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I started writing to save my life. When I was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1994, almost my first action was to buy a journal. First it was about recording what was happening to me. It soon became a companion in this journey into uncharted territory; a friend with whom I could be totally honest and share all my feelings - not just the edited version I gave to family and friends in order to protect them.
This journal grew into my first book - 'Flying in the Face of Fear' - in which my story is one chapter in a compilation of contributions from extraordinary women, and some of their partners.
As I write now, I have just celebrated book number six: Your Compass Rose Speaks: Rediscover Your Inner Wisdom. A distillation of all my experience and accumulated wisdom over the years.
I was born in Lyndhurst, in the New Forest. Cornwall has been my home for many years, and I have lived in the same secluded spot close to the wild north coast since 1977. I share my life with my husband and nearly always one or more cats.
Alongside part-time work as waiting and bar staff (including one summer with Rick Stein in the second year of operation of what is now the famous Seafood Restaurant in Padstow), I set up a crafts business. Under the name of Pydar Crafts I ran this full time for nearly fifteen years.
Making and selling copper enamel jewellery, silk scarves, hand-stitched patchwork. I travelled all over Cornwall and Devon (and occasionally further afield) in a succession of 'old-banger' type cars. One of these, a Renault 4, had a tendency to fuel blockages clogging the carburettor: I became accustomed to jumping out with a screwdriver to dismantle, clean and reassemble it by the side of the road.
By the early 1990s, I had been working flat-out for a number of years in a successful and labour-intensive business, so much so that my hands were sometimes rubbed raw from filing the copper shapes, and my enthusiasm was waning a little. At the same time a financial down-turn meant that many of my wholesale customers ceased to order. I took stock of where my life was going and decided on a big change. Returning to study, an MA with the Open University was the first step. Then finding a job to help pay for this.
My life changed in 1994 when I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. During and following my successful treatment my journey of personal and spiritual discovery began. Or may be I should say continued, as I became more aware of being a spiritual being in a human body.
As years went on, I worked in various jobs, always to do with people. Being made redundant three times means I have plenty of experience to be able to understand a little of what that is like for people. My husband runs two businesses and I have always had some involvement in supporting him.
My first role in business coaching was as a volunteer mentor with what was then called the Prince's Youth Business Trust in about 1992. In 2003 I began work with a local college as a business advisor and trainer, and then with another organisation until June 2015. That has all been a good grounding in coaching a wide variety of people from all walks of life.
Since setting up Dare to Blossom Life Coaching in 2003 I have been able to express more clearly who I truly am in my own voice. My first coaching book was Dare to Blossom: Coaching and Creativity, was published in 2008.
I have run workshops of all sorts since 2003, and mostly online since 2015, with a focus on creative visualisation. The development of the Dare to Blossom Rediscovery Cards in 2012, with a companion guide, following many requests, in 2016,was a big breakthrough for me, and using them to aid me on my own process of 'coming home to myself' and rediscovering my inner wisdom has given me confidence to share this with others. (The No 2 Deck followed in 2022)
The next stage, as I am finding out for myself, is about releasing the power we all have within. The emphasis being on just that: 'power within', rather than 'power over' another person. These ideas developed into what I now call ‘The Compass Rose’, and from 2015 onwards I began offering Zoom gatherings where the cards are drawn for each of us and I take us on a guided visualisation of a Magic Carpet Ride.
I began writing about this process around 2018, thinking it would be partly a memoir and partly a guide taking people around the Compass Rose process. However, the memoir developed a mind of its own (I hear from other writers that this often happens with books as they take shape) – and I self-published it as The Powerful Voice of the Quiet Ones: Reflections on an Introvert’s Life.
Writing on the Compass Rose book bumbled along it fits and starts, and then in 2022 I was introduced to The Golden Dragonfly Press, who have produced the beautiful book launched on 28th February 2023.
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