A CV is what happens with hindsight.
My accidental writing career
Some writers trace their desire to write back to their childhood. ‘Absolutely not’ would be my first response. It never occurred to me to write a book until I wrote Awaken Your Intuitive Vision. When I probe further I realise that books and writing were never far from my life – and I think that is the case for so many of us. We overlook the obvious. My mother had been a librarian until I came along. She was also an avid reader of Agatha Christie novels and was fair competition with Pam Ayres for her rhyming ditties. My grandfather had taught English literature and my grandmother had been on the stage.
My equivalent to my mother’s reading habits were Enid Blyton books. I was permitted a new paperback every second Saturday which I devoured curled up in a ‘nest’ made from my mother’s bed clothes since she was bed-bound much of the time. After ballet in the morning, I was allowed to choose a book from W H Smiths and devour it while eating prawns and chips, listening to the football scores recited on the TV.
As a teenager I was exposed to a much wider range of authors at Grammar school and took full advantage of it. My English teacher, for some groundless reason, didn’t believe me capable of English literature A level. It didn’t cross my parents mind to go in to bat for me. My mother was too ill and my father had a disdain for education having left school age 15 to take up a trade. So I had to study Economics instead.
Big trees from acorns grow
I got my grades nonetheless and headed off to the University of Durham to study Anthropology. Lots of reading and writing essays ensued, longhand in those days before computers.
After Uni I travelled around Africa for 6 months before I took my first ‘proper’ job. This is where writing and books start to perk up for me because I was employed by a mail order Book Club – a dinosaur that roamed the marketplace long before the advent of Amazon. A bright young thing, I was soon promoted to Marketing Manager of three Book Clubs – Arts & Crafts, Photography and Music. I loved it. Not only did I get to choose the books to offer members, I also had to brief the design and copywriting team on how to market them in the catalogues. We were based in Newton Abbot, Devon beside the railway station and every month I would take the train to London to be courted by publishers.
It was a private company. Latterly the CEO made some misjudgements which cost the company and after four years I volunteered for redundancy. With my boyfriend we moved to Richmond, Surrey. He took employment while I, from the floor of our rental, stuffed the letter I’d written into envelopes and launched OOMS – One Off Marketing Services. Little did we anticipate that most projects I pulled in were to be copywriting jobs. Thankfully I discovered I could write and my partner, with his career in direct marketing, was a good editor.
After 18 months OOMS had grown sufficiently for him to leave his job and for us both to start a marketing agency. Within four years we employed 20+ people and it felt like we had as many company cars. By now we were serving Fortune 500 companies and I was the lead copywriter as well as Sales & Marketing Director.
Sea-change in career
10 years after I’d stuffed my first envelope to launch OOMS, a sea-change stirred in me. We sold the agency. I continued to work two days a week for it and explored the emerging field of healing arts in the remainder. I landed upon Feng Shui because it was second nature to me. I trained in Seattle and began my new life as a Feng Shui practitioner before giving birth to our daughter. In the early days I did consultations with her in a sling and taught Feng Shui at weekends, breastfeeding in the intervals. I also qualified as a Reiki Master.
Arts as psychotherapy
It was around then I discovered Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way and The Right to Write. I began writing ‘morning pages’ regularly – a freeform stream of consciousness – and became interested in dance-movement and the expressive arts. When my daughter turned 7, I went back to University to do an MA in Somatic Arts Psychotherapy, which was to be the intellectual foundation for my book, Awaken Your Intuitive Vision, 15 years later. This was no mean feat since by now I was a single parent with the sole financial responsibility for her. The MA allowed me to integrate applied psychology that I’d dropped first time around at Durham when I’d discovered a Joint Honours Degree in Anthropology and Psychology was a heavy workload.
Towards the end of my MA I originated the creative process called the Intuitive Vision Board. I offer this as a workshop with an intuitive reading and I’ve taken thousands of people through it. In January 2019 I published my book – Awaken Your Intuitive Vision.
Awaken
Awaken Your Intuitive Vision looks and feels lovely. It is an over-size paperback with original watercolour drawings at the start of each chapter, accompanied by a quote from a famous person which sets the tone for the chapter ahead. The book describes how making an Intuitive Vision Board enables you to reach deep within yourself for the guidance and clarity to follow your heart in creating your one wild and wonderful life.
Awaken includes the psychology and philosophy behind the visioning process. I entwine tales from my clients’ with those of my own to demonstrate how direction and purpose can be found in the most astonishing ways. It takes you through step-by-step how to make an Intuitive Vision Board and how to prepare yourself by to be in an intuitive frame of mind beforehand, which is essential.
What inspired me to write?
My logical left-brain answer to this question is this.
I’d been running my workshops alongside my ‘day’ job for three years. I’d created a website and was advised to start writing blogs even though I had no idea what a blog was then.
Writing a book had never been on my radar. Then one morning I woke up with a gentle notion in my head: “Mary’s it’s time to write a book”. The next day I came across a Book Mentor who specialised in business-building books and the writing was on the wall for me to become an author. We spent the day together laying out the book plan. All that remained was for me to write it.
My creative right-brain answer to the same question would be entirely different.
I’d hit a problem. The problem was that every time I sat down to write according to the book plan nothing came. A few weeks scuttled by like this and I felt I should attend an Author’s support group evening to release my writer’s block, with a friend to accompany me. The highlight of the evening was when we went around in a circle so that everyone could share their ,book idea along with their fascinating backstory. I shrank into the chair feeling thinking how boring my book was in comparison and left feeling utterly deflated.
On the long drive home from Portsmouth my friend Linda suddenly turned to me and said. “Mary, what has your Intuitive Vision Board ever done for you?” It was a bit like the Monty Python line: “What did the Romans ever do for us?” except I didn’t find it funny this time. Fortunately I kept my mouth shout after muttering ‘a lot’ – and I stopped short of leaving her by the roadside.
Unhinged
Linda, by asking me the ‘wrong question’ at the right time not only unhinged me, it unblocked me too.
The next morning when I came to write my Morning Pages, 10 pages of A4 longhand poured out of me … I found myself recalling the painful crisis I’d been through three years earlier. I described how, over a short period of time, I lost almost everything all at once. It was soul-destroying beyond belief. In one foul swoop my entire identity disappeared and I was left dealing with the many repercussions of it on my own with a disgruntled 16-year old and a lively Labrador in tow.
Broken-hearted, in a state of shock, and I with no money whatsoever, I sat among the rubble not knowing where to begin. My family were unwilling to help. I didn’t want to talk to friends about it much because I felt ashamed that this had happened to me.
Weeks drifted by in a haze. It was all I could do to write my Morning Pages, walk the dog, and put a hot meal on the table. But in this darkest hour I was also ready to create a new Intuitive Vision Board. Curiously that board showed no trace of angst or crisis. Instead, the collage I’d constellated, proved to be the life-line I needed to get me out of the hole. I would not be writing this 9 years later (in 2021) and with a book published too, if it hadn’t been for my own creative process. Besides I couldn’t afford anyone else’s.
Incidentally I did write to Linda a few days after our fated car journey. I spilled the beans and thanked her for her question. We laughed about it.
Synchronicity
The months ticked by and little appeared to change on the surface of things but, as it transpired, much repair work was taking place beneath. Feeling a little better I was drawn to attend a tango workshop where I was paired with a complete stranger. Only the day before I’d felt ready to seek part-time work so I asked this man if he knew of anyone. It just so happened he had his own company. He wasn’t looking to employ but offered me a trial. I subsequently worked for him for several years.
I didn’t realise it at the time but I had grasped the golden thread that would lead me to higher ground yet I’d constellated this on the Intuitive Vision Board I’d made months earlier.
The evidence
Floating woman surrounded by pictures of the ocean. My new boss had an international floatation company called “Ocean Float Rooms”. My job was to sell the bliss of floating to well-being centres around the world.
Daniel Craig and the seahorse. My boss had the muscular torso and craggy looks of Craig although he only once appeared in the office in his trunks. He was Australian, multi-versatile, and with the singular character of the male seahorse.
Live, love, teach – and a gardens of flowers. By now I was running the Intuitive Vision Board workshop regularly and attracting mostly women around the table. I was blooming again as I helped other peoples’ lives flourish.
Yoga teacher in the centre. I observed how one of the oldest yoga teachers opened up her left side (heart) to connect her right-brain spiritual side, while grounded on the earth right-hand touching. What a suitable metaphor for the journey I’d taken and would continue to lead others through with the Intuitive Vision Board.
My Intuitive Vision Board had unlocked my creativity and transmuted all the heartache into a constructive way forward. I could not have planned it better myself – and I hadn’t.
So it came to pass that my backstory became the real inspiration behind my book – and my career to date.
It gave me the ‘why?’ to write Awaken Your Intuitive Vision along with solid evidence that the process worked – from my own and my clients’ experiences. If it could provide the hope and an unprecedented guidance to get me through the most challenging period in my life, surely it could help others too, even in less of a predicament. Intuition has certainly been a guiding light in my own life and not surprisingly I am committed to helping others find and use this remarkable faculty we all have that lies dormant within.
Mary Nondé – www.marynonde.com
Mary is the originator of the Intuitive Vision Board and author of ‘Awaken your Intuitive Vision’
To read her blog – https://www.marynonde.com/blog
To make an intuitive vision board or find out more about her online event https://marynonde.com/intuitive-vision-board-workshop