The Healing Power of Writing and Retreat with Kerstin Pilz

December 12, 2021

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 12^th 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 Journey and 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.

Links to explore:

My books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – open for enrolment now and kicking off December 2021

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

The Writing Road Trip – a community program with Beth Cregan – kicking off Jan 2022

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

About Kerstin Pilz

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’s website: www.writeyourjourney.com

Instagram: @writeyourjourney

Facebook: @writeyourjourney

TEDx talk on The Healing Power of Writing: https://www.writeyourjourney.com/kerstin-pilz-tedx-townsville-the-healing-power-of-writing/

or shortened version: https://youtu.be/btxVXcRDhqY

wholehearted stories writing

Lusciously Nurtured – a wholehearted interview with Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom

August 20, 2019

In this interview Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom, author of Lusciously Nurtured, shares her personal story of living with, writing with and learning from Fibromyalgia as well as her thoughts on wholehearted soulfulness.

This is the 21st guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

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

I’m delighted to have Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Dawne and I connected via Instagram and we decided to shape this post as an interview. It has been thrilling to see Dawne write and publish her book ‘Lusciously Nurtured: A Personal Journey of Soulful Self-Care and Intuitive Healing Living with Fibromyalgia’. In this interview, Dawne shares her personal story of living with, writing with and learning from Fibromyalgia as well as her thoughts on wholehearted soulfulness. Read on!

Hi Dawne, thanks for joining Quiet Writing and sharing your wholehearted story via this interview.

To begin, would you like to tell readers a little about yourself:

Based on the Jung/Myers-Briggs personality indicator, I am an INFJ which means I am a bit of a complex character, deeply introverted with extroverted behaviours. I am an idealist and dreamer at heart but can be extremely organized and focused. My super-powers are empathy and intuition which makes me a highly perceptive person. However, these two qualities also work to my detriment at times, as does idealism, as you can well imagine. As a result, I like a lot of space and quiet time, and I value my freedom immensely.

I also have profound concerns for humanity and world affairs and the protection of those basic freedoms in our societies, that appear threatened today. In this body/ avatar, I am 85% South Asian in origins, having over 14 genetic strains in me from most continents, except Australia (Sorry). I was born in Trinidad & Tobago, a tropical island in the Caribbean, subsequently living in the UK for over 25 years and now in Sweden with my Swedish husband, Dan and basset hound Klara. I am essentially a creative and although I am very capable of understanding abstract theories, I enjoy representing them creatively. I am told the INFJ’s ideal city is Paris, for its culture, history, style and beauty. I certainly do love beauty and adore creating beauty on many levels in my life, but maybe I love London a little more, might have to visit Paris a couple more times.

It’s been exciting to read your beautiful new book, ‘Lusciously Nurtured: A Personal Journey of Soulful Self-Care and Intuitive Healing Living with Fibromyalgia’. You talk in your book about ‘wholehearted soulfulness’. I know wholehearted is a word that has evolved to have special meaning for you too. Can you tell us what ‘wholehearted’ and ‘wholehearted soulfulness’ mean to you and why they have been important in your healing journey?

Wholehearted for me means living from the heart/ core/ centre and vibrating my life through the heart. The Biblical representation of the word Heart is not just about feeling but the “ruling centre of the whole” or “the place from which desire springs.” (Google) When I was in my early 20s, a seminarian shared this concept with me that the heart is the seat of decision and it stuck with me. So, yes feeling but also decision and commitment to the core, which was for me, at that time living a meaningful life driven by integrity.

Wholehearted also encompasses integrity and truth which is a willingness to learn about myself and who I am in this time, space and reality. For many years my mantra was “Go in the direction of your dreams and live the life you imagine…” (Whitman) This wasn’t just about my physical life. It also encompassed the way I wished to feel and my long-held desires, of sustaining my life through life-giving work and expressing myself in a holistic way in the world. This could be summed up in the poem I wrote to myself which I explain in the book, Lusciously Nurtured:

To rear bees/ To plant trees/ To write poetry/ To be

When we talk about desires, we are referring to our ideal way of living and being. Two primary aspects of my wholehearted life were to heal myself from Fibromyalgia, by resting more and growing and eating our own food; and to write with the hope that it would become a foundation for my sustenance.

Wholehearted Soulfulness is the commitment I made with myself to follow my dream and make this life. My poem was a summation of that dream: a reality formed through co-creative action with Universal law and Spirit guidance. It has taken turns and twists, but that’s okay, we are on course.

Is wholehearted living hard? Sometimes it is because I am stubborn and may need to be reminded of a thing several times, but at other times incredibly easy, once I am not pushing and being willful. I believe there is a difference between working hard and putting in 100% effort and being willful and domineering. Striking that right balance is important to wholehearted living.

Your journey has been around recovery from burnout and living with the effects of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Your book provides valuable information for people working through the impact of these conditions. Is it also relevant to people with other chronic illnesses or autoimmune conditions? Or even people who don’t have any illnesses of this type?

Thank you, Terri – I really do hope it provides valuable information for sufferers of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS. However, this book can be read by any sufferer of chronic illness and autoimmune conditions because it is dealing with the relationship that you are having with your body and developing that close physical relationship into a deeper psychological and spiritual relationship with Self.

Self is Soul – now there’s a bumper sticker moment. (Ha-ha)

But self is also determined by the make-up of the brain and the environment, so we must scratch a bit deeper down to find the Self with the capital S. Yet, once you begin listening to what might be called Deep Intuition, Spirit Guidance, the Inner Word, we begin to tap into the font of knowledge. And the font can provide answers to many other forms of illness. Now, I am not saying you are going to hear voices telling you to take X medicine, but you may be led to someone who speaks a language you understand or you may be drawn to find out more about a medicine that actually works for you. So, we return to the idea of co-creation and sometimes, you may take a wrong turn and must start again, but that’s okay. Nothing is wasted. We are here to learn stuff.

For the ordinary person, I hope this book could provide a comprehensive guide to self-care, so developing an awareness of oneself and one’s needs. In addition, this book encourages such a person to compose their own self-care practice, so that, they can begin to avoid some of the pitfalls that bring many to burn-out. It can also provide an understanding, to those involved in a high-paced lifestyle. These folks may be on the brink of becoming chronically ill and this book might alert them to take stock and redirect their course. For carers, family and close friends of patients with chronic illness, I would advise this book as an aid to understanding their predicament and possibly, getting knowledgeable of many issues the sufferer cannot voice themselves.

Congratulations on writing and self-publishing your book and sharing your story. It’s not an easy task and takes commitment and showing up. What was it like writing and self-publishing ‘Lusciously Nurtured’ especially with the effects of Fibromyalgia impacting your life?

It took me four years to write and publish this book. In the last two years, I have been intensively editing and I am still editing so the paperback will be better. In addition, I have been learning about indie publishing, thus finding the best fit for me. It’s a long time, so it required patience and being patient with my body, with life and with my inner demons.

As you’ve mentioned it required commitment, so I worked on the book every day, but I had to adjust my expectations. So, every day I tried to write or do something towards the work but not every day looked the same as I battled with fatigue, pain and foggy brain. For example: writing 500 words a day was not a realistic expectation but rather, write a couple of sentences today, edit tomorrow, rest the next, read, write a page etc. So once again, co-creation with the body. Yet, you do have to be incredibly disciplined and thoughtful.

As I got better physically, of course the writing got easier, both in the physical sense of sitting for a certain number of hours, say at a computer. Also, the head got clearer, but the demons didn’t always quieten. One of the demons I discuss in the book Lusciously Nurtured, is perfectionism. Quality versus perfection is very important to the writing process. As an INFJ character with idealism and a profound sense of justice, self-judgement is not far behind and I had to remind myself, time and again, that perfection was not the intention for this book. Quality and producing my best work were top priority for me but this book was about the message. The message was aimed at helping people to have a resource for self-care and self-healing. It was meant to raise the awareness of intuition and the power of intuitive healing.

The thing that most writers easily forget is that mainstream published writing is not about perfection, it’s about marketability. Literature is about perfection and they hold this over our heads like a sword, so when authors are declined, they immediately think “I am a crap writer.” However, in today’s world, mainstream publishing is having to adapt itself to the changing demands of literature and reading in a computerized society. This is causing a rise in indie publishing and the traditional market is already changing to these demands. So, write because you have something to say, it may be important to someone. And in the act of writing, I am improving myself always and one day, one day ……. who knows (smile)? That’s how I get the beast of perfection to take a back seat.

How have you worked your strengths and weaknesses to blend and find wholeness?

A lovely question. My answer is simply, I can live with broken.

I guess, my lesson has been that wholeness is a mythology, it’s a great aspiration but a myth, nonetheless. I am partly thinking of the Japanese art of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi (Golden Repair). In 2015 I injured my back so badly, I was in constant pain, day and night. I could not sit, walk or perform simple tasks for myself for a long time. The only thing that felt comfortable for the body was lying flat on the floor, on my back.

I had seen many health officials for treatment, but none of their advice or interventions had worked. Some even made me feel worse. Did I feel broken? Yes, I did: far from being whole or healthy. Yet, lying on that floor, I began listening to my body and allowed my body to tell me what was needed to heal. Thus, intuitive healing began. One day whilst lying there, I heard the blackbird singing so clearly it was as if her song was just for me. And in that moment, happiness pierced my heart so suddenly, I wept, because I had realised that all that was broken, or perceived as broken in my life, could not stop the joy and fulfilment that was there for me.

And nine months later, after my accident, I was pain-free.

How do I blend my strengths and weaknesses to find wholeness? I don’t believe that I have to “fix” or “create” anything in myself to be whole. It’s taken me over 50 years to reach that place. I am enough and I am “perfect” even in my brokenness: it’s part of the story.

What cultural, societal, health and ancestral issues have impacted on you feeling whole and how have you dealt with them?

You may have noticed in my description of myself I call myself an avatar. My soul has no cultural, societal, health and ancestral issues. My body does. My body has many health issues still, even though my fatigue and pain are much improved, and my viral symptoms quietened. I am now in a loving relationship with my body and I hope to continue healing as much as this life allows me and I will continue to write about it to help others. I tend to deal with things one at a time, so I look for what is calling to me the most. Right now, it’s my weight, because I am at first stage diabetes, so I am dealing with food choices and exercise programs that aid my goal, without damage to my body or dis-ease.

My cultural and societal issues affect my life from the outside in and these are issues to do with unconscious and possibly conscious prejudice in society and organisations. I am not just talking about for example racism in the publishing industry, but also sexism, ageism, gender inequality, and nationalism in our societies today. I am at odds with all of it because I see myself as a global person. I am certainly not nationalistic, but I am patriotic. I am a socialist and abhor any form of fascism. I have faced sexism and ageism in my work of education (of all places!), and I have called it out- Foul! I say in the game of life.

How do I deal with it? I accept the fact that I am at odds and I am at odds for a reason because the Universe wants to shake things up and I am a mover and a shaker. Let’s get the game on. However, I am a quiet mover and shaker, maybe I am giving too much away (laughter) but I think subversive is what I am. To be truthful and serious, the future is about change and we, (women, creatives, intuitives) must be active in that change. The way I want to be active and revolutionary is through the art of creativity and writing.

I am not saying that I don’t have my own issues with regards to racism and sexism within me. For example, as a woman of colour in the self-care business, there aren’t many of us. There is patronism and it’s very difficult to break into cliques and circles and be taken seriously. We also don’t have credibility as unconscious archetypal roles for women have become stereotyped, so I have a lot of questions. I also think the societal pressures of the 80s and 90s to spin in politics has entered the fabric of our lives and speaking out for truth becomes a rant. So, you are constantly fighting against these stereotypes and attempting to bring your authenticity into the arena. I believe it’s a process and must be lived a step at a time. Wholeness, therefore, becomes teaching, learning and negotiation.

My ancestral issues and healing are in a very personal space, now. It’s not a shadow or a secret but rather it needs to be in darkness and quiet for a while to take shape and begin to shoot. It’s something in gestation and I am excited about this.

Artwork by Trinidad & Tobago artist Brianna Mc Carthy @macabrii

You share lots of tools, tips and practices in your book. What 2 or 3 wholehearted practices would you highlight for others?

Meditation, getting quiet and silent – there is a difference there – you can quieten the body and mind. but you must also listen. Listening is very hard, so it takes practice. Every day if necessary and many times a day. This is the only way you will begin to hear your inner voice.

Physical Exercise – This can be combined with getting out in nature. Walk, run if you can, but walk in Nature. Swim, do yoga, play a sport, whatever you do try to spend some time in nature and notice things.

Keeping a Journal – Start with a gratitude journal if you haven’t kept a journal before. You are not writing War and Peace. Just empty your mind in your journal and go with the flow. If you end up becoming addicted, just keep learning and expanding your knowledge. It will begin revealing things to you.

And if you are doing all these things and you are loving yourself without apology, then you know, you know anything is possible in the game so go out and share it, be kind and help/ support someone else.

The only way to wholehearted is to know yourself and be yourself.

What’s the one message you’d like to leave with our readers to finish?

I want them to know that they are loved.

This love is closer than breath so spend quality time with yourself.

The Great Mother cares, even if everything around you feels like chaos. Out of chaos, the Universe was created with mathematical precision beyond our understanding.

Karma is one lifetime. Live your life well and be content. You are always choosing, so choose what you love the most, don’t give yourself second best.

Where can people find your book, Lusciously Nurtured and how can they connect with you?

People can connect with me via Goodreads, Instagram, Facebook or via my website.

About Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom

Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom is a writer, teacher, and blogger with an excellent academic background. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she has lived in London in the UK and now in a small village in Sweden. She enjoys walking, meditation, travel and unexpected, magical moments. She loves animals and is an avid foodie. Her favourite place is sitting in her garden.

4 Things to Know about me

Earth or Water: Water

Desert island book: Too many/ The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobrewski

Want to see 2020: The tulip fields of Holland

Favourite alcoholic drink: Vodka Martini/ Olive twist

Photographs all by/provided by Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom, and used with permission and thanks.

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intuition wholehearted stories

Dancing all the way – or listening to our little voice as a guide for wholehearted living

February 11, 2019

This guest post from Olivia Sprinkel is a letter in response to Heidi Washburn’s wholehearted story: When the inner voice calls, and calls again.

I am so excited by Olivia’s response and the dance between ideas and readers she invites!

I welcome any other letter style responses to wholehearted stories here on Quiet Writing any time. You can find out more about wholehearted stories guest-posting here. The links for all the stories are at the end of this post. How wonderful that we can share our stories of wholehearted living and what it means. And respond to the experiences of others as we shape our own journey. It truly warms my heart!

Enjoy this beautiful dance of ideas and how Olivia responds to Heidi’s wholehearted story!

Dear Heidi,

I read your article ‘When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted living’. I immediately wanted to respond and say ‘thank you for writing’ – and also to share my own reflections in response. I am now that woman in my mid-forties in New York that you were 30 years ago, listening to the call of my inner voice to give up my corporate job and to live life with my whole heart. It was so reassuring to read your story, and know that you had the courage to listen to that voice and to create a wholehearted life for yourself. It provided confirmation that a different way of living than the conventional one that is presented to us is possible, if we choose to follow that path.

The best piece of advice my father gave me

Writing this now, I remember that my father always used to say “Listen to your little voice”. It was probably the best piece of advice he gave me. He used to tell the story of how he had enrolled in Berkeley, as that is where his father and mother had both gone. But when he got there, his little voice told him, ‘You want to go to Stanford’. And he went and knocked on the door of the Stanford admissions officer, and ended up graduating from Stanford.

You write of how your little voice spoke to you so clearly and powerfully. It can only speak clearly if we are tuned into the hearing of it – you were ready to hear it. I’ve had a couple of other occasions when my little voice has spoken to me and my ears and body have been open for the hearing of it. There have been other occasions when undoubtedly it has spoken to me, but I have blocked it out because I didn’t want to hear – and things haven’t turned out too well.

Taking responsibility for listening to the little voice

I didn’t feel as if I had any choice but to listen to the little voice that spoke to me to send me on this particular journey. When this voice spoke it was giving me the gift of a creative idea or a creative mission. It spoke to me and said ‘Write a book “A history of the future of the world in 12 trees”. Or 10.’ (It was giving me a little bit of wiggle room.) And why did I choose to act on this, to give up my job, my New York apartment, to pursue this journey? I think it was a combination of the clarity of the idea, and the clarity of my listening. I felt that I had been gifted this idea and it was my responsibility to act on it. Not to do so would be irresponsible – both to the idea and to myself. And I am in the position to do so, with no responsibilities of family to take care of.

And writing this now, I wonder, ‘who is behind that little voice?’ As writers, we often speak about ‘finding our authentic voice’. Is our little voice that authentic piece of us that we can hear when we are tuned to the right channel, when we have done that preparatory work, that opening? I’ve had my little voice speak to me – and I’ve listened – in yoga and when I am out in nature. That morning when the idea for my tree journey appeared, I was sitting at my desk, but I had spent the weekend immersed in the beautiful woods of the Catskills at Menla.

Elizabeth Gilbert has written of how ideas are gifted to us, and if we don’t declare an interest in them, they will move on to someone else. She writes in ‘Big Magic’ of how an idea she didn’t pursue then moved on to Ann Patchett, who did act on it, and wrote a book based on the idea. This suggests that there is something larger than us that is seeking to communicate with us – and which knows us well enough to make only appropriate suggestions. I am sure whole philosophy books have been written on the subject, and someone more well informed than me can answer that question. But perhaps that is the authenticity of wholehearted living – that we are open to receiving information from the ‘whole’, rather than from a limited subset of ourselves.

Stepping into the dance

It also reminds me of a dance. That when we open ourselves to the dance of life, then we can dance in step with the universe and be open to being led by her, and be twirled and occasionally flipped head over heels and still land gracefully. I’m reminded of the dancing metaphor as I used to have a blog in the form of letters that a friend and I would write back and forth to one another, pondering life’s questions. The title of the blog was ‘Dancing All the Way’, which we decided on as we doing a multi-day walk and we wanted to dance all the way of the walk. And then Terri’s theme for the year is ‘Dance’ – so perhaps this is just a small example of how the universe wants to dance with us.

Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey

It’s not an easy thing to follow your little voice, as you know. You write movingly with the example of your accountant of how we are not always ready to do that. I believe that the call to a wholehearted life really is a Hero’s Journey, as Joseph Campbell has described, and which is the foundation of great myths as well as our ordinary extraordinary lives. There is the call to action, and we can choose to act on it or not. And if we do choose to accept, there will be setbacks, there will be temptations to distract us along the way, we will need to overcome challenges. But if we persevere, we will come back with a gift to offer our community. Thinking about my own story in this way helps to give me perspective. It is also reassuring for me to know that this journey will be repeated many times on different timescales, as well as providing an overarching arc for our lives, if we are fortunate enough to live into an old age and be able to look back over the distance that we have travelled.

I am at the beginning of this next stage of my journey, heading out into the unknown. All I have is an idea, and a rough itinerary. And, hopefully, my little voice to continue to guide me and ears and heart to listen.

I wish you well as your journey continues.

With love

Olivia

About Olivia Sprinkel

Olivia Sprinkel is a sustainability strategy and communications consultant, writer and photographer. She has advised some of the world’s largest companies on sustainability strategy, and been based in both London and New York. She is also a writer of poetry and creative non-fiction, and a keen photographer. She is now embarking on writing a book which brings together her sustainability expertise and creative skills to tell stories of a changing climate and nature connection. You can connect with Oliva via Instagram and her website.

Photographs by Olivia Sprinkel and used with permission and thanks.

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

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inspiration & influence transcending

Joy and resilience in challenging times

December 27, 2018

For a wise woman once

told Her that Her tears

were the most

healing waters of them all

Rise Sister Rise – Rebecca Campbell

Can joy be part of resilience in challenging times? This post explores how developing resilience and a kind of joy in small moments can help us through the most difficult times.

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Joy is my Word of the Year for 2018. I’m reflecting on my experience of JOY this past year in a series of posts here.

I’ve realised that each quarter of the year delivered a new lesson and experience about finding joy:

alongside deep grief
and resilience in challenging times (this post)
in travel and being away from home (to come soon)
in creative work and my calling (to come soon)

I hope you find these reflections valuable for your own journeys with joy, grief, resilience, creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. And I look forward to your thoughts and experiences too on these issues and feelings.

Joy and resilience in challenging times

In the second quarter of the year, we faced extreme challenges as a family. Circumstances that took us all into unfamiliar territory. Again and on the back of the first quarter’s experiences, I had to work out where any sense of joy and optimism sat alongside all of this.

A book helped me immensely at this time: Rick Hanson’s Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness. Practical, positive and based in neuroscience, this book focuses on 12 hard-wired inner strengths and how to cultivate them.

I read this book as an audiobook while driving and also an ebook when at home, dipping into its wisdom whenever I could. A toolkit of psychological resources and strategies, it helped me realise the resources I already had for navigating this extreme time. It also provided simple but powerful tips for changing my mind-set as I dealt with significant pain and challenge.

Resilient practices and joy

The two practices prompted by reading ‘Resilient’ that helped me most were:

Honouring my psychological resources
Feeling the beauty of joy in small ways as well as feeling pain

Honouring my psychological resources

Having been through a fair amount of pain, challenge and loss in my life, I’ve built up psychological resources to be more resilient and strong. We all do this. Everything we go through teaches us if we are open to the lessons.

At times, I have had to dig deep and be reflective, talk to special friends and professionals. I’ve learnt when to spend time alone, when to practice self-care and how to balance my needs with others. Tough lessons all and with more challenges stretching me, I dug deep into my learning this year and I learnt more. I am much better at contacting people and talking when I need it now rather than battling on alone.

I sought help from a psychologist to check in on my well-being and psychological resources at this time. This was positive and encouraging as someone trained and objective listened to what was happening and how I was dealing with it.

She provided valued feedback that I was doing well at this challenging time considering all that had happened and was happening. This helped me feel more self-compassionate and self-confident even as I felt overwhelmed. Perhaps not a feeling of joy, but it certainly helped me immensely. I was ready for a series of sessions if need be. But I found for this time, one session and conversation was enough to feel stronger and self-reliant, drawing on my personal resources.

Feeling beauty in small everyday joys as well as feeling pain

A big learning this year has been that it is okay to feel the beauty and joy of everyday things even as we feel immense pain.

Rick Hanson reminds us we can take an approach of gratitude:

Thankfulness is not about minimizing or denying hassles, illness, loss, or injustice. It is simply about appreciating what is also true: such as flowers and sunlight, paper clips and fresh water, the kindness of others, easy access to knowledge and wisdom, and light at the flick of a switch.

This ability to acknowledge and feel concurrent truths helped so much. One helps to balance and provide grounding for the other. I have found special joy in swimming, reading, writing, tarot work, sitting in the sun, cups of tea, coffee and connection with special friends and family at this time. These simple acts were a blessing and wisdom that helped me move through so much.

Feeling all the feelings

Sometimes we just need to acknowledge and accept that things are terrible and dark and find the points of resilience and strength that will get us through. In this way, we can discover transcendent energies we can tap into. They fuel us and help us strengthen wholeheartedly for life.

As a person with INTJ Jung/Myers-Briggs® personality type preferences, feeling is something I have worked on over time to balance my natural tendency and strength for thinking and logic. I am much better at working with both the head and the heart now. Through this time I learnt to experience feelings more deeply – sadness, anger, exhaustion, helplessness, frustration, fear, worry, pain. There were plenty of feelings moving through me.

I’m more open to going through feelings as a process step to the next stage rather than going around them. Especially through my intuitive work with Amber Adrian over time and her writings on All the Feelings, I’ve learnt to lean in and really feel my feelings. Crying and physical expression of feelings were part of this too. Amber has reminded me to ask “What next?” with feelings. In this way, we can move on and through, clearing out and moving onto the next stage of what we are dealing with and our response.

Joy and resilience

So there wasn’t so much joy in this second quarter of the year. It certainly didn’t feel joyful and at times, it was just very dark. In response to my post on joy and grief on Instagram, Cheryl Haezebroeck aka @the_intrepid_goddess shared that:

I love how a word of the year is such a learning experience because not only is the Word featured but the shadow is there too for our awareness and healing.

This is true. We can’t expect it all to be our stereotypical version of a word. Nor can we expect it to be all sunshine and light just because we choose a positive word, as lovely as that would be.

The lessons are often deeper and more long-standing involving shadow work. As I learnt with joy and grief, understanding the ability to live with paradox in challenging circumstances made all the difference. I was able to carve out small spaces of the day to manage self-care and practice resilience as I dealt with the most extreme worry.

And in the smallest moments, joy found a place in my heart and kept me hopeful, optimistic and confident that I knew what to do. These moments sustained me and kept me strong as I drew deeply on my resources to care for both myself and loved ones.

Have you experienced something like this? How have joy and other positive practices helped you with being resilient? What have dark circumstances taught you about the paradox of joy and resilience? Share your thoughts in the comments or on social media – Facebook or Instagram.

Find Your Word process + tools

First though, some information on the process and tools that can help you. If you have never worked on a Word of the Year, it’s a powerful process. Susannah Conway has a fabulous free Word of the Year ecourse available each year that I often dive into. It works really well alongside the Unravel Your Year process and free workbook that Susannah also creates and generously shares each year. I’ve been working through both processes to review my year and plan for the next one since 2014.

I credit these practices with contributing to deep realisations about where I was stuck and needed to make change. For the first few years, I found I was writing the same goals each year and not achieving them. This was mostly about writing books and making space for creativity in my life. Each year was swallowed up by work and my creative goals kept getting lost.

In 2016, I started doing things differently and began to make my transition and now at the end of 2018, I am two years in to my change journey and life is very different. It’s much more in line with the dreams and visions I had way back in 2014!

Amy Palko also offers My Word Goddess Readings with suggestions for your word for the year linked to a Goddess of the Year. Also a practice I have invested in for a few years now, it provides valuable intuitive insights and suggestions for words that might help drive your year’s energy positively.

You might also enjoy:

Joy and grief: the paradox and wisdom of finding joy alongside deep grief

Finding JOY in the everyday – reflections on my Word of the Year for 2018

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

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

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

intuition wholehearted stories

When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted living

December 18, 2018

This guest post from Heidi Washburn explores the call to respond to the inner voice over time as a path to the deepest of wholehearted journeys.

This is the 14th guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

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

I am honoured to have my friend Heidi Washburn as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Heidi and I met in Hoi An, Vietnam at Kerstin Pilz’s writing and yoga retreat in September, 2018 and enjoyed a time of deep connection during that week. I invited Heidi to tell her wholehearted story here. Heidi reflects on a moment of career shift in her life when everything changed. She shares how the inner voice often calls again and again and listening to it is a practice that evolves through our lives. Read Heidi’s reflections on her journey of responding to calls from her inner voice in deeper ways, a journey that continues!

Sometimes life changes suddenly: discovering a secret, a hurricane, a birth or a death. Sometimes the change is more subtle, more gradual and instigated by internal signals. Those signals may manifest differently for each of us. The question is when and how do we listen? How do we respond? What challenges do we face once we admit a change is coming? What happens if we ignore the call?

Many times in my life I have pushed past my inner knowing, trying to fit into the accepted norm, frustrated that the norm didn’t feel right or I couldn’t seem to do it right. As hard as I tried I could not happily push past my instincts and join the crowd. It is only when I listen and respond that the whole of me is present and engaged. It is it something that I cannot always do on my own. This ride in wholehearted living requires a lot of support, a lot of losing and regaining momentum.

My life is an evolving ever-changing journey. This is about my major career shift in my mid-forties followed by recent reflections on a lifetime of learning to listen, respond and deepen.

Setting the scene

Let’s get some perspective. In the 80’s there was minimal internet. There were no smartphones, no blogs, no easily available GPS, no online support groups and we were just out of an era when corporations took care of their employees, often for life. Leaving a successful, lucrative career was an unusual move generating a lot of opinions and, dare I say, envy.

Let’s set the scene for the moment everything changed. One rainy fall night, I was driving home to Saugerties, New York from a late meeting in New Jersey, a good two and a half hours’ drive. Visibility was sparse and I had to strain to find my way out of the corporate complex in the dark, while squinting at the map on my lap. My eyes were heavy, it was a long day and I just wanted to get home.

I was ten years into my market research consulting business, I had back-up staff and my work was in demand. Hard work, constant traveling and late nights had paid off. Yet something was not right. I was losing touch with my family and friends because I was always out of town. The only love life I could fit in was an on-demand friend with benefits. I was having dizzy spells and anxiety attacks. My teenage daughter was home alone too many nights and I wasn’t on top of her struggles in life. My friends were making noises about an intervention for my “workaholic” problem.

What problem? I loved doing in-depth interviews, consolidating them into a meaningful story for my clients and giving advice in the boardroom. I found a way to be listened to in my profession if not in my personal life. My introverted self found a way to be out front as long as I had a role to play. The operative word here is ‘role’. More and more, it felt like a role that was not me. I was trying to stay in a shell that no longer fit or serviced me. At the same time, something deeper was emerging, but I was flying too high to notice.

The voice and the moment everything changed

Back to the rainy fall night. As I said, I just wanted to get home to my bed. As I pulled onto the familiar Garden State Parkway, the rain let up and I relaxed. Before I could turn on the radio for entertainment a voice in my head came on instead. A quiet, gentle but firm voice, not just a thought.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

What?

“I said! I don’t want to do this anymore.”

What do you mean? You have to. You just got the business where you want it. You have staff, an office and now you can do the more creative work. Isn’t that what you wanted?

That was the end of the conversation. Or so I thought.

After that night, after that very moment, everything changed but so quietly and slowly I hardly noticed. Of course, I was the one making the decisions. However, I didn’t know where I was going or what the path was. Deep change doesn’t come with a check-list or a schedule. And there is no guarantee that things will work out for the best.

Shifting to deeper awareness and action

First, I became aware that I pushed through the day without eating even though I constantly yearned for food. Why wasn’t I feeding myself? I went to a nutritionist weekly for three months to get better eating habits and basically learn to nurture myself.

I began bringing more and more things from my New York City apartment and office to my ‘weekend’ house in Saugerties. By the time I set up an office in the Saugerties basement, my NYC assistant asked: “Are you ever coming back?” And she got another job. She knew what was coming before I did.

I submerged myself in therapy and enrolled in singing lessons to open up my voice.

I wanted a more meaningful life and figured I should be able to find it in a couple of months. I was used to getting things under control.

Getting to know that inner voice

I had skills I enjoyed and that contributed to my success: creating a safe space for people to express themselves, drawing people out, deep listening, analyzing overall trends, presenting my ideas and writing. Maybe I would be a psychotherapist? I applied to two graduate schools in California, but before I heard from them my inner knowing led me another way. I started training in wholistic counseling, yoga and healthy lifestyle. I spent months at Kripalu, a yoga and meditation center. In between I still took on consulting projects to sustain my searching.

The inner voice grew stronger the more space and time I gave it. After chanting three days straight during a Kripalu one-month retreat, I sent out a prayer from a song by Linda Wooster: “Take these hands and turn them into light beams.” I still didn’t realize quite where I was going and how meaningful that prayer would be.

Finding my path as a somatic practitioner

I am a kinesthetic person. Formal psychology is too mental and structured for me. So, I went to massage school. Out of massage school I searched for a mind-body approach that worked for me. I was still taking occasional consulting jobs.

The months of transition turned into two years, reading, searching, training, experimenting, meditating, getting help from therapists, poking the fire for hours.

One day a massage therapist touched my head and moved my neck ever so slightly just for a couple of minutes. My whole body deeply let go. I felt safe, heard and known through her touch.

“What was that?!” I murmured through my bliss.

She told me it was Craniosacral Therapy. I wanted to do that work. I just knew it.

From there I began training in Craniosacral Therapy, a way to work with mind-body-emotions-spirit. I found my home but not yet a career. It took a couple of years before I had the confidence to practice. And to totally leave my business.

Meanwhile, I needed to live a simpler life and reduce expenses. I was happier, but much less affluent.

Clearing the way to live fully

On a sunny day in August, my beautiful Saugerties house was sold and I was moving one town over to a small two-bedroom rental in Woodstock, taking my cat and my new life with me. My old house was ready for its new owners, except for the bright red landline kitchen phone. Just as I was about to walk out the open front door for the last time, final items under my arm, the phone’s shrill ring echoed throughout the empty house. Even the answering service was disconnected, so I rushed back to answer it. An advertising company was calling me to see if I was available for a market research consulting job.

This will be a short call! Standing straight and with a clear voice I gave the answer for the first and last time.

“I don’t do that anymore.” That was it. I felt exhilarated.

I have been asked if I have ever regret leaving my consulting career. It was a good run and mostly I loved it. But I was learning that my sensitive system needed a gentler, more spacious environment. So, did I regret it? Not for a nanosecond. I have been asked, did I ever worry about making a living? Things get tight now and then and I do worry about a future when I can no longer work. The lifestyle I have chosen is short on long-term security. My practice goes up and down. I would like to create some kind of community living as I age, but as an introvert am not too skilled at groups. So, the future is uncertain. Yet, I would never change my decision. I chose to live fully instead of setting myself up for a less-than-wholehearted fate.

Reflections and new perspectives

I don’t really know what brings up that mysterious inner voice sending me one direction or another. Some people might call it guidance. All I know is that it is powerful when I listen. A year ago, I just knew I had to go to Vietnam, thinking it was about the war that impacted my generation and my life when my young husband went to fight. One step led to another and on a hot September day I arrived in Hoi An for Kerstin Pilz’s Write Your Journey Writing Retreat. At 75, I have reclaimed myself as a writer and reclaimed the story I need to tell. And another adventure begins.

My first draft of this piece included mention of my accountant for my consulting business. Stan would show up at my office and stare out the window as if he wanted to vaporize and pass though it.

“Oh,” he murmured, “how I would like to be a painter, but I have to work.”

Then, less than two years into our business relationship and in his mid-thirties, he had a heart attack and died. In my draft, I used this story to show how dangerous it is not to follow your heart, your dreams. But, I was being lofty, arrogant, and disrespectful to my accountant. It implied that we have control over our destiny if we just listen.

Meeting the unexpected with deeper insights

I put aside the first draft, let it sit for a while to see if it was really what I wanted to say. I thought a lot about listening to that inner voice. Asked friends how they knew when something is “right.” One looks for a sense of deepening and clarity, another a feeling in her gut and still another uses a pendulum. I learned that each person has their own unique way of listening. I thought I had the answer to controlling destiny. Tune into what is right for you and all will be revealed.

Then, I had a heart attack. It was mild as heart attacks go. It has a name: Takotsubo, also called Broken Heart Syndrome. Given my low blood pressure, lack of any artery blockage, perfect cholesterol, and lean body, the only explanation is stress. I meditate, eat a healthy diet, process emotions and enjoy my career as a craniosacral therapist. This shouldn’t happen to me. But it did.

My point is, who knows why my accountant had his heart attack. Or, maybe I didn’t have mine until I was 75 instead of 45 because at 45 I followed the calling to change my life. I am inspired to once again look deeply. How do I want to spend the remaining years? The inquiry is the path to aliveness. These days I am more and more excited about each day as I heal my broken heart.

What I have learned

I have learned:

that we can affect our quality of life in a big way, but not control it.
to embrace the precious qualities of being an empath and an introvert with creative talents and deep wisdom to share.
to step up my self-care, boundary setting and need for spaciousness to be present for the wonders and tragedies life throws my way.
to rest before I am exhausted.
to trust and be grateful for the amazing support system that comes to my aid when I am in trouble.
that I love to share through teaching and writing.
the sound of my inner voice when it calls.

And I am still learning.

Resources that have supported me

These are some resources that have supported me:

Hakomi: a Buddhist-centred wholistic counselling method

Psychosynthesis: a wholistic counselling method

Mindfulness/Insight meditation: Dharma.org has talks available for free

Upledger Institute: listings of craniosacral therapy practitioners around the world

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

Write Your Journey, Kerstin Pilz: upcoming meditation, yoga, writing retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam September 2019

Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health

The Empath’s Survival Guide, Judith Orloff

About Heidi Washburn

Heidi Washburn is a craniosacral and massage therapist, writer, practitioner of gentle yoga and insight meditation, friend, sister, aunt, great aunt, mother and cat lover. She specializes in working with other empaths and INFPs who do best in
a spacious, safe, gentle and mindful environment. Heidi has been practicing
bodywork for over 25 years with advanced clinical training and certification in Hakomi, Psychosynthesis, Upledger Craniosacral Therapy and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. More recently, Heidi has joyously immersed herself in the sacred art of writing. She is working on a memoir about secrets and how the truth liberates the unexpected. You can connect with Heidi via her website or email at washburn.heidi@gmail.com

Photograph attribution as follows and used with permission and thanks:

Images 1, 2, 3, 9 – Terri Connellan
Images 4, 5, 7 – Heidi Washburn
Image 6 – Pexels.com
Image 8 – Nigel Rowles
Bio portrait: Amber Roniger Photography

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

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

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love, loss & longing transcending

Simple pleasures can make a world of difference

April 23, 2018

In the midst of grime and despair, the smallest act becomes unspeakably beautiful.

The Steampunk Tarot, Six of Cups

A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…

This week: simple pleasures and acts make a world of difference

Theme for the week beginning 23 April

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #38 Discover simplicity through the senses

This week builds on last week’s theme of the essential matters of life and of the heart and remembering what really matters. This week, we focus on the value of simple pleasures – through the senses, memories, remembered joy or gifts and thoughts from the heart. Often ephemeral and fleeting, we are reminded of the power of simple pleasures like laughter, sunshine, flowers, music and play. Engaging with our senses to heal, connect and ground ourselves is especially highlighted this week. And we reminded that these simple pleasures can make a world of difference to us and to others at critical times.

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Though you are infinitely complex, find serenity and peace through simple things.

Challenging times can make us get overwhelmed. But how many times do we find that it is simple pleasures like hearing a song we love, a gift of flowers or a walk on the beach can be just what we need to connect with ourselves and settle.

This week’s guidance is about remembering the value of simple pleasures and how they activate our senses. Music, scent, candles, feeling our feet on the ground whatever the surface, remembered joyful moments and the connecting value of simple pleasures and gifts are all highlighted this week.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 23 April

Tarot Narrative:

In the space between endings and beginnings, in the space between darkness and light, there’s an opportunity for simple pleasures to light the way forward. Remembered joy, getting back to what you love, a smile, a small word or gift, flowers, the pleasure of the senses being fired by an offering. Where you or someone else is vulnerable, simple pleasures, moments and memories can light the way to a new cycle.

Reading notes:

Cards: Six of Cups and The World from The Steampunk Tarot and #33 Chaos and Conflict in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

(Love The Steampunk Tarot deck – not a new deck but new to me and deck interview coming soon here!)

Book notes:

I’m reading Liz Fenwick’s The Returning Tide right now. I’m linking this book here because the experience of reading this novel is one of finding joy. This is through the act of reading, losing myself in a novel and also in my mind going to lovely Cornwall where it is set. That remembered joy of being in Cornwall is stirring as I read. It’s a special place for me and even the names of places – Helford, Falmouth, Boscawen – all create strong feelings. I would love to be there for a long time to explore its joys. Unfortunately, I can’t get there right now. But I have my memories of going there and this story which brings them alive.

The story also is one of how simple joys get complicated in life as events overtake. In this case, wartime experiences make life and especially relationships challenging. Liz Fenwick takes us through the journey of a family where joy and simple pleasures seem buried in layers of circumstance. It’s powerful to reflect on in the light of our own story and how we respond to what is happening.

So this story and the simple, sensual pleasures of reading a much-loved author in the warm sunshine of a balmy Sydney autumn have been sustaining and joyful of late. And if you haven’t read Liz Fenwick, do read her fabulous novels.

Simple pleasures and remembered joy

In last week’s tarot narrative, the Five of Cups reminded us it’s helpful to feel any pain fully as we move through it. If we don’t, we can miss valuable lessons.

The Six of Cups steps in to remind us of some practical tricks in moving through challenges. This card speaks of the value of small acts of beauty – gifts of time, thoughtful acts, flowers, moments of simple pleasure like reading in the sun. We are reminded to engage our senses – to feel, see, hear, taste and smell.

The Five of Cups focuses on sorrow, lost opportunity and regrets. The Six of Cups dwells in the hope and peace of life’s simple pleasures now and as positive memories.

The World card reinforces this via the World Dancer surrounded by symbols of the four elements: air, fire, water and earth. The world is open for us to engage with if only we lift our eyes from our pain or circumstance. There is joy in simple pleasures, even if life throws up some curve balls we hadn’t anticipated.

The Chaos and Conflict card says there is an opportunity for simple pleasures to become moments of real insight. The guidebook says:

Even in the seeming chaos, there is a kind of Divine order, a complete re-sorting of the elements.

We need to open ourselves to this.

Last week’s message was: We can focus on the dark clouds or we can focus on the light coming through. This week’s message is to seek light in simple pleasures and allow solutions and healing to evolve through these spaces.

We so often want to fix situations for ourselves and others. But often the simplest acts of self-care like reading, taking photographs or a walk on the beach at sunset can create answers.

Engaging in simple pleasures to heal

One of the big learnings for me going through extreme life experiences in the past 18 months has been the power of self-care and simple pleasures.

It’s important to know what lights us and others up and to do this. Here are a few of my favourites:

reading a great book – a novel by a favourite author or non-fiction book in an area I love
a cup of tea
a walk on the beach especially at sunset
a swim in the ocean
taking photographs as I walk and notice
flowers especially natives growing amongst wildness
green ferns and mosses
water flowing – fountains, rivers, cascades, waves
succulents and their quirky ways
listening to favourite songs, revisiting songs I’ve loved (this week: ‘State of Independence’ by Donna Summer!)
the feel of our companion animals’ softness as they sit close by
being inspired and learning through listening to podcasts (today, Discussing Jung’s Studies in Astrology by Liz Greene)
the smiles and laughs of special friends and family members
seeing healing occur in loved ones
breathing in and out and really feeling it move inside me
remembering the joy of holidays and places I love even if I can’t be there now
working with tarot and oracle cards
writing morning pages, feeling my hand move across the page
handling crystals, enjoying their texture and energy

What simple pleasures work to bring you joy even if life is tough?

How can you bring joy to someone else through the simplest pleasures of life?

It’s a great week for steeping ourselves in self-care and care of others through simple pleasures. Filling our well through our senses and remembering joyful moments can be the passport to healing and the bridge to new insights.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear what is working for you as you focus on the simple pleasures of life this week.

All best wishes for this week of moving through challenges by focusing on self-care and care of others through celebrating simplicity, the senses and remembered joy.

May you find joy in the simple things of life and may this make a difference for you and yours. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available in April for a May coaching start so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way.

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Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of interview with Kerstin Pilz

Links to explore:

My books and book club:

Free resources:

My coaching:

Connect on social media

About Kerstin Pilz

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About Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom

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Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

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The best piece of advice my father gave me

Taking responsibility for listening to the little voice

Stepping into the dance

Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey

About Olivia Sprinkel

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For a wise woman once

told Her that Her tears

were the most

healing waters of them all

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Joy and resilience in challenging times

Resilient practices and joy

Honouring my psychological resources

Feeling beauty in small everyday joys as well as feeling pain

Feeling all the feelings

Joy and resilience

Find Your Word process + tools

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Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

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Setting the scene

The voice and the moment everything changed

Shifting to deeper awareness and action

Getting to know that inner voice

Finding my path as a somatic practitioner

Clearing the way to live fully

Reflections and new perspectives

Meeting the unexpected with deeper insights

What I have learned

Resources that have supported me

About Heidi Washburn

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In the midst of grime and despair, the smallest act becomes unspeakably beautiful.

The Steampunk Tarot, Six of Cups

Theme for the week beginning 23 April

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 23 April

Book notes:

Simple pleasures and remembered joy

Engaging in simple pleasures to heal

Love to hear your thoughts!

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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