age, Empower Dreams Embrace Life,” Andy Asher, editor of BloomerBoomer.com visits with Kathalynn. How a chubby, sickly little girl from a working-class family in Maryland overcome her challenging beginnings and evolve into the woman who went on to check off every dream or aspiration – romance, celebrity, adventure — she ever conceived of?
KISS ME SWAMI: The Spiritual Education of a Beauty Queen (Silver Falcon Press; September 2019; ISBN:978-1-7338407-3-6) by Kathalynn Turner Davis is the story of a woman’s quest for self-actualization…a modern, slightly less fantastical series of Wizard of Oz-like adventures, set against a backdrop of some of the most exciting times in American history. Pop culture enthusiasts will thrill to hear inside-Hollywood revelations and disclosures, but this is far more than a tell-all. More than anything else, this book speaks to the spiritual seeker in all of us.
Kathalynn divulges how her keen intuition and deep faith, walking the tightrope between destiny and choice, led her to manifest each desire, one after another. “I am as susceptible to fear and doubt as the next person,” Kathalynn acknowledges. “My belief in myself and my potential was continually at war with my insecurities, which won their share of battles. But overall, my life has turned out to uncannily reflect those early, persistent wishes.”
As a small child, Kathalynn had a crystal-clear vision of where she wanted her life to go. The circumstances from which these aspirations grew often appeared bleak: a good-hearted but alcoholic mother, an emotionally stunted ex-military father, a con-artist brother, and a chronic bronchial infection for which she endured numerous protracted hospitalizations. As a preteen, urged on by her father, she competed in beauty pageants, which led her at age 16 to Palisades Park, New Jersey, to compete for the Miss American Teenager title. That night, as she looked across the river and caught her first glimpse of the New York City skyline, it was love at first sight. It was also the night she was introduced to pop singer Brian Hyland, who ignited a passion that propelled her move to Los Angeles three years later, just in time to find herself front-row center in an exploding sexual revolution and a lively scene shifting from Old Hollywood to new approaches to acting and film, along with its darker side, evidenced in the Tate murders.
Her first Los Angeles audition landed her a role in the movie The Grasshopper and launched a lifelong friendship with comedy legend Garry Marshall. Finding her way through the maze of the entertainment industry, she also had close encounters with Troy Donahue, kissed Elvis, and learned how to eat spaghetti from Frank Sinatra.
But at 23, Kathalynn, digging deeper, ditched Hollywood glitz for New York grit. She studied under renowned acting teacher Stella Adler, married a doctor, started a family, and lived in the famous Dakota building by Central Park, where she beamed as friend and neighbor Leonard Bernstein held her children on his lap while playing piano, and experienced the trauma of being within earshot of the gunfire that killed neighbor John Lennon.
New York, a center for the self-help revolution, had much to offer seeker Kathalynn, whose explorations into the Science of Mind and the Sedona Method deepened her spiritual awareness, established her bona fides as a life coach and spiritual counselor, and forever broadened her world view. From there, a second marriage prompted a move to Greenwich, CT, and the life of a Stepford wife—right smack in the mid ‘80s, when Wall Street roared.
With humor and candor, Kathalynn reveals how she learned to trust her inner strength and wisdom, let go of her troubled past, and connect with larger and deeper spiritual forces. Now, at 70 and single.
