truelovewaitsbook.com

A psychotherapist works within peoples’ marriages and relationships. I’ve been doing it for decades and have never stopped learning and appreciating the privilege of entry into the lives of others.

I do many things in my personal life to balance the intensity of professional focus – activities with family and friends, and in quiet times for myself, when I read and write. I like to read history, the doings of people in whatever age and wherever, the whos and the whys of the past, how we came to be here through earlier influences and events.  An overlap with work, of course, but someone else has done the wonderful work of thinking about it and writing it out for me to enjoy.

Something special happened as I read Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine – By Wrath of God, Queen of England. I read through the early pages, slowing my rush to get to her power-struggles with Henry II of England. I hadn’t known about Eleanor going on the crusade to Jerusalem while she was still queen of France and only 23 years old. I briefly tried to imagine how difficult such a long journey must have been. But what really hooked me was just a paragraph describing a day of marital therapy applied by the Pope as the unhappy couple returned to Paris and monarchy. The scene was recorded by John of Salisbury in his Memoirs of the Papal Court, Pope Eugenius doing something like a healing intervention.

Medieval marriage counseling – I had to know more!

I read and read lots of lovely information available for online exploration and from primary source prints and historical texts and books speedily delivered to my door. It was almost all new to me, but what fascinating characters and almost incredible true stories. The future saint, Bernard of Clairvaux and the great philosopher Peter Abelard, the newly founded Knights Templar, deep shifts in religion and society discovered in an abundance of contemporary chronicles, essays and sermons.

What resonated most for me was that personal issues from so long ago – 900 years – were quite recognizable, and states of mind, often now labeled, were just as real in those times. I began to understand why the king and queen of France were on the verge of divorce, to imagine in detail what that journey must have been like and how many relevancies to the present still existed.

I had no early intention to publish: I made notes and wrote just because I enjoyed writing.

Becoming an indie author is new to me. I’ve had great help, a thoughtful, precise indie editor in England, an indie publisher in Trinidad, whose superhuman patience and clarity carried me through the process, and the invaluable support of my tech savvy son and early-reader friends.

Quite a journey!