Why I've Written This Book

This book began as a diary of a journey I took with my husband in 2012, throughout outback Central Australia, six months after my grandmother died. Visiting places I'd explored with my grandmother in childhood, I re-discovered the beautiful wildflowers she had photographed and written about in her book Wildflowers and Plants of Inland Australia. When her voice spoke to me through the words on the page, I felt her spirit sing in my heart.

When I returned from this three-week journey through remote Australia, I began writing a diary. At first, my diary entries were about the spiritual healing connection I had made with each wildflower spirit, but as time passed I found myself writing about Grandma, my childhood and our family history. I knew my family would love the family history and the wildflower photography, so I turned the diary into a gift for my family. As the project grew, it become a resource for my healing students, eventually evolving into the book it has become today.

The Publishing Proposal

I shared the first print run of this book with my family and my students. Now, I'd like to do a larger print run of about 100 books so that more of my clients and blog readers – and indeed anyone who feels called to read the book and connect with the spirit of the wildflowers – can benefit.

PRE-ORDERING

You can use this page to pre-order your copy, so that you don't miss out when I do the next print run towards the end of June. All pre-orders will be honoured, regardless of whether I receive 100 orders or not! Please contact me if you have any queries about ordering.

The initial prototypes of both the book and the accompanying card set have been very popular with my students in particular, who love being able to shuffle and select a card at random, while asking which flower spirit might be able to support them with healing, and then referring to the book for more information.

Book Overview

The book is A4 size, in two sections:

Part One tells the story of my grandparents and their family history; my childhood and how I evolved into the spiritual naturopath I have become today; and the lead-up to the wildflower spirit journey itself.

In Part Two, I describe the spiritual healing I received from the 26 flower spirits I connected with while travelling through Central Australia. This section features beautiful photographs of the flowers and a description of their healing qualities.

PART ONE

Chapter One introduces my grandparents and my childhood memories of them. They moved to Alice Springs in Central Australia in the 1960s - my grandmother wanted to work with Aboriginal people in her capacity as a medical doctor, and my grandfather, a professional photographer, was attracted to the glorious desert colours.

Chapter Two tells the story of my grandmother's passing and the family stories I heard at the funeral about her life and our family history. In life, my grandmother role-modelled unconditional love and in death she continues to guide me.

Chapter Three delves deeper into my relationship with my grandmother, her influence over my decision to become a naturopath, and my journey from Alice Springs to Darwin. While studying naturopathy, I met a Welsh gypsy who taught me a psychic method for making flower essences.

In Chapter Four I revisit my toddler years and the deep connection I forged with nature while living in a tent in a Tasmanian rainforest. With no other children to play with, I developed a rich inner world and made friends with nature spirits. These childhood invisible friends turned into spirit guides in adulthood. During my teenage years, I went on a vision quest that foretold my work as a spiritual healer specialising in working with aura colours.

Chapter Five brings us to the wildflower spirit journey itself, a three-week, 6,000km trek through 17 Aboriginal communities over some of the most isolated and corrugated dirt roads of inland Australia. This chapter begins with a hand-drawn mud map, and goes on to explain how the journey came about and how my husband and I overcame the challenges we encountered along the way.

Chapter Six finds me reflecting, post-journey, on the incredible transformation I experienced over the three-week trek. I write about the healing of childhood wounds, the value of mindfulness and how we can call on flower spirits to help and heal us. A link to the companion website for this book, flowerspirits.net, provides additional resources for those who are interesting in making their own connection with flower spirits.

PART TWO

In Part Two, each flower spirit journey is featured on a two-page spread, with the flower photograph and list of its healing actions on the left-hand page, and a one-page story about the healing connection I made with each flower on the right-hand page:

Here's some sample text from the story about my connection with Tie-cutting Mistletoe:

I found this mistletoe outside my great uncle Peter's home in Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal community at Uluru. This mistletoe helps us let go of other people and move on with our lives. While this can include moving on after relationship break-ups and the death of loved ones, tie-cutting doesn't necessarily bring about the end of a relationship. Quite often, it improves relationships, because tie-cutting removes the old rot in the space between people's hearts. I cut ties with my father and my husband last year with the help of Mother Mary and Archangel Michael. Since then, my relationships with both men have been healthier and happier. This flower spirit also heals trauma associated with separation anxiety. Being forced to move on too quickly after loss can create wounds that cause clingy behaviour due to fear of loss.

Besides cutting ties with people, we can also cut ties with our own outworn identities and behaviours. This spirit flower helped me by reaching into my solar plexus and grasping hold of a blockage I had stored in this part of my body. You are holding on to the past, clinging tight to old ideas about who you are. You need to let go and shed your old skin. Have faith in your capacity to evolve, even if you cannot clearly see where your next transformation will take you.

Mistletoe showed me the grasping, fearful nature of the blocked part of myself and I really felt sorry for it, because it reflected a deep poverty of consciousness, like a pauper on the streets grabbing desperately at mouldy crumbs. I reached a hand out to this inner self and invited it into the warmth of my heart. I did this by creating images of bringing the pauper off the streets and giving her a good meal and some companionship. I imagined talking with this self about how it might re-invent itself by making use of its unique strengths.

After bidding Peter farewell we drove on to Imanpa, and after finishing the job there, spent the night at Kulgera Roadhouse. The next day we arrived at Apatula (Finke), a week after the Finke Desert Race, a famous two-day off-road race from Alice Springs to Finke and back again. The GBM (Government Business Manager) had just returned from Tapatjatjaka (Titjikala), our next community, so she was able to tell us a little about the road, which runs adjacent to the race track. “It's a rough road. I travel it regularly and have just broken my third back windscreen. By the way, keep your eyes open for railway spikes sticking out of the road."

She wasn't joking about the roughness or the spikes. Along the way, we found the manager's freshly shattered windscreen and three abandoned cars, including a shiny new BMW SUV. We originally set out on the main road, but it was unbearably corrugated so we crossed over to the racetrack, which runs adjacent to the main road. The racetrack had a smoother surface but it dipped up and down like a mini roller coaster ride. After about ten minutes of this I said "I'm feeling seasick. Are you feeling seasick? Maybe we should switch back to the other road."

"Okay, let's do it!" says Steve, so we did. After another ten minutes of being rattled half to death, seasickness didn't seem so bad after all. Each time we changed tracks, the other one would start looking more inviting. Then we got stuck while crossing between the two. When Stephen tells the story he recalls me filming the almost-bogged event while rattling off a light-hearted commentary. "Will you stop filming and help me!?", he exclaimed in exasperation. "This is serious!"

Cured of our road-hopping, we stayed put on the corrugations and limped into Tapatjatjaka on dusk. The journey had taken longer than we hoped, but we were determined to drive on and camp the night at Chambers Pillar, a place I remember visiting as a child with my grandparents. The road into Chambers wound around like a snake tying itself in knots, taking us through running streams and riverbeds, up and down large sandy dunes, then up the steep slope of a narrow ridge with a sharp 90 degree turn at the top, all in pitch blackness. It was a relief to arrive safely at camp, to say the least.

Who Will Love This Book

This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in spirituality, nature, flower essences, flower photography, family history, remote Australia and/or healing.

Some of the most important themes explored in the book are:

*Reframing our childhood wounds in a more positive light

*Keeping the wisdom of our loved ones alive in our hearts and minds after they pass

*Healing our relationship with loved ones who have passed

*The importance of being ourselves, even in the face of disapproval from others

*Finding ourselves by understanding and embracing family history

*Calling on flower spirits the way we call on angels (flower essences aren't the only way!)

*Using imagination and intent to connect with the spirit of nature

About The Author

Omanisa grew up in Central Australia. In her late teenage years she moved to Darwin, where she currently lives with her husband and grown children. She began healing, sketching and reading the aura in her mid-twenties, working for an international clientele via the internet, and in 2003 she graduated as a naturopath.

For many years, she ran a local clinic in Darwin, and was often booked months in advance, with clients loving her unique blend of spiritual counselling, healing, iridology, herbal medicine and whole-foods plant-based nutrition. Omanisa currently specialises in the distant delivery of tailored healing packages, full of colour, art, creativity and guided imagery. Here is a sample.

Om runs a Wordpress blog at omanisa.wordpress.com, which features her work as a practitioner as well as blog posts on topics such as healing, psychic ability, spirit guides and health. This blog has over 1,000 followers.

To learn more about Omanisa and her work, watch ABC Open's "A Spiritual Healer", by Jasper Martin.