Wonderlust took me 7 years to write. I organised my whole life around it, worked part-time only, budgeted, got up at 7am the four days a week to write it, even on weekends, and limited alcohol to only two glasses a night at most. It really is about who you become in the process.
I never wanted to write a book again. But Life had other plans for me. I had the whole big brain surgery odyssey and my stories became too large to blog about. So I started writing it as a book. I had nothing else to do at first and it made me happy. Then I couldn’t sleep because of the induced-menopause hot flashes. The oncologist said only meditation and yoga would help, so I booked into a ten-day vipassana retreat, like my friend Alana had been encouraging me to do, after she went for her neuralgia.
I too had wanted to do it since I read about it in Holy Cow on the trip to India at 24, but it was never the right time. Now it was. At the retreat I had a dream that reminded me of my love of linguistics. So I went back to teaching the Cambridge Advanced English exam. A few months later, I started getting the urge to go to Bali. Because I’d gone out with a guy who loved Gili T and met a woman at Sowilo, the kundalini yoga centre I went to, who loved Gili Air, I went there too.
In Bali, I was tormented by memories of Lucerne and finally had to feel it. After that I went to Gili Air and met a guy, a French jewellery designer moving to Bangkok. I started writing emails to him which I’d never send. This became part of my book.
Two years after I started, I finished it. Then I turned 40. Stuff happened, I added to it. I sent it round to some places but no one wanted to publish it. I thought to run a course, started a podcast, recorded 15 episodes and went to Bali for a month for our festival of forty. In Canggu, where all the digital nomads congregate, I met a guy at the breakfast place I always went to who had had an Amazon business for seven years. He told me I should publish ebooks.
I said mine were real books. But then the idea took hold once I’d gone back to Perth and so I published Wonderlust on Amazon. People loved it but due to some complications, I stopped publicising it. I was asked to teach the bridging course at UWA and felt so stressed that I quit teaching finally. I got the urge to go away again, on this trip I’d taken with a boyfriend at 21, and so I went for 7 weeks to Asia. Then COVID happened.
And a whole lot more. I started writing a second memoir called, The One, because I thought if I write it, I might meet him. But then, my legs stopped working. It was a six-month process that culminated in this. I couldn’t sit, stand or lie down without extreme pain. I was admitted to the hospital, had radiation on my spine and went on medication again.
I stayed with my parents while recovering. I started to walk again. And got better. I finished The One and met someone special. Now I am refining my first memoir again. And I’m almost finished, 4.5 years after I began it.
“Success will come when you are ready!”
I heard this the other day on The Manifestation Babe podcast (episode 114) and felt very excited because I find it SO TRUE. We must be the person able to receive our desires. Life is happening for us and not to us. Life is always working out. Life is training.
I love you,
Mireille xx
ps. On Sunday I will share more of my memoir. Do subscribe to receive it. I’d love it if you like this post and share it with your peeps. More of my writing is @mireilleparker_xx on Insta. Thank youu.
