The latest from A Sense of Place Publishing
“If you have a book, you have a friend,” says Robyn. When a child, she always had her nose in a book and, walked around the playground at school, her nose in a book. She loved to write fairy stories and plays for children. The friend she met the first day she started school at the age of six was to recently say that she remembers young Robyn confiding in her that she wanted to become a reporter. However, she grew in the days of women into the office, glory boxes (in preparation for the fairy tale marriage) and the dream of higher education just out of reach.
Robyn wrote copious letters to family and friends to keep in touch and wrote home when on holiday. It was a time of little other communication being available, but she was comfortable with pen and ink.
She loved to help with her children’s school assignments. “How did you go in your last essay?” her son’s friend’s dad was to always ask and they would compare notes. He being a headmaster, shared the love of writing and learning.
A passion for communicating to the world grew into her first self-published book on her daughter’s journey through the then, foreign world of street drugs and her consequent slide into mental health. Robyn ‘had’ to warn others of the impending dangers she saw looming. A school mistress said, “What else could we do to warn our young people of the dangers of that very first step of taking drugs? It will be a great resource for us.”
- Robyn loved to play dress-ups when a youngster. She would bring the neighbourhood children together to put on plays, but mostly musicals. Her first book launch was to create a medieval scene complete with ‘gallows’ outside of her retail outlet in a busy shopping centre! This with street theatre, fun displays and activities, such as Medieval face painting. However, this was the time of the collapse of the book distribution industry in Australia and AI was waiting in the wings. Of this, she had no concept.
Her unaware slide into the world of cancer happened. Years of not being able to work led to a decade of living the role of the Hermit, losing her home and striving for the dream of continuing her journey into the world of holistic counselling. However, she wrote children’s stories which are in essence, teaching books for children and adults. Finding herself living on a mountain top, words just tumbled onto the computer and she wrote the poem, The Jackboots, and bits and pieces of today’s story, at that time, an unfolding vision.
With a diagnosis of breast cancer, Robyn ‘had’ to pen that journey to share with others what she was learning about the present day health system and the power of herbs and plants to heal. Even when undergoing difficult treatments, she would wake every morning at four o’clock to put on paper the words that woke her from sleep. Her second book was published. This too was an unusual book launch. High on the mountain she loved surrounded by neighbours, friends and family, enormous dark clouds highlighted the surrounding beauty of the landscape. However, books were not delivered as promised, and this was a ‘bookless’ book launch. Robyn was not a salesperson, so this suited her and comments today can still be heard to say what a great time was had by everyone present.
Robyn kept her passion for holistic counselling and yoga alive by volunteering at a local charity working to give terminal and critical ill people a pampering day. She was awarded with the Annie Muir award for ‘Courage and Dedication to Service’.
When her mum passed away at the age of 101, a bag of writings was found, pages and pages of recorded family history. Not a full-stop or comma could be found, but Robyn delved in and produced a book for family and friends. This, she says is Australian history.
Dealing with a return of cancer heralding a long road to recovery, she kept researching and writing about the Covid years she insists is our history, a Story that must be told.
FROM THE BOOK
These writings are focused on brave warriors speaking in the public domain, risking everything to ensure that humanity’s soul survives this journey to seed future generations. However, every-day men, women and children also walk this path. When we are open to the lives of those around us, we see the spirit within and become a witness to the soul’s heroic struggle to survive and flourish.
I spoke to a neighbour who spends time every day visiting her husband in a nursing home as he is needing care that she cannot give to him. She said that he believes he is fortunate as he is living to see his grandchildren. There are many gifts in our everyday living, however, not everyone has the eyes to see.
The markets where I shop have a system in place to support in the way of putting together produce for those unable to do so and, also to make it possible for these people to effortlessly receive this precious bounty. They say that this is what we do when we can. The stories are many and are told by everyday heroes. This is how we keep the spirit alive and nurture the soul.
I recently listened to someone speaking about an adventure he had with sea creatures while diving in the ocean. He said that these are the times essential for enriching our soul which he believed is shrivelling in today’s world. A profound statement and one that bears more than a passing thought and a reminder to embrace those soul enriching experiences when they are encountered.
Humanity has compassion and warmth. The human heart has-the-ability to encompass and heal those in need. Humanity has the capability to create beauty and that space of love for all living creatures to be held in a place of peace. Artificial intelligence, a force with intent to shrivel the human soul and cut away the human ability to bring spirit into the physical realm, does not possess these qualities. Acts of love ensure that the human spirit will survive these dark times and are the foundations upon which our new world is being built.
When we live in generosity of spirit, we are the heroes.
To reverse the trend of chronic disease today in children is perhaps one of our most urgent challenges.
To give that beautiful flower the opportunity to grow, blossom and flourish is our job.
The template for regenerate life is to be found in Nature’s Garden. Chemical farming, genetically engineered crops, glyphosate, geoengineering, to name a few, are weakening, poisoning, and destroying the natural environment to which we are intrinsically linked. The human body heals when given the right environment and so does the Earth. Nutrient dense, chemical-free, organically grown living food is the greatest gift we can give our children to ensure their health and wellbeing.
The children are our future.
Indigenous wisdom may have become but a faint echo but we can re-invent a healthy knowledge base for agricultural practices and just may be, what we have thought to be lost, will again be gifted to humanity.
During the Covid time of lockdowns and mandates, the children’s growing years were disrupted and they need us now to step up and say no to being forcibly injected with poisons that may maim their body and steal their life. There is no greater gift than that of a new born child. There is no time, more sacred than the birthing experience. There is no greater gift than that of watching a child grow, flourish and reach their potential. Children need us to say no to an agenda intent upon enslaving these beautiful souls in a transhumanistic world where there will be no interaction with the natural world. The children’s fusion with machine will ensure that every thought, movement and bodily function will be monitored and controlled. Creativity, the forte of humanity, will be but an urge perhaps sometimes felt, but dismissed as fantasy. As too, will be the voice of the ancestors.
The Jackboots is available through all major online outlets and can also be ordered through your local bookshop via the Ingram Catalogue.
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