There was no business plan, or any kind of plan. We just sat down together and started to create, because we needed to.
Our first book, 'The Lady Who Came From The Sun,' is the direct product of art therapy myself and my then five-year-old daughter journeyed through upon the loss of my wonderful mother-in-law. I didn't realise it was art therapy at the time; it simply felt like the natural thing to do to come together and create a fairy tale to honour an amazing lady and to try to explain to my little girl my belief that the love she bestowed upon us will remain with us forever.
I fought my way through internet browses to learn how to turn our raw pages into a physical book so that we could gift our creation to my husband and father-in-law. I found myself lost in a rabbit warren for a little while but, eventually, we had our book.
The natural next step, after our story being bounced back to us in a warm light through the opinions of our recipients, was to officially publish our book so that we might share it with the world in the hope of helping others with grief.
Three years and three publications later, I find myself a business owner, sharing our well-being stories with view to promote emotional literacy and raise awareness of topics such as grief, bullying and self-worth.
Our books are sitting in some lovely bookstores and are going on some exciting journeys, which sometimes makes my imposter syndrome raise its head.
They don't have beautifully decorated spines and they might appear quite basic compared to other books on the shelves, but I think that this is exactly how they are meant to be - the original products of my daughter and I sitting together, tapping into personal experiences and creating straight from our hearts to help others, with no limitations that can come with having a plan.
I realise how lucky I am to be able to work alongside my daughter in creating these positive resources, and have just started the process with her younger brother to publish his first, and our family's fourth book, 'The Trees Within Us All', which seeks to address nervous system regulation and anxiety.
Special thanks to my husband who helps with the tecnhological side of things, without whom the books wouldn't have found their way to official publication!
A true labour of love for the whole family!
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