Non-Fiction
The Journey of the Slim Soul
After Ange got over the fact that the first spiritual book the angels asked her to publish was about weight loss, she embraced the assignement and wrote about MBS slimming. Yes, the angels cared about slimming because people who want to lose weight suffer from a chronic lack of self love. And instead of them starting from that point of view, the industry encourages them to use willpower in a self destructive cycle of yo-yo dieting.
This book was written before the body image movement, but it prepaved it. Though it is not part of Ange’s core message anymore, she wanted to dedicate a page to it to honour her first book.
Ange wrote this book to help herself first...
Ange had body image issues from very young. She was raised by women who were constantly dieting, criticising their own bodies and that of other women behind their backs. Her mother put her on her first diet at age twelve. When she got married for the first time in 1992, she lost a stone without dieting, by making small adjustments to the way she ate and without going to the gym.
When she trained in clincial hypnotherapy in 2007, she had a string of clients coming for weight loss. At that point, she had buried her past body image issues deep within and was in denial of her own journey of struggling with body image.
The book started as a leaflet for her clients with the basic principles she learnt from her own journey. It contained seven golden principles of slimming, the first one being to start with loving oneself as you are.
When told by a psychic that the angels wanted her to write a book about slimming, she laughed. Why on earth did the angels care about slimming? She simply could not understand how slimming could be a spiritual topic.
Weight issues are very often rooted in trauma and no amount of dieting is going to heal that.
The Journey of the Slim Soul is no longer available for sale because even though it was a book about self love more than anything, Ange realised that it was still far too much rooted into the diet mentality and she no longer wanted to be a part of that. However, Ange wants to honour this book as it has brought her two incredible gifts.
The three gifts of the Journey of the Slim Soul
Gift one
Even though the self publishing of the Journey of the Slim Soul could be seen as a failure not many few copies of the paperback were sold, Ange was able to produce a beautifully finished book, which, as a novice, was no mean feat. She had written, edited and published a book in English, which was not her first language. All of these were big achievements. How many people do you know who say they are going to write a book and never do? The fact that she did not know how to market a book just showed her where the work remained and she has been dedicating herself to learning how to do just that ever since.
Gift two
The Journey of the Slim Soul was the book that helped Ange secure a literary agent in December 2012. This was a massive boost to her confidence as Ange has always suffered from imposter syndrome as an author. Growing up, she believed only literary geniuses could be author and she was definitely not a literary genius. Her zone of genius was being able to explain complex idea in simple terms. In addition to this, English was not her native language, so she had a complex vis a vis native English authors. Signing an agent soothed both of those complexes and encouraged her to keep going.
Gift three
The Journey of the Slim Soul helped Ange and her clients stop the self destructive cycle of yo-yo dieting. It put the focus where it needed to be, which was on the strings of trauma and abuse that she and her clients experienced. It freed her and her clients from the cycle of blame that the diet and fitness industry puts on them for failing to be slim. And it brought angelic help for everyone involved to start their journey of self love. Ange is still very much on that journey. As she is unsure of whether she will write a sequel to the Journey of the Slim Soul at this point, she recommends authors like Megan Jayne Crabbe.