Entrepreneur | Former Publisher | Portfolio Career | Connector of People | Ardent Baker | Frequent Smiler | Wife & Mother |
Judy Piatkus
In 1979, Judy Piatkus founded what would become a global publishing brand—Piatkus Books—from her spare bedroom. A single mother with a child with learning disabilities at a time when being a self-made woman entrepreneur was rare, Judy defied expectations, influencing, shaping, and giving rise to the cultural and professional perception of personal growth and development publishing.
Long before the bestseller charts were packed with mind/body/spirit, business, and relationship books, Judy created a platform for new voices and leading authorities and experts in their fields, including internationally bestselling authors Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mary Berry, David Allen and Brian L. Weiss.
Judy grew the company to become an international brand, before selling it in 2007, just before the global financial crash that she had shrewdly foreseen. She is now a keynote speaker and a coach and mentor to start-ups. In 2011 she founded Conscious Cafe, a network that brings people together for connection and discussion.
www.judypiatkus.com
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
The Dance of Anger
This classic book came into my life when I was 37 and it was one of my early introductions to personal growth literature. It is a wonderful book on the topic of women and anger, written by an American clinical psychologist, and is still in print and on many reading lists. I ordered a copy for a friend not long ago. I had been brought up to be a ‘good girl’, a ‘people pleaser’. The Dance of Anger introduced me to the topic of anger, repressed anger in particular. I hadn’t understood until then how much I – and so many other women – are taught when we are young to repress our feelings. So many of us are unable to express our anger in appropriate ways. I was also interested to learn about triangles of anger and how to speak directly about my feelings rather than through a third party. It was all very new and interesting and I became fascinated to learn more.
Living Magically
I found the first few chapters of this book in the slush pile which is what publishers call the range of material that floods in for consideration and which is not agented. At the time Gill Edwards had a slot on BBC London radio. She was a psychologist and mystic and it was becoming very popular. Living Magically was the first book I read on metaphysics. It introduced me to the tools and techniques of metaphysics, ideas about the fundamental nature of reality, thoughts about abstract concepts such as energy, time and space. The book became a bestseller for an audience hungry to embrace new ideas and new ways of thinking. I was lucky enough to meet Gill on several occasions and attend her workshops. She was a remarkable inspiration to everyone who met her and knew her.
The Power of Gems and Crystals
Publishing this book was to have consequences that changed my life. It was the first mind, body and spirit title that Piatkus published. Soozi Holbeche gave popular workshops on crystals and their many uses so we knew she had a following. What I didn’t realise, when I first read the book, was that she also used crystals for past life therapy and that was one of her skills as well. I was recovering from major back pain when I was offered a session with Soozi. Expecting to understand more about crystal healing, I was not prepared for a past life session which was what she was really offering. The experience changed my life and emboldened me to explore more about mind, body and spirit and the mystic world which has since become a lifelong passion.
Many Lives, Many Masters
This is another classic bestseller. It may well have sold as many as 10 million copies by now and it has been widely translated into many languages. It is the story of a traditional psychotherapist who while giving a patient hypnosis, discovers that she is recalling past-life traumas. Dr Weiss was even more astonished when she began to reveal remarkable revelations to him about his own family. I was fortunate enough to meet him when he came to England to promote the book. He was a humble and unassuming man. This book introduced not just me but millions of others to thoughts and ideas about reincarnation which, at the time, was a subject rarely discussed in the Western world.
Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui
I haven’t trained to be a feng shui practitioner but I am a devout believer in the ancient subject of Chinese geomancy. The idea that arranging the placement of buildings and objects in such a way as to achieve harmony and balance not just in my surroundings but also in my inner life has great appeal. We published Creating Sacred Space with Karen Kingston and one chapter in that book resonated with so many readers—it was about clearing clutter. Karen’s next book expanded on the topic of clearing your clutter and was the first book on the subject of decluttering. Her work has spawned a whole new profession of people who will not only advise about feng shui but also come to your home and advise on decluttering your space and every aspect of your life. Simple principles that I learned from both books have stayed with me over the years and impact so much of my understanding of the part that spatial harmony and clutter play in our lives.
Your Body Speaks Your Mind
This has always been a bible for me. It was the first book to introduce me to the idea of the mind-body connection. Debbie explores the bodymind relationship, how feelings and thoughts are linked to specific parts of the body and how to understand ourselves better by understanding more about our specific areas of body pain. Since then I have always regarded my body as a complete holistic system. While Western medicine often treats each part of the body separately with doctors becoming experts in different areas of the body, especially in the UK, when you think about what is going on in your life and look at it in terms of the symptoms that are happening to you physically, there is always much learning to be gained. This is the first book I consult whenever I have a physical problem.
Momma and the Meaning of Life
Irvin Yalom is one author whose books I always buy as soon as they come out. He is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and author of a number of bestselling books. I was first introduced to his writing in Love’s Executioner, a collection of stories about some of the patients in his psychotherapy practice. Irvin Yalom is not just a great therapist and healer but hugely gifted in storytelling. I find his writing just glorious. He writes about the patients who come to see him, about their problems and how the experience of the therapeutic session is gradually able to help and to heal—although he also tells stories about some patients he has not been able to heal. You don’t have to be a therapist or a counsellor in order to learn so much about the human psyche from these beautifully told tales. Irvin Yalom was married to his wife Marilyn for 65 years. In his later books he writes about their life together. The most recent work of his that I have just finished reading was written by Irvin Yalom and his wife Marilyn together. In alternating chapters they write of Marilyn’s experience in facing cancer and how she grappled with the knowledge that it could not be cured while Irv shares his feelings and emotions as her illness runs its course. It is a sad book but, paradoxically, at the same time hugely warm and life-affirming.
A New Earth
This classic bestseller is beautifully written. The author explores complex ideas about consciousness and the ego and being present, and he does so in a way that makes it comprehensible. I have read this book a few times in the past and am currently re-reading it. Concepts that I struggled to make sense of fifteen years ago, have now become much clearer as I have worked with the ideas over the years. At every moment we are all on a different stage in our personal evolution. None of us can take in information until we are ready and able to absorb it. Or rather we can only take it in with the level of understanding of consciousness that is available to us at the time of reading. A New Earth is both an introduction and a book for advanced readers as there is much to be gained from it at every stage of reading and reflection.
Opening Doors Within
Eileen Caddy was one of the founders of the Findhorn spiritual community which is located in a small village in the North of Scotland. She came there with her husband and their friend Dorothy Maclean in 1957 and a few years later, following spiritual guidance, the Findhorn community was born. Eileen Caddy lived a long and inspiring life in the community and died in 2006. She wrote a number of books including her very inspiring and moving autobiography, Flight into Freedom and Beyond. One of my favourites of her writings is Opening Doors Within which was published in 1987. It contains a spiritual teaching for every day of the year. Each teaching is full of great wisdom. One year, when I was on a business trip to Australia I found some cards with Eileen Caddy’s words on them in a bookshop and I have kept one of them on my desk all these years later. Set your sights high The higher the better. Expect the most Wonderful Things to happen, Not in the future But right now. Realise that nothing is too good Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.
Creating Money
This book was first published in 1988 and I was introduced to it by Gill Edwards. At the time I had been running my business about twelve years. We were coming out of the recession of the early 90s and wanting to expand into new areas of publishing. We were always short of money. I read and re-read this book so many times. It was one of the forerunners of the abundance movement. It was channelled by the authors’ spirit guides and it was the first time I had read a channelled book—or even given any thought to spirit guides. As a publisher, I appreciated the way the words flowed so smoothly (it was published by H J Kramer, a small American press). I learned so much about money and manifestation from this book. For myself, I learned to adjust my thinking so that I understood that sometimes what we want can easily be obtained—we don’t always need money in order to manifest it in our lives. We just need to think about our life experiences differently. For my business I learned a way of working with energy and visualisations to manifest money to come in when needed to help with paying bills. I only used it when all other options were exhausted so that I wasn’t coming from a place of greed. It always worked.