creativity planning & productivity writing

The Writing Road Trip – Update

April 3, 2022

Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me and I co-host The Writing Road Trip. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.

So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you information and inspiration for your writing journey:

Get on the Writing Road Trip email list

The Writing Road Trip is an exciting collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.

The program has three components that we plan to keep cycling through so join us at any time. Join the email list to keep in touch with what’s available. Here are the three components!

We kick off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity, a two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing.
Then we have a six-week Writing Road Map course that helps you zero in on your purpose and direction. We work on: creating your vision, getting in flow, mindset, creativity for the long-haul and sharing your work with the world. It helps you map the writing journey your way with the support of community.
The Writing Road Trip is a longer community program for extended support as you write featuring virtual writing retreats, community calls to check in on your writing progress and writing input as required based on what you need!

We are kicking off on the Writing Road Trip in May 2022! So get on the email list for the latest news as well as regular writing inspiration and tips from us.

Get on the Writing Road Trip email list

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.

Transcript of our conversation

Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.

Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.

Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.

So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.

Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?

Terri Connellan: We did.

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.

Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.

Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.

Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely.

That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.

And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?

Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.

Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.

Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.

The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?

My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.

Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.

So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.

But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.

And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.

Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.

Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.

Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.

Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.

Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?

Beth Cregan:

Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.

Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.

We hope you’ll join us!

You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:

Get on the Writing Road Trip email list

creativity planning & productivity writing

The Writing Road Trip – Share the journey

January 31, 2022

I’m joining forces with Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me to co-host The Writing Road Trip in 2022. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.

We kick off today 31 January! So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you all the information and links to join in:

Get on the Writing Road Trip email list

The Writing Road Trip is an exciting new collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.

The program kicks off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity. This two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing for 2022.

We want to challenge you, nurture your creativity and provide opportunities to connect with other writers in a positive and affirming community.

Here’s what you need to know:

✍🏼 The Challenge goes from Monday 31 Jan to Friday 11 Feb.

✍🏼There are 6 x 30 minute live workshops Tues Wed Thurs each week.

✍🏼 Workshops are live at 7pm AEDT Sydney/Melb via Zoom + recorded.

✍🏼 Each workshop has a key focus, writing prompt & time to chat.

✍🏼 The private Facebook group is open for further connection & exploration.

✍🏼 The Challenge Workbook is ready for you to download.

Don’t forget to add us to your contacts so our emails land in your inbox.

The Challenge is free so connect with us, to get writing in 2022.

If you are already on our email list, then check out today’s email with all the Go Live links. DM us if you haven’t received it for any reason! We don’t want you to miss out.

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.

Transcript of our conversation

Terri Connellan: We did.

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely.

That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.

Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.

Beth Cregan:

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

We hope you’ll join us!

You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:

Get on the Writing Road Trip email list

family history intuition wholehearted stories

Ancestral patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through: My wholehearted story

July 31, 2018

This guest post from Sylvie Kirsch explores ancestral patterns via Tarot Numerology Lifespan Reading as a way of shaping our wholehearted stories.

This is the eleventh guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, with each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I am honoured to have my dear friend Sylvie Kirsch as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. This story is a real treat, informed by deep life experience, Western and Buddhist psychology and art, and featuring Tarot Numerology as a way of exploring ancestral patterns and influences. My sincere thanks to Sylvie for sharing her personal story, photographs and unique influences. Sylvie also shares a special Tarot spread and invites us all to explore our own ancestral patterns in this way. With a focus on a Tarot Numerology Lifespan Reading to explore the major events that have shaped her wholehearted story, read Sylvie’s heart-felt reflections to guide your own story!

Ancestral patterns in our lifespan: my wholehearted story

When we are born into a family, we enter a sphere of inherited cultural, traditional and societal dynamics that conditions our development throughout the lifespan. This sphere holds the seeds of all that will limit or nurture our lives. As we grow we become aware of a pre-established framework that defines our values, beliefs, choices, goals, relationships and especially our capacity to connect with the world.

My journey has been tightly woven into uncovering the ancestral paradoxes in my life. For 20 years I’ve been developing my own process through blending creativity and the intuitive exploration of the Tarot with the express intention of unravelling the complexity of my family situation.

How much of my life have I spent trying to understand and attribute some meaningful explanation for my broken parental links? How many of my choices have been driven by a need to heal this primal wound? How many times, stumped by my irrational responses, have I wondered why I did what I did, said what I said, and been unable to recognise the reflection in the mirror of my life?

Tarot Numerology as a tool to uncover ancestral patterns

Over time, my Tarot practice revealed several discrepancies between my choices and the assumptions and motivations that underpinned them. Intrigued by this, I deepened my exploration through training and was mentored by Katrina Wynne, author of An Introduction to Transformational Tarot Counseling: the High Art of Reading, an approach that integrates Jungian psychology, alchemy and counselling skills. This has become the backbone for developing my ideas in my work on Tarot Numerology, Genealogy and Family Dynamics.

The Tarot offers a non-judgemental stance towards what is playing out in a conflictual situation. We can become observers, able to uncover and acknowledge subconscious feelings, fears, and blockages without getting dragged down by them. Pieces that have been puzzling my life come together as I work on my family tree and explore relationships through genograms.

In the context of a genealogy reading, using the Tarot Major Arcana to represent family members provides me with archetypal clues I need to decipher their personality traits, talents, needs, strengths and vulnerabilities Guided by my studies in Family Systems and Constellation work I’m able to orientate my way through my ancestral map. However, a map is not the territory and my most precious guide in life has been my intuition. The Tarot’s gentle guidance tells what me what I’m capable of understanding, of changing and helps me discern what I cannot change and need to accept.

I want to share with you how I use a Tarot Numerology Lifespan Reading to explore the major events that have shaped my wholehearted story. This reading emphasizes the quality and strength of bonds with my parents and grandparents and their impact throughout my life. It consists of a numerological calculation of five Major Arcana. As this reading is inspired by French Tarot tradition, I use versions of the Tarot de Marseilles, in this case, the Pierre Madenié 1709. I have prepared a simplified Lifespan Card Spread for you to work through if you wish; you may find it a useful reference as you read my story and reading. Click the image of the overall spread below for the Lifespan Card Spread pdf:

The 1st Arcane – The quandary of my life – XV LE DIABLE reversed

The XV Le Diable reversed speaks: Every experience, whether bitter or sweet, is an opportunity, a teaching moment.

XV LE DIABLE, The Devil, represents the endpoints of my lifespan. At the point of entry, the Devil is reversed but it is through integrating the energies of the other Arcanas that He will gradually straighten to become fully evolved. The Devil’s strategy is to lie and cheat. He abides always on a dual level that superimposes our most basic instincts with the deepest Karmic mysteries. If the Devil represents our delusions, addictions, lack of control over our desires, lack of discernment in our choices, his real plan for us is that we break free from all that binds us.

In the Tarot, the Devil is a gatekeeper of the spiritual world. His mission is to test our capacity to overcome our inner demons. By successfully crossing his threshold, we cast ourselves on our final journey towards spiritual fulfilment. As the 1st Arcane of this reading, the Devil reversed indicates the problematic nature of the inherited environment we are born into and also gives clues to what we need to work on to fulfil our life purpose.

Both having too many emotional issues of their own, neither my Father nor my Mother could be present for me when I was a baby and I was brought up by my grandparents. At the very first I drew comfort in being the apple of two pairs of eyes. However, there was a parenthesis to the integrity and quality of this bond which widened into a taboo which encompassed the subject of my parents. As my childhood consciousness opened, I became aware of the differences between my situation and that of my playmates. “I don’t know” very soon became an unsatisfactory answer to –“Where is your Mummy?” – “Where is your Daddy?”– “Are they dead?” My grandparents went into immediate lock-down when the subject was broached and the lack of answers created a void of doubt and shame within me.

In the XV Le Diable, there are two tethered little demons. They have their arms tied behind their backs. From a genealogical perspective, this represents secrets and lies hidden in the ancestry. I am not the beginning of this story; the lies and secrets began generations before I was born. My grandmother had a very controlling personality. When her expectations for her brilliant daughter’s future were disappointed, she projected these underlying motivations on me. I wonder what role she played in my mother’s flight and in her leaving me behind.

The shame and confusion of my young childhood mind was fertile soil for breeding disparaging self-beliefs such as inadequacy and stupidity. All these added to a general conviction of not being good enough.

There had to be something wrong with me to explain the disappointment which led my mother to leave. Instead of the security of being loved, it was a deep fear of being abandoned that irrigated my early childhood growth. In fear of being further abandoned by my grandmother, from childhood right through to my teens, I aligned my life choices to please her. From my artistic inclination and talent, she decided that I would become a great artist. I was sent to the Beaux Art in Paris. For the first time, I was free from my grandmother’s control and far too naïve to notice the Devil still reversed had laid his trap. I plunged and revelled in every mistake he presented me.

The 2nd Arcane –The initial honing – XVI LA MAISON DIEU

XVI La Maison Dieu speaks: It is at the core of your pain that you will find the seeds of your growth.

XVI La Maison Dieu, The Tower, is often perceived with the foreboding of some painful experience, which it can be, but, in spirit, this is a wake-up call for necessary change. It marks a separation, a point of no return. If properly integrated the teachings of the Tower represent a breakthrough that leads to growth and flourishing, if not they become an irrevocable breaking up. The Tower seeks to understand and dive into the depths of human experience. Even if it means sustaining some serious cuts and grazes, the Tower knows that true wisdom necessarily comes at a price.

With my propensity to go the whole hog, I staggered from one unwholesome choice to another. I fell madly in love, abandoned my studies to rush into an improbable marriage. In my delusion, I persuaded myself I could build a secure edifice out of the flotsam and jetsam from the maelstrom I was wallowing in to house my dream family. I thought myself pregnant with child, when in reality, I was pregnant with the father and mother I never had.

To a certain extent I did quite well at sustaining the illusion but the Devil was unimpressed. He decided the time was ripe for putting his Karmic plan into action. The core of my life was struck with brimstone and fire. The most brutal, what shattered me so absolutely into a billion pieces, was the loss of my daughter. It took several years before I could understand that these tiny shards of my self were in reality seeds.

The 3rd Arcane – From Darkness Rising – VII Le Chariot

VII Le Chariot speaks: The only thing that can stop you is doubt.

VII Le Chariot, The Chariot, is read both reversed and upright. In its unevolved position, The Chariot needs to harness and maintain a strong hold on the steeds, or else, aimlessly drifting, we lose all sense of direction and end up floundering in self-doubt, never able to reach out to the rich abundance promised in its upright position. From the Tower I fell in fragments and was buried deep into the depths of Sorrow. I drifted blindly through what felt like aeons of darkness. Then one day, my eyes grew accustomed to the night, I began to make out familiar forms, gain a sense of orientation, slowly, gingerly standing up and find my bearings. I saw lights in the distance, my sons, the steeds of The Chariot, come to my rescue.

Upright, The Chariot speaks of the organisation and structuring of identity, never static, always evolving and expanding. He is a Voyager in search of new encounters and broadening his experiences beyond the boundaries of preconceived ideas. It is yang energy that fuels the vitality to reach our goals. The Chariot guides me through the stages of defining a viable itinerary and reminds me that I need to clear the path of past debris before I can move
forward. This means clearly stating my motivations: am I a voyager or am I seeking an escape route? If this is a journey, what is my destination? If this an attempt to escape, what fear do I need to overcome?

The Chariot is about survival: not the fleeing type, the facing the danger and fighting it type. Here I am in my early 30’s. I need to take stock of my resources, make a list of my assets for building a new life, for my two boys and myself. The seeds shed so heartbreakingly in XVI La Maison Dieu are now germinating and taking root. I found an apartment we could afford within walking distance of perfect schools and parks. I had my own art studio and got back to my painting. My life is back on track. I have my first exhibition, a success. I meet the man of my life.

The 4th Arcane – My sphere of choice – VI L’Amoureux

VI L’Amoureux speaks: Know the difference between love and desire and the right choice will appear.

The fourth Arcane symbolises our evolving maturity. The trodden path along which our values and beliefs shift, change or strengthen. VI L’Amoureux, The Lovers, represents the crises that shake the foundations of what we uphold by bringing on the need to make a fundamental life-changing choice. In every choice, we simultaneously gain and lose
something significant in our lives. In every choice, something comes to life whilst another thing dies.

The question asked by The Lovers is: what am I prepared to lose in order to win? To develop and grow, we must be prepared to fly away from the safe nest of our childhood. Two entities (or are they the little devils in disguise?), guide the choices of The Lovers. The first is the capacity to discern the difference between our needs and wants. The second is the ability to identify what is within our sphere of choice and dependent on our power and what is not.

Choices always imply taking risks. Risks always engender consequences, even sacrifices, which call upon personal responsibility, the terra firma of maturation. The Beloved asked – Will you marry me? How I loved my life as it was! Yet, I yearned to live with my beloved. The boys were happy and thriving well in their schools. Why change? This is the dilemma of the VI The Lovers. The life-affirming decision that breaks the stasis so painstakingly reached. I set endless conditions for home, schools and art studio. My beloved accepted it all and waited patiently for me to answer.

In truth, there was that old fear of abandonment, lurking in the dark, ready to undermine any attempt to invest in a new relationship. This period of indecision lasted two years.

Above the figures in The Lovers, there is an Angel with bow and arrow extended, ready for Divine Intervention. There is no possibility of stepping around or evading the issue. As I dithered still, the arrow was shot. My youngest boy fell seriously ill and was hospitalized in emergency with suspected meningitis. The paternal presence we needed came from my Beloved who was supportive in every way possible during the three weeks my son was in hospital. The choice was clear. I opened my heart to this gorgeous man and never shut it since.

The 5th Arcane – The dynamics of doubt – X La Roue de Fortune

X La Roue de Fortune speaks: Steadfastness is the virtue of being present in perpetual change

How have the dynamics of doubt enabled the Devil to stand upright and shine strongly in the tapestry of my life? X La Roue de Fortune, X The Wheel of Fortune, speaks of our readiness to embrace the constantly changing dynamics of life. How many different versions of myself have I been throughout my lifespan?

Buddhism has brought me to understand that the sentient world is a constant cycle of birth, maturation and passing. There is nothing that I can grasp hold of to withstand the inevitability of change and the losses that it incurs. Going with the flow is the only way to survive the reality of this maelstrom. Read with the Upright Devil, the Wheel of Fortune provides a retrospective of the significant events that have marked or changed my life.

In my new wedlock, I flourished and so did the boys. We purchased an old farmstead which we converted into a home and created a sculpture garden and gallery. I ran the business, organised exhibitions in the gallery, several cultural and seasonal events in the garden that included concerts and theatre groups, in addition to facilitating art workshops for schools and groups. My husband and I created an international sculpture symposium in the nearby town. The sculpture garden became famous and featured in many magazines and media. We were in all the guidebooks. It was a success and I was good at it. It was as if everything I touched turned to gold…but all that glitters is not gold.

My golden life was punctuated by health problems which, in reality, masked episodes of depression: the Shadow, cyclic surges of past anguish that kept knocking me down. I was 40+ and exhausted by floundering in these patterns of despair. My body threw what it could at me to make me sit still, be quiet and listen to what desperately needed to be voiced.

There were three important events that set into motion the Wheel of Change. The first was when I encountered and embraced Buddhism, the second was when a friend introduced me to the Tarot and the third was when I discovered the work of Caroline and David Brazier and took up studies in Western and Buddhist psychology.

These encounters provided me with the tools to learn about the inner mechanisms of my being and behaving. I gradually gained an understanding of how my emotions and responses can be triggered by events contaminated by things projected from other than my own experience. I saw how my beliefs, values, and choices were conditioned from childhood by my family sphere, the cultural values and all the hidden agendas it upheld. How all of this determined my anxieties and fears, especially my capacity to connect wholeheartedly with the world. Yes, the fear was still there, lurking in the dark, ready to hold me back. I grasped hold of it and listened deeply while it emptied its cup.

XV Le Diable upright

XV Le Diable upright speaks: Neither tethered nor outcast but infinitely connected.

It was time to tackle things in earnest. With my Beloved in his 60s, my boys grown and pursuing journeys of their own, we cast off for other horizons in search of a peaceful haven to shelter our retirement. We found it in the Cook Islands where we embraced the multiple levels of this new culture. Today I have found a balance between investing my energy in my personal pursuits and offering to the community. I continue to study and expand my creative skills with the intent to share them with others. It’s nothing special, no higher state, just the congruence of a simple life that is rich in meaning.

As I write, I think of my father. He was an author and a poet, he loved music, art and read science fiction books, so do I. My mother, had a love for beauty and refinement, was always elegantly dressed and decorated her home with tasteful style that relinquished nothing to cosiness, and so do I. I spent much of my lifespan either reacting against or trying to resolve their dilemmas. Of course, I never could, but in the process I resolved my own.

The wholehearted journey weaves a tapestry of uneven colours where bright would not seem
so vivid without the darker tones.

Books that paved my path

Brazier, Caroline, Buddhist Psychology, Little, Brown Book Group, 2012.

Brazier, Caroline, Listening to the Other: A New Approach to Counselling and Listening Skills, O Books, 2009.

Brazier, Caroline, Other-Centred Therapy, O Books, 2009.

Brazier, David, Zen Therapy: A Buddhist Approach to Psychotherapy, Little, Brown Book Group, 2012. .

Brazier, David, The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion, St. Martin’s Press, 2002.

Jette, Christine, Tarot Shadow Work: Using the Dark Symbols to Heal, A Practical Guide Series, Llewellyn Publications, 2000.

Jette, Christine, Tarot for the Healing Heart: Using Inner Wisdom to Heal Body and Mind, Llewellyn Publications, 2001

Johanson, Greg, and Ronald S. Kurtz, Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of Tao-Te Ching, Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale, 2011.

Manné, Joy, Family Constellations: A Practical Guide to Uncovering the Origins of Family Conflict, North Atlantic Books, 2012.

Wallin, David J., Attachment in Psychotherapy, Guilford Publications, 2007.

Weiss, Halko, Greg Johanson, and Lorena Monda, Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice, W. W. Norton, 2015.

Wynne, Katrina, An Introduction to Transformative Tarot Counseling: the High Art of Reading, Dancing Moon Press, 2012

About Sylvie Kirsch

Sylvie creates mixed media art and jewellery. She is also a mother, wife and crone. She has a passion for weaving together intuitive and creative processes such as Tarot, SoulCollage®, writing and art. After 15 years as creator and manager of a successful sculpture garden in France she and her husband, a sculptor, moved to Rarotonga to embrace the Cook Islands culture. Here she took up online studies in Buddhist and Western psychology. Today she balances her own artistic journey with running a stone carving business and voluntary support in the community through creative workshops and activities. You can visit her at thiscronesjourney.com

Photographs of and by Sylvie Kirsch used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You might also enjoy my free 94-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive the ebook straight away! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes newsletters with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

personality and story wholehearted stories

Message from the middle – my wholehearted story

June 27, 2018

This guest post from Amie Ritchie is a wise message from the middle of change reflecting on how ‘the most loving of maps is one’s own soul’.

This is the tenth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

I am honoured to have my dear friend and fellow life coach Amie Ritchie as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Amie for sharing her story and images about her journey as she negotiates it. It is a message from the middle of change. Amie checks in with what she knows as her personal truths and values as guides for her wholehearted journey. She says: “I believe the surest, wisest, most resilient and most loving of maps is one’s own soul.” With a focus on the meaning making from the middle of deep change, read Amie’s wise reflections to find out more and guide your own story!

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou

Where I begin

My dear friend Terri asked me to write this story many moons ago. The realities of my life were incredibly different at that time. Now as I sit excited and eager to share my wholehearted story of truth, growth, intuitive knowing and co-creation, the certainty of what that story tells floats in the ether. The final pieces have not quite emerged in the space of living, embodied experience. Neither are they yet visible in the rear view mirror of hindsight and integration.

My awakening journey is still being walked, and I am here, right in the middle of it. It is from this place that I write, a message from the middle, and I do so with the knowing that there is no other way. Amidst the many middles of life’s journeys, I believe the surest, wisest, most resilient and most loving of maps is one’s own soul. As I share pieces of mine, may you receive what you need, and gently release what you don’t.

Who I am

Mine is a story of a woman who feels the world around her deeply, who is deeply intuitive and who has grown accustomed to giving more than she has. A woman who stretched outside of boundaries she never learned to create, and so could not honour. She is a woman who is healing, learning, growing. A woman wayfinding her way to living the whole truth of her soul. She is redefining herself and the world around her as she wakes up. She is me and I believe she may too be some of you.

It must be noted also that many of the most powerful medicines, that is stories, come about as a result of one person’s or group’s terrible and compelling suffering. For the truth is that much of story comes from travail; theirs, ours, mine, yours, someone’s we know, someone’s we do not know far away in time and place. And yet, paradoxically, these very stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present and even future ills.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés – The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What is Enough

I find myself in one of the messy middles in life and so far it’s been the greatest of dips I’ve faced. The path has been filled with darkness, confusion, sadness, grief, anger, fear, and shame. The friendly shadows of my lighter, happier self have been by my side. The details of my why and how, the travail and suffering Estés writes, I will hold for another day. The elements of strength, grounding, and support I have befriended, however, are here for the exploration and sharing. They are pieces and elements of my path that I share in earnest they will be useful or awaken a truth in you. At the very least, you will know that someone else out there is in a murky middle of their own, and they are finding their way through. Just as you will.

What I know to be true: Mother Nature and her cycles are liberating

For as far back as I can remember, I grew up outside. From days spent in snow forts of Montreal, to the beaches and rivers of Florida, and sport fields in between, I spent as much time as possible outside. During high school, I remember nights spent with friends under the stars, camping on islands, trekking through forests and fields, and waking up surrounded by green. As happens to many people, life took me indoors and I quickly started spending more and more time inside.

I drifted out of my daily relationship with Mother Nature and recently began to find my way back. Slowly through more outdoor walks, to stopping to photograph flowers, to watching the moon at night, I began to return to the outside world. What has resulted from that return is a deeper appreciation, a more conscious relationship with nature and an intentional drive to be present with her. Unsurprisingly, this has also coincided with the deepening of my relationship with me.

What I’ve learned through the cycles of the moon, the seasons of change, and the diversity of nature is that there is a time and place for everything. It is natural to rest, to be in stillness, to release. There is a cycle of being that does not always produce or show itself in constant motion. What I’ve received through my stillness, my internal winter, is actually the freedom to be and surrender to what I do not know. I’m learning patience and allowing, which is no small thing for an over-achiever and planner who loves to know where she’s going.

Living in relationship with nature offers me an expanding, evolving and natural way of being that doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks only for what already is, as it is. To me, this is a beautiful expression of wholeness and it’s available just outside my window, and inside me if I can see it.

What I know to be true: The body often knows before the mind

Wholehearted living means following the truth of my inner guidance, in its innate wisdom and infinite capacity for compassion. As a long-time athlete, trained yoga teacher, and runner, I have always paid attention to my body and breath, but there has been a significant shift in this middle ground. While I used to pay attention to my body, it didn’t necessarily ‘win’ over my mind. What once mainly meant listening to my inner voice, and following my gut instinct, is now a more subtle sense of wisdom that I’m actively trying to develop. My understanding of my intuitive guidance system has deepened to include my somatic body, my emotional and cellular body.

Ironically, learning more about the brain has been a large part of this road. How it can work to rationalize negative experiences, protect us from perceived or real danger, and blur felt-reality, led me to a deeper understanding of what it creates, and also what it misses. I now really feel into my emotions, breathe into the spaces of tension, feel it all while slowly quieting my mind’s desire to categorize, rationalize and interpret.

What has helped this learning greatly is a book called The Awakening Body and various somatic grounding practices, including ancient Hindu Pranayama techniques like Nadi Shodhana. This deepened somatic attention has also helped as an Introverted Intuitive who often has a hard time explaining quite why I know something to be true. Knowing that intuitive hit I receive has a layer more subtle and less obvious than I once knew is really grounding. I’m learning I don’t always need a reason or explanation, a feeling will do.

What I know to be true: Being in present, compassionate relationship with others begins with oneself

As a giving and nurturing woman, I have often acted for the benefit of others ahead of myself. I put myself last, gave more than I had, and tried to create harmony amongst the whole, without always counting myself as part of it. Having generally focused my life, learning, career on serving others and creating change in the world, the idea of self-love and first filling my own cup hadn’t really crossed my mind until it rolled through like a steam engine.

Intellectually, I knew that women are traditionally socialized to act as caregivers who give and please and bend to keep the peace, sometimes at the expense of their own wellbeing. My healing journey of late has guided me to the deep, felt knowing of those consequences. I intimately know that if we don’t love ourselves, give to ourselves, practice self-acceptance and self-compassion, we cannot truly show that to others.

Thus the practice of radical self-love and conscious inner work is what colours my middle. The integration that all of this begins within, first and foremost in my relationship with me. I’ve loved building awareness of my natural cycles, the personality preferences I have, the stories I tell myself, and the sound of my own breath. Journaling and being outside have proven wonderful spaces from which to navigate my middle and build trust within myself. I have also received professional support in the way of therapy and am incredibly grateful for the gift of a good book.

As I lay the roots for a strong, solid, loving relationship with myself, the interdependence of us all and the blessing of community is never out of sight. In my view, being in conscious and compassionate relationship with ourselves and each other is a truly wholehearted way to live as it requires the acceptance, honouring, and celebration of all parts of ourselves as humans. While there is much that separates us, much more is shared. As I practice lifting up my voice, in story and in truth, I know that it will serve the lifting of someone else’s. When I hear the stories and truths of others, I am uplifted and brought closer to my own centre.

In our present time, there is a goodness to, and a necessity for, rugged independence among individuals. But this is often best served and supported in good measure by deliberate interdependence with a community of other souls. Some say that community is based on blood ties, sometimes dictated by choice, sometimes by necessity. And while this is quite true, the immeasurably stronger gravitational field that holds a group together are their stories…the common and simple ones they share with one another.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés – The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What is Enough

What lies ahead and the courage to meet it…the message from the middle

I’m on a path of living my joy, my questions, my journey with devotion and surrender to every piece of me. What lies ahead is the creation of a new life, the redefinition of myself on my own terms. While I possess a lot of intellectual knowledge about what this means and have learned to facilitate this road for others, I am also deeply learning to embody it. The honest truth is while the path of self-definition, of taking full and complete responsibility for my whole, imperfect self, and the uncertain journey ahead is empowering, it can also be quite frightening.

The path of being your whole self, of leading a wholehearted life requires courage. And to demonstrate courage, one has to feel some degree of fear. As I move forward, I have learned to welcome it, befriend it, receive its message, and act from my inner compass of truth. Of course, it is far easier to say that ‘one day, then…’, ‘when I am/have/done, then…’, ‘when all is well, then…” Then the magic will occur and I will feel whole. This is a feeling many people have, and I surely have also felt this. It’s as if we forget the caterpillar and the time spent in cocoon, only to see the butterfly appear and believe it all happened spontaneously.

The truth is these shifts and changes toward wholehearted self-leadership are happening all the time. Just as in nature, change is constant, even if we can’t see or name it. Even in times of deep winter, whether of nature or the soul, shifts are afoot. While deep and imperceptible in the middle, they are ongoing. Each day, through the quiet and unannounced choices to honour our boundaries, they grow in strength and clarity. These self-definitions emerge in the roar of our voice, the tender ear and the space we hold for another whose story needs to be heard. It is a daily practice of connecting with and honouring what is true. And this is the path I follow. This is my truth of courageous, joyful, wholehearted life and the ongoing, creative journey of living it.

Guides and resources for my journey

These books and writings have been guides and resources for my journey:

The poems of Rupi Kaur
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
This is Woman’s Work by Dominique Christina
The Awakening Body by Reginald A. Ray
The writing and works of Clarissa Pinkola Estés

About Amie Ritchie

Amie has spent much of her life focused on making a positive difference in the world. She is now passionate about helping people who also feel this same call to venture inward and get grounded in their truth, values and purpose. As an internationally certified life coach, yoga teacher and writer, she supports people toward trusting and loving themselves first, so they can consciously share their brightest blend of love with the world and lead a life of joy, meaning, and connection. Visit her at www.amieritchie.com , on Instagram or via email amie@amieritchie.com

Photographs of and by Amie Ritchie used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

3 Comments

creativity wholehearted stories

The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story

April 26, 2018

This guest post from Chantal Simon shows how the wholehearted path invites you to weave the threads of your lifetime journey into a cohesive whole.

This is the ninth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

I am honoured to have Chantal Simon as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Chantal for sharing her story and stunning photographs. Chantal’s story shows how following our heart, connecting the pieces of our skills and passions weaves a cohesive lifetime journey. A story with language adventures, healing arts, beautiful photography and a backdrop of changing landscapes, read on to find out more!

Answering the call to adventure

It was January 1991 and time moved unbearably slowly in my native corner of France. Going through the motions at university, dutifully attending classes that failed to hold my interest, and feeling increasingly restricted in other areas of my life, I was restless and needed a change. Fast.

As if on cue, one of my English professors called me at home to offer me one of two places on a European exchange program and a four-month grant to study in Galway, Ireland. Dumbstruck by this unexpected turn of events, I quickly regained my composure on the phone, gratefully accepted and took down the details. Time was of the essence, so there was no second-guessing myself. I made all the necessary arrangements and, less than two weeks later, boarded the ferry and embarked on a journey that would change my life.

To say that I fell under the spell of Ireland is no exaggeration. The rugged beauty of its west coast landscapes moved me almost to the point of aching, everything was exciting and I could see possibilities I had never considered. The canvas of my life had suddenly expanded and I loved how it made me feel. Free to be all that I was. I knew I had found my soul home and decided to do all that I could to stay and create as spacious and fulfilling a life as possible.

Finding joy in the outdoors and writing

Born in a port city on the western coast of France, I had always felt at home in nature and, as a child, spent countless hours playing with friends, my siblings or by myself in the wood at the end of our street. We climbed trees, found secret hideaways and ate all the berries. That sense of ease in the outdoors and need to explore my surroundings never left me.

A month after arriving in Ireland, I immersed myself in Connemara’s wild beauty and climbed my first mountain. I’ve never been the sporty type, but that way of being in the world, feeling my aliveness expand with every step or breath of fresh air, invigorated by the elements and at one with my immediate environment is as natural to me as it is necessary.

My first line of work in Ireland was as a teacher of French and, as such, I enjoyed three full summers off in a row. At the time, I was living in the Irish capital and was more than ready for an outdoor adventure when the much-awaited month of June would come. Two months spent cycling down the western coast of France and around Brittany, a summer of boating on the Irish inland waterways and hiking the West Highland Way during a rare Scottish heatwave presented an abundance of experiences, encounters and impressions which I casually captured with my camera as well as in a notebook. The storyteller and writer in me had been reawakened and, as synchronicity would have it, books on writing and creativity soon crossed my path, encouraging me to nurture that side of me – an invitation I happily accepted.

Broadening horizons and taking risks

After three years of teaching beginner, academic and professional levels of my native language to a variety of students from 3 to 80 years of age, I wanted to broaden my horizons and started seeking work as a translator. Within a month, an IT translation company booked me for a 3-day freelance assignment onsite.

I had no computer experience whatsoever, but that didn’t faze me. How difficult could that be? My willingness to find out still amuses me, as does my faith in my language, typing and on-the-spot learning skills. It seems they worked a charm since I was asked in for a second assignment. IT translation was a relatively new industry then, Dublin-based agencies providing a bridge between American software companies and translation providers in Europe. Before too long, I was doing regular freelance work for two of the largest agencies while maintaining various freelance teaching gigs.

Committing to self-employment

When one of the agencies offered me a full-time position with a 1-year contract, I accepted it as a great opportunity to learn everything I could about that industry. I did that, but also learned something equally, if not more, important: I wasn’t employee material. Being surrounded by people, stuck all day in a neon-lit office full of computers was so draining to me, it was physically painful.

The less positive aspects of city life were also starting to weigh on me and I was missing the wild Atlantic. With the terms of my contract met and realizing I merely needed a computer, phone line and modem to set myself up as a freelance IT translator, I resigned and moved back to the west coast. It was June 1996 and I felt professionally freer than ever before, having just committed to self-employment and made my work location independent.

Healing modalities and deep spiritual unfolding

Building a business on my own terms was exciting, as was the freedom to take time off whenever I wanted, either to pursue my creative activities or to travel abroad. One dull spring, seeking a respite from the ever-pouring Irish rain, my then partner and I booked a flight to Crete. This marked the start of a love affair with Greece.

We returned the following year and eventually bought an old house on the Cycladic island of Paros. Being able to take time off to stay there all summer was priceless. My notebook and camera always in my backpack, I learned some Greek, spent my days exploring the island and neighbouring ones, visited whitewashed churches and temples, watched the sun set into the Aegean Sea every evening, and ate an abundance of sun-drenched fruit and freshly caught fish. It was bliss, pure and simple.

Back in Ireland, I continued to balance work, creative pursuits and the needs of my unfolding spiritual self. My spirituality had always been part and parcel of my creativity and time spent in nature, but another realm of experience opened itself up to me when I started training in Reiki in 1995. After years of practising, integrating, training in other energy healing modalities and treating friends and loved ones, I opened my practice to the public.

Working on people I knew nothing or little about showed me how intuitive and clairsentient I had become. This subtle awareness continued to expand and led me down a beckoning path of investigation. Specific books came my way, certain themes started to appear in my writing and art. Synchronicities abounded and I started to feel an undeniable pull towards a certain part of the British Isles. True to my nature, I heeded the call.

Art and the call of the feminine

The city of Bath, my home for the following two years, was not only stunning and a delight to live in, but also perfectly located to allow regular day trips to the ancient power sites of Stonehenge, Avebury, Stanton Drew and Glastonbury as well as farther north to the fascinating Forest of Dean. I constantly felt like I was bathing in a pool of potent yet nurturing energy. This had a huge impact on my personal unfolding and it is there that I experienced one of my biggest shifts in consciousness to date.

My creativity also flourished, at that point mainly flowing through the channels of collage and mixed media art, techniques I had come across three years previously. Having enjoyed publication success with the articles, poems and collages I occasionally submitted to magazines and journals, I took the jump and started a blog, hoping to connect with like-minded people. The sense of community that characterized what was commonly called the blogosphere back then was truly amazing. I forged lasting friendships with people who, like me, were creating more and more room in their lives for their creativity and art.

My awareness of the divine feminine became increasingly acute and embodied while living in Bath, so it was little surprise that related themes, archetypes and symbolism became prominent in the images I created. I enjoyed the conversations they prompted online tremendously.

It was a very expansive and busy period in my life: I was a high-tech translator by day, a creative by night and spent countless weekends exploring the area. However, some good things come to an end and my personal journey called me back to Ireland.

Forever seeking more congruence

Perhaps it had something to do with the incredible times we live in or simply was a side effect of turning 50. The fact remains that, last summer, I put an end to my 23-year career as an IT translator to focus solely on what truly holds meaning for me and, hopefully, be of service in a different way. My values and slow living aspirations were increasingly at odds with the consumerism-pushing content of my assignments and the near-daily deadlines becoming the norm in that line of work. There was no other true way forward than to pause and course-correct.

To me, living wholeheartedly means following the flow of your life, taking chances but saying “no” when needed. It requires recognizing and using your skills and the resources available to you, as well as being fully present to all that is within and in front of you, the opportunities just like the challenges and difficulties. Sometimes convoluted, the wholehearted path invites you to weave all the threads of your life, your passions, needs and values into an increasingly cohesive whole, and fosters self-responsibility, self-leadership and sovereignty.

Key book companions along the way of my lifetime journey

Anaïs Nin’s diary
D.H. Lawrence’s novels
Jean Houston’s books on human potential
David Whyte’s poetry
The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
Writing for Your Life – Deena Metzger
Synchronicity – Deike Begg
Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation – Dorothy Walters
Wild Creative – Tami Lynn Kent
Writing Wild – Tina Welling

Photographs by Chantal Simon used with permission and thanks.

About Chantal Simon

A native of France, Chantal Simon is a writer, translator and photographer living on the North West coast of Ireland. As well as working on a memoir about her spiritual and energetic unfolding, she is currently creating a photographic series inspired by her natural surroundings and her love of the liminal. Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram, where she shares both her photography and snippets from her creative life, or visit chantalsimon.com (website upcoming soon in 2019).

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

creativity wholehearted stories

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

March 29, 2018

This guest post from Shalagh Hogan shows how gathering lessons of self-knowledge over time can lead to wholehearted Creative Soul Living.

This is the eighth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

I am honoured to have Shalagh Hogan as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Shalagh for sharing her story and photographs. Shalagh and I connected on Instagram via our love of creativity. Her story shows how growth and self-knowledge accumulate over time. Embracing creativity wholeheartedly via parenting, blogging, community, writing and social media, Shalagh’s gathering lessons evolve into Creative Soul Living. Read on to find out more!

Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Despite my low self-esteem and anxieties, I have enthusiastically gathered my self-knowledge with hope for a better life. I accept as a given, my need to seek and grow a more whole version of my formerly fragmented self. Yet up to even a few years ago, the concept of Wholehearted Living, or what I call Creative Soul Living, was still just a conceptual inkling. Having never felt whole, the definition and the feeling of wholeness eluded me.

One lesson at a time is how my self-guided journey has unfolded. I am busy gathering my lessons which rise like cream to the top. From the more important lessons about creativity, community, connection, self-care, and self-trust, I have learned who I truly am, what makes me happiest, and who I want to proudly see myself being. Growth takes its time, yet I always feel like my biggest and best lessons are the ones that have just happened.

Valuing intuition and introversion

As a child, I was fragmented. I held too many pains involving too many people. My self-mirrors were broken, and the chaos was draining. I was a creative with no permission to be me. As a teen, much-needed hope collided with my insatiable appetite for knowledge when my mother’s pursuit of a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences showed me that knowledge was power, and we can use this power to choose our life’s outcome.

It was then, I also began my life-long journal writing practice, developing my inner voice (which I now know to be my intuition) and the voice of my blog. It was then too that my Myers-Briggs test results pegged me as an ENFP. Although this felt mostly right, last year I was relieved to discover and own that I am equal parts Introvert and Extrovert. Although, for many years I neglected my creative callings, the introverted time I now take to think, write, and create are my self-care practices.

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

My self-care became essential when I was 38 and pregnant with my son. My anxieties and the last of my self-destructive behaviours shook and woke me. It became clear, how I treated myself would be how my kids would treat themselves. Doing as I did and not as I said, my children would inherit my anxieties, my self-doubt, and my repressed creativity. I truly committed then to taking better care of and healing myself mentally and physically that my children might hopefully do the same. Eventually, I quit smoking, I began eating better, and I continued to seek therapy.

My biggest authentic self “aha”, on which the rest of my work truly depended, was given to me in a therapy session. The therapist offered that I had low self-esteem. At first, I raged against this mis-definition of me. If I wasn’t who I thought I was, who was I then? Yet, this information freed me like a bird from my heart cage. I wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, nor did I need to help fix anyone I knew. Instead, I needed to have compassion and love for my humanity. And again, I began gathering my lessons.

Writing and connecting to heal

Bad things can happen for good reason, it may just take a while to see why. When my son was one, an American economic slump forced me to close my lovely little gift and antiques store named Bally Eden and I returned home to mourn the loss of my dream shop. I was anxious and desperate not to be stuck at home with my fast-growing-soon-to-be-a-toddler boy without something “just for me”. Encouraged by an old whisper in my ear, I began to write personal essays and publish them online. It then took five more years to start my blog at Shalavee.com which has just turned six.

I purposed the blog to make me a better writer, create a living resume, and voice my lessons regularly. While I achieved these goals, it was the community and relationships I’ve developed here online during my writing journey which have been my truest gift. My new unseen friends and our connections and courtships via comments and kind letters elevated my ego and gave me an immensely better self-image; a self-reflection where there once was none. I began to see my beauty and not my broken. And, as my voice of pain and healing came through on my blog, my readers said, “Keep writing what you are writing. We feel this way too.” Authenticity and vulnerability were my win/win.

Healing through community creativity

These voices from my community have helped to shift my purpose to offering others my voice to speak through. Our self-reflections echo each other through our communications and we begin to see ourselves as both individuals and as a collective of women with one voice of self-love and acceptance. We are gathering our lessons together. Strangers have become mirrors I will treasure forever, and the internet helped make me visible and whole again.

Although I was terrified, in May of 2016, my community encouraged me to host my first Instagram Challenge called the Soul Selfie challenge. For one week, we explored our souls, our fears, and our truths together in a deeper way via the hashtag #Soul_Selfie. My esteem and courage to lead increased incredibly as I hosted another that Fall and two more in 2017.

Then a small gathering on the evening of the first women’s march in January of 2017, inspired me to start a mindful meet-up group of my own in real life. We meet monthly to discuss a soul topic, eat well, and drink prosecco. We witness, acknowledge, and validate one another and that is so very necessary to my process of seeing my wholehearted self. I have created what I needed which benefits me and others and heals us all.

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Two years ago, even with all the progress in my writing and my self-healing, I knew my anxieties were still running the show. I found a new kick-butt therapist, a new resolve, and heading into my 50’s saw me amp up my efforts of self-discovery and visibility. Reading was one huge resource I used to finally reach the summit of the value hill I’d struggled to climb my entire life. I discovered I could say and mean, “I can”.

I read four books last year with willful intention to change my life’s outlook and my understanding of myself. First, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert gifted me with such validity and permission for my creative process. I came to understand that I was an Uber-Creative and my inner child needed to be creatively indulged until she trusted me again. From this, I was inspired to create online projects and a creative community to support myself and others in being our creative selves.

I had barely put Big Magic down when I read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. From her brilliant work, I came to understand the necessity of community, vulnerability, and authenticity. Disconnection is our worst fear and we need to be authentic to belong to, trust, and reconnect with ourselves. And I now understand there’s a connection between creativity and vulnerability.

Then, on my therapist’s recommendation, I read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns which was the very first book that permitted me to understand and name my anxieties. I learned how to refute the lies called Cognitive Distortions that cause them. Eventually, this book helped me win the battle against my anxieties.

And lastly, on Terri’s suggestion, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. This book showed me that I may be even more capable of making a difference in the world if I allow myself the time and visibility to work on and publish my theories. My deeper thinking and writing will help me and the world, and this feels like a noble purpose.

Creativity conquers all

While reading and gathering my lessons, I became aware of an internal dissonance which my therapist suggested was my inner child throwing tantrums. It seems denying my creativity had my creative inner child furious at me for not allowing her to play. So I decided to just give her what she wanted.

First, I indulged in thirty days of creating paper collage through an online creative community challenge. Having really enjoyed that, I created my own Instagram challenge called Our Creative May and this gave me another month straight to play. From this, our IG creative community established the hashtag #ourcreativeselves to continue posting our creations. I immediately did another challenge in June and July creating daily postcard art for the #ICAD project.

Four months straight of daily creating and continuous authenticity had proven that I did have enough time to create and I was trustworthy. My creative indulgence grounded me and greatly dissipated more of my anxieties. As I continue to replace the slave-driving parent who preaches art as impractical with the compassionate empowering present parent, I recreate a trust in myself proving my word is good. Self-trust is the truest most important result of our authentic creativity.

As my anxiety diminished, I began to understand this powerful lesson of how creativity and anxiety cannot coexist, and how indulging one represses the other. Love and presence conquer fear.

Creative Soul Living

This profound understanding of the inverse relationship between creativity and anxiety, and knowing many others need permission to create too, led me to develop and lead a Creativity Workshop this past November of 2017. I believe that our permission to live more creatively is necessary and integral to us being wholehearted individuals. I believe less consumerism and more Creativism will heal the world as we find creative solutions to its problems.

Creative Soul Living is the term I use to describe my process of Wholehearted Living. I intentionally seek and share my life lessons, prioritize my creativity in all areas of my life, develop my self-trust, value authenticity, commit to self-care, am mindful and present, stay connected with my people, and intuit my grandest Why for being here. And while my Why continues to firm up and my path widens, I know I have fought to reach my here and now, gathering my lessons one lesson at a time.

My future “I can” will include more creativity workshops, e-books, and eventually a book about crafting our own life plans based on our life lessons. My inward soul work has brought me the gift of knowing me and that feels like permission to hope. Hope is what I want to share with the world through my writing.

Photos and artwork by Shalagh Hogan used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns

Deep Work by Cal Newport

About Shalagh Hogan

Shalagh Hogan, said Shay-la, is a personal essayist, a blogger, a designer, an uber-creative, and mother to a five-year-old ginger girl and just turned teen boy. She resides in an ancient house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA, and is always amazed and amused by life’s abundance of lessons. Thrice-weekly she shares the lessons she gathers on her blog at Shalavee.com (Chez La Vie was taken) and currently, Creativity is her Why. Follow her as @shalaghhogan on Facebook and Instagram.

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey.

Just pop your email address in the box to the right or below. You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

2 Comments

Older

creative coach

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

Transcript of our conversation

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.

We hope you’ll join us!

Share this:

Like this:

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

Transcript of our conversation

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

We hope you’ll join us!

Share this:

Like this:

Ancestral patterns in our lifespan: my wholehearted story

Tarot Numerology as a tool to uncover ancestral patterns

The 1st Arcane – The quandary of my life – XV LE DIABLE reversed

The 2nd Arcane –The initial honing – XVI LA MAISON DIEU

The 3rd Arcane – From Darkness Rising – VII Le Chariot

The 4th Arcane – My sphere of choice – VI L’Amoureux

The 5th Arcane – The dynamics of doubt – X La Roue de Fortune

XV Le Diable upright

Books that paved my path

About Sylvie Kirsch

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Share this:

Like this:

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou

Where I begin

Who I am

What I know to be true: Mother Nature and her cycles are liberating

What I know to be true: The body often knows before the mind

What I know to be true: Being in present, compassionate relationship with others begins with oneself

What lies ahead and the courage to meet it…the message from the middle

Guides and resources for my journey

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Share this:

Like this:

Answering the call to adventure

Finding joy in the outdoors and writing

Broadening horizons and taking risks

Committing to self-employment

Healing modalities and deep spiritual unfolding

Art and the call of the feminine

Forever seeking more congruence

Key book companions along the way of my lifetime journey

About Chantal Simon

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Share this:

Like this:

Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Valuing intuition and introversion

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

Writing and connecting to heal

Healing through community creativity

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Creativity conquers all

Creative Soul Living

Key book companions along the way

About Shalagh Hogan

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Share this:

Like this:

PRIVACY POLICY

COOKIE POLICY

Instagram