How Did I Come to Write This Book?
I have always been a lover of books! It was my favourite pastime as a child, the favourite part of my early childhood teaching career and bedtime stories with my children was one of the best parts of being a mother!
Then writing children’s books became a hobby which moved to publishing a newsletter to circulate children’s writing and then out of that came a neighbourhood children’s art festival which encompassed writing, music, dance and art. That sort of exhausted me in the end!
I learnt transcendental meditation from a wonderful man Steve Griffith (Success without Stress) and that began the process of my spiritual life. For the last 10 years I’ve been drawn to books that explore spiritual growth – Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay – all setting me up to write Making Mindful Magic.
About 2 years ago I started getting strong messages from somewhere that I needed to return to writing children’s books; the messages came from everywhere. I knew it had to be about children living authentically but it wasn’t really coming together until I did an amazing online course Living Intuitively with intuitive teacher and writer Helen Jacobs of The Little Sage. That allowed me to shift focus to myself and believe in what I could achieve if I allowed it to happen.
At the same time I was on a wonderful visit to a Balinese Ayurvedic retreat (Sukhavati) and I was blessed with 2 wonderful healing sessions and that coupled with the panchakarma treatments allowed everything to really come together.
I’d never thought of writing in verse but one night those verses just poured out of me and onto my notebook – it was exhilarating and strangely lightening! As for the art work that forms the illustrations for Making Mindful Magic, I was asked by my sister-in-law Diana if I’d like to do a pastel course with her. In my new open-minded frame of mind I just did it, although I’d never considered myself creatively artistic generally. I loved the medium and decided to give it a go with my verses I’d written. Being a novice, the naïve, whimsical style suited my theme and the rest as they say is history!
