Anne Sheppard
My name is Anne, I am a divorced mother of two living in Gloucestershire, surrounded by the beautiful countryside that this county has in abundance.
I come originally from Nottinghamshire - the daughter of a farm worker. The farm and the cottage where we lived lies close to Sherwood Forest and for as long as I can remember the natural world of trees, flowers and animals have played an important part in my life.
My father loved poetry and when I was young he would read to me every evening before bedtime. I began writing poetry myself when I was at primary school and I also enjoy reading poetry on a regular basis.
When I was six we left the farm as my father took a new job as a coal miner.
I come originally from Nottinghamshire - the daughter of a farm worker. The farm and the cottage where we lived lies close to Sherwood Forest and for as long as I can remember the natural world of trees, flowers and animals have played an important part in my life.
My father loved poetry and when I was young he would read to me every evening before bedtime. I began writing poetry myself when I was at primary school and I also enjoy reading poetry on a regular basis.
When I was six we left the farm as my father took a new job as a coal miner.
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It was during those first few years in the new environment that I began to write - it was an emotional time for me, a sad time and I used writing to escape in my head back to the farm and the forest.
I became interested in spirituality during my twenties and read and studied as much as being a busy wife and mother allowed. My children grew up picking blackberries; walking the lanes and fields; paddling in streams; learning the names of the flowers and the birds; seeking out rare plants and wild creatures; searching for fossils. They learnt about ley lines and we plotted them on the local ordnance survey map. We visited the standing stones at Avebury and Stonehenge and I bought a pack of tarot cards but lacked the knowledge then to understand them.
During that time I worked as a farm secretary with more than 40 farming clients in the Gloucestershire/Wiltshire area. I served on various village committees, and co-edited a village magazine; fostered four children; ran a bed and breakfast and bought and sold books on the internet.
With work, home-life and so many commitments it meant that it wasn’t until the children had grown up and become independent that I was able to begin exploring the spiritual path that had been there in the background for so many years. I joined a local Christian Spiritual Church and through them trained as a Spiritual Healer. I went on to study Reiki to level III (Master) and attended workshops dealing with tarot; dowsing; crystals; shamanic healing and inspirational writing. Of those the tarot and inspirational writing are the two aspects of spirituality that I have studied in more depth and feel most attuned to.
For anyone interested in finding out more about inspirational writing, please read my book “The Purple Hare’s Guide to Inspirational Writing” - it is available in ebook format from Amazon, and also available as a paperback from The Hollow Hills Bookshop in Glastonbury, the Henge Shop at Avebury and directly from myself - see the contact page.
