Writing, listening and making room for others

For more than twenty-five years, I worked as a counsellor and psychotherapist, accompanying people through change, loss, questions of identity and faith, and complex life experiences. Deep listening, sensitivity to language and respect for each person's understanding of their own life shaped that work. They still shape the way I work today.

Alongside my clinical work, I trained in spiritual accompaniment and began lay ministry training. I also developed my writing and publishing practice. I discovered how a story or metaphor could help me find words for something difficult, and began exploring how reflective writing might offer others room to consider their own experiences with the support of an attentive facilitator.

Over time, I wrote and published four nonfiction books. I also created two poetry books for friends, co-wrote a book with a colleague, and helped other writers develop and publish their manuscripts. My work has included beta reading, book reviews, and contributions to Lincolnshire Life, The Poacher, the Lincolnshire Echo, the Louth and Skegness Standard and Yours magazine.

I have offered interactive talks and facilitation for medical staff, businesses, charities and writers' groups. That work has also taken me to professional meetings and NHS hospital events in West Yorkshire. Whatever the setting, I have valued the same thing: meeting people with care and helping them find language for what matters to them.

Busy Corner Books grew from a quiet corner of my own life, where words mattered, listening mattered, and people deserved to be met with dignity. Writing, for me, has never been about performance. It is also about process, honesty and discovering a voice that feels like your own.

I hold qualifications in various counselling, psychotherapy and unconscious nonverbal communication models; the study if subjective experience;  Master of Arts in Creative Writing and I am studying for a Doctorate of Ministry at St Mary's University Twickenham, London. My interests bring together creativity, ethical reflective practice and spiritual discernment.

My earthly father passed in September 2024. His love, faith and encouragement remain part of this journey. Both my parents have shaped the person I am and the ways I hope to serve others.

Held by God, serving others

In 2023, an accident changed my body, my pace and everyday life. From never having broken a bone in my body, to sustaining uncountable broken bones, reconstructive surgery, and lasting physical limitations. I felt left to either give up, or learn and begin again in ways I had not chosen. I prayed endlessly through unforgiving trauma - all while my earthly father suffered at the same time, reaching the end of his life - and I found myself looking to God in some of the loneliest, quietest and most painful places.

I am grateful to have been cradled in the huge arms of God and the gifts of further compassion, a deepened spiritual empathy, with patience only my earthly father could have left me. I feel blessed.

My walk changed, but the gifts I had been given were not lost. I began finding different ways to write, listen, encourage and bring people together - something I always found rewarding. There have been a few gifts requiring adapting; others were reshaped and rekindled.

My Christian faith is part of who I am and why I do this work. I believe service and ministry can happen through careful attention to the person in front of us, as well as in more familiar church settings. I hope Busy Corner Books can complement the life of the Church while welcoming people of different beliefs and backgrounds without pressure or assumptions.

The foundations of my work

Busy Corner Books brings together:

• Writing, publishing and support for writers

• Reflective writing and thoughtful facilitation

• Encouragement to discover, explore, and develop your own voice, with meaning

• Careful listening and respect for individual experience

• Creativity, courage and discernment

• Meaningful connection and mutual respect

Through mentoring, Writing Well courses, the ARCLIGHT™ spiritual formation journey and professional development training, I invite people to pause, write and reflect at a pace respecting their own process. I sometimes think of this as keeping oil in the lamp: making room to notice what sustains us and what needs attention. "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path" (Psalm 119:105). God lights my path and I follow the light.

Life has a way of inviting evolution