Sitting down to write this blog, with a view to mapping out how I came to be the person I am today through the books that have helped and supported me on my path, I have to confess that I really didn’t start my journey until I was around thirty years of age. There is one book, however, that introduced me to magic, friendship and possibility at a very early age so I have to give it credit for the spark of who I am. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton instilled in me an open and non-judgemental mind and a love of the magical and mystical.
Fast forward twenty-five years and shamefully, the only books I read in that time were the ones I was forced to read for school, college, or work.
Around the age of thirty, recognising that I was not following my true path, I started to explore a lot of self-development books to try to find my way. One book that really helped me to become more assertive was A Woman in Your Own Right. This empowering book features four caricatures of women dealing with different situations in passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive and assertive ways. Fun to read and very educational it was amazing how I managed to recognise myself in each situation. I learned so much from this book, but most of all I learned about the right to say ‘No’ when appropriate.
Shortly after becoming more assertive, I had some big life decisions to make and the book that helped me most here was Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. As the title suggests, this book takes a fresh approach to making important decisions in your life. If you are looking for some free guidance on how to make important decisions, you might like to take a look at Sapphire’s blog from 16th October 2023. 6 Approaches to Decision Making.
Anyway, decision made, with a direction change ahead, I left the world of finance and embarked on my true path. I trained as a counsellor (lots of reading required there but that’s another story entirely), and as a spiritual healer through the Norfolk Healers Association and later the National Federation of Spiritual Healers. I also read a lot of Betty Shine and Louise Hay books, but the one that resonated most with me was Betty Shine’s Mind to Mind.
Barbara Ann Brennan’s Hands of Light helped me to see healing more from an energetic point of view, and around that time I read a book that tied spiritual healing in with quantum physics, which was a real ‘well, I knew that already’ moment for me. What I meant was that I felt the truth of it, rather than claiming to actually understand it. I have not been able to trace that original book on Amazon or anywhere else, and I must have lent it out because it’s not in my library either, but others I have read since which have a similar content are The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature, From Quantum Physics to Energy Healing and The Science of Subtle Energy.
Having qualified as a counsellor, I started my own alternative therapy business and continued to journey along my path in the company of James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy and Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret.
Training new healers, offering absent healing and keeping busy with my counselling practice kept me occupied and satisfied for many years, but I knew there was something more that I needed to do.
Further life changes followed and I began reading for pleasure rather than just reading to learn. I experienced the joy of getting lost in an adventure, travelling to exotic destinations, and discovering fantastical worlds. I was hooked, and would pick up a book at any opportunity, but it wasn’t until I began reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, when I was heavily pregnant with my youngest son, that I realised what I really wanted to do. I wanted to write, and I wanted to write books that made readers feel good.
For my 50th birthday, my husband bought me a correspondence course with ICS (International Correspondence Schools), which resulted in my first novel being self-published in 2012.’ The POISE Archives: Gifts’ was followed by ‘Expansion’, the second book in the series, in 2014 and that was the start of my writing journey, but after ‘Expansion’, I decided that if I was going to do this writing thing, I was going to do it properly.
I concentrated for the next few years on a Degree Course in Creative Writing with the Open University, before I wrote and self-publishing the first novel in my second series, a cozy mystery called Moons & Runes: Legacy. Since then, there has been no looking back and I now have three books published in each series along with Audio versions of the Moons & Runes series which will be out in full by Christmas.
The path is easier now that I am travelling in the right direction, but it is not without its problems. Currently I am experiencing Long Covid and have not been able to work on my next book for a few months. At one time in my life a blow like this would have devastated me, but with the learning I have gained from reading the books that I have recommended here, I know how to get through. I also know that the novels I am meant to write will be written and published when the time is right.
It is my hope that reading the life-changing books I mention above will enable you to achieve your dreams too.
Kind Regards
Disclosure: some of the links in this post are affiliate links with Amazon.
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