Automatic thoughts

I came across a pile of notes today that I have made over the past three years, relating to my writing of the book.

Coincidental I found this notebook today, while I was looking for a work book and thought initially that it was one and the same, because I made contact with my long-lost editor just yesterday. After many months of not communicating, we've both made it back to working together again - I went AWOL to take on board her many valid points about the restructuring required of my manuscript and she went AWOL due to some really heavy-duty personal circumstances - and we have decided to work out a deal where we trade time-for-time using our respective skills to help each other out.

The point is, though, that the book is rising to the surface in importance again. When I flicked through my notebook, it fell open to a page where I had been searching to ground my intentions and purpose for writing such a deeply personal account of death and birth and everything in between. For it has become far more spiritual than I would have ever imagined I'd be comfortable sharing in print. But if it does make it to print, readers will be coming on the journey that has been me being introduced to that realm I have been getting more and more familiar with.

When I asked myself these questions, in 2007, and wrote down the answers I don't think I realised how profound I would find them, some three years later and in desperate need (once again) of some inspiration to continue on with this story. For what I wrote was thus:

What is the purpose?
"The purpose of the book is to simply tell Ella's story. The whole thing. From my perspective/experience. Her coming into existence and my awakening awareness. Her physical story. The impact of her life and death from a mother's point of view. The challenges presented when living with a child's death."

But most amazing of all, and I don't even remember writing this even though I remember where I was sitting (in a gorgeous garden in the country on a really beautiful, crisp, cool, sunny day), was what I wrote of the running theme of the book. Something I'm not entirely sure yet that I've adequately captured, so I will have to go back and take a look:

"The task of the mother is to insure the continuum of the soul of her child, after their death, amongst those still living."