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:
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
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:
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.
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.
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:
Welcome to Episode 10 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Intuiting, Channelled Writing and Connecting.
I’m joined by Natasha Piccolo, Mama, Author, Speech Pathologist, Life Coach and Small Business Owner .
We chat about Natasha’s soon-to-be-published book, The Balance Theory and how it was written in a channelled way. And Natasha’s multi-faceted life and the threads that connect it together.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Following your intuition
Writing The Balance Theory
Channelled writing
Knowing when a book is finished
Dealing withloss
Being in balance
Healing our inner child
Connecting as a core value
Multiple life roles and how they connect
Mental health challenges + learning
Practical self-care tips
And so much more!
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 10 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 20th of January as I record this. We’re enjoying pretty much the heart of summer here with magical swims in silky water and many fish swimming around us. It’s truly joyful!
I’m excited to have the lovely Natasha Piccolo join us for the podcast today to chat about Intuiting, Channelled Writing & Connecting.
Natasha Piccolo is a mama, small business owner and author. She is always up for a good chat as her main work roles include clinical Speech Pathology and coaching. Her business, Resonate Holisticassists clients to facilitate healthy communication across the life span. Her first book, The Balance Theory is out in March with the kind press. She has recently contributed to This I Know Is True – a collection of stories to inspire community progress alongside 18 other women in the health and wellness space. Natasha hopes that her words motivate others to live a life that is consciously aligned.
Natasha and I met through Instagram and as fellow authors in the kind press community. It’s been wonderful watching Natasha’s journey as a writer and author, and we discuss writing her book The Balance Theory as an intuitive and channelled writing process over 10 years which is fascinating. Natasha has many strings to her bow and we chat about the common threads of these roles and passions in her body of work. Natasha also speaks about her mental health challenges, the difficulties and the learning and perspective they provided over time. Natasha is a wise young woman with much to share so enjoy these insights and the very practical tips provided.
In my writing and coaching life, this week I’ve enjoyed working through Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition with the Book Club group that has formed. The ability to work through Wholehearted with a group of women focused on transition is a real joy. There’s nothing like working through a book you’ve written in a practical way with women applying the insights. A coaching and reading community program that will be offered on a regular basis, consider joining in for the next round.
The other focus right now is The Writing Road Trip Free Challenge I’m hosting with my friend, co-writing buddy and brilliant writing teacher, Beth Cregan. The challenge starts on 31 January with 6 free 30-minute workshops over two weeks. So, sign up for our mailing list now. We’ll be sending out the Challenge information this Friday (21 January) with a link to our private Facebook group and the Challenge Workbook. We are going to have so much fun, and you’ll be inspired to engage with your writing plans and writing self in new ways. Plus connect with others also focused on writing. So, if writing is a priority for you in 2022, join us. Links are in the show notes. Head to quietwriting.com/podcast and click on Episode 10.
I also shared how my word of the year is NOVEL and what that means over on Instagram @writingquietly if you want to check that out. It’s a mix of excitement and a little fear as often happens when we step up into a bigger or different version of ourselves. I look forward to sharing more about that with you in 2022.
So now let’s head into the interview with the wise, intuitive, multi-faceted, creative Natasha Piccolo!
Transcript of interview with Natasha Piccolo
Terri Connellan: Hi Natasha. Welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast.
Natasha Piccolo: Hi, it’s beautiful to be here.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. And thank you for your connection and your support of Quiet Writing.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. You’re a beautiful inspiration. So I’m more than honored to be here.
Terri Connellan: Ah, that’s wonderful. And I’m so looking forward to our chat because you too are a fantastic inspiration. And we connected around writing and publishing as fellow authors in the kind press, which is very exciting. It’s been wonderful to watch your growth as a writer and an author. So, can you provide an overview of your background about how you got to be where you are and the work you do now?
Natasha Piccolo: It’s a beautiful, big question. I’m a wearer of many hats. Professionally and clinically my role is a speech pathologist, with a life coaching context as well and that’s shaped so much of my worldview. But then on a personal level, in terms of being an author, an upcoming author, that’s just, I think, innate to who I am. So I’m now 30 and I’m at a point in my life where these two beautiful worlds are starting to come together and here we are. I’ve followed nudges. I think that’s the best answer here is that I’ve just followed the intuitive hits and I’ve created this union of who I am at the very core with my external roles. And I wanted to write it all down and tell some stories.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful, what a beautiful blend. And it’s amazing that you’ve been able to bring so much together at the age of 30. And particularly as you say, following your intuition that’s very wise. And I think something that often takes a long time to develop. So congratulations on following your intuition. I think that’s a great skill.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. I think it’s something that I didn’t really realize I was doing until probably the last three years when I really did have a big spiritual awakening. And I realized the whole time I was being guided by nudges and that was coming through in the form of meditations. And I thought, hmm I think this little voice has always been here. It’s intuition. That’s what it is.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. It’s amazing. You might’ve heard of the Wholehearted Stories that are on Quiet Writing and women tell their stories. And it’s amazing how intuition features as such a strong theme of women of all ages particularly when they’ve had a big transition, like a turning point or when they’re going through difficult times. It’s just fascinating how intuition pops up as a theme.
Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely. I always liken it to the inner child voice. So when I think about it, the childhood version of me is the voice that I listen to, as funny as that sounds, and as I became more and more adult and the conditioning around that developed, I realised that it was that little girl that I was listening to the whole time. She’s the creative side of me.
Terri Connellan: Oh, I love that. A great way to personalise it. Thanks for that wonderful overview. So we have both recently enjoyed, or we are enjoying the process of taking a book from that crystal or that gem of an idea through to draft, through to published book. Your book, The Balance Theory is ahead of publication in early 2022, which is very exciting. So congratulations.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you so much. We officially launch in March.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Tell us about your writing journey, what it was like for you.
Natasha Piccolo: The journey of The Balance Theory. It was completely channeled. And when I say channeled, it was listening to that little niggling voice of intuition coming through in a collection of downloads. And I had been writing the core content of The Balance Theory for the last 10 years. That part’s incredible when I think about it, that I actually pulled the book itself together in the last 12 months, but the writing and the channeling and the concept development has been 10 years in the making.
And I do share this quite openly and deeply in the book, that channelling process started after the death of a very close friend. So I was 19 at the time and we got a phone call that one of my closest friends had fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit a tree. And I was fresh out of school. You know, that whole idea of world at your feet ready to explore and yeah, naively maybe, just the best was yet to come and all of that. And we got that very soul shaking phone call. Very abruptly. No time to say goodbye. And yeah, I think all artists can relate to a point in their life that something really flipped. And I think that flip did happen quite early for me. And I had a big surrendering moment to the universe and I just said, what are you doing? What are you doing? I, yeah, naively had it all together and I was ready to explore what was coming after school. And instead I had a big trip down the grief process, clinical depression, clinical anxiety, a very, very big shake-up at a very core level. And The Balance Theory was actually born from surrendering to the universe and asking for the answer.
Why, why did you rip this part of my life away or this experience? And the answer to that question came through in intuitive hits in a meditation, which I didn’t even realize I was meditating at the time. But it was just in that quiet moment when I was still, I could hear a voice saying because the universe needs balance and I didn’t really understand what that was at the time at all. But I started noticing. And I think initially, when I look back at those very early writings, it was just self comfort that I was putting a question out and writing down things that would make me feel comfortable or try to articulate the grief and I realized that I was tapping into something that was bigger than me. And over the years it shaped. So that’s the journey there. Like I think it took about five years clinically, like I was in and out of therapy for a long time, to realize that I could channel and transmute it into an art form, but it took a long time to get there. Initially it was purely just comfort writing to process grief.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and I think as you say, many creatives.. I certainly can relate to your story of going to that deep place where something incredibly challenging, something like the loss of someone really dear, and in a sudden way, particularly can be a terrible shock to the system. I’ve experienced that too. So I really sympathize with you on that and just know that it makes you look at your life differently, completely differently. At a young age that must’ve been a real shock to the system.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, my friend Dylan, so I do use his name in the book too, at the time he was my boyfriend, high school sweethearts. So my husband’s best friend. So the three of us had our teenage years together and even to this day, like my husband and I, he’s a huge part of our family. We can feel his presence, especially guiding this book. Yeah.
Terri Connellan: That’s amazing. And it’s incredible the way you described that, from that time, the process of writing started. So it’s a book that’s been shaped over a long period of time. And, that idea of channeled writing is really incredible too, that idea of being a conduit or being open and receptive to what comes through. Is that how you describe it?
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. I kind of feel, and I do say this in the book too, that The Balance Theory, the concept has come through me. I’m the vessel and I’m just transmuting it out into the world. So it’s for us, it’s for the collective, but it happened to come through my life event or my story. I’m kind of that middleman, I guess. That’s how I feel. Like it’s got its own energy really.
Terri Connellan: Did it feel like a calling?
Natasha Piccolo: Yes. Yeah. And there were times, I mean, like writing over 10 years, there was probably two other times before I actually got signed with the kind press that I thought, okay, the book is done, you know? It wasn’t. Like, it was never published at 0.1 and then 0.2 didn’t happen. And then it was third time lucky, but there was actually more life experience that I needed to have before I got to the point where it actually was published.
And funnily enough, it all came to fruition two weeks before my son, who’s a year old next week, was born. So I think because the whole concept is balance and life death cycles is the tying-in theme, I needed to actually experience rebirth in the form of becoming a mother. And I think that’s what really nailed the final concept that just felt unified when I then approached the publishers.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that idea too. Again, it’s something I’ve experienced where, sometimes you wonder if you’re procrastinating in not getting writing done. And then I know I put my draft away for quite a time and it was like it had to incubate or sit until I experienced more and put the pieces together. So I totally understand what you’re saying.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. My process and yours similarly, I think once you are really tapped in, on that intuitive level, the book actually tells you when it’s finished. You get that kind of, yeah, okay, I’ve told the story or stories I need to tell. And now it’s just about fine tuning.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. That idea of getting the message out that you want to get in some form because I just find it fascinating how it begins as an idea in our head or is channeled. And then we shape it into something that we can share with others. It’s quite miraculous in some ways, isn’t it?
Natasha Piccolo: It is. What I find funny is that, especially because clinically my work is speech pathology and a lot of that study was like, that hardcore formal language, understanding grammar and structure and how the spoken voice and the written voice can be different. And it’s so clinical. But then in channeling this piece, sometimes I would write and the voice of The Balance Theory or intuition is really quite illogical because I do liken it to that childhood voice. So sometimes the grammar’s a bit weird or the content is like, oh, we really gonna use that word. Like I’m talking to whatever that entity is. And then like now The Balance Theory is in its editorial phase now, like have that logical layer over the top where we’re actually going, okay, does this read properly? Does it flow? And that part’s coming in now, but the actual writing itself was quite intuitive.
Terri Connellan: That makes sense. Perfect sense. So can you share with us a snapshot of what The Balance Theory is about? You’ve touched on it, but can you tell us a bit more about what The Balance Theory is about?
Natasha Piccolo: Sure. So in essence, the idea of the concept is that the universe is attempting one goal and that goal is to seek balance. And if we are open to observing that at all levels of life, we can see it. So from the cell level to the cosmic level, and I love the idea of like the fact that I by nature am intuitive, but clinically I’m a scientist. I actually observed the same thing. So when we’re looking at human cell biology, the way cells behave. There’s an attempt at what we call homeostasis or the quest for balance essentially, but in a clinical term. We witness it in the way that organ systems interact with one another. We witness it in the way that we attempt to emotionally balance ourselves in terms of our mental health and the impact of that when we’re not balanced.
It’s almost like the book’s split into three sections. So that’s dealing with the self and then we look at one self to another, how they interact with one another and the idea of the energetics of human connection. And then finally the final concept is soul level connection. The final section is actually called kismet connection. So how the energetics of a soul kind of balances itself and in between all of that, I weave my personal stories to illustrate that. So that’s The Balance Theory in a nutshell and what you can expect from it.
Like I was saying, it feels like it’s a concept that needs to be shared for the collective. And I find it particularly interesting that I actually finished it during COVID. Because I think we can all agree in this modern history, if there was ever a time where we really reviewed what balance meant it was when we were all locked inside for a long period of time. And that idea of we were thrown way out of balance. It was almost like thrown out of the arena so we can observe what’s playing inside. Yeah, super interesting. And when we talk about that idea of it not being finished, I think COVID had to happen too before I finished the book.
Terri Connellan: More experiences and circumstance to integrate into that whole idea of balance by the sound of that.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. And it’s actually quite funny because before COVID was a thing, I remember logically trying to think about how am I going to articulate The Balance Theory on a collective level, so that there is something that is unifying for everybody’s life experience. And then the logical part of my brain’s saying, well, everyone’s life experience is different. How can we possibly all connect on one thing? And the pandemic happened. So I was like, well, there we go. There’s something we can all talk about. And we’ve all got a take on it. We’ve all experienced what it’s like to be in and out of balance in that time. And I know just from speaking to my circle, there was so many people that… we have that relationship with the pandemic where I was like, oh, we actually love being locked inside. It’s given me time to really evaluate my life and where I’m at.
And then the next day, you’re absolutely on that roller coaster of hating it. And then there’s fear. And then there’s gratitude. Like the whole spectrum of emotion came out to play during that time. And it was interesting channeling that as I was writing.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s been the whole experience of COVID. My work is in transition, so that idea that it’s just been this huge shift and change, and that’s really thrown it back on us, on our internal resources and what toolkit we have, what understanding, what frameworks, how we’re using our personality or all the different aspects we can bring to it. So yeah, I think your book is incredibly timely to pick up on all of those themes that are happening.
So with your channeled writing process, were you surprised at what came through? Like was there, was it sort of landing more than… I guess all writing in a way has a sense of coming from a muse, doesn’t it? Do you see that?
Natasha Piccolo: Definitely. So there were times where, cause I do feel like I had that relationship with whatever the entity was that I would writing and I’d be like, oh, this is so controversial. I don’t know that I want to write this down. And again, like that’s where I speak to that idea of, put on the page and then your logical brain and the brain that understands that this is going into the world and it’s going to be open to a lot of people now, you can shape the language so that it actually comes across in an eloquent way. But there were definitely times where I was like, oh, okay. There was some little shocking moments here and there. And I was curious with it. I was just like, sure, let’s go on this journey.
Terri Connellan: And were there particular sort of rituals and practices that you did as part of your channelled writing?
Natasha Piccolo: Well, I definitely would get quiet before writing, right in the thick of the newborn phase of having a baby too. So there were times where it was easy to achieve quiet and times where it wasn’t depending on baby. But I would at least try and factor in three to five minutes of stillness before going to the computer. Having said that though, there were times where I would still old fashioned hand write. So I found that interesting. A lot of the writing that I did in 2020 in that first lockdown was handwritten. So there are sections of the balance theory that I had to then put onto the computer and it transmuted again when I typed, it came out differently.
But, I think in real time, I’m actually reflecting on this, I think because I was pregnant, I just found it so much easier to jot down in a notebook at the time and then get to the computer. But then all the writing that I had done in this period, which is like the current 2021 lockdown period was all typed. So there wasn’t really anything specific other than stillness, finding the right time of day when baby was sleeping and just having space to open up or to have that intention to open up that channel.
Terri Connellan: So it sounds like you’re a naturally intuitive person. Like it’s probably one of the strengths of your personality by the sound of it.
Natasha Piccolo: So I’m a Pisces moon too, so I think I’m tapped into the collective just by nature of my soul level.
Terri Connellan: Who you are. Yeah. Beautiful. So you’ve also recently had your story When Saturn Hadn’t Returned published as part of the brilliant kind press collection, This I Know is True, which is sitting beside me here. Beautiful book with lots of incredible writing by women and curated by Natasha Gilmour and Sian Yewdall. Could you tell us a little about that story that you wrote and contributed to that collection?
Natasha Piccolo: Sure. So When Saturn Hadn’t Returned, I always preface this by saying I’m not an astrologer, but the idea of a Saturn Return is that every 30 years or so you get a big life lesson governed by Saturn, which is the planet of the life lessons and the responsibility. And the story of When Saturn Hadn’t Returned, again came through in a meditation as that being the title. So that actual title dropped in before I even actually thought about what that meant.
And I thought, okay, so I’ve got the title. What does that mean? And then I just had in my physical hand-written diary a bit of a brainstorm around what that statement means for me. And I realised what I was doing was telling the story of all the lessons I had learned before my Saturn Return at 27 years old. So that was the nature of that.
And essentially the biggest life lesson there was around the importance of healing the inner child,. Because, again, I don’t think it wasn’t until I was pregnant, that I had that full circle journey of realising that there was still a part of my childhood self that wasn’t being seen or heard, not in terms of anybody else, but myself.
And yeah, I guess 2020 was a big year of me going quite inward and I had the space with the lockdown to do that before giving birth to free that little girl. And it was I guess ironic that the contract for the kind press came through the same year. So it really was a healing process. And I pitched that idea to Natasha the publisher at the kind press, and she loved the idea of When Saturn Hadn’t Returned as a concept. And so I got to work. Bubs was eight weeks old when I wrote that. So I was still very fresh into motherhood.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Motherhood certainly takes you into very creative space. That whole idea of creating a human being naturally takes you into a very fertile space. So it was amazing you could tap into that, but also having read the story, I loved the way you went full circle with your inner child and the birth of your son as well. It was beautifully told.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. It was so cathartic to write and I think it actually shaped my first year of motherhood because I wrote that quite early on in becoming a mum. It’s nearly been 10 months that that was written now, which is crazy to say, but whenever motherhood was challenging this year I would actually just reflect on that and say, okay, what part of my childhood, like what part of the wound is coming up? Because he’s obviously triggering something in me. It’s got nothing to do with him. He’s just this little soul navigating his first year. And, it was actually a really beautiful touch point in my first year of motherhood. So I’m very grateful to that writing process.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. It’s amazing how creativity can create something that we need that can help us on our journey. I’ve found that with writing my own book and a bit like yours, it was a blend of personal experience and things that were coming to me. I didn’t quite feel it was channelled, but there was certainly a lot of intuition in the writing process. And I think sometimes we write what we need for ourselves as much as to share with others.
Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely. Did you find that you were writing more of the memoir first or were you writing the concepts first in your own process?
Terri Connellan: I found that I had a pretty clear structure of what the book looked like, which was quite intuitive. I think I shared the mind map in the launch session. I had quite a sense of where it was going. Then I started with the memoir, I think to frame up the story, but I think it was as much to work out my own learning as it was to share it with others. Guess it’s a reflective process to tap deep into that experience to be able to write about it. It’s probably how I’d describe it.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Very cathartic.
Terri Connellan: It is very cathartic. So you’ve mentioned a little as we’ve spoken today and I know you’ve spoken in your writing about your personal mental health journey, about the challenges and what it’s taught you. So what would you like to share about that for people who are listening today?
Natasha Piccolo: Well, firstly, I’m very grateful for my mental illness now. I share in my book that my psychologist, 10 years ago almost, said those words: one day, you will tell me you are grateful for your mental illness. And at the time I was very unwell. And I said to her, like, you have no idea. And she’s like, well, no, I don’t because I’m not you. But one day, trust me, there’ll be a reason, a rhyme and reason. And you’ll be able to express that you found light. And I thought, here we go at the time. Definitely it was not open to seeing the light at that point in my life.
But I guess my biggest thing that I’d want to share with people that are experiencing something that feels quite dark and scary is that it’s an opportunity to be kind to yourself and to see that the shadow side is just as important as your light and to not fear it. And not to take away from the experience because the lived experiences is terrifying at times, but I think when it is terrifying, it’s actually showing you that something’s not balanced in life.
So for me, it was like a compass pointing me back to what I already knew, intuitively that there is light in the world. And to experience that you need that dichotomy and that spectrum. So you need the shadow to see the light. You need the light to understand that there’s shadow. And there is light at the end of that tunnel. It’s a journey. It’s the dark night of the soul. You need to go through it. It’s part and parcel of being human. I’m saying that with a lot of hindsight, though. So it’s a chance to be kind and to forgive self.
Terri Connellan: Thank you for sharing about your experiences. And again, it’s something else that’s popped up in conversations on this podcast. And, it’s just that reminder that sometimes going to the shadow side, the darker side…they’re difficult, horrible, uncomfortable experiences. But if we can, particularly when we’ve been through them, take the opportunity to step back and look at the wisdom, the light that was shed from that time. It can be really powerful for us. So, yeah. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And it sounds like it’s something you talk about more in your book too.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. The Balance Theory gives that a nice big chapter. When I was studying as well, I would have been halfway through therapy at the time, I could feel that I needed to give back with the experience of mental illness. And I did a thesis on understanding anxiety and depression in youth. And I reference that in The Balance Theory, the actual study itself. But it’s such a common thing and yet it’s so lonely. And if I can be just one other voice out there that is willing to talk about it on a public level, I think we are inspiring, healthy, functional conversation around it.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Thank you for being a voice for that while we’re chatting today. I really appreciate that.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you.
Terri Connellan: So, as well as being an author, you’re also a speech pathologist and a life coach, as well as being a mumma of a little one as you’ve shared. And you also run a gelato business with your husband too.
Natasha Piccolo: A bit of fun.
Terri Connellan: So you’ve got lots of different streams and passions in your life. So just wondering how the streams and passions come together and play together, and you’ve talked about play, the inner child and play. And I’m wondering too, if there’s a thread that unites your body of work, because often there’s ingredients cluster together that connect things for us and sometimes there’s not.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s kind of like what joins speech therapy and ice cream together. That’s one. But there is a common thread there. It’s connection. So I actually want to share this story. It’s a beautiful story that highlights why I do what I do, I guess. So the backstory of this is my husband’s side of the family come from a long line of ice cream makers, gelato makers in Italian, and my husband is now taking that baton and makes amazing gelato. And we decided that well, it was his dream to have the gelato cart that we do events with.
And we were doing our very first wedding. And I’ve just finished a full clinical day. And a lot of my work is in autism spectrum disorder. So I’d just seen a whole bunch of patients that day and went straight to the wedding to help my husband serve. And at the wedding I heard a little boy really, really upset, and he had run out of the wedding because he was overwhelmed from the light and the sound.
And I then learned he had autism. But he ran behind the gelato truck and was hiding in the bushes really scared, really upset, overwhelmed, sensory overload. And I could sense straight away. I knew what it was, like just clinically, I could see it. And I went around the bush and I pulled him out and I said, ‘Hey mate, do you want an ice cream?’
And the only word he could say at the time was chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. And I said, sure. We went to the back of the truck, made him a chocolate gelato. And his mother came around and apologized and she was saying, I’m really, really sorry. You know, he has autism, I don’t mean to upset your service.
And I said, whoa, I know. And it’s okay. He can stay with me the whole night. And I then went on to see that little boy clinically. But the one thing she said to me was we were coming to see you because it’s the first time I’ve seen him voluntarily want to connect. And I saw that. I saw that in the way he just took to you. Maybe he sensed that you were there to help him or to give him that experience of having a chocolate gelato.
And it’s just a beautiful story that I always come back to when I am sometimes wearing a lot of hats. And when you come back to yourself and you say, why am I doing this? Or what am I doing this for? And it’s that, it’s the love of connection. And if I can make a difference, start conversations, then I’m doing my job.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. Yeah. I love that idea. And connection’s one of my top five values too. So, which is interesting, that it’s a thread for you as well. And I find with connecting it often can be about connecting ideas too. Do you find that? Like it’s about connecting people obviously, and that beautiful story that you told, but it can also be from what you’ve said from the writing you’ve done so far, it’s about, how does this idea connect with this idea and then how do they come together to create The Balance Theory in the first place?
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, I think connection would be my top value because it does it weaves through everything. Why am I writing a book? To connect people or to connect thoughts, to connect ideas, to start a conversation. Why am I a speech therapist? Very same reason. Why do I hand people gelato? Because they smile and the non-verbal connection is fantastic. And then obviously being a mama, it’s I think the height of human connection, parenting.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. So, this is a big question. There are two questions that I’m asking everyone on the podcast. So the first one big question, but interesting intuitively to see what comes up.How have you created your story over your lifetime?
Natasha Piccolo: This is my favorite question. Yes. I am an observer of my life, I think. So that’s the intuition saying that. If we go back to inner child stuff, I think from the moment I could pick up a pen, I remember saying to my parents that I was going to be an author. I’m going to have books, people going to read them. My first work at five years old was about an elephant, but, something about, remembering it now, but all airports in the world had shut. Maybe I was channeling COVID. Elephants needed to be the way that we got around. No idea, but I think I have always observed some kind of creativity in telling stories and I have always loved to put them on paper. So first I observed my life or the things that are going through my head. And then I write, and that practice of journaling and retelling has just been paramount to how I’ve created my life story.
And I think then, shaping that and articulating it as I got older, it became about wanting to start and initiate important conversation. So then I kept retelling my stories through telling my own story and sparking chat. My favourite thing to do.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. You mentioned in your bio that you’re always up for a good chat. So that idea of having a conversation. So what I’m hearing there is that you create your story almost by telling the story or by storytelling.
Natasha Piccolo: Yes. Yeah. And then I think I’m also a fan of collecting stories. I’ve always loved reading, like on that level, but I just love to hear somebody else’s story and to find the lesson in listening to someone taking that story and if it’s going to help, passing it on. Yeah. What would you answer to that, Terri?
Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s a big one. For me, how have I created my story over my last? One of my top things is reflecting. My background is as an adult educator and one of the key theorists that I really liked in that area was Donald Schon. And his work was about being a reflective practitioner and I love that idea. So I think for me, it’s been very much about experiencing and reflecting. I think again, it’s a very introverted and intuiting process, which is my strength, but very much that idea of taking things in and then sorting them out internally and then getting a structure to them and sharing them with the world. So, yeah. So similar to yours in some ways.
Natasha Piccolo: I think putting that practical way of then giving a message, like reflecting, transmuting and then telling.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. And then, but I do think structure and being practical to me, and it sounds like for you, two are very important because, again, I think it’s like two parts of my personality and it sounds like potentially with yours, it’s that, here’s the intuitive, but then how do I structure that into something that others can read and get value from?
Natasha Piccolo: How does it make sense? I think because especially intuitive thinking can be so ambiguous and huge. And I know that that’s been a wonderful challenge with The Balance Theory. How do I actually get this into a form that somebody could pick up similarly with like your Companion Workbook and actually do something with it, apply it to life.
Terri Connellan: Yep. It’s a big challenge as a writer. So the next question is, again, something I’m asking people, because, I’ve written my book with wholehearted self-leadership tips based on my experience, but I see it as a toolkit we can all add to. I’ve shared 15 things that work for me that I think will work for many people. What would be your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practice, especially for women.
Natasha Piccolo: Thank you for asking that question, because I think these are the questions that people can take something away and apply tomorrow, or even in the next hour. I’m actually working through your Companion Workbook at the moment. So I’ve just read the part about your self care practices essentially, and how they shape, can set up your day really.
But I would say, I think maybe because speech pathology is such big part of me as well, having an honest conversation. And I mean that first with self every day, every morning, just that check-in of like, where am I at? What’s going on today? What’s my intention? How can I shape this day to work in my favor so that I show up as the best version of self? That’s probably my little go-to before I do anything else before I get out of bed with breath work.
And then I have a little fun thing I do on a Sunday night. Fun for me because clearly I like practical things. But I look at the calendar and I commit to one self-care practice a day from the Sunday to the next Sunday. So I just looked at the calendar, what’s going on this week and I’ve got my self-care menu of things I like to do. And then I just plot them in. So it’s like a meeting that I promise myself I’ll show up for.
And it can be as small as putting on a face mask while Alfie has a nap, my son to making sure I make a date to go and have a coffee with a friend I haven’t seen. It’s like a self care Sunday hack that I do. It started in lockdown and it’s really, really helpful. And it’s fun. It’s a challenge too. It’s like, well, I’ve had a few coffee dates, maybe I need to go and have a massage, or I need to look at booking a yoga retreat, or I need to just sit in the sun with a cup of tea this week. And, but it’s just been really practical about it and committing to it.
Terri Connellan: I love that. I think I might copy that idea, add that to my toolkit. And I love the idea of having a menu so you’ve thought ahead about what the things might be. And it’s a bit like a plug and play, you know, what does the day feel like, mixing it up with something different.
Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. And making it work for your week. Like there are weeks where like, work is really busy and sometimes it’s just committing to three minutes of meditation or having a big glass of water before you get out of bed. So it’s like, I just need to be really hydrated today to function. That’s my thing. I love a good tick a box, so I just feel like I’ve done. I’ve done me and now the oxygen mask can be on everyone else after that.
Terri Connellan: Awesome. Yeah. I love that. Thanks for sharing those two practical tips we can take away with us. I love them both so thank you.
Natasha Piccolo: Pleasure.
Terri Connellan: Thanks so much for sharing about you or about your life, about your writing, about your books. And we look forward to The Balance Theory coming out in March, 2022. So, that’ll be something for people to look forward to. So where can people find out more about you and your work online?
Natasha Piccolo: Thanks, Terri. I just want to thank you as well, because I think you are an incredible voice and you have a lot to give, and this podcast is going to reach so many people. So I’m just going to extend my gratitude to you. Thank you for having me. And the best way to connect with me is over on Instagram. I love a good DM chat. So @tashspeaks one big word as a handle, and my business is Resonate Holistic for speech pathology and coaching. So yeah, that’s the two, well, I hang out there quite a lot now, especially with the writing process. So come and find me come and say hi.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I love your Instagram. It’s fantastic. And you’ve got some lovely snapshots about the book too, and foreshadowing about the content, which is exciting. Congratulations. And we’ll pop those links in the show notes too, so people can connect with you. Warmest wishes, thanks so much for being with us today and we’ll look forward to The Balance Theory.
Natasha Piccolo: Thanks for having me.
Natasha Piccolo
About Natasha Piccolo
Natasha Piccolo is a mama, small business owner and author. She is always up for a good chat as her main work roles include clinical Speech Pathology and coaching. Her business, Resonate Holistic assists clients to facilitate healthy communication across the life span. Her first book, ‘The Balance Theory’ is out in March with the kind press. She has recently contributed to ‘This I Know Is True’ – a collection of stories to inspire community progress alongside 18 other women in the health and wellness space. Natasha hopes that her words motivate others to live a life that is consciously aligned.
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Creating, Grief Coaching & Pro-Ageing.
I’m joined by Valerie Lewis, Grief & Loss Coach, Lifestyle Model, 60+ Pro-Ager and Creative Dabbler.
We chat about creativity as a central life value and practise and how it helps in so many ways including dealing with grief and loss. And about being a grief coach and 60plus pro-ager!
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Life after tragedy
Embracing creativity
Choosing not to climb the corporate ladder
Dealing withloss
Making transitions later in life
Grief coaching + supporting others
Creativity + intuitive art
Being a 60plus pro-ager
Becoming a model
And so much more!
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 13th of January as I record this and suddenly we are nearly mid way through January! we’ve had a lot of rain here in Sydney so it’s humid and the gardens are going wild. But I’ve been able to swim and enjoy the mid-summer temperatures. I’ve also been reflecting on 2021 via Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year 2022 Workbook this week and also reflecting further on my 2022 word of the year (to be revealed soon). Plus I’ve been planning and preparing for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club where we focus in on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook next week together. As well as preparing for The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan which kicks off with a free challenge on 31 January. So there are lots of exciting new things this year and I hope you’ll join me in one of these offerings! Links in the show notes on Quiet Writing at QuietWriting.com/podcast and find the link to this episode.
I’m thrilled to have my friend Valerie Lewis from Visualise and Bloom join us for the podcast today to chat about Creating, Grief Coaching and Pro-Ageing.
Valerie Lewis is a multi-passionate 60plus pro ager. Through grief coaching and personal growth facilitation, she supports and empowers those who are lost and confused with the direction they want to take following a significant life event that has impacted them and their sense of self. Her interests include being an intuitive reader, Reiki and crystals practitioner and avid creative dabbler.
Valerie and I met through a project of a mutual connection Julia Barnickle, ‘What if life were meant to be easy?’ Sadly, Julia passed away early in 2021 as a result of metastatic breast cancer. We connect today remembering Julia and with gratitude to her for connecting us. And it’s fitting that we remember Julia’s message of living a creative, easeful and positive life even in the face of or after difficult circumstances, as this is the focus of the conversation today.
Valerie has been a coaching client in the Sacred Creative Collective group coaching program. We share many similar experiences including moving through deep grief and our passions – including a love of creative expression in many forms and intuitive practices such as tarot as important self-leadership tools.
Today we speak about creativity and how we respond and learn to move through tragedy, loss, deep grief and challenging transitions including ageing. We have fun in this conversation but we also traverse some tragic and sensitive topics so I wanted to let you know this upfront. We consider creativity and intuition as sources of healing and growth and how they support us in making life transitions. Valerie’s story is an incredibly inspiring one especially around how she creates as a central focus and value, has become a grief coach supporting others and is a passionate 60-plus pro-ager.
So now let’s head into the interview with the wonderfully inspiring, creative and multi-passionate Valerie Lewis!
Transcript of interview with Valerie Lewis
Terri Connellan: Hello, Valerie. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. Thank you so much for your connection and for your support of Quiet Writing.
Valerie Lewis: Thanks for having me, Terri. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Terri Connellan: I’m so looking forward to chatting with you today. We’ve connected in many ways around creativity, transition, grief, coaching and more. So it’s great to be able to share conversations on those topics today with others. Can you start us off by providing an overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now?
Valerie Lewis: Wow. Where do I start? Well, I’m originally from the north of England, south Yorkshire, and I moved to London, in the late eighties, following the loss of my only child, my daughter, through manslaughter and the resultant breakdown of my marriage to her mentally ill father. As you can imagine, that was quite a traumatic time. So I would say, that was the main reason why I moved to London basically to start a new life cause I thought, well, I’ve got nothing to lose. And before my daughter died, I had instigated starting a degree because I left school with minimal qualifications.
So it was almost like something that I needed to prove to myself. So I had embarked on the initial stages of the degree. And then after my daughter died, the tutor that I had at the time, he was very encouraging. He said, well, why don’t you apply to one of the universities or polytechnics as they were called. And study that way rather than doing it as I was going to do through the open university. In those days you received the manuals through post and then you do your assignments and work and then send them off to the tutor to mark.
So I applied and I was accepted at Middlesex Polytechnic and ended up moving down to London to do my four year degree. And, in some ways that helped me, that was a tremendous help. It gave me something to focus on and channel my energies in. And it was whilst doing the degree, a friend brought me a book. I made friends with three women at university, and we’re still friends to this day. And one of them brought me a book called Feel the Fear and do it Anyway. And you could say that started the journey of self discovery, self-development, finding out more about who I was.
Life continued. I got a job. One of my sisters had already moved down. My other two sisters moved down and then they eventually ended up moving back with their families and to buy their own homes because it was cheaper in Sheffield. And I’ve remained in London as has my youngest sister. Through that time, I worked and there was a point at which I think it was in my mid thirties. I don’t know if you want to call it a quarter-life crisis or something. Cause I worked with engineers as their admin officer and I remember looking at them absorbed in their work. And when it was time to go home, I used to think, aren’t they going home? They just seemed content to stay there in the office.
And, I just remember thinking, I don’t want to do this, you know, thinking, well, where do I want to go? I did a post-graduate course, the Diploma in Management Studies, because I thought I’m in an administrative field. Maybe that’s the direction that I want to go in. And I remember thinking to myself, well, I don’t want to trap myself. I don’t want to just focus on this. And I think it was through reflecting on who I was. Where did I want to go? I remember thinking, realizing that actually I needed to be creative because that was what fed me. And, I’d kind of neglected that. I’d always been creative. I kind of like neglected that because I was studying and basically adapting to life in London.
And so I started getting back into being creative, making cards. Then I discovered salt dough modeling and got into that. And one of my other sisters she’s quite creative too. So we used to get together and, when her children were young, the schools would have craft fairs. So we’d book a stall and we’d have maybe have a table together. She’d make her own stuff and I’d make my stuff.
And I thought I enjoy this. I thought I don’t want to be trapped in a job where I’m working all these long hours. I want to have some time away from that, where I can do some of the things that I want to do. That’s basically how I’ve been throughout the past 30 years if you like.
Sometimes I felt a bit conflicted about it because you see your colleagues climbing the ladder in one of the fields they’re in. And obviously earning more money. I did get a promotion. I went for promotion and my pay jumped quite substantially. And I felt comfortable with that because one of the things I realized after my daughter died, I remember thinking to myself, you could have all the money in the world and in some ways it’s kind of meaningless if people that you care for are not here anymore. So in some ways I’m not materialistic in that sense. I like to have nice things. I like to wear nice things. And I like to be able to have my books around me and makeup and eat nice food. But having a lot of money is not my main goal. Feeling fulfilled is more important to me, more meaningful to me. Does that make sense, Terri?
Terri Connellan: It does. Absolutely. So, thanks for that snapshot of your life over many years, and what’s important to you. I think that what comes through strongly is your values and how you want to live your life. So we’ll explore more about that as we go through our conversation today. So thank you for that. So we’ve both shared a major transition in your case from corporate life to a more creatively focused life. So can you describe what that transition’s been like for you and how long it took and the main turning points?
Valerie Lewis: That happened last January. In some ways I saw it coming because for the past few years at work there’d been lots of changes, the constant restructuring. My role, if you like became less than what it used to be. It got less stressful. Certain aspects of it, the nicer bits, if you like, the more creative bits of it were taken away and given to another department. And I remember thinking, me and my colleagues thinking, this is strange, something’s going on in the background, you know? And, the restructure that they had before we were told our jobs were going to be moved up north, it happened with one of the teams. They were restructured. And, I think a couple of people were made redundant and the other team basically transferred up north. So that’s why the two people were made redundant from that. And we thought, well, this is odd, if they’ve moved part of our department up north, what does that mean for us?
So in some ways it was almost like you think it’s going to happen at some stage. And, I actually welcomed it. So when it came, it wasn’t a complete shock.
I wasn’t devastated because I thought, oh, I’m approaching 60. I think it’s time. It felt as if it was time for me to be doing something different, something more meaningful, something that I had more control over. So the only thing that I knew that I would mentally have to adjust to was the lack of consistent income. Because obviously, when you’re working, you’ve got an income coming in every month and you know how much is coming. But if you’re not getting that income, you’ve got to create it yourself. So I knew that would be a challenge, but I thought, well, I’m up for it.
Terri Connellan: Excellent. So, sounds like you knew the transition was coming, so you had some time to mentally prepare and perhaps practically prepare for it. And I think that helps too. Certainly for my own transition, it was quite similar. I could see that writing was on the wall. You could see things were coming. And, for me, I started to make a plan for what my life might look like when that time came. So I think that helps as we move through and change. It’s interesting you mentioned that you made that conscious decision in your thirties, not to climb the corporate ladder so that you had space for creative interests. So how do you feel about that decision now? Was that a good decision?
Valerie Lewis: It’s hard to say. I mean, other people might, well, I don’t think anybody else sort of really looks at it. It’s more about me, isn’t it? There are occasions when I think, oh, maybe if I’d stayed in the job and become this, I might’ve been head of this. And then I think, no, this is the road I chose, you know, so I’m happy with it. And in some ways doing a lot of the things that I’ve done feeds into what I’m doing now.
Terri Connellan: So tell us about what you’re doing now.
Valerie Lewis: I certified as a coach. I’ve been jewellery making. So in some ways I’ve had a taste of self-employment, even though I was employed, if that makes sense and earning little bits of money, pockets of money. So it’s not something that’s totally alien to me. I think that I can use my creativity in my coaching, and in other ways to help me achieve an income.
Terri Connellan: I often talk about Elizabeth Gilbert’s line about the long runway, where we’re preparing along the way, perhaps many years before for what we end up, wanting to do that’s important to us. Does that relate to you?
Valerie Lewis: Yeah, I think so. I don’t think you realise it at the time. Do you? Because I look at other people, I look at my sister, for example, who’s an executive coach and she climbed the career ladder. And when she was made redundant, when she started to think about what it was she could do, she realised that one of the things that she’d enjoyed whilst she was employed was coaching others. So she’s taken that aspect and also got trained, did a Masters in Coaching Psychology. And is using that and drawing from her skills in a corporate or in the civil service, if you like. So I think we do draw on our skills, I’m sure in what you’re doing, you’re doing the same, aren’t you?
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And as you were talking, I was thinking of my own experiences and your sister’s and your own, there are threads that we value that we go back to over time. And often as we’re getting older, we start to stitch them together in different ways. And I think that’s a really exciting part of our journey. Fantastic. So do you want to tell us about what your life looks and feels like now?
Valerie Lewis: It’s kind of like, I’m more in charge of it. Self-leadership that word that you introduced me to. I feel very much my own person. There’s a sense of freedom, if that makes sense. I’m much more at peace with myself. I feel as if I’m more in tune with my own values and I’m not going into work and having to do things that conflict a little bit with how I think or feel.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So you really have put into practice the things that are important to you, that self-leadership, creativity, embracing who you are. It’s been a real joy to connect with you and to learn from you too and share our experiences as we’ve moved along our road.
So you mentioned, earlier about the tragic death of your daughter and only child and your Wholehearted Story that you wrote for Quiet Writing, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, you share your story and what happened, the impact upon you. Can you explain or share with us what you learned from moving through and on from such incredibly difficult circumstances?
Valerie Lewis: At the time, I wasn’t sure about what I’d learned and I remember sort of thinking. Am I strong? Am I coping with this? And it wasn’t until I volunteered with, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children? I volunteered. They have a helpline, the child death helpline. I think it might be called something different now. But I applied to volunteer for that as a bereaved parent. And it was offering emotional support to basically anybody who was impacted by the death of a child, whether they were the parent, the grandparent, the aunt, the teacher, whoever. Perhaps they were feeling upset or traumatized. It was a free helpline, so they could call the helpline and just pour out their feelings.
And we were there as a volunteer to listen and it was through listening to their stories, it made me realize that I had come a long way and that I was actually quite resilient and emotionally strong.
And I learnt that, I mean, it’s a bit cliche, that there are more questions than there are answers and that sometimes we just have to accept that we can’t know the answers to everything as hard as it is. Because that used to probably torment me in the early days. Why, why, why? And there were certain answers that satisfied me so much. And then I’d want to go beyond that and think, well, no one can tell me why.
I know why she died. I know what was wrong with my ex-husband. I know those sort of medical reasons why. But in the bigger scheme of things, it’s almost like well why was it her time? Why did she go then? And I don’t think anybody can give me an answer to that. So I’ve had to learn to accept that’s just how life is, we don’t know when we’re going to go. Sometimes we have signs, like if you’re ill terminally ill, then you know, but you don’t know necessarily why you became terminally ill, what led up to that? So there’s lots of things that we don’t know, we will never know. And we can’t know. And we just have to come to terms with that or else we’d go mad.
I’d also learnt how important it is to have a wall of support around you. It’s so important because, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here with the helpline when I say that there were people who didn’t have that support. And they were really struggling. They had no one to turn to apart from the helpline and I think just knowing that there are people around you can help to keep you, make you feel emotionally supported. And sometimes in the practical sense as well.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. I think the points you’ve raised are just so important particularly that what we learn or the experiences we go through, grief is really a journey over time. That’s certainly something I’ve experienced with the grief that I’ve experienced in my life. And I think you conveyed that beautifully in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. Just that horrible shock when something as terrible as that happens and how we start to make our way through the early days. And then over time. You talk about from fragmented to wholehearted. Yeah. So, thank you for sharing that. And I think the fact that you were able to volunteer to help others helped you realize how much you’d learned is a really powerful story, too.
Valerie Lewis: Thank you. And something else that I learned was that really there’s only, you can decide what your values are. Because I think sometimes when we go through difficult times, it does make us reflect on what’s important to us or not. And really no one else can decide for you.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
Valerie Lewis: Have you found that to be?
Terri Connellan: I have. My brother passed away tragically. So, I went through a difficult time and that’s the time that I went back to my creativity, which is my number one value similar to you. And I think the loss of someone so special and so loved and in tragic circumstances, particularly, yeah, it does. It just makes you go back to those places and I think you look at your life in a different way.
So in your work that you do now, you take those experiences to coach others, which is really beautiful that you’re able to take the hard won learning and experiences that you’ve had to be able to support others. So can you tell us about your coaching in this area and how you support people experiencing grief?
Valerie Lewis: Well, grief coaching, if you like, would be seen as a niche or a specialization within life coaching. I think it’s quite new. It’s basically aimed at individuals who’ve experienced loss, whether it’s a death or non-death related and need support and guidance on their grief journey. As you know, coaching is about moving forward. With grief, you’ve got that additional aspect of somebody who may be still going through the various stages of grief. They may still be a little bit hurt, a bit angry, in disbelief.
So grief coaching is also providing practical support using many of the same coaching tools, common to life coaching, as well as providing emotional support through creation of a safe and supportive space for the client to feel that they can heal And that they can express their feelings around grief without judgment.
So there’s a similar way. It is coaching but what I found is that in terms of goal setting, they’ve got to be gentle goals. Very small goals. They may have a big goal, but really with a lot of people who are going through grief, it’s just creating small goals to help them get through the day.
And I find that self-care comes into it quite a lot. So that’s one of the areas that I have tended to focus on with people going through grief. What can they do to be compassionate with themselves, to love themselves, to nurture themselves? What little steps can they take and turn those into goals and actions until they feel strong enough to tackle the bigger goals.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So that’s a real form of that self-leadership we talked about before is taking control or taking care of what you can in a very traumatic, often very traumatic situation. And what’s the pathway to grief coaching, obviously personal experience of grief is…
Valerie Lewis: Yeah, personal experience and I came across the Institute of Life Coach Training. They’re an American organization. I came across them a couple of years ago and thought about it and then put it from my head like I do with a lot of things that are intuitive and I kept getting pulled back to it. And in terms of thinking about what niche I wanted to focus on, before that I’d looked at working with women who were midlife and who were looking to reinvent themselves. But then I started to think, what can I do with my experience of grief or what I’ve been through? And this is where I discovered this course on the internet and it kept coming back to me. I think it was once I knew that I was going to be made redundant, I decided right, I’m going to sign up for this course.
Because I just felt that I needed some structure. I needed some support around that. So, I mean, I thought I’d been through my own experience, but I need this extra. You know, how do you coach somebody? But as I said, we draw on very much the same sorts of tools as we do as we use in life coaching. It’s just this other additional element of supporting somebody, being there, and creating this safe space for them. And knowing that you’re going to be dealing with somebody who might be a bit fragile and also knowing within that when to refer somebody, , when to be able to say, well, perhaps this person needs more than what I can actually offer them. And it’s counseling that they should be receiving or need to get in touch with.
Terri Connellan: It’s very important work. And I think for many of us, the life experiences, what happens to us, the skills we gain, insight we gain is often what we channel into coaching isn’t it? It’s often a challenging journey, but I think the wisdom that we gain from our experiences, the insight and the tools that we develop are so important to pass on to others. So it’s great that you’re doing the work in this area that will help so many people.
Valerie Lewis: Thank you.
Terri Connellan: So creativity, obviously a very important part of your world. It’s been a touchstone for you over time and more recently you shared in your piece, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, how intuitive abstract painting has been a big part of your journey. So how has creativity been a source of growth, expression and insight for you?
Valerie Lewis: I would say, I’ve been creative in some shape or form ever since I was a child. I think it’s just a natural part of me. It’s something I turn to whether I’m happy or sad. It just helps me. I find that being creative is something I can lose myself in. Whether this taps into being an introvert, I don’t know. But I like to sometimes go into my own little world and shut out everything else that’s going on around me. And I find that obviously you can do that when you’re working on a piece, you’re doing something creative.
And I often find that in the act of being creative, and it’s silent around you, or you might be a person who likes music playing, you can ruminate, you can think, you can think more clearly. And if something’s bothering you, sometimes you find that the answers come to you.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I’m sure it can be the same for introverts and extroverts, but I think introverts definitely draw energy from that time alone and that creative space. So yeah, it sounds to me your personality type, which I know is introverted. INFP – you have a preference for introversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. It would make sense that a tool like creativity, whether it’s painting or jewelry or some of the things you’ve mentioned provides a vehicle to create a quiet space where you can energize and make sense of things.
So your intuition is also something you share a lot about in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. What I found fascinating in that piece is how you tracked through learning to listen to your inner voice over time. So can you share us with us more about learning to listen to your intuition and how it’s guided you? Cause it’s not often talked about, is it, intuition?
Valerie Lewis: No, it’s still something that I find hard to articulate because it’s abstract, isn’t it? You know, you can’t see it. And it is different for everybody. You know, you look back on things and you think, well, what helped me, and then it’s just being aware that there were certain times when I seemed to know what I was doing, I felt as if I was actually being guided And I suppose some people might say you know, it’s God. And I think, well, it could be God and then over the years, having different experiences when you think that’s what they call your intuition. Like a silent voice or a sense. It’s like your body knows the right thing to do. Something’s baffling you or confusing you, and you’re weighing the pros and cons and then out of the blue, when you’re doing something totally different an answer comes into your head or you’re doing something and you get a reaction in your body.
And it’s through experiencing that. And then learning when I experienced that, that means I’ve got to listen to that. And just learning to be aware of those sensations. It’s learning to be quiet and still, and just being in the moment. And I think being creative helps you do that. I’ve heard people say that running, for example, does that for them, you know, going for a run, clears the cobwebs away and they’re in that moment. And maybe if they’ve had a problem they’d been churning turning over in their heads, they’re getting clarity in that moment.
So there’s definitely something to be said about learning to be still. Shutting out everything else around you and really being in that moment. So for me being creative is like a kind of mindful meditation. And I suppose in some way that that’s where the abstract art came in and that was kind of a mindful meditation. I don’t know what I’m going to paint. I just have these paints in front of me and I start doing shapes and ideas come to my head. Oh, that represents so-and-so. That means so and so, but initially I might not know what it is. I want to get down on paper.
Terri Connellan: I think it’s fascinating that abstract intuitive art was what you were felt very drawn to. It’s obviously something that has called you over time. And when you describe your creativity, the power of it, intuition, it seems to bring all the pieces together. So that’s perfect.
I love that you described yourself as a 60 plus pro ager, Valerie. That’s great. I love that term. What does that mean for you? Tell us a bit about that.
Valerie Lewis: I think for me as I approached 60. I thought my gosh. Am I still middle-aged? And then I actually had to Google it to see what years middle age encaptured. And I thought, well, I’m at the tail end of middle-aged. And it was like looking at older relatives around me and thinking, there’s a part of you, that’s a little bit fearful about getting older and that term to me, it helps me allay those about being over 60 and getting older. It’s about me accepting that, yes, I am getting older. I can’t hide that and really, I don’t want to. I think it’s something to actually be proud of, because not everybody, you know, my daughter died at seven. She didn’t make it to 61. My mum’s mum, I think she died at 63, my mum’s 84 so it’s actually something to be really, really proud of.
And regardless of what society says, I think we’ve got more freedom. We’ve been allowed the opportunity for more self-expression than our parents’ generation, if you like. And I think we should take advantage of that to the full. We should create our own rules, dress, how we want to dress. If you want to dye your hair, dye it. If you don’t want to dye your hair don’t. And live life as fully as you can, within your capabilities.
I look around me and there’s people my age and a bit younger having hip replacements and, and dying from cancer and things like that. So I think to myself, life’s short. I think you’re just aware of your own mortality when you reach this age. So you think to yourself, I’m not just going to sit here and sort of accept that I’m getting older. I want to live my life. And so being pro age, it’s about accepting that you’re a certain age but not letting that age, define you or defeat you.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Yeah. And I was fascinated to hear that you did what I also did recently, which was look at middle age and the span, because I was asking the same questions recently because I just turned 60 not long ago. I was thinking, oh, am I still middle aged? Or am I old age now? Or what am I? And I did the same thing.
I was fascinated to find that I could see middle-aged, which is that point. And then there didn’t seem to be a term so much for after. So yeah, I do like that pro ager. I was listening to a podcast, The Magnificent Mid-life Podcast, and there was a guest on there who talked about being age-full, which is nice too. I love that. And, I certainly agree with you about celebrating all that, we’ve learned the sharing of that with others, which in your journey is really important. So yeah, I love your attitude. It’s fantastic.
Valerie Lewis: This is where the modeling comes in.
Terri Connellan: Yes I’ve seen on Instagram. Is that a new career for you?
Valerie Lewis: I wouldn’t say it’s a career, it’s a form of income but it’s another form of being creative if you like.
And it’s also about in a way me celebrating, being the age I am because if you look back 10, 15 years ago, who would have thought that somebody in their sixties will be doing modeling. But I think there’s more of us reaching a certain age. And I think companies are appreciating that their customers want to see a greater representation of people who look like them.
And so this is the right time for me to be doing this because I am not what you would call sort of fashion model. I don’t look like a fashion model. I’m not the right height. I’m not the right build for it, but I might look like somebody who you’d see in the street or your next door neighbor. So that’s basically what I’m doing. Lifestyle modelling and it’s quite fun. It’s something different and it’s fun.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. The pictures you shared on Instagram. I was just blown away. I found it so inspiring. It was fantastic to see. So yeah. Be interested to hear more about it as you get more into your modeling.
So there’s a couple of questions that I’m asking all the guests on this podcast, being the Create Your Story Podcast. It’s a big question, but it’s really just seeing what comes to mind from the question. So how have you created your story over your lifetime?
Valerie Lewis: That’s an interesting one. It’s almost like there hasn’t been a rule book to follow. So in many ways circumstances have shaped some of my story. And other aspects of my story, I’ve taken charge and shaped myself. For example, not climbing a career ladder when that’s something that society expects of you, if you like. I chose not to do that.
Some of the creative things I’m doing, such as modeling and what is interesting is meeting other people who are of the same age group, who have decided to do that as well and thinking, well, you know, this is fascinating.
So my story has been shaped by I suppose obviously my parents and people of their generation, my upbringing, being a black person in a mainly white society. That’s helped to shape it. Being a female. In two of my jobs, I worked in a more male dominated environment.
And also the circumstances I’ve been through have helped to shape my story. And also I think I’m a little bit eccentric and I’ve got a strong streak of independence. There’s always something in me that slightly wants to dance to my own tune. So that’s helped to shape my story. I’m still continuing to shape my story.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. That’s great. It’s lovely to hear all the different aspects that have shaped you, your personality, circumstances and how you’ve responded to them as well. Thank you for sharing that. So wholehearted self-leadership is obviously part of creating your story and a key part. And I’ve shared some tips in my book, but I’m interested for people on the show to share their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So what comes to mind for you as the top tips?
Valerie Lewis: I think the main thing that I would say is work on being true to you. Who are you, or who do you want to be? And that might mean a lot of self-reflecting, digging deep within yourself. I would say a good starting point is looking at your values. What are the things that make life meaning to you or could make life meaningful to you? The values that you hold – are they yours or the values of others? What do you dislike about yourself or what do you dislike about other people? Ultimately, are you living your life for you or for others?
And I think that sort of question becomes more important the older you get, especially as you reach middle age. Maybe if you’ve had a family and your life has been focused on your family, I think you can lose yourself, whoever you were. So at some point, I think most of us, you start thinking about who am I, what am I here for? What gives me joy? And that’s where the self-reflecting comes in. And as I say, looking at your values, I think that’s a good starting point because your values change over time, don’t they? And you might be holding on to things that are not helping you anymore. It’s dragging you down.
Terri Connellan: I think that’s great. I think that question about it with your living your life for yourself or for others and sometimes it’s that overlay of family with its family values, cultural values or corporate values, it’s almost like we have to clear them off sometimes just to work out what’s important for us. I relate to that, like a clarifying process. Beautiful. I love that. And that idea of working on being who you are, who you want to be, and what gives you joy, I think a beautiful tips too for women to take to heart. So, thank you so much for our conversation Valerie today. It’s been so heart-warming, so inspiring and a lot of fun. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Can you tell us where people can find out more about you and your work online?
Valerie Lewis: Okay. My website, Instagram and Facebook under Visualise and Bloom. And LinkedIn under Valerie A Lewis and people can sign up to receive my periodic newsletter. I say periodic because I’m not one of these that sends out a newsletter every month. It’s more like once a quarter. So, if they sign up for my newsletter on my website, I’ve just created a guided meditation. They can receive a free downloadable copy of it. It’s called the Violet Cloud Guided Meditation for Difficult Times.
Terri Connellan: Perfect. That’s a beautiful gift for people who connect with you. So, we’ll pop all those links in the show notes. I’ll also make sure the link to your wholehearted story, The Silent Whispers of my Mind and the piece you shared on creative transition too is there.
Valerie Lewis: Oh, it’s been a pleasure, Terri. Thank you so much.
Terri Connellan: Thanks so much Valerie.
Valerie Lewis
About Valerie Lewis
Valerie Lewis is a multi-passionate 60plus pro ager. Through grief coaching and personal growth facilitation, she supports and empowers those who are lost and confused with the direction they want to take following a significant life event that has impacted them and their sense of self. Her interests include being an intuitive reader, Reiki and crystals practitioner and avid creative dabbler.
Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Shaping a Multi-Passionate Life.
I’m joined by Meredith Fuller, Psychologist, Author, Media Spokesperson, Career Change Specialist and Theatre Maker.
We chat about shaping a multi-passionate life in practical terms! There are so many tips for living a full, wise and creative life without overwhelm.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Making transitions from work or a life we don’t love
Tools for tapping into what is not conscious
Living a full, multi-passionate life in practical terms.
Meredith’s book Working with Bitches
My book Wholehearted & how Meredith is working with it with clients
Thinking and Feeling preferences in women
Choosing projects wisely
How personality insights can help
How tarot insights can help
Setting boundaries
And so much more!
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 6th of January as I record this and we’re firmly into the new year. It’s warm and humid here in Sydney with lots of rain, so it’s a perfect time for setting intentions and goals for 2022 and also reflecting on my word of the year. I shared about my word of the year for 2021, Author in the past week on my blog. So pop over to see how that shaped up over the year and some tips for applying this learning in your life! More on my 2022 word soon as I ponder on all that it might mean!
I’m thrilled to have my friend Meredith Fuller join us for the podcast today to chat about Shaping a Multi-passionate Life. You might remember Meredith featured in Episode 3 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch.
Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwright, columnist & media commentator, talkback radio guest, theatre director & producer, TV co-host, actor, psychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.
Meredith and I met via our mutual interest in psychological type as members of the Australian Association for Psychological Type about 4 years ago. From that we have discovered many shared interests and passions. Today we will be chatting about the value of psychological type and personality insights in making change, looking at how tarot can help, my Wholehearted book, Meredith’s book ‘Working with Bitches’ and writing and creative living. One of the things we particularly chat about is being multi-passionate and having a number of projects. There is some fabulous advice about how to make wise choices about where to focus and how to practically structure your life so you don’t get overwhelmed or burn out.
A reminder before we head into the podcast about the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club as a focus for 2022. One of the things Meredith mentions in the podcast is about the value of community and it’s something that’s integral to my life and work. If you’re looking for community, support and accountability for living a more wholehearted life, join me and a wonderful group of women gathering for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club to read and work through my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook together through-out 2022. Part book club, part group coaching, with weekly accountability and prioritising check-ins, it’s a gentle, focused and value-packed way to keep wholehearted living front of mind and make progress to the transitions and transformations you desire in the coming year.
We start on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted in mid-January so it’s not too late to join us now and there is a space for you. People in the group are already commenting on how the accountability is helping them to do things they might otherwise have given up on! So head to the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club.
You’ll also hear more about Wholehearted in this episode and how it can support you. Meredith wrote a fantastic review of the book you can read too.
So now let’s head into the interview with the fabulously multi-skilled and multi-passionate Meredith Fuller!
Transcript of interview with Meredith Fuller
Terri Connellan: Hi Meredith, welcome to the Create Your Story podcast. And thank you so much for your support of me and my book Wholehearted.
Meredith Fuller: I’m delighted with it.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. It’s great to chat with you today. So to kick off, can you tell people a little about you and the roles that you focus on in your work in the world?
Meredith Fuller: So, I’ve been a psychologist for over 40 years. I have a private practice where I’ve seen many thousands of individuals who come for career developmental or personal growth, and I’ve also spent a number of years working in organizations on organizational issues, whether that’s leadership, team communication, mainly it’s interpersonal issues.
And I also write plays that I direct and produce at our venue, and I assist my husband with his short documentaries. So, we’ve got a very psychological focus on that. So essentially what I do is assist people to be the best they can be. And I mainly find that people are often in a position of distress. It could be interpersonal problems with people at work, problems in relationships, a poor fit, and they need some assistance in moving towards whatever their life stage is.
And it’s interesting at the moment, there’s been obviously quite a lot of people who are looking at what next? I’m in my fifties, I’m in my sixties. What now? So there’s a very strong theme there. And the other thing that we’ve been doing for the past two years because of the pandemic issue is working with a lot of people using Zoom to do group sessions or one-on-one sessions.
So, I guess what happens for me is there’s lots of different projects that emerge and if I’m interested, I’ll grab it. So for example, at the moment, I’m making a film with some colleagues about domestic violence. So it’ll just depend on what seems to be the critical issues. And the other part of what I do in writing is I’m an author of books and I do a lot of book reviews and write articles for newspapers, magazines, do some TV work, radio work, just a lot of helping people to understand more about the psychology of people.
Terri Connellan: So many threads, but so many interesting aspects to your life and to your work. And I love that at its core about helping people to be the best people they can be and I think that’s where your work at my work comes together. We’re both interested in that space where people can make choices, make transitions, practice self-leadership, understand themselves to be the best they can be, but I absolutely love all the different strands. And so we’ll explore quite a few of those in our chat today.
So thank you. And thank you for your review of Wholehearted too cause, that was a beautiful first review, which I’ll put in the show notes, but thank you for that. And the work that you do, I’m sure is hugely appreciated because it’s one thing to write and create something, isn’t it? It’s about sharing it with the world too. So thank you for that. So we met through our mutual love of psychological type and it’s valuable insights. So why have psychological type and personality been such powerful frameworks in your life?
Meredith Fuller: I’ve always been psychologically minded. And even as a child, I wanted to be a psychologist and it struck me that I was fascinated all through school about what do I think people will become when they get older so much so that I used to write down all the names of the kids in my class and write down what I thought they’d be when they grew up.
So obviously, the issue of vocation spoke to me very early on, and it was clear to me that people were different and that you could cluster them in some way. And I used to wonder why doesn’t anyone else seem to see what I’m seeing? So I felt quite different and alone with that and I guess for me, what I love about AusAPT and working with psychological type is we have a group of disparate people who are all keen to understand what our differences and similarities are.
And we like looking underneath and we like reflecting back on what we’re observing and to my mind, there’s a great depth of thinking that is so helpful for people. And I certainly find that psychological type has informed most of the work I’ve done since about 1998.
Terri Connellan: Wow. It’s been a really long-term influence then. Yeah. So just to explain to people listening Meredith and I are part of the Australian Association for Psychological Type, which is a connection of people in Australia, but globally who have a passion for personality and psychological type and it’s great community for people who as you’ve said think really deeply about the way we’re made up, the way we’re wired and the influence of that with nurture too. It’s not all about how we’re wired is it? But it’s obviously a big player in how things play out. So how do you work with these insights with clients?
Meredith Fuller: Individuals will come for counseling or careers counseling, and they’ll normally present with distress about their relationships at work or their relationships in the family, or with significant others or their difficulty in forming relationships, their concern about their careers and we’ll explore their lives. And I like to look at childhood through to the present and I like to understand their narrative. But I also like to look at what are their ability, skills, interests, values to get that full picture and what their hopes and dreams are in terms of who was this child? What did that child want in the future? And who is this adult now? What does this adult want?
And increasingly, I’m noticing that there’s so many problems with people who are not being valued and validated in their relationships and at work. And so, the thing that struck me about your titles about, this wholehearted and the shadow coming to work and the half-hearted working. The turns of phrase you used were just beautiful because they just encapsulated for me how people talk about work versus self.
And, I loved the way you gave a number of activities and exercises that they could reflect on, that helped them to see what the misalignment is and what’s changed. And that just sits so nicely with the sort of work that I do with people where something shifted. And if they don’t address what’s going on for them, invariably, they get sick or they have to sever relationships or rethink a lot of things.
So definitely there’s a sense that people are coming because they’re not happy. They’re in distress. They know something’s wrong. And they know that it’s very toxic for them, but they feel so stuck and they often feel very trapped and they seek some support from elsewhere because there’s something intolerable that’s going on.
Terri Connellan: That makes perfect sense with me cause certainly when I went through my journey, in my case, I reached out to a coach. There’s lots of different people or actions we can take when we feel that. But it’s that, as you say, that real sense of misalignment between who we are, what we want to do, what we want to be, and then what’s actually happening. And there’s lots of reasons for feeling stuck isn’t there.
Meredith Fuller: Oh, absolutely. And also the issue of age, life-stage. The sorts of issues people might present with when they’re 27 are going to be very different to what they’re presenting with at 57. So, that’s of concern to me that there’s quite a number of women I find who haven’t got the financial security that perhaps men might have. Historically, we know why that is. And they find themselves in this position where they’re being edged out of their organization, or they’re not ready to leave, but there’s nothing for them anymore. And they’re really at their prime and they might be in their forties, fifties, and sixties, and they’ve got so much to offer, but they just can’t get a gig anywhere so that’s a real concern. And the other one is that similarly with a lot of men who are really stuck, lamenting that nobody wants them and what are they going to do with the rest of their lives? People that have been chewed up and spat out. So that’s very common.
Terri Connellan: And it’s ironic as we get through life, we get more wisdom, more skills and, then we get in a situation where we feel of less value. So it’s a huge issue and it’s obviously something we’ve both really noticed in the work and, and I’ve experienced it myself. So it’s something obviously you’re seeing in your clients.
So in Wholehearted, in your work with clients, we both use psychological type and personality as like a compass or a framework or a way of seeing personal development. I’ve spoken about that in my book, and obviously your story is very different. So do you want to tell us more about your psychological type makeup and how your understanding of your personality and how you’re wired has helped you grow and evolve?
Meredith Fuller: And so my preference is for introverted, intuition, feeling, perceiving, [INFP] and I was aware when I was very young, that there were two parts of me, two aspects. There was the very introverted—I loved reading. I loved thinking, daydreaming and performing, and this would be my outgoing situations. So I started working very young. So I was in professional salaried work when I was four and a half. That was because I came from a single parent home and my father had left and there was no supporting parent benefit. My mother was very unwell. We also had in our house, her mother and her mother’s sister who had Down’s syndrome.
So my mother was quite trapped, as a caretaker and not really able to go off to work. So it was quite dire. But from when I was very young, three or four, I just love singing, dancing, chatting to strangers, that sort of thing. And so there was a photographer called Athol Smith who was very famous at the time.
And he and his wife, Bambi, wanted me to do some modelling with them. And so that began a modelling career and that also led into an acting career. So I had a situation where I loved all that. I could go off to work and earn some money to help my family, but I could do things I enjoyed, which was entertaining groups, being in plays, et cetera.
But I knew that was a part of me. And the other part of me needed that balance of time alone. And I always had that fascination by how people were different. Why were they different? What can I understand about that and how to make sense of all of that? I guess I’ve always been interested in these things and another connection we’ve had is with the the tarot.
So I started reading tarot when I was about 15 and that’s always been a lifelong interest in collecting decks and exploring symbolism and the unconscious. And so locating MBTI when I was working at a tertiary institution. It was about 97, 98. It seemed to me that things very much came together with that because here was something cogent.
It made sense in a way that I just felt encapsulated everything I’d been thinking about. So I seized on that and became very involved in doing something to help people train and bringing that to tertiary institutions, bringing that to organizations and then working one-to-one with clients.
And I found it’s been the most useful thing because it isn’t about people running around doing a questionnaire. It’s about understanding yourself through that self-reflection and observation and imbibing the theory yourself. So, it’s got a lot more to offer than say, there’s a lot of tests and little questionnaires and things people do, and they’re quite simplistic.
And of course the fewer categories, the less comprehensive and the less good affinity. So there’s something about having 16 types that’s so robust and it’s something that people can grasp very easily and then it can help inform, well, who am I with? How do I work? What do I need? Where am my gaps in communicating? So it’s something very practical and very common sense.
Terri Connellan: That really aligns with how I feel too. First it’s making sense of your own personality and your own view of the world, I think often is part of the lens through which we see type. And then, in my role as a coach or your role as a psychologist using those skills to help others to see what your strengths are, where you’ve got blind spots, what you might be missing, because we all just naturally have certain ways of seeing the world that’s so natural to us, we think it’s the same for everybody.
Meredith Fuller: That’s a really good point you’re raising because obviously one of the issues about working in my field is that we see the people who don’t fit, who have got distress, who have got concerns, who do feel different. So , I do have a skewed sample in that sense.
So invariably, what I find is there are certain types who come for counselling and careers counselling and my husband, who’s a psychotherapist psychologist, he finds the same thing. So, we tend to work more with the introverted, intuitive, thinking or feeling perceiving or judging types than perhaps the more mainstream types.
And that interests me as well, that I can actually reframe a pretty horrible life experience for someone, and they can actually celebrate what is unique about them and then work to their strengths rather than feeling unwanted in our society.
Terri Connellan: That’s really powerful work. I think type’s such a valuable tool for reframing, for understanding. I like the idea of it as a compass, as Jung used that idea of the compass and the framework for taking us forward. So, thanks for those insights. You mentioned tarot, which is another love we share. I write about tarot as a tool and a support for wayfinding and personal insight in my book. And I know you have been collecting decks and have lots of insights. What are your thoughts about tarot as a personal development practice?
Meredith Fuller: I love the visual aspect for people. It’s very clear that some people are very auditory and they need to have deep conversation and, and music might be really significant in how I might work with them. For some people it’s visual. So films, things like tarot, help them get the awareness, get the insight, help them to name what’s going on for themselves, and also really help them connect with their unconscious.
And the thing that I particularly like about tarot is that it sits so beautifully with doing dreamwork and how in our dreams, we understand that present, past and future are interconnected. We don’t have linear time, that images can be constructed or archetypal. There are messages in our dreams.
And similarly with working with your tarot and working with your unconscious, you’re actually helping yourself to appreciate what’s going on for you in a way that enables you to perhaps have a few more resources in the moment when you’re feeling lost, uncertain, confused. So it’s something very tangible. And it’s also something that I really appreciate because I love ancient cultures, ancient religions, ancient symbolism, and also futuristic work. So I love how it just seems to combine all of those.
And it’s a great tool for quickly communicating with someone else. It’s a little bit like the way we use type that, you know, we can say, oh, you know, my preference is X. So suddenly we understand a lot very quickly. And similarly with cards, oh look, I keep getting certain cards, what’s going on with me. It’s a good way of quickly absorbing and integrating information that helps us.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So I love two things you said there, firstly, about both tools,type and tarot, or both frameworks are ways of tapping into that unconscious, like what’s beneath the surface or what’s less conscious for us.
And then secondly, how they both like languages or symbolic systems or languages, we can become more fluent in. I love that idea because they do. At a type conference, for example, when we’re together, I just love it. We all understand, at different levels, but it’s sort of a language we can speak.
And as you say, it’s the same with tarot. When I talk about the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups in the book, I hope people who don’t know that can also get a way in. But for those who understand that, they will bring that understanding to that book. So it just means we’ve got a language for communicating.
Meredith Fuller: It’s interesting. There was a line in the book that was really interesting for me, that you made that I hadn’t seen anywhere else before. And it was very significant. I think, as a teaching tool for a lot of people who are looking at this business of career change. You’re talking about, you’re leaving success. So you’re leaving things that are working, you’re leaving things and you’re going off and you made the comment, you’re actually choosing to leave the successful things.
And that was a very significant statement because for a lot of people where I find they’re stuck is: I earn X amount of dollars and I don’t want to learn less. I’ve been doing this for so long and I’m a partner or a senior administrator or an executive, or I’m a X, Y, Z ed. I can’t leave all this, all this work. I can’t stop and start something where I might earn less or not have my status or not have the recognition. And that can actually paralyze people.
And so we’re looking at the duality of, well, on the one hand, you’re saying you feel dead inside, you hate going to work. You feel there’s so much inside you that’s not being expressed. You’re bored with what you do, even though you’re busy, you feel trapped. And yet you’re saying I can’t let go, you know, do I stay, do I let go?
And there’s something about the way you’ve talked about this card and saying, you’re actually choosing to leave your success. It was just a beautiful way of describing an active decision. And I think that’s very empowering for people who are frightened about letting go of material things, or letting go of how much work they’ve put into something to begin something different.
And with that thread, you also talk about we bring ourselves to every new thing we do. So it’s just a different iteration of what we’ve done before, but some of those phrases will resonate with a lot of people. And it will help give them a boost to say, I can do this. I’m choosing to do this.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that idea of abandoned success, and the image of the Eight of Cups. If you have a look at a fairly traditional pack the cups stacked up, and then a person’s choosing to walk away from the full cups. Yeah. And to me, it’s about identity. It’s about how much of our identity we’ve invested in that role, that position, the money that we earn, whatever it might be. And then that choosing to find a new path is incredibly difficult.
Meredith Fuller: I guess what makes it hard is our society doesn’t understand. So when people say I’m having a change, I’m leaving X or, I was doing a more senior role, but I’m going back to do a more specialist role in the same organization, or I’ve worked long and hard for this and I’ve got all these qualifications and so forth, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m doing something else. And how other people really try to interfere and say, you’ll regret it. You shouldn’t do it. What if you can’t get another job and everyone will laugh at you and what a stupid thing to do. And they’re actually, I think often frightened because they don’t want that other person to go off and be happy because they’re not happy either.
So a lot of investment in keeping the status quo. So I think the way you’ve talked about the Eight of Cups in that sense, that it’s a really sound decision to choose to walk away from amazing success, because you know you will have different success and the success you will have is more congruent with who you truly are. There’s something in a lot of those comments that you’ve made that I just think for people reading the book will strike such a chord.
Terri Connellan: Thank you for those comments. I really appreciate it because it’s something I really felt personally. And my aim in writing the book was to help cause when I went through it, I also felt a bit lost. And there weren’t a lot of frameworks in writing the book. It was working through what I experienced, but then trying to provide some anchors for others.
Meredith Fuller: That was another thing. I did want to mention this because I was very struck by how you wrote the book. What’s unique about your book is that you talk about your own process, including everything you did, every book you read, every person you saw and you very generously talk about what you took from each experience. And it’s almost like a little road map of, here’s a whole lot of books you can buy or types of people you can go and see, and how a coach might be different to a therapist.
And there’s so much that you give in that that is so helpful because traditionally when people write self-help books or here’s your way of looking at your career or change or whatever. They’re very much about, well, this is the system and this is what you follow. And, they don’t compare and contrast other techniques or things that they’ve struck. They don’t suggest that very wide exploration and they don’t talk so much about the internal distress.
They’re much more about, okay, so here’s your problem. So here’s step one and that’ll go to step three and then you’ll be at five and then you’ll be done. And so there’s something quite desiccated about reading those books. Whereas with yours, a) because you’re so honest and open about everything that happened to you, people can feel that you understand them. But the way you talk about how you made decisions about, will I go here? Will I read that? What did that trigger? What did that mean? Why is this person good at this? It’s so much more comprehensive for people to say, okay, well, I didn’t like that book and I didn’t like that person. But you know, it’s like a hairdresser. I’ll go and find one that cuts the hair how I want. Thanks very much.
You’ve really given people permission to play with the way through. And I can certainly see how this kind of approach has been missing in the past because there are a lot of books came out in the eighties and the nineties. It’s almost like we get waves of things happening, but they never really hit the spot about people who had this profound sense of emptiness and loss and confusion and concern.
And they didn’t help people who couldn’t just snappily work through each exercise and tick off all the goals and have it neat and tidy. And, I like it cause it’s messy and our lives are messy. And you’ve really captured that for people, which is nice. And that sense that you have with your work is, well, it is going to be unexpected. We don’t know how this is all going away, but it could be this. It could be that. It could be something else, but there’s growth in it and there’s excitement. And there’s learning in this curiosity, and there’s a sense of mastery rather than having a person feel well look, I’m hopeless, even the help books don’t help me cause I’m so hopeless. So to me, you’ve really picked up on a book for our time.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. I really appreciate that cause often when you’re writing a personal narrative like that, it’s that challenge of sharing your experiences a bit like, show don’t tell. I was just chatting about this in another interview, the difference between telling people to do something versus this is what I went through. And here’s what I suggest, which I thinks a more powerful way to go. And you’re also an author. So tell about your books and the topics you focused on in your writing career.
Meredith Fuller: So I’ve written a number of books that were more academic, but the one I did that was more mainstream was called Working with Bitches and it was identifying the eight types of nasty people that you find, nasty women and how to deal with them. And why I did that was, again, part of the theme of what was happening with my work is women were saying I’m really struggling with a particular woman at work who might be my support person, my boss, my team leader, my colleague, and they were being undermined or they were being distressed and they couldn’t understand what was going on.
They didn’t know how to manage it. And they were being so triggered. It was causing great alarm. So I wanted to identify what was happening with these themes. So I did some research and worked on about 2000 cases and put together types based on all of the materials, the data that I gathered and then worked through, well, how could people deal with that in a way that was safe and in a way that also appreciated their personality structure. Because usually the people who were coming to see me were very much feeling preferred women who avoided conflict, who were frightened by power and control issues and were really getting decimated at work or in relationships. Often it might be something about a mother-in-law or a sister-in-law or somebody’s sister or something.
So it was a way of validating that what they were feeling was true, because there’s been such a theme of, oh, you can never complain about another woman. We women have to stick together because we’re all a homogenous group and men are the enemy. So you can’t say that you’re struggling with a woman. So they’re actually being silenced before they could even articulate what was going on for them. So it was a way of appreciating that all genders walk up and down a continuum of nice to nasty and what you can do to manage that better.
Terri Connellan: Oh, it sounds a really practical book cause that’s something a lot of us experience in different ways, but maybe don’t have any reference points to make sense of all of that. And often when that happens, we tend to think, oh, it’s us. Is that something you’ve come across?
Meredith Fuller: Absolutely, and of course the other thing with that too, is that often it’s about different personality types. And if you’re not as aware of your own style, you certainly not going to be able to identify what someone else’s style is or where there could be a mismatch or a misunderstanding, or how you could broach that to make it a little more palatable at work.
And one of the key findings in my work, and this has also been researched by Ian Ball, who is our colleague at AusAPT. Interestingly enough back in the day, many, eons ago, I used to work at a university with Ian where he was Head of the Psychology department. So I already knew him before we found ourselves back together in our association.
His research found that while there are far more feeling preferred females, for women in the workplace who had a more senior role, they usually had a thinking preference. So if there’s only about 25% of females have a thinking preference, 75% of those females will be in a senior role in the workplace.
And one of the things that was very clear to me was that people were coming to me with this terrible distress about a thinking preferred manager who actually wasn’t being a bitch, wasn’t being horrible, was actually really trying to help them grow and develop, monitor them, train them, work well with them, but there was such a misunderstanding about the way they went about this. They were really at cross purposes.
So it was also part of my book to say, hang on, maybe that person you’re having trouble with, isn’t a bitch. Maybe it’s something about you you have to look at. So let’s have a look at how you can work better with those people. And I certainly used to find that working in organizations. I’ve done a lot of work in banks and legal firms and universities, where there tend to be more thinking preferred females in positions of leadership and authority. And often they would be having difficulties with their feeling preferred females. And it really was, talking two different worlds, two different languages and so much misunderstanding.
And there were some things you could do to make it work and that really excites me. And again, one of the things I loved in your book, as a thinking preferred female, you operate very much using your feeling and your thinking preferences. And you talk about your integration of those things. And this is so important in terms of, I think all of us men and women being able to access all the parts of ourselves. So I thought you handled that very well. And one of the things I’ve noticed as, I guess walking the talk in your role as President of our association, I noticed that you do the very thing we talk about. You identify well, who are the people on the team, or who the members, or who am I working with? What do those people need to do their best? How can I respond to that, so that I honor the difference that I have around me and I see you actively do that. So I see you working very hard to connect with your committees and your staff and your members and your groups and whatever, and doing it well. And so to me again, there’s that sense of, okay, so here’s someone who writes a book and she actually practices what she’s talking about and I see it. So that was another thing that struck me about what you’ve achieved in this work.
So it also sat really nicely with me about knowing that, it’s very good for many women, I believe to understand a little more about what the thinking preferred woman’s doing, because, historically, that’s been really a problem for thinking preferred females. They’ve had a terrible time at school. They’ve often had a dreadful time when they not yet in a position of authority and they’re struggling. It’s one of those things where the more we understand our gender, the better, and you seem to be saying on our journey to become all of these aspects, let’s understand how it might be played out as we sometimes swing from one extreme to the other till we find that fulcrum balance and why it is important for us to take the time to consider that innermost part of our souls and how we are who we bring to work. We can’t divorce ourselves from all of that.
What happened for me with the book [Wholehearted] was thinking, well, I’m not able to see as many people. I can’t see them in person. We’re doing Zoom work. It’s a bit tricky holding people. Here’s a resource that people can work through that I would say is safe, trustworthy. It doesn’t humiliate anyone. It doesn’t cause people to feel stupid if they can’t work through the exercises or there’s no problem about working through the Companion Workbook and the book. And it’s something that gives us some dialogue when we have a couple of weeks gap between sessions. So I thought you’ve really come up with a tool, right when we must need something.
There used to be a number of books. Everyone would get one every year, like What Color is my Parachute? They were very superficial and they really didn’t hit this spot about people are really saying, who am I really and how do I want to live my life? What does my life stand for? And how am I in relation to others? And so those very fundamental questions and the way we’re changing work. We’re changing work to be, as you would appreciate, most small business run by women, most new business women setting up, most people going off becoming specialists or consultants who are collapsing who they work with at different times.
This is the way that we’re working and doing several jobs in a year. And just going with the flow. And historically, a lot of the books about careers and development just didn’t take into account the new way that work is emerging. So, I’ve been really happy to say, well, here’s a tool that I can recommend both to men and women, interestingly enough, and get them to work through. And then when we talk, they’ve had the chance to really work through some thoughts themselves and that really adds to our work together. So I’ve been really struck by how you’ve put, certainly your understanding of type in, but also your understanding about how organizations have been working and where they need to be working in the future. So it’s got a real breath of fresh air to it.
Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. And I was really appreciative too of your comments that it’s a book you can use with clients, that idea of particularly in times when we’re not having as much, face-to-face, it’s something people can take away. And it was certainly designed to be part of a whole that people can work through the workbook, read the main book, have their own reflections, have space, create their own ways of working through it. But have a mix as we’ve talked about before of meandering, but also structure to work through. And I guess that’s the teacher in me as well as INTJ coming out. So, yeah, it’s designed to be that sort of self coaching, self-leadership guide as well, supported by also having a face to face.
Meredith Fuller: Yes, that was another thing I liked about it. We want people to sit with the uncertainty. We want people to explore symbolism and dreamwork and art and literature and film and tarot and everything possible. But we want them to be able to do it in a way that they can then integrate that into their everyday life and this helps them do that. Whereas some sort of new age materials, there’s no relationship to get up each day and go to work, come home, and you have to earn an income and you have to feed yourself. And, you have to be in relationship with other people who aren’t on the same journey and all of this sort of thing.
So I felt that you provided those safe walls if you like so there was plenty of space to bounce around in this, but you knew that you were being held in a very caretaking way while you went about exploring all of these, for some people, very new ways of looking at their careers, particularly looking at tarot cards, for example.
Terri Connellan: Exactly. And I think from looking at your body of work, which is a concept I talk about in the book, that all the skills, all the work that we do, the volunteer work, all the different work that we do, often that idea of having multiple sources of income, being a multi passionate, multipotentialite, is very much embraced, I think, by how I’ve moved and certainly it’s embraced in your life. So with all that amazing body of work you have over time and what I also hear from clients is sometimes having lots of passions, people can feel overwhelmed, by which way to go, what to do, what advice would you give to others who are also looking to embrace their multi passionate body of work and interests?
Meredith Fuller: So I had an INTP mother, which is a great mother to have, so she was quite unique and unusual, and her attitude was, you find your own way, Meredith. Value education and trust yourself, back yourself and so for me, I’ve always felt a little different from a lot of people because I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do is from when I was very young.
So I’ve never felt, oh, there’s too many things, or I don’t know which one to do first. What I’ve always done is I’ve said to myself, I have to go with what’s most important to me at the moment. So what’s the most burning, exciting thing for me now. And I know there’ll always be plenty of time to either come back to something or do it, postpone it and do it later, or do a little bit of it, stop, do something else. I’ve never felt, aw gee, you can’t play with it all. I just knew you could never do it all at the same time. So I find that my question always will be when there are so many things I enjoy doing, how do I choose? I’ll go with what sits inside of me being best, right thing that I have the most energy for. So for me, it’s often about energy.
So I do a lot of pro bono work for clients, particularly cause I work in the creative arts a lot. There are a lot of people in the creative arts, who’ve got no money and I often see a number of those people for nothing. And how do I choose? Because so many people, how do you choose? And something will happen in that engagement with that individual that I’ll feel, and I’ll go with that. So for example, at the moment, this is a funny story, but it’s a good example of how do you choose what you do? We mainly do a lot of our house maintenance ourselves, but in a two story house, there was no way my 70 year old husband was getting up a ladder.
So we had a housepainter come to do the top bit. And he brought his son with him to help hold the ladder. And they were talking and his son had wanted to be an artist and he was really lost. And he was very distressed and there was something in this young man that I felt. So I’ve now been working with him for some months. So he comes every week and we’re exploring his move towards becoming an artist, how he will go about choosing a course to do, how we’ll go about earning some money, to be able to be a student, to purchase all his materials, how he works in the field.
And his sense of identity and who he’s becoming and how he deals with issues because we’ve all got issues, obviously. And because he’s such an aware person, he has a lot to work through. So there was something I felt in him where I felt he had something very special and I wanted to nurture that. And he’s a very humble person and he’s a very respectful person. He’s got qualities as well. So I’ve really felt drawn to working with him. So there’ll be something about that. Or if I’m choosing a play, I want to write, it’ll be a burning issue that I’ve got some energy for. Nothing that might be commercially successful.
It’s always about what I’m interested in and that’s what I’ll do. And if friends come to me and say, how about a project? I’m doing this. Are you interested? Again, it’s always going to be because I either love working with those people or I love the issue and I’m happy to just trust my own sense of where my energy is saying to go.
And it’s very much like that Eight of Cups card. Often it means I walk away from successful things because there’s something new I want to do and different I want to do that the energy is there for. And I know I’m not saying goodbye to everything forever because there’s plenty of time. So it’s something about noticing what’s the spark, what’s the energy, what’s the curiosity. And if you follow that, they’ll always be a few things that bubble up to the very top, rather than everything. And I really love this notion of, just because you’re really good at something, you don’t have to keep doing it. Do something else.
Terri Connellan: Hmm. I love that too. I think that’s great advice because just some of the people I’ve worked with, what you’re saying resonates. And some of them are INFPs too, which is interesting, it’s that idea of just so many passions, so many interests and they compete. But I think that idea of being more attuned to what you’re drawn to and prioritizing that. I’m also hearing you say almost taking a bit of a project approach to things, to help compartmentalize, I guess?
Meredith Fuller: Yeah, I think it’s really important to compartmentalize because I notice for me, if I want to fit a lot of things, I couldn’t keep doing too much of one thing because there wouldn’t be the space. It’s almost like asking yourself, how many days a week are you fit for counseling? How many days a week are you fit for writing? How many days a week are you fit to do radio interviews or whatever it is, and work out roughly what those clusters will look like, and then be really strong.
So I’ll be able to say, well, I counsel on these days so if you can’t fit in with me, sorry, I’ll refer you to someone else because I can’t keep stretching across taking the space from other projects that I really believe in. Because if I do that, I’ll end up getting sick. I’ll end up trying to overstretch and I won’t manage, and it won’t work.
Terri Connellan: So there’s a couple of questions I’m going to ask podcast guests as we go through. And, this being the Create Your Story podcast, it’s a big question, but I’m interested to see just what comes up for you when you’re asked the question, how have you created your story over your lifetime?
Meredith Fuller: Okay. I’ve created my story by allowing myself to sit a bit away from the mainstream. And I’ve enabled myself to listen to what my heart wants to do, even when it seems at odds with what the sensible thing to do is, or the smartest thing to do is, and almost like back myself, even when it looked ridiculous, because I told myself when I was very young, there’ll be a pattern, I don’t understand it yet, but there’ll be a pattern that will make sense to me, but it’s something that I’m doing that’s going to be unique to me. So I can’t be impacted by what everyone else thinks I should do or what one should do.
I have to trust that little voice in me that says, I know I’m here to do something unique for me. And I’ve always done that and to my detriment often, but it’s like I’m absolutely convinced for me that what’s helped me is by wanting to go off and do whatever it is I want to explore because I’m curious about it. Even if it’s not fashionable or even if it’s way too early and then once I’ve understood it or mastered it or done enough, I don’t have to keep doing that. I want to do something else. So a little bit like saying, yeah, just because you’re good at something you don’t have to keep doing it, do something else, as long as it’s what you’re interested in and you believe in it and it sits with your values.
And my values very much came from my childhood and my upbringing, which was about, to care for people and to care for relationships and to care for what the purpose is that we’re here for. And in a deeper sense, in a much deeper sense. And I’ve always appreciated self-expression. And so for me, creating my story was about saying, well, okay if I can trust myself to follow what my interests are and use that as my guide and not be swayed by what everybody else says you should do, or how everyone else goes about doing things, that’s going to keep me most aligned with my true self. And that’s what I’ll follow. And it was pretty clear to me very early on that I didn’t have a lot of the values that mainstream society seems to have.
I believe that if you do things that are really important to you and you do them very well, somehow you’ll be rewarded and it may not be quid pro quo or tit for tat or something, but somehow it’ll work out. If you are transparent and if you do believe in what you do, and if you do respect other people in how you go about that. You know, that whole thing, isn’t it about freedom but freedom as long as you don’t impact on other people’s freedom.
So that’s been a bit of a narrative for me. And it’s almost like if I had to say, well, where does all that come from? I’m convinced it came from being a little girl who used to believe in her dreams and sitting around daydreaming and imagining the future and imagining things way ahead of time and backing that instead of what was just literally right in front of me.
And that came from coming from a family where we didn’t have a lot, it was very difficult. So we had a lot of trauma in the family, a lot of poverty in the family. But what I had with my INTP mother was a woman who said, use your brains and you can help other people. Use your brains and you’ll find a way to construct something positive out of whatever happens. And I saw her do that. So I had a very good role model in my mother. And I also had a very good role model in reading because I love to write, I was always reading books.
I just found that I was far more interested in thinking big picture future than I ever was in what was going on in the here and now. So it was some something about a knowing that I had and that I couldn’t not know once you have that feeling. And also what was good for me, if this makes sense, it’s like I lived my life backwards.
So if you start working at four, that’s a long time that you’re in the workplace, and if you’re very famous, when you’re a child, well, you’ve sort of been there, done that. It doesn’t matter. It’s like I didn’t have to build up to anything. It’s like, well, I’ve already ticked off this and I’ve ticked off that and I’ve ticked off something else.
And so there’s so many things that I had done that really didn’t concern me at all that I could just go along my own merry way, do what I liked because I didn’t have to prove anything. If that made sense.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Thank you. It’s just fascinating to hear how, with all those different things in the mix, how you created your story to where you are now. So thank you for that. So in Wholehearted, I share 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips, particularly for women, but for all people. So I’m interested in what your top wholehearted self-leadership tips might be for women.
Meredith Fuller: The first one is I believe that it’s a good idea to have a small group of people with you, like your clan or friends or colleagues who you trust, that you feel safe with and who have similar shared values. I take that very seriously. I won’t work on projects with people that I don’t feel that we’re aligned about our values and honesty, transparency, trust, loyalty, all those things are really important to me.
So, that’s a very important issue about who do you connect with. I believe that it’s important to work on communication. So, if I’m going to do it, I need to know how I feel. So I’ll do a lot of checking. How am I feeling? What’s being triggered in me? What do I need to do about that? Can I talk to someone? How do I do that? So in my life I’ve always been keen to look for wise counsel. When I was a child, I got to figure out what I would look for in a partner, because how would I know I didn’t have a father. We were very isolated in our home. There weren’t very many male role models.
So I read all the classics when I was in primary school and I thought, I don’t want all the exciting men. I want all the nice men that I’m reading about in these classics. So I thought: these are the qualities I want in a man. I want a nice man. And I got it from the books. And then as I got older, I realized that I want to understand myself and that will help me understand others.
So anything that would help me do the best I can for myself, I will do. So I went into therapy. I went into supervision. As a psychologist, I think it’s important that we do our own therapy and we do our own supervision. So, whether you go to coaches or whoever you go to, it’s going to someone where you can actually explore your process. So I think that’s really important.
And of course, reading, I’m always reading millions of books so I think that’s important. The other thing I think is working out very simply, what do you need for wellness? So, I’m a diabetic, I’ve got a lot of health issues. I have to say part of my day is managing my diabetes, is going to appointments and is to understand that as I get older, I have less energy than I did when I was younger because of that.
So therefore I have to really cherry pick my projects. So I think, know what your health is. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in nearly every woman who’s come to me is they push themselves way too far. They work too long hours. Doing work that’s killing them and they can’t stop. And so I think it’s really important to say in the week, how much space have you got for work? How much do you need for sleep? How much do you need for your internal life? How much do you need for your relationships and make that pie and make it work?
And I’d also do that with being strict about those boundaries. So both Brian and I, because we’re helpers and we’re feelers, we’re busy. So people come to helping, feeling, busy people and you need to learn to say no. And so while it would be nice to do everything everyone wants you to do, I can’t. So, be really clear about how do you cluster it. So it might be for me, I work in clusters of time. So it might be two days for this and all night for that and a weekend for that. And that’s how I like to work. Other people it might be well mornings isfor this and afternoons is for that. So know what your best rhythm is and then be really strict about how you protect that. And don’t keep saying, oh, I’ll just let this one in. I’ll just let that one in because you’ll get overloaded and you get sick and then, you’re no good to anyone.
So I think they’re probably the key things for me, but, really overall, it’s something about, got to know who you are. You got to know what’s important to you. You got to know what you’re here for. What’s your purpose. And the threads will probably stay the same, although the execution of that will shift over time.
And so you have to keep saying, does this matter to me? Is this engaging me? Am I growing in this? Am I learning in this? Am I sharing with others with this? What’s the point of me doing this and doing it because you want to do it, you believe in it and you love it. So they’re probably the most important things, but you know, it be sensible. Like you might have to say to yourself, well, how much money do I need to earn to live for the week? Okay. I need to earn x dollars. How many hours a week can I possibly work x hours? Well, what do I need to earn per hour to do that? And what will I do to get that? And then if I’m prepared to say, I’ll do a day for that, then that gives me three days for something else. Okay. That’s fine. So it’s not like a childish, I’ll just do what I like, blow everyone else. It’s about making choices and decisions that give the bulk of your time to what you love and you think is very important, but also that you’re mindful that you do live in a society and you do have to buy food and pay rent and, you know, whatever. So something about, honouring, not only yourself, but the other in relationships.
Terri Connellan: It’s a rich body of knowledge, honed from all your experiences and all your client work too. So thank so much for sharing that. And thanks so much for your time today. It’s been a fantastic conversation and I’m sure the listeners will get so many gems of wisdom and prompts to think about themselves. And thank you also for your comments and kind insights about Wholehearted, my book as well, really appreciate that and your support. So, Meredith, where can people find more about you and your body of work online?
Meredith Fuller: My website’s MeredithFuller.com.au. That’s probably a good place to start.
Terri Connellan: That’s great. And you’ve got so much on there about all the things you’re up to your books, your work with your husband, Brian, which we didn’t talk about so much, but he’s a filmmaker, psychologist as well, and your partnership is an incredible part of your life as well. So we’ll pop the links to Meredith’s key work in the show notes and thanks everyone for listening and thanks so much Meredith.
Meredith Fuller
About Meredith Fuller
Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwright, columnist & media commentator, talkback radio guest, theatre director & producer, TV co-host, actor, psychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Writing Together and in Community.
In this episode, I’m joined by Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me – writer, writing teacher, mentor and workshop leader, and soon to be published author—and my morning co-writing buddy and collaborator for the upcoming Writing Road Trip kicking off in late January 2022.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 20th of December as I record this and we’re steadily marching towards Christmas. I hope things are not too frantic for you and that you are able to find some quiet spaces in your days and time to read, write and reflect on the year that’s nearly complete and the year to come.
I’m thrilled to have my friend Beth Cregan join us for the podcast today. To introduce Beth:
Twelve years ago Beth combined her passion for creativity with her great love of writing to launch her business, ‘Write Away With Me’. Since then, she’s presented hundreds of writing workshops to inspire and encourage young writers to find their voice, develop their writing skills and connect with their inner storyteller. Her work has branched out to include presenting writing workshops for adults of all ages and stages and taking on the role of a writing mentor. She believes writing simply makes life better so in 2017, she set out on a journey to write a book to inspire teachers to develop a daily authentic writing practice in their classrooms. Soon to be published in 2022 by Hawker Brownlow Education, writing this book was a transformational experience both personally and professionally. Beth lives in Melbourne.
Beth and I have a special relationship as early morning co-writers. We’ve never met in person but for many months now as we’ve both written our books, we’ve got up to greet each other at 5:30am or 6am, connecting via Zoom and dawn writing virtually in 25-minute bursts. In between we have the most fantastic chats on writing, editing, publishing and life. Today we will be chatting writing, co-writing, editing and working collaboratively as part of our wholehearted journeys. I am so excited we can share some of the joy and insights from our early morning private chats more publicly with you today.
Beth and I are also collaborating and co-hosting a community writing program The Writing Road Trip that kicks off in late January 2022 with a free 6-day challenge on your writing identity followed by a 6 week course to shape your Writing Roadmap and then a 6 month community program. If you’d like to join us or are just interested to find out more, head to The Writing Road Trip waitlist link in the show notes on QuietWriting.com. Or you can find the link in my bio on Instagram where I am @writingquietly and of course all the links to connect us with both are in the show notes. Before we head into the podcast, warmest wishes to you for this festive and holiday season. I hope you get to send time with loved ones and curl up with a good book or two. Thank you for listening and connecting with me, Quiet Writing and the Create Your Story Podcast. It means so much to me. So now let’s head into the interview!
Transcript of interview with Beth Cregan
Terri Connellan: Hello, Beth. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. And thank you so much for your support of me and my book Wholehearted, especially as morning writing buddies.
Beth Cregan: It’s a pleasure to be here and it’s a pleasure to be here in daylight hours!
Terri Connellan: Yes. We usually catch up first thing in the morning at about five thirty or six in the dark. So yeah, so it’s good to connect and we’ll talk about that more as we go through. We’ve had lots of conversations about writing, editing, publishing, and so much more on our journey together so it’s great for us to be able to share some of those conversations with people today. So can you, as a starting point fill everyone in on how you got to be, where you are, what you do and your new book.
Beth Cregan: I trained as a kindergarten and primary teacher. So that was like 35 years ago and after I’d been teaching for a few years, I had a gap year in Asia, and I wrote every day. So I’d always loved writing, but it wasn’t so much of a daily practice. And then while I was away, I had that experience of making writing really part of my life.
So I came back and taught, but when I had Molly, my first daughter, I decided that perhaps I’d like to reinvent myself a little. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t teach, but I wanted to do something a little bit different. So I started to study professional writing and I loved it.
I loved everything about it. I loved being a student. I loved talking about writing, but I think perhaps the biggest part of that was that I worked out you could teach someone to write. Before then I had the experience of capturing my own thoughts, but I hadn’t really discovered that I could capture images and thread them together and make stories.
And when I realised that somebody could teach me to do that, I had that understanding that I could teach somebody also to do that. So I rather than go back into the system, I taught for a company that ran programs for gifted kids and I taught writing. So I did that and various other jobs along the way.
Then finally in I think 2010, I’d had the experience of setting up a kinder and I’d worked there for three years and I loved it. But it was where everything came together because I had the experience of running a business cause a kinder is a little like a business. So suddenly the writing and the running a business and the teaching all felt like they combined and I decided to start my own business.
So that was Write Away With Me and then I started to teach classes after school. So I had a core group of kids some of who’d been in my kindergarten groups came through into my writing classes after school. So that was lovely and then I started to also go into schools and teach writing workshops.
And from there, I also started to teach professional development workshops for teachers. So those three: my private teaching, in school teaching and working with teachers became the core of my business and my writing. And so I blogged about that and wrote newsletters. And from there, that was the start of the book really.
At first, I felt that creativity was being sidelined and it was very structured and very much based on assessment and data. And I wanted kids to have a chance to be creative and to fall in love with writing. And I had those kids after school who were kids that loved writing. And I just wanted to bring that spirit into schools. So that was my start and the book has changed and it’s something a little bit different to that now, but my original intention and it’s still the intention is to re-imagine how creativity could fit into the actual structure of our program as it stands now. So I think that answers all of those things.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. Yes. It’s a big question, but in there, I’m just seeing writing as this thread that goes all the way through your teaching, your professional development with others, your own professional writing, learning, realising you can teach writing and then, sharing your knowledge from all that in a book. So, I love beautiful body of work focused around writing and around sharing the love too in there.
Beth Cregan: And I think writing has been my solid companion as a kid, as a teenager. Recently I spoke to, the year twelves at my school and they have a journal as part of their year 12 program. And I went back under the stairs and through all my boxes and found the journals that I had in year 12. And I realized that it’s just been there all the time, not always at the forefront, but al ways there.
Terri Connellan: It’s something that I connect with too. So it’s that idea of a body of work or ingredients or passions that keep popping up, but they take different forms that I think is something we connect. So we both have a passion for writing. We both have a love for writing, and one of the ways we connect around that is writing in the morning together.
So, Beth was already doing Dawn Writing and invited me to join. So at five thirty or six o’clock, depending on the time of year, we hop up together. I live in Sydney, Beth lives in Melbourne and we work via Zoom virtually to write. It’s a great joy. isn’t it Beth?
Beth Cregan: It is and it started so organically. It was the beginning stages of lockdown 2020. And I was talking to Sandra who joins us as well, it was just a let’s jump on and sort of connect with each other. And then that night, I just thought I’m going to do this Dawn Writers idea and invite other people to come and write with me because I felt like I really needed a structure.
I was needing to move on with my book and locked down and a house full of people all working at different places and the distractions. So it had this lovely start to it, not much thought just, sort of an idea in the shower and I had no expectations for how that would look, I think.
And, how it looks now is exactly the way it was meant to be, just a very small group of people, greeting each other at dawn and giving each other courage to work on our own projects.
Terri Connellan: It’s fantastic. And it’s been such a support for me in getting my book written and published and and I know we’re going through a similar journey, and we’re able to share experiences of particularly going through those hard, sloggy times where it feels like it’s endless, cheer each other on a bit.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. I don’t want to say, I don’t think my book would be finished now if it wasn’t for that, because who knows how I would have wrangled it into shape, but I don’t think it would have been as joyful as it’s been and I don’t mean necessarily the writing experience has been joyful, because I think we’ve had lots of conversations about that. It’s not always joyful, but I think the conversations about writing that we have are joyful.
Terri Connellan: And I think the way we do it too, which, for people listening is like a 25 minute Pomodoro type, set a timer. And so we’re co-writing, but doing our own writing. And then at the end of the twenty-five minutes, we stop and have a chat. And often that might be what’s surfaced in the morning pages or what might be the focus of our work. So all those conversations are really helpful too. I think they take away the isolation.
Beth Cregan: They take away the isolation, and they become part of your writing identity. I think over the last, probably 18 months, at least we’ve been doing it consistently now, haven’t we? I feel like some of my real aha moments and real formative moments about writing have come from those conversations because there is something about the dawn and sort of breaking open and you’re breaking open your own day.
And there is a sort of a vulnerability about that energy. And I feel like some of the biggest things I’ve learned about myself and recorded are really important, foundational, to how I think of myself, came from those conversations.
Terri Connellan: I find that too. I’ve always got a notepad here and I’m often writing down things that might be something you say, or you recommend or a podcast. And, I think it’s too the rhythm of checking in regularly, you develop ongoing dialogue perhaps.
Beth Cregan:My book is for primary teachers, ultimately, although for any teachers at work and teach writing, but one of the chapter is about writing routines and rituals. And we don’t think always in terms of that in a primary school setting, but it has been really instrumental… it’s a rhythm and a routine for me to wake up and do a series of actions and to come in to the space where it’s usually quite dark. I only have a lamp. I do things very much the same each morning. And it means that when I sit down to do that, my brain signals, this is time to… if it’s journaling, then this is time to reflect. Or if it’s writing, this is time to think things through, this is time to brainstorm ideas. So that routine and that rhythm of, same time, same place. It’s always you and I, but other people come in and out of that as well. It’s amplified for me how important, routine and ritual is to really any sort of project that you’re working on.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think it’s that idea of where practice, writing practice or practice anything, and routine come together. But routine can sound dull and boring but that idea of practice and craft showing up to the page.
Beth Cregan: It does feel like in its own way, it feels like it’s sacred. And I think we’ve talked about this recently, that it feels somehow, it’s not religious or spiritual experience, but it is the regularity of a form of worship with words really and turning up to do that, making space to do that every day or five days and the days that we give ourselves off to sleep in.
Terri Connellan: And I know we often get to the end of that, it might be an hour and a half might be an hour, whatever we choose to do and say, well, that’s great. We’ve done the important thing for the day. And I think it gives you a bit of a headstart.
Beth Cregan: It does. On the days when I don’t do it, it feels like a slippery time in terms of settling down and getting work done. I’ll find myself sort of nine 30 and then suddenly I’ll do something else and it’ll be 10. Whereas when I have that start, I do go and do something afterwards. I usually have a bit of time out, cause it’s quite focused, even if you’re doing morning pages, it’s a real focus sort of time. So I usually take my stuff away, but when I come back, I’m in that zone of ready to go. I’m not all over the place. I’m not scattered. When I don’t do it, I have that feeling of being a little bit scattered and it takes me probably an hour or more to settle into my day. Whereas I think we’ve already done that by the time we have breakfast. That’s a bonus.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I totally relate to that. And I think it’s that accountability to each other, but accountability to the practice too, which is great. Yeah. Some people have asked us about how hard it is to get up early and write. And, I think we’ve found that it’s not so hard, the more you do it. So what would you say motivates you or makes it easy to get up?
Beth Cregan: Well we were talking recently at your launch about morning and evening. And I think I wasn’t perhaps always a morning person because I know when my kids were little, they used to go to bed quite early and I used to have the evening where I would do creative things or whatever I was doing.
But I think over the years I’ve become a bit of a morning person. So the actual getting up naturally isn’t that difficult, but in 2016, I got acquainted with Ayurveda and they have a real teaching about greeting the day and various routines that you do. So I was already in that frame of mind. So getting up wasn’t such a problem, but I do think that once you start to wake up early and you do it consistently, you do find yourself going to bed earlier. I find when I get out of the habit of it, I think over January, when we had a break, I found myself going to bed at like 1130, midnight and sleeping in.
But when you actually get in that habit, you naturally can’t last long past 9: 30, 10, and then I just have everything set up, ready to go. I’m not a crazy organized person, but I usually spend a few minutes getting my teapot ready, getting my drink bottle, ready, making sure I’ve got room to balance a computer somewhere. I have my Ayurvedic routines that I might do already in the one spot. So I find that makes it easier. Just to not be scrambling for things. So I never have that sense that I’m belting down to turn on the computer in the nick of time. I always feel like it’s a smooth transition.
Terri Connellan: What I’m hearing from you is what I’ve learned too, and also working with clients is it’s what you do the night before really helps with the morning. The morning routine starts with the evening routine. And it was funny, we only talked about it at the virtual launch, but I do the same thing. I always make sure my clothes are there. I make sure the kettle’s filled up, the cup’s there. It’s got the teabag in and I just know there’s a set number of things and in a way that’s actually lovely. It’s nice. Cause you don’t get distracted. You’re just there to do that. And I said to you, I think this morning when we were talking that if I don’t have the accountability of you being there, I might get up early, but I tend to faff around. I think it helps to focus.
Beth Cregan: Yes, it does. And I think when I don’t have somebody else there, I don’t do the twenty-five bursts in the morning. I do sometimes do that during the day by myself, but in the morning I don’t tend to do it. And I think that does sort of lead you, the 25 minutes is a really good container for pouring things out. So yeah, I’m a bit the same. If I’m by myself, I tend to go through all those steps but I don’t settle as easily, I think, because part of the routine isn’t quite there.
Terri Connellan: For sure. So tell us more about your book and where you’re up to in the writing.
Beth Cregan: Well, as of today, I had the last 800 words or so, which were the conclusion. And I don’t know if you felt like this, but I felt a bit teary today just finishing off that last 800 words, because this piece of writing, this project, has been such a companion through lockdown. And we haven’t always seen eye to eye and it’s sometimes been a bit of a love, hate relationship, but we’ve had each other’s back the whole two years or close to two years.
So it felt great to start piecing that bit of writing together but I realized that I’d left it for a while and I think it was because I just didn’t want to sign off on that container that has really held my work and my life together, cause I haven’t been able to work in schools consistently.
So I’ve just finished that and the rest of the book has just undergone the first full structural edit where you move everything around and check your arguments and all those sorts of things. So, I know you, and I always say this that, you finish one part and you go, oh, that’s that? And I finished my book and then you find that you haven’t quite finished your book. So I feel like I’ve been saying I finished for a long time. But I think the gritty writing part of it is finished or close to finished.
And the book is about the importance of developing a daily writing practice in your classroom. It has prompts and ideas and activities, whereas we tend to work on our own, generate our own, writing projects. It’s not dissimilar in a way to what we do. I think when I first started it, I saw it very much as being the way to balance standardized testing. And in the re- writing cause I’ve actually restructured the whole book from the original manuscript, I had to really try and find a way to make it doable for teachers. So it’s really about how you could do a daily writing practice in that first 15 minutes of the day or, or some time in the day. So how you could actually make sure that your kids had that opportunity to interact with writing away from obvious assessment and how they could learn to develop their own processes.
Because often in a classroom, you’re providing one way of doing things. Whereas this is very much about kids learning to appreciate their own creative processes and have the sorts of conversations that we’re having in the morning, that form writing identity that get them to think about how they interact with writing.
So I guess my goal is to have a group of people that don’t see writing as something that happens in a classroom. That they see, like we’ve discussed, writing as a thread that will run through their lives in all different ways. That would be my greatest wish for that book.
Terri Connellan: What a brilliant goal to have for your book and to bring all your body of work as a teacher and a writer to share that love.
Beth Cregan: I have a love affair with capturing ideas. I like to think. And so I think writing is a way of capturing ideas and playing with words and I do really love that. I think writing makes life better, much better. And I think we could solve a lot of problems if people not necessarily wrote at 5:30 in the morning, but had time to think on paper every day.
Terri Connellan: I totally agree. And it’s made all the difference in my life and it’s something I’ve shared about in my book too. Of my 15 wholehearted self-leadership skills for women, writing regularly, is right up there whether it’s for clarity or sorting things out. It doesn’t have to be a book.
Beth Cregan: It’s a tremendous thinking tool. I think some people do leave writing at school and they finish and they think that that’s that. But if you can write for an audience of one, you don’t have to see yourself as writing for other people. You can be a writer that just writes and thinks on paper for yourself. And I think if we could get our politicians in the habit of daily writing practice, I think we’d see some real changes in Australia.
Terri Connellan: I think we might too. It makes a huge difference. So we’ve shared the ups and downs through the long haul writing processes in working on books and we both experienced challenges in the editing phases that we’ve talked about. My journey of writing was that I found the editing so much harder than I ever thought it would be. How about you? How did you find that?
Beth Cregan: I had a slightly different experience, I think, because the book was picked up by a traditional publisher and the publishing house was taken over by another company. So when it was taken over, I was then given the feedback that the book as it stood needed to be restructured. So I basically had this manuscript that I had to come up with a different plan and then find bits of the book that fitted into all of those sort of chapters.
So it was a real puzzle for me. And I think that’s where Dawn Writers made such a difference in those early days, because it really took a lot of courage to get in and try and piece this together. So the editing, the structural edit and checking that everything’s matched and that I put the puzzle back together in the right way has been… yeah. I love words, but it’s been a slog, an absolute slog
Terri Connellan: I’ve used the word slogan because it is. And when we had a discussion, some in the morning and some in the virtual launch, other words come up like tenacity and resilience, but yes, when you going through it, it definitely feels like a slog.
Beth Cregan: And I think culturally, we expect things to move. We live in a fast world. We expect things to move quickly and everywhere around you, you do have information, ideas, like, write your book in 30 days. And there’s this expectation that writing can be done quickly if you’re productive. And if you put time and where I found that I did all of those things and it was slow.
And so you have to learn to be happy with progress in whatever way it takes. I don’t think I understood that unfortunately to the very end. I think in one of the conversations that we had in the morning, we talked about slow writing and that wasn’t that many weeks ago. And I think the penny dropped that my expectation of what I could do and what actually played out were quite different. So instead of being happy with where I was in the process and being in the moment, I was always berating myself for not being faster and not being more productive or not being this or not being that. And I think it might be easier the next time because I’ve had that experience of my expectations and the reality of being quite different. That’s a real mindset. Any long haul project, I think you have to really put your mind to it.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And it’s patience, that getting frustrated with yourself because it’s not finished or it’s not this, or it’s not, that can pop up quite a lot. My particular version of that is that I made it quite tricky for myself cause I wrote this huge draft and then fortunately working with Penelope Love who received it as a friend and an editor helped me with the developmental editing to realize there was two books in there. But then we had to separate them out and then it was working on the two at one time. So I certainly didn’t make it easy for myself in that.
Beth Cregan: So sort of similar in that your manuscript was a bit of a puzzle. That first manuscript was a puzzle to put together.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. When you said puzzle, I went, yeah, that’s, that’s exactly what I experienced because what we actually did was went through and color-coded the bits that went.. We did that to the whole manuscript. Blue was the main one, pinky color was the second color. And then there was another color for things that perhaps didn’t quite go in either. It really was a puzzle.
Beth Cregan: I used to worry about this last year, and I don’t think too much about it now, but I used to think, parts of this are going to get missed. And they’re going to sort of fall off and I’m going to want them back. I don’t worry about that so much because I feel like any parts that are missed, I’ve got all the manuscripts. So they’ll be repurposed in some way, but it seemed important to me last year that I couldn’t lose any of it.
Terri Connellan: I felt that too. I have a document. I just put all the things that didn’t go anywhere else there. Yeah. Interesting. So one thing we’ve talked about on the way through was maybe doing a session of how not to write because of all the things that we’ve learned on the way through the journey. It might be nice to share with people, a few things we have learned about what not to do.
Beth Cregan: Ooh, what not to do. One of the things that is significant to my experience and perhaps it would be across genres as well is I think writing a book in the educational space has mostly a particular structure. And I didn’t understand that. I wasn’t quite aware of that. And I think perhaps if I’d have taken a step back early days and looked at what that structure might be, I perhaps wouldn’t have chosen the way that I chose to approach it.
However, the flip side of that is that I got to say it exactly how I would have said it and it has been possible to make it into a different shape. So I think rather than spend too much time worrying about it, perhaps people should jump in and know that if it’s not quite the right outline, or it’s not quite the right structure, it is possible to change, that’s the upside of it. But I feel like if I had perhaps done that, I could have saved myself a lot of time. Definitely.
And I also used an editor because I intended to self publish. I also used an editor and whilst the editor, a freelance editor, her work was fine, but I think I also needed someone who had worked in that space and who was in educational publishing. So I think that would have also, probably given me a few more clues early on that the structure might not have actually worked. So I think being a bit specific to your genre, perhaps looking at what other books in that space might look like and the structure they use and looking at who edits in that space, sort of narrows down, builds your field of expertise.
So I didn’t do that. I really sort of threw it up and did it my own way, which now I can say that it all worked out for the best, but I think I may have saved myself some time and heartache perhaps.
Terri Connellan: And as you were talking, that really resonated with my own experience – that idea of writing that very long draft and then realizing that there were two books. I had always thought about a workbook, for example, but not probably something that was a distinct, separate book that had quite a lot of content in it too. So yeah, similar learnings. Maybe it’s just part of the writing process that you create a bigger thing and you do your own way of working and then you work out what the piece wants to look like.
Beth Cregan: You could spend a lot of time and energy researching and fitting into a structure and mate, you may have to change it any way. So I think you have to start don’t you, you just have to make a start and trust that the material, if you have a strong enough connection and a strong enough will to birth it into the world, that piece of work will find its shape. I think you just have to trust that. Did you think too much about that – what you might have to do to shape it when you were writing it?
Terri Connellan: Not in the way that it happened, but I did have a strong sense of what it looks. I’ve shared on social media, the mind mapping. And I had a structure pretty early on about what I wanted it to look like. And I had that idea of being layered and spiraled, which is in there. But I think it had to evolve itself. Like you said, it had to incubate and it had to grow and I had to have life experiences to bring to it. And we’ve both read the lovely Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process, where she talks about it, like bread and, the idea of the dough rising, where sometimes things have to almost take on a life of their own before, when they know what to do with them.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. So I think what else would… I know we’ve had so many conversations about this and I think perhaps because I’ve just finished that last little bit of writing I’m in that optimistic space where I feel like I did everything, everything happened as it should, not necessarily that I did everything right. But everything happened to plan in some shape or form. Well, what other things have we talked about that we would do differently?
Terri Connellan: I think probably the structure is the big one that we’ve both experienced. Sounds like that’s something that you learn from experience. The next book you write will be different to the first time around or second time around. Probably some of the things we’ve talked about, the idea of that mindset around the long haul, long haul creative mindset, and just being a bit more patient.
And then the other thing too, I think, is just realizing the value of writing community andco-writing. But it took me a long time. On my journey, it’s been very much about realizing that writing is much more collaborative than I thought it was.
Beth Cregan: Yes, and I think that’s true. I did work with a mentor originally to start things off and I really liked having that comradery with somebody else. Yes, then it did feel for a long, long time like I was just left to my own devices and it’s lonely to hold faith to something that you’re not really quite sure what the outcome will be. So yeah, I think Dawn Writers always feels like an act of bravery. Community does have that sense of bravery. Doesn’t it?
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it’s realizing too, whilst we often write alone, even if we’re writing together you write alone, it’s that idea of realizing that it’s the communities or the connections. We met through a mastermind, through the Gentle Business Mastermind,, which supported me as a community. And I know supported you. So that idea of at least having somewhere where you can just say, well, this is what I’m up to. This is what I’m doing.
Beth Cregan: And we’re invested in each other’s work, you know, I think that’s what you find, that you become really interested in what you’re doing. And I’ve got to see the process unfold for you, which has been highly motivating. So yeah, the value of community and early on, the value of having that community is really important.
Terri Connellan: I wish I’d had it a bit early on in the process too. It’s been a big learning for me about, co-writing and writing community and how important it is.
So, we’re both writing teachers by background. Interestingly, I also started as an infant’s/ primary, teacher and then went into adults and then I worked in the adult literacy area. You took another path, but, I’m interested as a fellow writing teacher, how being a writing teacher helps you with your own writing?
Beth Cregan: I haven’t had afterschool classes now since the beginning of 2020, but prior to that, I would run pop up after school classes based at schools. But I also had my own group of students that followed through over years, many years, and they were my writing group really, because I would write with them. Anything that I learned at all, was interested in, I took to that group. I’m forever grateful to those parents because although I would at the beginning of the term plot out a program, but the parents were incredibly trusting of what we would achieve during that time and how it would play out.
So I had a lot of freedom. Like one time, I was reading Natalie Goldberg about walking meditation. So I decided that we would do walking meditation before we started writing. So all the things that I learnt I could bring and share in community. And although these writers were aged eight to 12 and 13, they were equally as skilled as me. So I did have that sense of meeting with another group of writers every week. But also when you’re teaching, it’s never the same. So you’re drawing on what the kids give you and you’re learning things as you go.
Once we were sharing bits of writing and talking, we ended up just talking about the power of verbs and how a verb really transported the meaning of the sentence. And it had to be quite specific. And it led me on this personal journey about verbs. So I felt like anything I learned, I brought to my classes and anything that came up at those classes became my points of curiosity. So it’s this wonderful circle of giving and taking.
I did a podcast a while ago and Ellen, who, you know, introduced me as a teacher at heart. And I thought that’s very true. I think teaching and writing have always been so important to me and it’s the teaching I learn and I never feel with teaching that it’s just something that I’m giving.
I feel even when I step into a classroom to do a workshop, I always come out knowing that I’ve discovered something new or I’ve seen something new or something has happened that keeps me company on the way home. Some student had this little piece of writing about the book of everything. And I mulled over this book of everything all the way home. So, the characters that I hear and the storylines that I get to hear just sort of play in my head on the way home.
Terri Connellan: It sounds like a wonderful dance of ideas and inspiration, imagination.
Beth Cregan: Actually that’s a beautiful image because that’s how it really does feel like, a nice sort of flow between those things.And this lovely sort of movement and choreography, some of which is planned and some of which is just moving to the music.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Beautiful. So there’s two questions that I’m asking every guest on the Create Your Story podcast. It’s a big question, but just interested in what comes up for people. So firstly, how have you created your story of your lifetime?
Beth Cregan: I think that the beginnings of the story that I’m in now, the phase of life that I’m in now, I think part of the thread of that and perhaps part of the writing, how the writing fits into this too, is that I’m one of six kids. So four older sisters and a younger brother.
And I think when you come in at number five, some of the key archetypal roles in the family are already taken. So we already had the smart one, the super generous, the athletic, the organized. So, I never felt under pressure to do this, but I do think you try and find ways to be different and to define yourself and looking for your voice or finding your voice and being heard in that group is really important.
And I think part of what I do now with writing and what I do with teachers is about finding a voice. So I feel like find your voice has been the common thread in that story line. That’s the plot really, and it’s finding a voice through all these different mediums and elements and relationships and experiences. And I think Morning Pages, and I know that tarot is something. I had Oracle cards, but I think tarot is something that I’ve really seen and read from your book, but seeing you do, and it’s now becoming something that really inspires my intuition. So it’s not just finding your voice and speaking out, but it’s feeding and, and nurturing that inner voice, that voice of intuition.
So those tools, writing, tarot, and incubating ideas for me, gardening, all of those things are about creating something and speaking through the things that you create or the stories or whatever.
Terri Connellan: I love that thread of finding your voice in all that you do and teaching’s a way of sharing what’s important and making a difference too. So, thank you. It’s beautiful. And you’ve touched on some of these. So in Wholehearted, I talk about wholehearted self-leadership tips and we share some passions in those areas, but are there any particular top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women that you’d mention?
Beth Cregan: Well, I know we’ve spoken about writing, perhaps that’s probably that or some sort of daily reflection time. Perhaps for some people that’s not necessarily writing. Maybe that’s painting, maybe that’s reading, but I do think that having some time out and it doesn’t have to be long. Sometimes when we think of self care or self leadership, we imagine we need big chunks of time. And I don’t think you do need big chunks of time. I think you need to just carve out a little bit of space to hear your voice in whatever way plays out for you. Whether that’s in the garden or in the shower, wherever. Just tuning into something other than the world around you is really important to me. Perhaps it is about finding your voice, using your voice, but nurturing your voice as well.
And creativity, I think is the heart and soul of us. And I think everybody’s creative. I think some people practice creativity in different ways and their skills may be more defined in certain areas. But, we’re all creative. That is what makes us different from animals and from various other species. So I think honoring that in some way is one of the best ways that you can make your mark on the world, which is self-leadership. So whatever that is, however you decide to practice creativity and in whatever shape or form, I think those two things, taking some time to reflect and perhaps an internal response and an external response, making something, thinking about something, connecting ideas, all of those things. An internal and an external responses is a nice connection, just a way of responding, a nice response, I think to your day.
Terri Connellan: So it’s like a way of internalizing, but also bringing in like a balance thing. We know too much internal work, not externalizing can be a problem, but getting out and not taking the time to settle and integrate can be a problem too. So yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s about that balance or of the two that makes a big difference.
Beth Cregan: And in whatever way it works for you. I think we’re spending so much time and we have so much great information at our fingertips about how people all live. And sometimes it looks like other people what they’re doing works so well and we have to try it, but, I’ll never forget when I first started yoga, I had this great teacher Rita and we were all mid pose and I’m not particularly flexible when it comes to yoga. So holding a pose for me, mid pose isn’t a fabulous way to stop. But we’re all mid pose and she stopped us and said, just out of the blue, be your own guru, stop paying so much attention to other voices and listen to your own voice. So I always have somewhere on my desk, ‘be your own guru’, because part of that internal is looking at what you already have in there.
Terri Connellan: And what the truth is for you cause we’re also different. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So, where can people find out more about you and your book and the work online?
Beth Cregan: Well I have a website, so the website is WriteAwayWithMe.com and I’m on Instagram also @write.away.with.me which is a blend of my own writing life and my work. I do run programs and hopefully we’ll run programs again in schools once we’re up and running. But I do also run programs for kids online. So if you come to the website and you can have a look and see what’s around. I’ve had a term off, but, I’ll be heading back into doing some online classes.
Terri Connellan: Great. That’s fantastic. And you and I’ve also been hatching up some plans for something very exciting together to offer next year. So shall we chat a little bit about that? So yeah, Beth and I are joining forces to offer I think the experiences of a lot of the things we’ve talked about today. That community support, skills, teaching, coaching, skills we bring together. But also, I know you and I are both big believers in creating a space, creating a container and facilitating. So that’s something with a focus on writing.
Beth Cregan: We had our first planning session yesterday. I was all buzzy by the end of the day. So it’s nothing better than having that feeling. But we’ve talked a lot together and because I’ve had this experience, I’m really keen to explore writing identity and how we view our relationship with writing and how we can build that relationship with writing. Because I know that the experience of working on a book has changed that dynamic for me completely.
I think writing has always been there, but now writing is very much part of how I see myself and that wasn’t always the case. If someone asked me what I did, I probably never said that I was a writer. I probably chose teacher or various other labels. So I’m really keen to explore how we step into that relationship with writing and how we develop that relationship with writing, because I think that makes all the difference to how you then approach writing projects.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think that’s something we’ve both learnt as people always passionate about writing, being writing teachers, working with others, but also going through writing projects and writing longer haul projects like books. So the things we’ll be focusing on are all about identity. And in that to me is a bit around mindset, how we see ourselves, skills because there’s obviously skills involved in writing. But I think both of us are very strong on process, writing process too. And that will be a key part of what we’ll explore.
Beth Cregan: And also the conversations, that’s where the real jewels are. Don’t you think? That ability to share your experience with someone and have them say, oh, I see you, and I hear you. I know where you’re coming from. And I think that has been part of our journey together because we’ve been able to do that for each other. And we have the proof of how that works or how that has worked for us. So, yeah, I’d love to be able to offer the goodness of that to other people who want to be involved or take on a writing project of some sort.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And as we said earlier, I think I particularly said, but I think you’ve also mentioned, that idea that I wish I had writing community earlier in my journey. And I think that’s what we can offer too, is that idea of community, how to create community, being a community together and the support. We’ll put a link where people can express interest if they’d like to know more in the show notes. So stay tuned.
Beth Cregan: It’s being currently planned as we speak.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. But I think that’ll be a really exciting space and program for next year for us to share. So thanks again, Beth. It’s been a real joy to talk today.
Beth Cregan: My pleasure. I’ve loved it. And I feel so proud to see your book in the world is like seeing the dream of our mornings in a really tangible way, isn’t it?
Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s really beautiful to hear. I can’t wait to see yours in the world. That’s going to be a very exciting day too.
Beth Cregan: I think there’s nothing like having other writers invested in your work because it feels incredible to have people who are not just happy for it to be out in the world, which of course everyone is, but to really have a sense of watching it grow up almost.
Terri Connellan: Yes, because it’s a real psychological journey, that whole practical and psychological journey. So for someone to go on that road with you ,on that trip, it’s very special. So thank you for being that for me.
Beth Cregan: Oh and thank you. I just marvel at the fact that one night in the shower, I had this idea and it ended up being so fruitful for both of us.
Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. I’m glad you had that thought in the shower.
Twelve years ago Beth combined her passion for creativity with her great love of writing to launch her business, ‘Write Away With Me’. Since then, she’s presented hundreds of writing workshops to inspire and encourage young writers to find their voice, develop their writing skills and connect with their inner storyteller. Her work has branched out to include presenting writing workshops for adults of all ages and stages and taking on the role of a writing mentor. She believes writing simply makes life better so in 2017, she set out on a journey to write a book to inspire teachers to develop a daily authentic writing practice in their classrooms. Soon to be published in 2022 by Hawker Brownlow Education, writing this book was a transformational experience both personally and professionally.Beth lives in Melbourne and when not writing or teaching, you’ll find her painting, hiking, rummaging in her garden or in a forest, hugging trees.
Welcome to Episode 5 of the Create Your Story Podcast!
In this episode, I’m joined by Kerstin Pilz, published author, former academic, writing teacher, yoga teacher and retreat leader.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Transition and turning points
The healing power of writing
Dealing with grief and challenges of loss
The value of retreat for writing and life
Being a TEDx speaker
Claiming your story
Writing her memoir, ‘Falling Apart Gracefully’
Writing practices and teaching
And so much more!
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to this episode of the Create Your Story Podcast.
I’m thrilled to be speaking today with my friend, Kerstin Pilz, who you might remember featured in Episode 2 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch. Kerstin and I connected via social media and have had the joy of meeting up in three continents and countries including when I joined Kerstin for her first writing and yoga retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam in September 2018. We chat about retreat, the value of incubation in writing, Kerstin’s memoir in progress and more.
But first, a personal update and something you might like to be part of. As I speak it’s the 12th of December 2021 and the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club is open for enrolment with the first orientation session coming up this week on 15 or 16 December, depending on your time zones. This is a year-long, actionable, community read of my books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. So if transition is a big theme or focus for you now and into 2022, it will be a powerful, value-packed way to do the work of transition over time with accountability and community, and make space for the deep shifts you desire. it’s part book club, part group coaching and a transformative reading experience.
So head to the Book Club links or the links in my Instagram bio, where I am @writingquietly to find out more and join the fabulous group of women gathering.
Now to introduce today’s guest.
Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.
Kerstin and I met via our mutual interest in writing and living a creative life after a more academically and teaching focused career. Kerstin was the retreat host in Vietnam for retreat I attended while writing Wholehearted in 2018, is a Wholehearted Stories author: Grief and pain can be our most important teachers.
Today we will be chatting about transition and turning points, shaping a self-directed creative life, writing as a source of healing and growth in challenging times and the experience of being a TEDX speaker and of writing her memoir ‘Falling Apart Gracefully’.
There’s so much wisdom in this chat and I am excited to share this conversation with Kerstin with you today.
Transcript of interview with Kerstin Pilz
Terri Connellan: Hello Kerstin and welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. Thank you for your connection, your support of me, Wholehearted and Quiet Writing.
Kerstin Pilz: Thank you, Terri. I’m really pleased to be here. Thank you so much.
Terri Connellan: So we’ve connected around creativity, living a self-directed life, writing and so much more on our journey together. We even met in three continents in Frankfurt, Hoi An and Bundeena where I live. So it’s so great to be able to share the insights from our conversations and our connections today. Can you provide an overview for people listening about your background, how you came to be where you are and the work you do now.
Kerstin Pilz: Okay. Thank you. Well, where to start? You’ll probably be wondering along the track what my accent is so I’ll start with that. I’m German. And when I was eight years old, I thought I want to be a writer. I just loved the idea of creating stories, but then of course, life happened and I moved to Italy and then eventually to Australia and I couldn’t write in either of those languages as a novelist or writer. So I went into a different career. So I taught literature for many years at the university, and I actually ended up doing a PhD in Italian studies on Italian literature. And then life change happened for me and I realized, it’s a turning point that necessitates perhaps finally actually also going for what I’ve always wanted to do, and that is write full time.
And so that took a few stops and starts, copywriting, travel writing, teaching at university and eventually I created Write Your Journeyand the idea is I’m sharing tools with my community that helped me heal after a very difficult life event. And writing had been my tool, I call it my lifesaver. So personal reflective writing. And I’m also at the moment finally coming to the end of my draft of my memoir about these events called Falling Apart Gracefully.
Terri Connellan: Incredible. So it’s amazing how many similarities there are in our stories. And we often find the theme s that we both relate to align. One thing we’ve both shared is a major transition from a long-term career. In your case, a career in academia to a more creatively focused life. So can you describe what that transition has been like for you? How long it took and the main turning points. And I know that’s a big question too.
Kerstin Pilz: It’s a big question. It took a long time. I sort of felt at at age 48 when basically what, what triggered my life change was that my husband got sick with cancer and then he passed away and I realized that it was such a profound experience. I felt like, okay, a portal had opened up, I’d gone through a portal and it was time to become somebody new as a result of that experience of going through grief and so on.
So it wasn’t as straight forward as I had hoped it to be. And it took a lot longer than I had envisioned it. So basically I decided to leave a tenured university position as a head of department, which was a big choice. And most people thought I was crazy and I would regret it.
I mean, who let’s go of excellent superannuation, a lot of time paid leave that you can spend at home to do your research and to write your papers. But I no longer wanted to write in that voice. And I’m sure I could have, perhaps within academia explored other ways of using my voice in new, more creative ways, but it also had to do with the fact that I no longer wanted to teach Italian, which was the language that my husband and I had spoken.
And so I think it took me a long time to actually come to the point where I was writing my own book because I had to first process those events. So I turned to travel writing, and that was very exciting. I actually moved to the Maldives for a year. I worked there at the university, it was a DFAT funded appointment. And then I stayed on and I became a travel writer. So I would say I honed my writing in many different genres until I finally reached that point where I was ready to write that memoir and I love writing it. It’s not giving me a lot of income at the moment, but you know, I’m happy. I’m happy to be living in my passion and not making much money, but I can live very frugally.
I used to live in Vietnam as you know, for four years, which made things easier. And I loved living there. It was a great community, but then COVID happened and I remained stuck here and the borders closed. So that was in a way a blessing in disguise because it has forced me to stay in the one spot. I can’t travel as you know, the borders are closed. So I said to myself, well, let’s write that book. And yes, I’m very happy to say I’ve been extremely productive on that front.
Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s fantastic. And it’s incredible to hear your journey through, from academic career to where you are now and the twists and turns. And I can certainly relate to your point that what you think is going to happen or what you plan to do and what happens often two very different things. So in your Wholehearted Story on Quiet Writing, you share the story of how grief and pain can be our most important teachers. And you’ve touched a bit already, what happened in your life that that story is about. So what did you learn from moving through and on from such difficult times?
Kerstin Pilz: Oh, yes. Well, my difficult times, and I have said it publicly in my TED talks so it’s not a secret. My grief was complicated by the fact that I found out virtually in the same week, if not actually on the same day that my husband, when I found out that he was terminally ill, that his cancer was incurable. I also found out that he had been unfaithful to me, serially unfaithful. And so my world fell apart, you know, several times in that moment and so what I learned from that, and that was the moment when I had to make a decision, do I leave him? And of course it was not clear whether he had three months or five years, the doctors kept saying, we don’t know, it could be two years. It could be three years. So the decision, yeah. Do I stay or do I leave? That was a real turning point for me. And in order to reach that decision, I did something unusual. Most people probably wouldn’t do that. I locked myself away in a 10 day silent Vipassana retreat.
I remember my best friend saying, are you sure you want to do that? What if you have a breakdown, the monks are not trained to help you, if you have a meltdown. I said, it’s fine. This is a conversation, a very deep conversation. I have to do on my own terms. And I feel that Buddhism can give me the tools to actually understand what it is I have to do. Namely let go, and cultivate compassion.
And I think this is where I discovered the whole heartedness paradigm, if you like, is do I close my heart and leave this man and say, all right, that’s it you’re on your own? Not that he would have been on his own. He had a family and he had his daughter and, you know, Italian family and close my heart and perhaps become bitter, drink too many glasses of red wine just to close that chapter.
Or do I take the other choice, which is a much more difficult and stay with this man. Of course, he also wasn’t like in the movies repentant and I had sort of imagined that moment where he goes home, ‘Look sorry, honey. It happened. I’m very sorry.’ No, it didn’t happen that way. It was actually much more brutal.
However, the choice was, do I keep my heart open? Do I use this as a opportunity to evolve and to grow? Or do I choose the other options? Which could very well lead to me becoming a very bitter and twisted old lady. So I’m grateful I took that choice. So that’s the first thing I learned, to actually embrace the personal hurt. You also as your most important teacher, I mean, it’s a sort of banal and simple thing to say, but it’s super important, I feel. Secondly, it gave me that feeling of being invincible. What else can happen to me? And in fact, as you know 10 days after the funeral, we had a major category five cyclone, which was billed as the largest cyclone in living memory, destroy my beach side town.
It in fact made landfall, not far from my veranda. And so, what I learned is that you’re actually more resilient than you think, the inner resilience. And the other thing I learned and this was shocking, is that our Western society, first of all, unless perhaps you are a Christian, but most of us are secular or even atheist, we don’t have any rituals to deal with death. We don’t have any sort of protocol or any comfort around grief. In fact, I found it very shocking, how people judged me, how people told me, get over it already. It’s been five months, how people felt uncomfortable to even mention the topic. So that was an incredible learning.
And that’s where much later I discovered Brené Brown who says it so eloquently. The truly brave are those who allow themselves to be vulnerable because it takes courage to feel all those messy emotions. It’s much easier to run away to numb your pain. Not that I didn’t try that of course as well. But those emotions will always catch up with you in the end. So that’s another very important thing I learned that if you’re over grief, you get through it. And if you give yourself to actually get through it on your own time, in your own time and on your own terms, it’s a much deeper healing. At least that’s what it was for me. I’m sure there are people who do it in different ways and equally feel healed, but that was what happened for me.
Terri Connellan: Yes. And from the experiences I’ve been through, obviously quite different set of circumstances, but resonates with me with what you’re saying is that we would never wish for these circumstances in any way, shape or form, but when they do happen, there’s an opportunity for us to dig deep and that idea of creating a story, or as you say, in your lovely TEDx talk, being in charge of the stories that we tell. I guess that Falling Apart Gracefully too, your beautiful memoir title. We do fall apart in a way, but what’s the rebuilding process too.
Kerstin Pilz:Yes exactly. In fact, I did pitch this to an agency who said I don’t like the title because you want the rebuilding part in there as well. I said, yes, it goes without saying, in fact I had thought about it as ‘never waste a good crisis’ because really it was an opportunity to use this moment to actually learn something really profound.
And of course the other thing you learn when you are in the face of death and especially if a loved one is the preciousness of your own life. And that moment when he say I am no longer going to remain stuck in a shadow career. I am now going to go for what I really have been wanting to do. I could drop dead or, you know, have a cancer diagnosis tomorrow.
You just don’t know. This came completely out of the blue for us. We were about to head overseas and go on a adult gap year and had everything planned. It was basically the eve before our departure that this happened, that he got ill.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s just amazing how life can change so quickly. I think that’s something too we learn from these experiences and to make the most of every moment. So tell people what your life looks and feels like now, because it’s obviously through all of that, moved on to something quite different.
Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. So it took a long time. I did a lot of detours. I did a lot of things. I kept thinking immediately, the next year, you have to be productive. You were a head of department. Now you have to quickly do something else. So I took on a voluntary position, very onerous, as a director of a film festival. And I realised that wasn’t actually what I was meant to do. So it was a long process of figuring it out.
Right now my life looks like, well, the best thing was for me to decide, to rent my house out on Airbnb. I’m lucky enough I can do that here, it’s a beach side community. And to start again in a completely different community. And that was Hoi An in central coastal central Vietnam. You’ve been there. It’s a wonderful place. And I did a yoga teacher training in Nepal the year in 2016, when we decided this. I have a new partner now I should say, so that also happened. So that’s a lovely, it can happen. You can have your life back, even after difficult things happen.
And Hoi An, I set up myself as somebody who teaches and shares the tools that help me heal and yoga, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, and of course also creative writing. And so I used to teach it in workshops in Hoi An. And I built up my online platform. I do also teach these things online although at the moment I’m focusing exclusively on getting my own book written.
But the main thing and I really enjoy this is holding those retreats. You were at the very first in fact in Hoi An, and we were only a very small group. And now with COVID, I have shifted them to Mission Beach, cause I literally got locked out of Vietnam. All my things are still there. And I decided, well, let’s do them in Australia. And of course there’s a lot of demands. Lots of people want to do these retreats. So we have five day retreats where people can really get into their manuscripts, into the body, finding the stories they’re holding and, and just use the time to write.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful. I love that your business is called, Write Your Journey. And what you’ve done is really created and shaped a beautiful journey through incredibly challenging times. So it’s really inspiring. So while we’re talking about retreat and my experience of being on retreat with you in Hoi An, Vietnam was such an important part of my journey and my writing, my book Wholehearted. And one thing I’ve come to realize is the value of incubation in writing and retreat, especially in hindsight, when I look back over the four years of writing my book. So what would you say is the value of retreat as a writer? And what experiences do you create as a retreat leader and host?
Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, so I think the value of the retreat is really giving yourself that stretch of time, where you’re away from your family, away from your work, from your desk. I encourage lots of offline time, because you really want to slow down and become present to those stories inside of you, that that are dying to be told. I also of course, offer guidance on how to tell a story. So I tailor these retreats to the particular group, so one time, people wanting to write nonfiction books. So, you know, be focused on that. The last retreat we had people wanting to focus on short stories so we did a lot of emphasis on that. And I think the value is that you have the opportunity to really get into the flow. And I noticed this also with writing my own book. You know, if I give myself a long weekend alone without a partner without anything else, you really stay with the story.
And often the benefits come, rippled through you even much later. So I think rest and retreat. I’ve actually realized this when I was in Thailand for that Vipassana retreat I mentioned. It was at a public temple. I was the only white person. There was all local women, mostly women. And they said to me, well, we do this once a year. It’s sort of, they didn’t use the word ‘self-care’ but basically the idea is as a Buddhist, your work on your inner transformation, you’re constantly working on yourself and you should take regular retreats to deepen that inner work.
For me, when I was still working, we got 20 days paid leave, which is not very much. And I always thought, why would I spend those days of leave on retreat? Like, let’s say meditation retreat, not speaking. I always considered it to be a waste of time and I’ve changed my mind 100% on that. It is the best investment you can make for yourself.
Terri Connellan: That’s beautiful. And in terms of the experiences you create, I know the retreat I went on was a blend of yoga, writing, but also getting out and about, and for me, it was very much about sharpening my senses too. I know in Hoi An, we went to the local markets and we bought the food. We went back and we cooked it and we ate it and it was actually very rejuvenating.
Kerstin Pilz: Yes, actually. And you will remember, I think maybe it was even on that morning when we went to market, we use the, the Buddhist concept of beginner’s mind, you know, see the eyes as if you see the world through fresh eyes as if you’re seeing it for the first time, which in a context, in a foreign context, like Vietnam where everything literally is foreign and new is easy. It’s part of the experience anyway, but we also do that very actively here in Australia. And of course, for most people coming up from Melbourne, let’s say Mission Beach, which is very tropical, is also like they’re going overseas. But to actually consciously focus on seeing things for the first time through beginner’s mind is a really good lens to use as a writer. Yeah. Like you said, sharpens your skills of observation.
Terri Connellan:Yeah, and I think it’s about a reset. We can feel quite jaded. And I think that taking ourselves out of our normal day-to-day routines, it’s just totally refreshing.
Kerstin Pilz:Mm. Yes. And also you do it with a group of like-minded people. You know, I sometimes have very small retreats. The one that you came on was very small. Sometimes I have larger ones and of course, inevitably you get people from every personality type imaginable, but the thing is you’re there because of your shared passion and your shared drive to actually do that slowing down. And that can be very nourishing, the synergy that is created even those of us who are introverts will really benefit from that exposure to others who are on a similar journey.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. I found that to be the case. So in October, 2020, you presented a TEDx talk on the healing power of writing, which is incredible. And we’ll put it in the show notes and encourage people to watch that talk. Can you tell us about that experience, which I’m sure must have been quite nerve wracking, why you chose that topic and how writing can help us heal?
Kerstin Pilz: Three questions I guess but that’s great. I love talking about that experience. So first of all, the experience was just very random. I got stuck here, borders closed and I was like, okay, what do I do next? And so just coincidentally actually was somebody who came to a retreat. She also went and presented and she mentioned it to me. The deadline was like the next day. And I thought, okay, I’ll give it a shot.
Choosing a topic was very easy because the healing power of writing is what I do, and what I would like to think my business is about. And the tagline to that actually is you are the author of your own life, so you can write the next chapter. So my narrative, my story that I had set up for myself being based in Vietnam, doing what I do in Vietnam, I had retreats scheduled that year, which of course had to be all be canceled is, turn a page at any moment and write another chapter. And especially as long as you keep in focus that you don’t want to be the victim of any circumstances you want to actually be the hero of your own story, claiming your own story. So that I thought has to be the message and especially given this was of course, the first year of the pandemic and we were all a bit in shock, what’s happening here. So I thought it might also be a really good time to share that message with the world that, Hey, we’re all going through this very difficult time collectively, but there is one tool we all have available to us 24 7 at the cost of pen and paper. And that is self-reflexive writing.
So, and then to the logistics, the event was in Townsville, which is just local, it was three hour drive. I was very lucky that the person who organized the event Joanne Keon, she teaches public speaking at the local high school there in Pimlico Townsville. And she offered some coaching sessions and for free. And I thought, of course, another skill. Why not? So I actually went and met with her a couple of times and she really helped me tell it as a story that draws the reader in the reader, the listener, the audience. And the difficult part was that other famous TED talk speakers, but even the not so famous ones generally get a year lead up time.
We had from finding out that we were accepted to the actual night of the presentation, we had just under one month, which was extremely scary, but in a way it was a blessing in disguise because it meant my focus for one month, and I was by myself cause my partner was back in Vietnam, was to get this talk written and rehearsed.
And because you don’t get a teleprompter, you actually have to learn every word off by heart. And I’ve written a blog post on how to prepare, because I learned so much from this experience that I thought it might be useful for others to share. But one of the things I’d like to say is it really taught me that it’s okay and it’s important to own your story, to claim your voice and to feel confident stepping in front of an audience and saying, here is my story, and this is the reason I would like to share this with you. And then to tell your wobbly knees, just keep me straight because I have a very important message to share with the world and my knees obeyed.
I mean, I was quite impressed by myself, how well I did, considering that I had a bright light shining right into my face. I couldn’t look at any notes. I had to have memorized every word. We had a time limit, and if you go over the time limit, we were told it will not be uploaded to the TED side, so it will be disqualified. But we had no way of seeing a timer. So in other words, you have to rehearse it, not to the second, but basically you have to feel very comfortable with the pacing. The other thing I did, if anybody who’s is thinking of doing a TED talk, I rehearsed it. Well I said it out loud to myself in every context, in the car, doing the dishes, going for a walk, but I also rehearsed it with live audiences just to see what happens if somebody coughs and you get thrown and you go, oh my God, I’ve lost my spot and you go blank. Or if somebody drops a glass, which happens you just keep going.
And nobody will know if you keep skip a sentence or paragraph, cause they haven’t read your script so they will not know. So you just keep going. And that was very helpful and it was a great experience in itself to make me feel more confident about it’s okay to claim your voice. So anybody thinking about it, I encourage you to do it.
Terri Connellan: Oh that’s fantastic. And that idea of owning your story and claiming your voice. And I think it’s the same in writing, but it’s probably another step, particularly if you are a writer to then as an introvert, which you are, I am, perhaps many people listening may well be also, you have to really work, I think to claim your story and to really share your voice is another step at it. And it takes like all these steps, hard work, hard inner work, learning the skills and being able to move through that process. So congratulations on that and thanks for sharing your learning here and also in that blog post again, we can pop that in the notes because I think there’s just so much learning from that experience.
Kerstin Pilz: Yes, there’s a lot to be learned and that’s how I prepared just reading lots and lots of blog posts, how other people had done this. Yeah.
Terri Connellan:That’s great to hear. So your memoir, you are currently writing is called Falling Apart Gracefully as we’ve discussed. So how are you finding the writing process yourself? That longer term, longer haul, writing process is quite different, isn’t it?
Kerstin Pilz: Yes. I knew what I was going in for, because I have done a PhD. And I had published as you know, is required when you are an academic. And so I knew it was going to be a long haul. However, I stalled because this is, of course not a research project. It’s not fiction, I’m not making up characters and give them funny lines. You know, this is actually about me and what really happened. And also of course you need to tell it as a story that is interesting, that has tension, that moves the reader forward, you know, is a page turner, that would be the ideal way to tell it, and I’m aiming to do that.
So I think I’m very good at teaching things. I’m often a very bad student of my own teaching, but one of the things I would say, and you know, this yourself is journaling is a wonderful practice for any writer. Maybe even just simple things like morning pages to train the writing muscle, to become more comfortable in your own voice to write faster and to lose that fear of the blank page, because you can just start. And I often do that when I’m struggling to get into a chapter, I might just journal and you know, maybe three pages and then halfway through, it’s like, ah, that’s where I start and you find it. So it’s a process and for a long time, I approached, perhaps like I would have approached the PhD: researching thinking, planning, scheming. But with my memoir, it doesn’t actually work that way for me. It’s really a process of discovering the thread of the story as you write.
And then once you understand how to tell that story, I’ve chosen the three act model. I’ve obviously read heaps of memoirs, but once you have found that structure, then you can make an outline and then you sit down and you say to yourself, I’m not writing my book today. I’m writing scene X. And if I have 20 minutes, I can still write a very rough draft of scene number 25. And then maybe in the evening after dinner might have time to polish it a bit further. And then the next day I have something that is more solid than if I hadn’t sat down to do that. So choose the little pockets of time you have. Choose them well. Use the Pomodoro technique, which I know you use d and trick yourself into being productive. What works for me – and I never thought this would be the case, is to have a very strict routine. I always was, you know, the rebel. Routine? That’s for boring people. Well, I’ve changed my mind on that too. And for example, one thing I do is I combine it with exercise. So like this morning I get up at 5:30 in the morning. I’m a morning person now, which is another surprise. I do my physical exercise cause that teaches me, like, I might struggle, I don’t know, running up the hill because I’m not that fit. But if I do it for 10 weeks, I get better. And that is a mirror to my writing. It’s the same thing. I might struggle to write the first draft, but if I keep doing it, I will finish. I will get better. So have a routine, have a system that works for you. And then just do it, focus on it.
Obviously I speak to a lot of aspiring writers and I hear it all the time: I would love to write a book, but I just can’t do it. I haven’t got the inspiration. I’m waiting to be inspired. Inspiration will not come. Like Dani Shapiro says, put yourself in the path of inspiration every day. Or like Dan Brown says, sit down and write every day. He writes even, I think on Christmas day, I think he takes one day off a year.
Terri Connellan: So much about mindset. It’s about practices. It’s about self-belief you know, believing you can do it better. But a lot of it is just that step by step, day by day, you know, that idea of just getting our butt into the chair and doing the work is a big part of it too. But all those things can come together, can’t they, to also self-sabotage, you know, when our minds play tricks, our inner critic tells us, what are we doing? We’ve got to have an income somewhere along the way through all the work that we do. But it’s a huge learning process, that whole journey of writing a longer haul piece. So congratulations.
Kerstin Pilz: Thank you. Well, I’m not where you are. I’m not there yet, but I liked the idea, what you just said is an evolution, because that’s what it is exactly. You grow as you write that thing and you get so much clarity. With a memoir, of course, you do want a little bit of distance from the story because you don’t want to make it a whinge or revenge story. And for me, this is now 10 years after the event. I have so much more clarity. And it’s no longer a story about my husband. It’s the story about my rebirth, how I reemerged from this situation. The other thing I will say about the process, something to maybe help your listeners, if they are on that path and wondering how to do it, I found it very helpful to also have a support group.
So don’t show your writing to your partner, your best friend. They’re not going to be your best critics because they’ll either feel uncomfortable to say something negative or they’ll just praise you because they love you. So have a group that is your peers, a writers’ group. I had a writers’ group that I ran for four years in Hoi An and then the borders closed and we kept going for another year via Zoom, but it became too complicated.
But now I have a small group, three of us. We meet once a week and we critique and read each other’s chapters. And since we started that I have made huge progress. So that is a really good thing as well to do.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And that’s one thing I’ve really learned from my journey too. We often think of writing as just us with a pen and paper or computer. But my light bulb moment was when I wrote my acknowledgements. And then there was just this cast of many, many people involved in the community of writing that book in many ways. So whether it’s feedback, support, just that ability to talk about what you’re going through, I think is so valuable.
Kerstin Pilz: Yes, exactly.
Terri Connellan: So shadow career. In my book, I talk about shadow career, and I know that you have also been running some workshops recently around the idea. And that is a concept talked about by Steven Pressfield in his book, Turning Pro. He uses examples like being the roadie when we actually want to be the musician or being the teacher of writing when we actually want to be the writer. So I know this concept resonated with you in recent times. Tell us more about your thoughts about the shadow career and how it might be playing out.
Kerstin Pilz: Well, exactly like you just said, do you want to be the writer, but become the writing teacher. And I think you and I actually connected initially by both reading Pressfield. I think the penny dropped like six years or whenever it was 2016, when I first started this idea of Write Your Journey. And I read Pressfield and the shadow career, and I thought, oh yes, I’ve been a university lecturer teaching literature and dissecting it and writing papers on different authors when I really wanted to write my own book.
And I had always taken the excuse, well, my English wasn’t good enough. It was great for writing academic stuff, because that can be a different way of writing, but I wasn’t yet confident enough to write in a more lyrical prosaic way. Although that was just an excuse. And so the shadow career, yes, it’s a form of, self-sabotage. What I’ve also realised in my case, for example, it’s an inheritance of blockages of trauma. Like my mother, and I say it in my TED talk, the biggest gripe in her life is that her parents, growing up in post-war, being born into Nazi Germany. And then afterwards, after the end of the war, they were too poor to send her to high school. So she has remained in this narrative that she is the dumb one in the family, the one unworthy of an education. And she didn’t have the tools or the ability to break out of that narrative. So the shadow career is, like you said the roadie or the roadie who drinks himself into alcoholism thinking I’m a musician, but really you’re not, so it is so easy to remain stuck in those shadow careers.
So then what I did is. I started Write Your Journey, which I thought was a clever idea. And it is however, it actually meant, I spent a lot of time setting up my own website, which I loved. I actually really enjoyed that experience of learning new skills in that way. And then I ended up teaching writing to others.
I think the penny finally dropped when I was reading your book again the day before your virtual book launch. And I thought there is somebody who came to my retreat. She’s finished her book, we’re launching her book, where’s my book? And she talks about the shadow career. And that’s when I thought, okay, that’s what I wrote to my community and I said the monthly Zoom writing sessions that I hold live, they will be on hold until I finished my book. And so the last one I held last weekend was on the topic of shadows and it was incredible. It was such a great topic to use because of course we all live with these shadows and we need the shadow. To be whole, we actually need the shadow. And if you’re writing fiction, your character needs a shadow to be interesting, but don’t remain stuck in the shadow career. Claim your own career.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s fantastic. And it’s great that you were able to share your insights with your writing group too. And for the light bulbs, probably to go off for different people. Because you’re right, that’s again something I reflected on in writing my book that we need the shadow, but we need to make it more conscious.
Kerstin Pilz: Mm. Yes. That’s what Carl Jung said, making the shadow conscious. That’s the work.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So we were chatting just before we came on live about how our themes and our stories are often very, very similar. My podcast’s called Create Your Story and you talk in your TED talk about being in charge of the stories we tell ourselves. So it’s obviously a strong theme for you. So I’m really interested for you to tell us how you’ve created your story over your lifetime.
Kerstin Pilz: So I think it comes back to that tagline I mentioned earlier, you are the author of your own life. So you know, I’m a high school dropout. I dropped out of high school when my English teacher in Germany said, you will never learn English. I said, right, I’m going to show you. Actually, I didn’t think that I went off and I worked in a hospice, of all places, at the age of not even eighteen. And in those days, it was the eighties, they didn’t have the training and work health safety that we have now. In Germany, this was, and so the things they made us do would be illegal these days, lifting bodies and so on. But it taught me so much and it also forced me to sit with dying people, and to be for the first time as an 18 year old in the presence of a dying person was extremely powerful. And it made me realise how precious life is, how it’s actually a unique opportunity because also a lot of the people in that old people’s home were very sad. You know, they had wasted their lives. Some of that has to do with historical circumstance, poverty, perhaps, but it was a much deeper teaching than high school would have given me at that point. And so I have stayed true to that dictum that I now have that you are the author of your life.
So I did eventually go back to high school because I knew an education would be important but I did it on my own terms. I actually worked in a restaurant. It was hard. I never went to any parties because I was always working on the weekends, but I was in charge. I was the one in charge. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I was born very far away from the ocean and in a cold and gloomy place, not too far from the border with what used to be east Germany. And it was during the cold war, it was very gloomy, very gloomy. We were an occupied nation. We had American army forces around us. You’d hear them training every day, with the tanks and machine guns and that risk of cold war lingering, it really shapes your psyche in some ways.
So I work hard, saved a lot of money and I discovered Italy, sunshine and la bella vita, la dolce vita, so that’s when I realized you can, unlike my mother who has remained stuck, I was the one I never was allowed to go to high school. You can change your life at any moment. And so that’s what I’ve done. I’ve realized I can actually live in Italy. I lived in Italy for a while then I lived in Bali in the eighties before anybody did yoga there. And eventually I ended up in Australia and so what’s the question again, how I shaped my life?
Terri Connellan: It’s about how you created your story. And I think the way that you’re seeing that is reminding yourself constantly that you’re the author of your own life. You’ve also used the word self-directed, which again is a word I love too, that idea of, we have choices. We’ve talked about luck versus choice too. Luck plays a part in life, but sometimes we can overly put the emphasis on luck and talk about your lovely blog post that influenced me in Wholehearted. And I think we need to just focus on that hard inner work that we can do to make change.
Kerstin Pilz:Yes. And actually that, now that you mentioned that blog post again, that was really important to me to share that with the world. I’m really grateful that it resonated with you and others, of course, because often I get people saying, how lucky are you? You’re living in Vietnam. How lucky are you? You’re working from home. Yeah, well, I rent out my house on Airbnb, I often camp so that I can rent it out. Not everybody would want to do that. Not everybody would want to go to Vietnam and set up new and live on a small budget, but have the benefit of that self-directed life. So it wasn’t luck, it was hard work and determination and staying true to my values.
Terri Connellan: So in all of that, you’ve learned so much about wholehearted self-leadership. So you’ve read my book, you know some of the tips that I have recommended from my experiences. I’d love to hear about yours. What are your top tips and practices?
Kerstin Pilz: We share the personal journaling as a way of staying connected, of honing that inner compass and also of just unburdening yourself, saying the things that you’re afraid to say. Because that’s the other thing, where the fear is, go near the fear. And if you’re writing fiction, go near the fear, because that is where the energy is, you know, the same for a memoir. Tell us the things that you are most scared of. So confront your fears. Don’t bury them. Don’t try to outrun them. I tried that for a while, but that doesn’t work.
And other practices, mindfulness, of course. After I had my stints in various monasteries, I even received teachings from the Dalai Lama. Not just me, there were 300,000 other people. I did develop a regular meditation practice. I’m a little bit slack at the moment and when I do slacken up, I realize it. I just feel a little bit more disconnected from myself.
And also I feel less relaxed when things become stressful. And for me what’s really important is also to get enough sleep. Very important, not to be undervalued as a superpower. And well, I personally also like yoga because I feel it’s a mind body, it’s a holistic approach to life and to do your own wellbeing and to allow yourself to rest. To get out of that, I have to produce in order to be valuable to society. I need to show that I’m constantly busy, that I have to-do lists that are impossible to get through. No, it’s okay to rest. It’s okay not to be productive. Like Bronnie Ware in her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying says, what do people regret the most when they’re dying? Well, I didn’t spend enough time with my family. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Those are some of the things I’m sure the minute we stop this podcast, I’ll think of something else.
Terri Connellan: It’s great. Just to hear what’s front of mind for people and what comes to mind immediately. And I love those tips and practices that have served you well. So thank you so much for sharing about your life, your work with Write Your Journey and particularly your deep learning over time and the hard inner work that you’ve done through challenging circumstances.
Thank you for sharing them today and also through Quiet Writing which is much appreciated. I’ve gained great strengths from our connection, from your work and from going on retreat with you. So thank you for that. So if you can let people know Kerstin where they can find out more about you about your work online.
Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And thank you Terri very much also for creating this community where actually I’ve met a lot of people online through you, and that’s wonderful in that community. So my website is WriteYourJourney.com. You can just contact me through the contact page if you want to get in touch with me. I run regular retreats. And one day, I might even have a podcast, but for now I also have a Facebook group where I post regular writing prompts and motivation articles I find and so on. And my aim going forward with my business is to actually, because my passion. You just have to stay with your passion. And I’ve realised my passion is memoir. I never thought that would be the case. But it’s a such a powerful tool because even if you’re not planning to write it as a book, sharing and writing your life story just bring so much order and clarity. And so I’m hoping in the new year when I have finished my book, you know, brought it to a point where I can back off a bit is to actually have a memoir writing group or a program or something like that. That’s sort of a long-term plan. So, and on Instagram, of course I love Instagram. I’m not that active at the moment because I get lost in social media as we all do. But since I live in a beautiful place or when I lived in Hoi An, I love taking photos. It’s another passion of mine. And so Instagram it’s @writeyourjourney.
Terri Connellan:Oh, thank you. And your photography is always so beautiful. It’s lovely to see all the amazing places where you’re living and writing from. It’s such a joy. So thank you so much. We’ll pop all those links in the show notes and thanks for chatting with us today.
Kerstin Pilz:Thank you very much, Terri. Really appreciate it.
Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.
