About

I think the theme strikes to the heart of an emerging spiritual and holistic planetary
culture, exemplified for example by Paul Ray's expanding Cultural Creatives
population. 35% of the adult population across W. Europe, the US and Japan are
emotionally ready to take up this challenge for a planetary future - but they need
more information and practical ideas, and encouragement. This book I think
addresses that need.

Here is the book for anyone who doubts whether the human race will survive the
21st century, and who is willing to explore and develop those healing and spiritual
aspects of their own lives that will make a contribution towards saving it!

You have certainly had a very full professional life, starting off as a plant scientist,
gaining a PhD, then changing tack completely and becoming a qualified Chartered
Accountant, Tax and Investment Consultant, finally building your own successful
Practice, as well as now being verger at your local church. Phew! That is quite a
range of experiences, clearly put to good use in the book. So how did it come
about? What inspired you?

The idea first came to me while I was on holiday in Turkey in 2004. I guess I was one
of those career women who thought I could have it all, both successful career and
family. Perhaps many can do this successfully. With me something had to give, and I
was forced into early retirement by mental breakdown and burnout. This turned my
life upside down for a while, and I was convalescing by the side of the swimming pool
in that Turkish villa wondering what to do next to occupy my time and keep my brain
working!
A friend had lent me some of the contemplative books by the Roman Catholic priest
Henri Nouwen, including his short bestselling gem, The Wounded Healer. The idea
here is that through suffering his own physical and mental wounds the Wounded
Healer acquires a special empathy for recognizing and healing the wounds of others.
This is embodied not only in the life of Jesus Christ, (probably the most famous
Wounded Healer of all time), but in the story of the healing centaur Chiron and the
work of the indigenous shaman.
It was the Jungian psychoanalysts who probably first started referring to the
Wounded Healer archetype as a recognized tool in the healing process. But it was
Nouwen who really popularized the term within a wider spiritual and pastoral healing
context when he wrote that book in 1979. And then I came upon Nouwen's
biography, Wounded Prophet, written by Michael Ford. And that is what I was
reading by the side of that pool.

So where did that lead you?

As I thought more about what I was reading it seemed to me that the compassion and
vulnerability of the Wounded Healer could have significance for healing our
dangerously fractured world far beyond the realms of the pastoral and medical
professions. Because that is where it is primarily researched and understood as a
means of healing and where most of the literature is to be found. Where else, I
mused, can we find the Wounded Healer in our lives? How, I thought, could we hope
to heal this world when so many of us have our own unhealed spiritual and mental
wounds, and so much of our destructive behavior is because of those wounds; when
for so many of us it is not regarded as appropriate in our working lives to show too
much compassion, let alone vulnerability.
But then I realised that the scope of my book needed to be broader, that the motif of
the Wounded Healer is but part of the greater need for more spirituality in our lives.
And I really had not realized the enormity of the project I had started. Perhaps if I had
known I wouldn't have started it! Who knows?! But I did make a start as soon as I
came back to the UK. My researches then took me deeper and wider into so very
many other fields, and my varied work life and experiences certainly gave me a head
start.

Then I found a quote from a speech Robert Kennedy made in Cape Town in 1966:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes
out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other
from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current
that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

I liked that idea very much, the idea that we can all start those ripples of hope with
some action, however small and insignificant that action may at first seem. In fact the
working title of the book was Ripples of Hope. I wanted that title but my publisher O
Books didn't like it!

Where did you write the book?

I wrote the book mostly in a really quiet hideaway in Dorset, that I visited for two
weeks at a time, and when I was stuck for ideas I would go for a swim or take long
walks along the coastal footpaths, often in wild weather, to find further inspiration.

How long did you take to write it?

The book required loads of research. I made many visits to Guildford University
library to start with. Then more information gradually became available on the
Internet and this enabled me to take my laptop to Dorset as I could always connect up
to the Internet for more information if I needed to. And of course communication at a
distance is so very much easier now - and getting easier all the time!
So I suppose in answer to your question it was researched and written over 6 years,
although not on a fulltime basis. I had my gardens to look after as well.

When I started there was nothing like the media concern we see today over global
warming and climate change. But that was never my sole preoccupation and takes up
only one chapter of the book. I am more concerned with the need for spirituality in all
aspects of our lives - and there is an increasing recognition of a new spiritual
consciousness in the world - into which my ideas neatly slot.

Are you following your own recommendations?

Oh gosh I'm no saint and I don't expect others to be saints. Look, the point is we can
all at least start ripples…I write in the book about reasons why we do nothing when it
is clear that action is needed - ignorance, futility, that sort of thing. Yes I do support
my own favourite organizations that work to relieve worldwide poverty, hunger,
suffering, or promote interfaith dialogue, for example. I support and follow
Sojourners, for example, but everyone will have different personal preferences and
that is fine. There are lots of ideas in the book.
The green initiatives for tackling climate change are only part of my thesis, and yes I
do try hard to recycle as much as possible, conserve energy, buy the best rated
electrical consumer goods like washing machine, dishwasher (yes I know!), kettle,
(only boil the exact amount I need), use timer programs to come on overnight at
cheap rate, hang out washing when weather allows, avoid packaging and try to shop
on the basis of need not greed, buy fair trade goods, all that sort of stuff, and I do
consciously combine loads of different errands into each car journey. I did go
vegetarian straightaway - I had felt strongly for a long while about the cruelties of
farming, and there is no way we can feed the world if we insist on converting plant
fodder into meat instead of eating it directly…the waste in food energy is huge if we all
eat meat.

Are there other books like yours?

Well yes there are a few on similar lines, but none takes the spiritual and vulnerability
idea quite as far as I do. In fact I can find no other book with the same emphasis on
exploring the healing idea as catalyst for social change, whilst taking the reader
through specific work and leisure situations, appealing to anyone who cares about
the future of our planet to reassess aspects of their own lives.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' bestselling book To Heal a Fractured World - the Ethics of
Responsibility is an in depth exploration of our individual responsibilities to shape the
world, but from a reasonably specialised and Jewish theological base, rather than
from the perspective of healing (in spite of the title). Mine offers that healing
perspective, woven around the image of the Wounded Healer.

There is an increasing interest in all books that consider the future of the world and
our place within it, and there are some very good ones, but mostly they concentrate
on climate change, not looking at the other issues in society that need healing. Some
are doom laden, as with James Lovelock's latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A
Final Warning. From a scientific viewpoint I feel quite sure that Lovelock is on the
right lines, but my book emphasises the hope that can be found in a spiritual,
vulnerable and compassionate approach to life. Jim Wallis in God's Politics: Why the
Right Gets it wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It similarly argues for a new spiritual
revival to transform society but from a political standpoint rather than in the context
and emphasis of individual healing. His latest book, Rediscovering Values: a Moral
Compass for the New Economy, supports my views, but as indicated by the title it has
a narrower scope than my own book.

So how would you summarise your main message?

The basic message is how we will steer the world's future through personal
responsibility and healing using ancient spiritual wisdoms.

But let me expand on that. The world is seriously wounded, threatened by violence,
egocentricity and mass consumerism. Government intervention alone will never solve
society's problems. We need a bottom up approach, taking personal responsibility for
healing on a global scale.

I show in my book how Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Scott Peck and Aldous Huxley all came
from different philosophies and backgrounds but nevertheless they shared a
common vision and understanding: they all appreciated the significance, and the
potential social impact, of the spiritual growth and health of the individual for the
future health of the world.
Never have spirituality and faith and the ancient wisdoms of all the great religions
been more relevant than in today's fractured world and we need to appreciate these
in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding. More than that, I believe there is an
urgent need to integrate ancient spiritual wisdom and philosophy with modern
scientific endeavors and rediscover the spiritual in all our material experiences. This is
our responsibility and we have no choice if we are to halt the destruction all around
us. This is a matter of faith for many and an obligation for all humankind.
Throughout the book I therefore try to weave science and spirituality with philosophy
and ancient wisdom, using this potent imagery of the Wounded Healer.
Most importantly I write the book around a message of hope as it speaks to a
palpable global shift towards holistic and spiritual values. The hope theme was I
suppose inspired by Barack Obama's best seller, The Audacity of Hope, in which he
shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future. Through
the healing needs of relationship, our economy, our environment and the living Gaia,
creativity in all its forms, and finally the curing professions of pastoral and medical
care, I aim to show how we may all become catalysts for social change, for a happier
and more peaceful world.
The book has plenty of footnotes and references reflecting the background research,
and supporting action. In the final Appendix I provide a comprehensive resource for
the reader to use for further action. This tells the story of how I was influenced and
inspired to write this book, my own Journey of Hope. It then brings in a few more
ideas and fills in a few details on others, and leaves us all fully equipped to start our
own mission to heal this fractured world.

But what is in it for the reader? What will people take away from reading this
book? Who will benefit?

Of course if the world benefits then we all benefit. In his UK best seller Heat: How We
Can Stop the Planet Burning, environmental scientist, philosopher and best selling
author George Monbiot admits to being driven to action by the birth of his own child.
He is as keen to see her survive in what he calls "a liveable world" as any of us must
surely be for our own children and grandchildren. Suddenly the effect tomorrow of
our actions today has become so much more important.

I really hope that anyone genuinely concerned for the future healing needs of this
world will read this. If only more of us would heed these messages, ponder them in
our hearts and understand the significance of our actions and our healing; the world
would become a better place for us all. Surely we all have this responsibility.
Meanwhile, while we decide what to do, the wounds of the world become ever more
serious and the healing needs more urgent.

When you are not writing - what do you like to do?

I just love being outdoors - almost certainly a response to my childhood spent on my
father's dairy farm. I was always outside working or playing around that farm.
I had riding lessons recently but wish I had started those as a kid!! It is not, I found,
as easy as it looks!
I cycled recently for two Marie Curie Cancer care fundraising events, one from
London to Paris and then from Vilnius in Lithuania to Warsaw in Poland, but I broke
my elbow at the end of the second day and had to spend the remaining 3 days in the
escort van accompanying the ride. That did put me off a little, and anyway there is a
limit as to how often you can ask the same people to sponsor you.
I also love gardening, at home and at the allotment and helping out a few others with
their own gardens - and I love going back to Dorset, to my writing hideaway, and to
La Gomera, where I can write in the sun!!