I am writing a daily blog about being homeless with my family to try and process the emotions behind this as well as the lessons to be learned from it. If I help someone along the way, that will make me very happy.
I loaded the final book of my trilogy onto Amazon yesterday, and in three days hopefully it will be live (barring any issues with the cover art). And I will have completed something I started in April 2023 as the result of a thought I had while sitting through an Easter service in the chapel of my son’s school. I will never forget the vicar talking about the Resurrection and how Mary Magdalene was the one who first saw the resurrected Jesus in the tomb. And the thought occurred to me…what if they had been in love? How would it have felt to see the man you loved and thought was dead resurrected in front of you. What would you say? What would you do? How would you react? And it started a chain reaction in me.
What then compounded it was watching the Dan Brown film ‘Inferno’ that evening where the main antagonists part knowing that one of them was going to sacrifice their life. And I wondered then, how would that feel? What would you say? What would you do? I thought about how you might cling onto them, inhale their scent as deeply as you could to get it into your DNA and absorb it you so you never forgot them. I wondered what it would be like to knowingly have that last kiss, that last hug, that last moment. And it all came together in my head into an idea.
The original intention had been to write one book, a spiritual romance if you like. I love a good romance story, I always have ever since I was a teenager and discovered Mills and Boon. I do still read romance as a form of escapism (though not Mills and Boon anymore). So, I started to plot out a book about a couple who had had many lives together as twin flames. Then I thought – where’s the tension? So, I thought, as with Jesus, there was a sacrifice to be made and one of the couple had had enough of losing their love. The original idea had been that she walked away in this life and the story was about wooing her back.
How did it become less about romance and more of a spiritual thriller? About dark versus light and the egoic mind versus the soul? I really couldn’t say. I just know that standing in a Starbucks queue about a week later, the idea of the trilogy hit me. The notion of this being so much more than a love story but actually being about good versus evil and how it needed to flow over three books just popped into my head. I had to hurriedly write it down.
In April 2023, I was still gainfully employed though facing the redundancy prospect. I was still hoping to fight that with the business proposals I had had to help continue the company I ran, but the way in which public sector funding operates ended up mitigating against this, unfortunately. We simply ran out of time, and the government kicked a major project into the long grass meaning there was no urgency for one of the proposals to be funded by big business. The decision to fold was taken that month despite our very best efforts.
My books then became something more. I had sometimes toyed with the idea of writing full-time but I never would have given everything up to do so. That just wasn’t how I operated, I was keenly aware of my responsibilities. I applied for jobs, got interviews, came close, but was ultimately unsuccessful. I say it didn’t help that the government of the day closed down other economic agencies, flooding the market with people in the same sphere as me but I do wonder if that isn’t something of an excuse. Deep down, in my soul, I no longer wanted to work in the political atmosphere and while I wanted to help businesses, I was tired of their inability to help themselves. I was tired of small businesses blaming everyone else except for their own lack of strategic direction, and I was tired of big businesses saying all the right things about working with small businesses but, in the end, only paying lip service to it. I found often that the big business representatives were just putting themselves around to satisfy their own egos which was depressing. No, this time I wanted to write full-time and I wanted, somehow, for the resources to materialise. And this is where the lottery idea came from.
I told myself, ‘jump and the net will appear’ assuming that money would flow in via a lottery win. It didn’t. Though the net did appear just not in the way I thought it would. What happened was the start of an intense spiritual journey that gradually stripped all the material things away from me and helped me see who my real friends and supporters were. A journey that has taught me humility, resilience, love, strength and courage. I haven’t always faced up to things immediately, but I have faced up to them eventually. It’s been a journey that has reminded me that material things come and go, they aren’t what really matters. It’s about the people who stand by you no matter what, who love you even when they don’t quite get you and wish you would make different choices.
I did still continue to apply for jobs though they came up with decreasing frequency. I applied for interim work that would take me away from my family, and I was badly let down by a ‘friend’ who had promised me some consultancy work that never appeared. Well, it did but she took it for herself. I have been scammed in my search for work (luckily I didn’t part with any money, because I didn’t have any) and it has frankly been the most difficult experience of my life. But, I feel, this has been directed by something greater than me. I know had I secured alternative full-time employment my writing would have languished as I simply would not have had the time. My priority would have been my job and the income I needed from it to keep my old life going. A life, quite clearly, I was meant too leave behind.
Anyone who says a spiritual journey is full of light has never been on one. Because the reality is, it forces you to strip everything away in every sense with no real guarantee that you will get anything back at all. I was told by someone once that when you get out the other side, it is beautiful, and I have no doubt of that. I am just still climbing through it, but I have learned so much through this process.
And the one thing that hasn’t stopped, the one thing I have felt compelled to continue with regardless of everything else has been writing my trilogy. When I started, I honestly didn’t think I would finish the first book let alone complete all three and self-publish them. I didn’t know it would take me two and a half years to do so. I didn’t know then that I had the staying power to complete one book let alone three. As I type this, I realise that I am tremendously proud of myself for what I have achieved. I have done something, completed something. And that feels like a massive step forward in my life.
Maybe now I have done that, now that I have completed what I know I was driven to do by spirit, by Source or whatever word you want to give it, maybe now things will shift. I know I am thankful that I was chosen to channel this message to the world, that I did it the justice I could in my writing ability, and I know that I loved doing it. And that given a choice, even knowing what it would mean, I think I would probably do it all over again (with some caveats from the lessons I learned). I don’t know, though, what I am going to write next other than this blog.
But I am soaring. I am thriving. I am successful. I am grateful.
Louisa Simpson 