BOOK WRITING FOR THERAPISTS & OTHER HEALERS:
NAOMI ROSE
BOOK DEVELOPER & CREATIVE MIDWIFE
helping you listen your book into being
write the book that’s been waiting inside you
There is nothing quite like being truly heard.
As a healer, you know this in your bones. Every day you create the conditions for another person to be seen, received, held — to discover and give voice to what has lived wordlessly inside them, sometimes for years.
But who listens to the listener?
Who helps healers give voice to their own creative wisdom?
As a healer who offers others the profound and essential gift of listening, you may not always get to receive it, yourself, as fully as you would like. And this may be even more true when writing a book. It can be challenging to be able to hear and trust your authentic self amid the superimposed critical voices about writing that may interfere with your inherent ability to listen to and trust yourself, and to create from there.
But it doesn’t have to go this way.
Writing a book can be a wonderful way to give voice to what’s inside you. A way to know yourself — to experience a deep and sometimes wonderfully surprising reflection of yourself, even beyond what you’ve been conscious of. Being listened to deeply (as you well know from the giving end) enables you to know yourself more fully, more truly — and to love yourself more acceptingly, appreciatively. This can be true whatever the subject of your book.
As a Book Developer & Creative Midwife, this is what I do with healers. I want the process of writing a book itself to be healing. Then you can approach it with gratitude, perhaps even reverence. Something that wanted to be known through you – something that can only be known through you – becomes known. And the end result – the gift – is a book that you can love . . . and share with readers . . . and thereby give them the fruits of your listening. It’s a virtuous, healing circle all the way around.
“Thank you, Naomi, for your rare, exceptional ability to hold safe and sacred space. What an exceptional holding quality you have and deep listening, that you can make space for me to articulate what’s in me.” — Shira Stone, MFT, author, The Sounding Heart
what i bring to your book — and to you
There is something I’ve come to understand over half a lifetime in the publications field working with publishers and authors: the book that speaks in its author’s true voice rarely comes out fully formed. It arrives slowly, often in glimpses or mosaic pieces, more felt into than logically planned. And if it had to wait until it was completed in order to be received (the standard approach), its author would not get to experience being received every step of the way.
But being received — listened to, held, and appreciated as well as guided — is essential for this journey to be encouraging, reassuring, and inwardly inspired all the way.
This is what I do.
I receive your book before it exists. I treat what’s not yet formed or shaped as already worthy of love and attention. I find the beauty in the rough draft, hold the larger vision when you’re too close to see it, and stay with your work across the months it takes to come into being.
For example, one of my therapist-clients had a strong sense of what she did with clients and why — she worked with their voice to reach the unmet places within. But because so much of her work is intuitive, getting the reach and breadth of her knowledge into written form was daunting enough that she froze. However, when I invited her to speak it instead, and offered to listen and capture her words as she spoke, that turned things around: she was able to articulate what she knew, from both experience and training, in an inspired way. Describing her experience, she said:
“It was just kind of like a sea, an ocean of all this knowledge and awareness — but it wasn’t in form. Being able to put it into words has been so transformational for me. It’s letting me know what I know. It couldn’t come out unless you had the consciousness to receive it.
“Being in this with you has been a very transformational journey. You created such a deep holding space that I felt safe to open up my heart, my being — to let myself out. I’ve been able to say things I didn’t know I could even say, didn’t know I had words for.
“Thank you, Naomi, for your rare, exceptional ability to hold safe and sacred space. What an exceptional holding quality you have and deep listening, that you can make space for me to articulate what’s in me. Your deep listening was able to help me know how it wanted to emerge in me. I couldn’t have done it without you. It had to be you.” — Shira Stone, author, The Sounding Heart
This quality of presence with my clients didn’t come only from my publications background as an editor, writer, and consultant to publishers and authors. It also came from my graduate studies in depth psychology and transpersonal psychology, and from my ordination as a Healing Conductor in the Inayatiyya Sufi tradition — a lineage that understands the soul’s knowing as real and worthy of tending. “Listening” embraces all this.
Listening Your Book into Being
Writing a book may be new to you (it was, for the majority of my clients), but listening is not. Listening is your home territory.
So when we listen to you together — that is, both of us bring full presence to what’s inside you that’s seeking expression, and I hold and reflect back the jewel of what I see — something that’s ready to open up inside you has the room to do so. And the words begin to flow. And you know when they are right, because they land well inside you. They give you the healing that you wish for your readers
You get to be you, in this process of writing a book from the deeper Self. You don’t have to fit yourself into some book-writing mold. Your true writing emerges out of you. We call it forth by listening to you together.
And isn’t writing a book via an intimate act of listening just perfect for someone like you, given the profession you’ve been called to?
Whether your book draws on your professional expertise, your personal experience, your spiritual path, or something that weaves together all of these — your book will not only reflect your healing training but will also transmit your healing nature, because of where you were within yourself as you wrote it
Your book is waiting inside you. We just have to listen it out.
It’s your turn to be listened to, now.
The Fruits of the Book You’ll Write
Think for a moment about the ripple effects of your healing work. Each person you help goes on to affect others. A book carries that outward further still — to readers you may never meet, in places you may never go, long after the sessions have ended. It becomes a living extension of your vocation.
And there are practical gifts as well. A book creates a lasting legacy of your wisdom and experience. It introduces you to readers who, having already encountered your approach through your writing, arrive as pre-qualified, resonant clients. And it opens doors — to speaking, to teaching, to being known in wider circles for the work you've given your life to. Listening your book into being allows your readers to listen to themselves along with you.
Book Developer Naomi Rose welcomes therapists and other healers who have a book calling to be written.
What Some of the Healer-Authors Who Have Worked with Me Say
Who I am and Why This Work Is Mine to Do
I've spent half a lifetime in the publications field — as an editor, writer, and consultant to publishers and authors — and for more than twenty of those years, working specifically with therapists, healers, and others whose books carry wisdom the world needs.
But credentials alone don't explain why this work fits me so naturally. I am also a visual artist and musician, born into a family of writers — which means I know from the inside how creativity moves, where it gets blocked, and what it needs to open. And I am an ordained Healing Conductor in the Inayatiyya Sufi tradition of Hazrat Inayat Khan, which means I bring a healing orientation to everything I do. In our work together, it's not only about the book you are writing. It's just as much about the person who is writing it.
I work with therapists and healers both locally in the San Francisco Bay Area and worldwide via Zoom.
How We Would Work Together
Where we begin depends entirely on where you are — whether you have only a feeling that a book wants to be written, a handful of pages, a full draft that needs shaping and deepening, or somewhere in between.
Your first step might be a free 30-minute Discovery Call — a chance for us to meet, and for me to get a sense of you and what your book needs.
Or you might begin with a single Deep Listening Session, a full hour where we look together at where your book stands and what wants to move forward. Many people leave that hour feeling: “She gets me, and we can do this together.”
If your book-birthing calls out for the kind of Creative Midwifery I provide, the next step would be 1:1 ongoing Book Development sessions — where we meet every two weeks (in person or on Zoom) to closely accompany the unfolding of your book. God is said to have said “I was a Hidden Treasure and I wanted to be known.” And bringing out your “hidden treasure” in book form is what we give ourselves to.
Together, we can listen your book into being.
a case study of one therapist-author
who worked with me to write her book
Many healers have paved the way in writing the book of their heart.
You can take heart from their experience.
Read about the book-writing journey of one of my healer-clients,
RAHIMA WARREN, MFT (ret.)
Author of THE STAR-SEER’S PROPHECY trilogy
What she wanted for her book and her writing process . . .
What she went through (obstacles and breakthroughs) . . .
What it was like for her to work with me . . .
The eventual triumph of
Publishing her book . . .
Receiving rave reviews from readers . . . and even
Having her book be used in clinical settings as “bibliotherapy.”
CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE RAHIMA’S JOURNEY & GAIN INSIGHTS FOR YOUR OWN BOOK’S CREATION
What does it take for a therapist to become an author?
I explored this question (among others) in depth during my interview with Where the Client Is journal, sharing my approach and encouragement for therapists who feel ready to share their expertise in book form.
You can read this interview HERE.
Take the Next Step on Your Author Journey Today
A deep listener like you deserves to be heard far and wide,
and the world deserves to receive your wisdom.
Together, we can listen your book into being.
NOT QUITE READY TO BEGIN?
My books on Writing from the Deeper Self are a good place to start:
A deep listener like you deserves to be heard far and wide,
and the world deserves to receive your wisdom.
Together, we can listen your book into being.
Writing from the Deeper Self
Bringing Your Treasures into the World
Naomi Rose, Book Developer & Creative Midwife Encouraging your flowering