Julian of Norwich is known as the first woman to publish a book in English, and I first learn about her during a Virtual Residency meeting with several authors from Norwich. A 14^th century Christian mystic who had received 16 visions on the Passion of Christ at 30 years old while gravely ill, Dame Julian went on to become an anchoress after this life-changing experience, living apart from the world in a small church cell in Norwich. She documented and reflected upon these life-changing visions in her lifetime while also providing spiritual counsel to those who visited her about her visions.

For me, reading Revelations is an unusual experience. While the writing almost feels foreign coming from a vastly different time, there is something about the nurturing optimism of her words (the most famous being ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well’) that make me want to sit with them a little longer.

The first thing that strikes me is that her refreshing clarity and conviction had to have come from the minimalism of leading a mostly solitary life. This surfaces a pensive recollection that 25 years ago. I had gone for my first silent retreat in Singapore. Back then, I had just started my first ‘proper office job’ after graduation as an account executive at a public relations agency with friendly colleagues and an easy-going boss. By all accounts, it was a relatively comfortable gig, but I was often exhausted and miserable. My Catholic friend recommended that I take a break for a few days at a silent retreat centre run by Good Shepherd Sisters that welcomed people from all religious backgrounds.

The retreat centre was aptly named Oasis, a two-storey green and white building on a hill nestled by broad, sweeping raintrees. During my three-day stay there, I discover just how liberating it was to have the space to just be. The physical silence permeates to an interior stillness that goes beyond just having some relaxing ‘me-time’. I emerge from Oasis with several epiphanies, including one that eventually steers me away from pursuing a corporate career.

I attend five more of such retreats in the next ten years before the Oasis closes to make way for a construction of a highway. During my last stay, I am saddened by its impending closure and asked the retreat director there, Sister Elizabeth, if I could write a book that paid tribute to her special ministry in this place. I interview her for the next few months and put together a manuscript which I submit to a Christian publisher.

The publisher is surprised that a non-Catholic like me would write what they view as a Catholic book, but they find Sister Elizabeth’s perspectives on silence refreshing and decide to publish it. While finalising the book cover, Sister Elizabeth insists that my byline needs to be included along with hers though I had been intending to just be a ghostwriter. This is how I get my first published book, Quiet Journeys.

This experience creates a shift in how I perceive my writing process. I have always wanted to publish a book since the age of six, but prior to this, all I had were incomplete drafts. How had I been able to complete writing Quiet Journeys? I realise it is because I had genuinely wanted to share with other people how wonderful and embracing a silent retreat could be. Having that higher purpose had somehow driven me to see this manuscript to its end.

This higher purpose is also what draws me to Julian of Norwich’s writing. She is passionate and bold in declaring how loving God is and how His goodness overflows despite a world full of unrest with war, plague, and social inequality. Women barely had a voice in medieval society, but she had wanted people to know about her visions, and she unreservedly documented them throughout her lifetime. And yet, her writing itself is devoid of ego – we don’t know her real name or many details about her personal circumstances.

My writer friends and I often ask each other why we write. The answers vary, but some of them bring up the idea of immortality and being able to leave some sort of personal legacy behind. Somehow, this notion has never been particularly motivating to me. While reading Revelations of Divine Love, there is something refreshingly appealing about the other centredness of Dame Julian’s writing even as she is sharing such intimate personal visions. Her focus is always on telling readers about God’s unconditional love for humanity.

Since Quiet Journeys, I have published 15 children’s books. With most of these titles, I start on them because I hope to explore something bigger than myself. There is a picture book series touching on adoption and one’s sense of identity. A recent book project was a middle-grade graphic novel trilogy dealing with ageing and dementia. However, as a virtual resident at the National Centre for Writing these past few months, I am now working on a YA novel purely out of a curiosity as to where this story will take me.

This shift in purpose feels hard-hitting, but perhaps it is a reflection of being in a different stage of life now. In the past, there had been the need for silence and getting away from the madding crowd. These days, it is more about seeking connection and community. While it was solitude that once catalysed my drive to write, now, I am writing more in response to interactions with people and the world. Reading Revelations of Divine Love and learning more about Julian of Norwich has made me see this shift much more clearly. At the same time, it has also made me consider just how expansive and dynamic the act of writing is.

The structure of Revelations of Divine Love is intriguing and reveals just how much introspection Dame Julian brings to her writing. The book comprises The Short Text, a narrative description of her 16 visions, and The Long Text, where she mulls over these visions and adds more spiritual commentary. The latter was written over a span of 20 years and is six times longer than The Short Text with 63,600 words that spread out over 86 chapters. There is something to be learned from this space and time she gives with Revelations. While The Long Text may seem repetitive of The Short Text in terms of chronicling the visions, there are also new details and insights which give more weight to her experiences and bring forth refreshing doctrinal insights.

Being introspective is something that I am trying to remind myself to do more of these days when writing. As someone whose first form of paid work came from freelance writing with magazines, I have always valued the notion of being productive and efficient with words. However, this is gently discouraged by my virtual residency mentor, Yin, during our first meeting, after I had presented a rather ambitious writing timeline for my work-in-progress novel. Yin reminds me to give more time for my story to take shape and to linger with the plot and characters so that I can write with more familiarity and authenticity. Intentionally being slower with writing and giving it a more sustained form of attention has been frustrating and disconcerting at times, but Revelations of Divine Love has been showing me that it can lead to a fruitful exploration. In a way, this manner of writing is an act of faith, especially in a world where content can be spewed out by artificial intelligence in a matter of seconds.

Dame Julian’s earnest faith is also layered with spirit of courage in her writing. While I do not entirely grasp the theological intricacies of Revelations of Divine Love, I am fascinated with how she expounds upon the maternal nature of a Christian God, a concept that is considered controversial even in many modern-day churches. She confidently presents her ideas on this from a woman’s perspective, positioning a personal relationship with God as tender and comforting, and Christ’s Passion akin to the suffering of a mother’s labour pains. To articulate such ideas with such depth in a male-dominated institution as an untrained layperson takes a certain kind of audacity which I find admirable.

I take note of this in light of the moments of fear and Imposter Syndrome that have come my way during the period of this Virtual Residency. Meeting so many talented and accomplished writers these past few months have been exhilarating yet terrifying, and it makes me wonder if the story I am trying to tell will have a place in the highly selective world of book publishing. At the same time, while writing my YA novel, I am sometimes gripped by concerns of being offensive or myopic in depicting the harsher realities of growing up in Singapore. I take cue from Dame Julian that if there are words brimming in my heart, they should emerge somehow against all odds. And so, I continue writing and refining, with hope that this will eventually be a piece of work that I will be able to share with others.

In a post-pandemic world, Julian of Norwich has grown in popularity in religious and literary circles. Living in isolation and yet being so hopeful despite dismal circumstances have made her writings from 600 years ago a lot more relatable in recent times. One website even declares her as the patron saint of  ‘solitary women, writers, solitude and cats’. I, too, am glad to have discovered her as a writing role model. Reading Reflections of Divine Love has unexpectedly been a fitting capstone to my Virtual Residency.