Creating, grief coaching and pro-ageing with Valerie Lewis

January 13, 2022

Living a creative, easeful and positive life after loss

Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Creating, Grief Coaching & Pro-Ageing.

I’m joined by Valerie Lewis, Grief & Loss Coach, Lifestyle Model, 60+ Pro-Ager and Creative Dabbler.

We chat about creativity as a central life value and practise and how it helps in so many ways including dealing with grief and loss. And about being a grief coach and 60plus pro-ager!

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Life after tragedy
Embracing creativity
Choosing not to climb the corporate ladder
Dealing with loss
Making transitions later in life
Grief coaching + supporting others
Creativity + intuitive art
Being a 60plus pro-ager
Becoming a model
And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 13^th of January as I record this and suddenly we are nearly mid way through January! we’ve had a lot of rain here in Sydney so it’s humid and the gardens are going wild. But I’ve been able to swim and enjoy the mid-summer temperatures. I’ve also been reflecting on 2021 via Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year 2022 Workbook this week and also reflecting further on my 2022 word of the year (to be revealed soon). Plus I’ve been planning and preparing for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club where we focus in on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook next week together. As well as preparing for The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan which kicks off with a free challenge on 31 January. So there are lots of exciting new things this year and I hope you’ll join me in one of these offerings! Links in the show notes on Quiet Writing at QuietWriting.com/podcast and find the link to this episode.

I’m thrilled to have my friend Valerie Lewis from Visualise and Bloom join us for the podcast today to chat about Creating, Grief Coaching and Pro-Ageing.

Valerie Lewis is a multi-passionate 60plus pro ager. Through grief coaching and personal growth facilitation, she supports and empowers those who are lost and confused with the direction they want to take following a significant life event that has impacted them and their sense of self. Her interests include being an intuitive reader, Reiki and crystals practitioner and avid creative dabbler.

Valerie and I met through a project of a mutual connection Julia Barnickle, ‘What if life were meant to be easy?’ Sadly, Julia passed away early in 2021 as a result of metastatic breast cancer. We connect today remembering Julia and with gratitude to her for connecting us. And it’s fitting that we remember Julia’s message of living a creative, easeful and positive life even in the face of or after difficult circumstances, as this is the focus of the conversation today.

Valerie has been a coaching client in the Sacred Creative Collective group coaching program. We share many similar experiences including moving through deep grief and our passions – including a love of creative expression in many forms and intuitive practices such as tarot as important self-leadership tools.

Today we speak about creativity and how we respond and learn to move through tragedy, loss, deep grief and challenging transitions including ageing. We have fun in this conversation but we also traverse some tragic and sensitive topics so I wanted to let you know this upfront. We consider creativity and intuition as sources of healing and growth and how they support us in making life transitions. Valerie’s story is an incredibly inspiring one especially around how she creates as a central focus and value, has become a grief coach supporting others and is a passionate 60-plus pro-ager.

So now let’s head into the interview with the wonderfully inspiring, creative and multi-passionate Valerie Lewis!

Transcript of interview with Valerie Lewis

Terri Connellan: Hello, Valerie. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. Thank you so much for your connection and for your support of Quiet Writing.

Valerie Lewis: Thanks for having me, Terri. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Terri Connellan: I’m so looking forward to chatting with you today. We’ve connected in many ways around creativity, transition, grief, coaching and more. So it’s great to be able to share conversations on those topics today with others. Can you start us off by providing an overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now?

Valerie Lewis: Wow. Where do I start? Well, I’m originally from the north of England, south Yorkshire, and I moved to London, in the late eighties, following the loss of my only child, my daughter, through manslaughter and the resultant breakdown of my marriage to her mentally ill father. As you can imagine, that was quite a traumatic time. So I would say, that was the main reason why I moved to London basically to start a new life cause I thought, well, I’ve got nothing to lose. And before my daughter died, I had instigated starting a degree because I left school with minimal qualifications.

So it was almost like something that I needed to prove to myself. So I had embarked on the initial stages of the degree. And then after my daughter died, the tutor that I had at the time, he was very encouraging. He said, well, why don’t you apply to one of the universities or polytechnics as they were called. And study that way rather than doing it as I was going to do through the open university. In those days you received the manuals through post and then you do your assignments and work and then send them off to the tutor to mark.

So I applied and I was accepted at Middlesex Polytechnic and ended up moving down to London to do my four year degree. And, in some ways that helped me, that was a tremendous help. It gave me something to focus on and channel my energies in. And it was whilst doing the degree, a friend brought me a book. I made friends with three women at university, and we’re still friends to this day. And one of them brought me a book called Feel the Fear and do it Anyway. And you could say that started the journey of self discovery, self-development, finding out more about who I was.

Life continued. I got a job. One of my sisters had already moved down. My other two sisters moved down and then they eventually ended up moving back with their families and to buy their own homes because it was cheaper in Sheffield. And I’ve remained in London as has my youngest sister. Through that time, I worked and there was a point at which I think it was in my mid thirties. I don’t know if you want to call it a quarter-life crisis or something. Cause I worked with engineers as their admin officer and I remember looking at them absorbed in their work. And when it was time to go home, I used to think, aren’t they going home? They just seemed content to stay there in the office.

And, I just remember thinking, I don’t want to do this, you know, thinking, well, where do I want to go? I did a post-graduate course, the Diploma in Management Studies, because I thought I’m in an administrative field. Maybe that’s the direction that I want to go in. And I remember thinking to myself, well, I don’t want to trap myself. I don’t want to just focus on this. And I think it was through reflecting on who I was. Where did I want to go? I remember thinking, realizing that actually I needed to be creative because that was what fed me. And, I’d kind of neglected that. I’d always been creative. I kind of like neglected that because I was studying and basically adapting to life in London.

And so I started getting back into being creative, making cards. Then I discovered salt dough modeling and got into that. And one of my other sisters she’s quite creative too. So we used to get together and, when her children were young, the schools would have craft fairs. So we’d book a stall and we’d have maybe have a table together. She’d make her own stuff and I’d make my stuff.

And I thought I enjoy this. I thought I don’t want to be trapped in a job where I’m working all these long hours. I want to have some time away from that, where I can do some of the things that I want to do. That’s basically how I’ve been throughout the past 30 years if you like.

Sometimes I felt a bit conflicted about it because you see your colleagues climbing the ladder in one of the fields they’re in. And obviously earning more money. I did get a promotion. I went for promotion and my pay jumped quite substantially. And I felt comfortable with that because one of the things I realized after my daughter died, I remember thinking to myself, you could have all the money in the world and in some ways it’s kind of meaningless if people that you care for are not here anymore. So in some ways I’m not materialistic in that sense. I like to have nice things. I like to wear nice things. And I like to be able to have my books around me and makeup and eat nice food. But having a lot of money is not my main goal. Feeling fulfilled is more important to me, more meaningful to me. Does that make sense, Terri?

Terri Connellan: It does. Absolutely. So, thanks for that snapshot of your life over many years, and what’s important to you. I think that what comes through strongly is your values and how you want to live your life. So we’ll explore more about that as we go through our conversation today. So thank you for that. So we’ve both shared a major transition in your case from corporate life to a more creatively focused life. So can you describe what that transition’s been like for you and how long it took and the main turning points?

Valerie Lewis: That happened last January. In some ways I saw it coming because for the past few years at work there’d been lots of changes, the constant restructuring. My role, if you like became less than what it used to be. It got less stressful. Certain aspects of it, the nicer bits, if you like, the more creative bits of it were taken away and given to another department. And I remember thinking, me and my colleagues thinking, this is strange, something’s going on in the background, you know? And, the restructure that they had before we were told our jobs were going to be moved up north, it happened with one of the teams. They were restructured. And, I think a couple of people were made redundant and the other team basically transferred up north. So that’s why the two people were made redundant from that. And we thought, well, this is odd, if they’ve moved part of our department up north, what does that mean for us?

So in some ways it was almost like you think it’s going to happen at some stage. And, I actually welcomed it. So when it came, it wasn’t a complete shock.

I wasn’t devastated because I thought, oh, I’m approaching 60. I think it’s time. It felt as if it was time for me to be doing something different, something more meaningful, something that I had more control over. So the only thing that I knew that I would mentally have to adjust to was the lack of consistent income. Because obviously, when you’re working, you’ve got an income coming in every month and you know how much is coming. But if you’re not getting that income, you’ve got to create it yourself. So I knew that would be a challenge, but I thought, well, I’m up for it.

Terri Connellan: Excellent. So, sounds like you knew the transition was coming, so you had some time to mentally prepare and perhaps practically prepare for it. And I think that helps too. Certainly for my own transition, it was quite similar. I could see that writing was on the wall. You could see things were coming. And, for me, I started to make a plan for what my life might look like when that time came. So I think that helps as we move through and change. It’s interesting you mentioned that you made that conscious decision in your thirties, not to climb the corporate ladder so that you had space for creative interests. So how do you feel about that decision now? Was that a good decision?

Valerie Lewis: It’s hard to say. I mean, other people might, well, I don’t think anybody else sort of really looks at it. It’s more about me, isn’t it? There are occasions when I think, oh, maybe if I’d stayed in the job and become this, I might’ve been head of this. And then I think, no, this is the road I chose, you know, so I’m happy with it. And in some ways doing a lot of the things that I’ve done feeds into what I’m doing now.

Terri Connellan: So tell us about what you’re doing now.

Valerie Lewis: I certified as a coach. I’ve been jewellery making. So in some ways I’ve had a taste of self-employment, even though I was employed, if that makes sense and earning little bits of money, pockets of money. So it’s not something that’s totally alien to me. I think that I can use my creativity in my coaching, and in other ways to help me achieve an income.

Terri Connellan: I often talk about Elizabeth Gilbert’s line about the long runway, where we’re preparing along the way, perhaps many years before for what we end up, wanting to do that’s important to us. Does that relate to you?

Valerie Lewis: Yeah, I think so. I don’t think you realise it at the time. Do you? Because I look at other people, I look at my sister, for example, who’s an executive coach and she climbed the career ladder. And when she was made redundant, when she started to think about what it was she could do, she realised that one of the things that she’d enjoyed whilst she was employed was coaching others. So she’s taken that aspect and also got trained, did a Masters in Coaching Psychology. And is using that and drawing from her skills in a corporate or in the civil service, if you like. So I think we do draw on our skills, I’m sure in what you’re doing, you’re doing the same, aren’t you?

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And as you were talking, I was thinking of my own experiences and your sister’s and your own, there are threads that we value that we go back to over time. And often as we’re getting older, we start to stitch them together in different ways. And I think that’s a really exciting part of our journey. Fantastic. So do you want to tell us about what your life looks and feels like now?

Valerie Lewis: It’s kind of like, I’m more in charge of it. Self-leadership that word that you introduced me to. I feel very much my own person. There’s a sense of freedom, if that makes sense. I’m much more at peace with myself. I feel as if I’m more in tune with my own values and I’m not going into work and having to do things that conflict a little bit with how I think or feel.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So you really have put into practice the things that are important to you, that self-leadership, creativity, embracing who you are. It’s been a real joy to connect with you and to learn from you too and share our experiences as we’ve moved along our road.

So you mentioned, earlier about the tragic death of your daughter and only child and your Wholehearted Story that you wrote for Quiet Writing, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, you share your story and what happened, the impact upon you. Can you explain or share with us what you learned from moving through and on from such incredibly difficult circumstances?

Valerie Lewis: At the time, I wasn’t sure about what I’d learned and I remember sort of thinking. Am I strong? Am I coping with this? And it wasn’t until I volunteered with, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children? I volunteered. They have a helpline, the child death helpline. I think it might be called something different now. But I applied to volunteer for that as a bereaved parent. And it was offering emotional support to basically anybody who was impacted by the death of a child, whether they were the parent, the grandparent, the aunt, the teacher, whoever. Perhaps they were feeling upset or traumatized. It was a free helpline, so they could call the helpline and just pour out their feelings.

And we were there as a volunteer to listen and it was through listening to their stories, it made me realize that I had come a long way and that I was actually quite resilient and emotionally strong.

And I learnt that, I mean, it’s a bit cliche, that there are more questions than there are answers and that sometimes we just have to accept that we can’t know the answers to everything as hard as it is. Because that used to probably torment me in the early days. Why, why, why? And there were certain answers that satisfied me so much. And then I’d want to go beyond that and think, well, no one can tell me why.

I know why she died. I know what was wrong with my ex-husband. I know those sort of medical reasons why. But in the bigger scheme of things, it’s almost like well why was it her time? Why did she go then? And I don’t think anybody can give me an answer to that. So I’ve had to learn to accept that’s just how life is, we don’t know when we’re going to go. Sometimes we have signs, like if you’re ill terminally ill, then you know, but you don’t know necessarily why you became terminally ill, what led up to that? So there’s lots of things that we don’t know, we will never know. And we can’t know. And we just have to come to terms with that or else we’d go mad.

I’d also learnt how important it is to have a wall of support around you. It’s so important because, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here with the helpline when I say that there were people who didn’t have that support. And they were really struggling. They had no one to turn to apart from the helpline and I think just knowing that there are people around you can help to keep you, make you feel emotionally supported. And sometimes in the practical sense as well.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. I think the points you’ve raised are just so important particularly that what we learn or the experiences we go through, grief is really a journey over time. That’s certainly something I’ve experienced with the grief that I’ve experienced in my life. And I think you conveyed that beautifully in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. Just that horrible shock when something as terrible as that happens and how we start to make our way through the early days. And then over time. You talk about from fragmented to wholehearted. Yeah. So, thank you for sharing that. And I think the fact that you were able to volunteer to help others helped you realize how much you’d learned is a really powerful story, too.

Valerie Lewis: Thank you. And something else that I learned was that really there’s only, you can decide what your values are. Because I think sometimes when we go through difficult times, it does make us reflect on what’s important to us or not. And really no one else can decide for you.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely.

Valerie Lewis: Have you found that to be?

Terri Connellan: I have. My brother passed away tragically. So, I went through a difficult time and that’s the time that I went back to my creativity, which is my number one value similar to you. And I think the loss of someone so special and so loved and in tragic circumstances, particularly, yeah, it does. It just makes you go back to those places and I think you look at your life in a different way.

So in your work that you do now, you take those experiences to coach others, which is really beautiful that you’re able to take the hard won learning and experiences that you’ve had to be able to support others. So can you tell us about your coaching in this area and how you support people experiencing grief?

Valerie Lewis: Well, grief coaching, if you like, would be seen as a niche or a specialization within life coaching. I think it’s quite new. It’s basically aimed at individuals who’ve experienced loss, whether it’s a death or non-death related and need support and guidance on their grief journey. As you know, coaching is about moving forward. With grief, you’ve got that additional aspect of somebody who may be still going through the various stages of grief. They may still be a little bit hurt, a bit angry, in disbelief.

So grief coaching is also providing practical support using many of the same coaching tools, common to life coaching, as well as providing emotional support through creation of a safe and supportive space for the client to feel that they can heal And that they can express their feelings around grief without judgment.

So there’s a similar way. It is coaching but what I found is that in terms of goal setting, they’ve got to be gentle goals. Very small goals. They may have a big goal, but really with a lot of people who are going through grief, it’s just creating small goals to help them get through the day.

And I find that self-care comes into it quite a lot. So that’s one of the areas that I have tended to focus on with people going through grief. What can they do to be compassionate with themselves, to love themselves, to nurture themselves? What little steps can they take and turn those into goals and actions until they feel strong enough to tackle the bigger goals.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So that’s a real form of that self-leadership we talked about before is taking control or taking care of what you can in a very traumatic, often very traumatic situation. And what’s the pathway to grief coaching, obviously personal experience of grief is…

Valerie Lewis: Yeah, personal experience and I came across the Institute of Life Coach Training. They’re an American organization. I came across them a couple of years ago and thought about it and then put it from my head like I do with a lot of things that are intuitive and I kept getting pulled back to it. And in terms of thinking about what niche I wanted to focus on, before that I’d looked at working with women who were midlife and who were looking to reinvent themselves. But then I started to think, what can I do with my experience of grief or what I’ve been through? And this is where I discovered this course on the internet and it kept coming back to me. I think it was once I knew that I was going to be made redundant, I decided right, I’m going to sign up for this course.

Because I just felt that I needed some structure. I needed some support around that. So, I mean, I thought I’d been through my own experience, but I need this extra. You know, how do you coach somebody? But as I said, we draw on very much the same sorts of tools as we do as we use in life coaching. It’s just this other additional element of supporting somebody, being there, and creating this safe space for them. And knowing that you’re going to be dealing with somebody who might be a bit fragile and also knowing within that when to refer somebody, , when to be able to say, well, perhaps this person needs more than what I can actually offer them. And it’s counseling that they should be receiving or need to get in touch with.

Terri Connellan: It’s very important work. And I think for many of us, the life experiences, what happens to us, the skills we gain, insight we gain is often what we channel into coaching isn’t it? It’s often a challenging journey, but I think the wisdom that we gain from our experiences, the insight and the tools that we develop are so important to pass on to others. So it’s great that you’re doing the work in this area that will help so many people.

Valerie Lewis: Thank you.

Terri Connellan: So creativity, obviously a very important part of your world. It’s been a touchstone for you over time and more recently you shared in your piece, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, how intuitive abstract painting has been a big part of your journey. So how has creativity been a source of growth, expression and insight for you?

Valerie Lewis: I would say, I’ve been creative in some shape or form ever since I was a child. I think it’s just a natural part of me. It’s something I turn to whether I’m happy or sad. It just helps me. I find that being creative is something I can lose myself in. Whether this taps into being an introvert, I don’t know. But I like to sometimes go into my own little world and shut out everything else that’s going on around me. And I find that obviously you can do that when you’re working on a piece, you’re doing something creative.

And I often find that in the act of being creative, and it’s silent around you, or you might be a person who likes music playing, you can ruminate, you can think, you can think more clearly. And if something’s bothering you, sometimes you find that the answers come to you.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I’m sure it can be the same for introverts and extroverts, but I think introverts definitely draw energy from that time alone and that creative space. So yeah, it sounds to me your personality type, which I know is introverted. INFP – you have a preference for introversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. It would make sense that a tool like creativity, whether it’s painting or jewelry or some of the things you’ve mentioned provides a vehicle to create a quiet space where you can energize and make sense of things.

So your intuition is also something you share a lot about in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. What I found fascinating in that piece is how you tracked through learning to listen to your inner voice over time. So can you share us with us more about learning to listen to your intuition and how it’s guided you? Cause it’s not often talked about, is it, intuition?

Valerie Lewis: No, it’s still something that I find hard to articulate because it’s abstract, isn’t it? You know, you can’t see it. And it is different for everybody. You know, you look back on things and you think, well, what helped me, and then it’s just being aware that there were certain times when I seemed to know what I was doing, I felt as if I was actually being guided And I suppose some people might say you know, it’s God. And I think, well, it could be God and then over the years, having different experiences when you think that’s what they call your intuition. Like a silent voice or a sense. It’s like your body knows the right thing to do. Something’s baffling you or confusing you, and you’re weighing the pros and cons and then out of the blue, when you’re doing something totally different an answer comes into your head or you’re doing something and you get a reaction in your body.

And it’s through experiencing that. And then learning when I experienced that, that means I’ve got to listen to that. And just learning to be aware of those sensations. It’s learning to be quiet and still, and just being in the moment. And I think being creative helps you do that. I’ve heard people say that running, for example, does that for them, you know, going for a run, clears the cobwebs away and they’re in that moment. And maybe if they’ve had a problem they’d been churning turning over in their heads, they’re getting clarity in that moment.

So there’s definitely something to be said about learning to be still. Shutting out everything else around you and really being in that moment. So for me being creative is like a kind of mindful meditation. And I suppose in some way that that’s where the abstract art came in and that was kind of a mindful meditation. I don’t know what I’m going to paint. I just have these paints in front of me and I start doing shapes and ideas come to my head. Oh, that represents so-and-so. That means so and so, but initially I might not know what it is. I want to get down on paper.

Terri Connellan: I think it’s fascinating that abstract intuitive art was what you were felt very drawn to. It’s obviously something that has called you over time. And when you describe your creativity, the power of it, intuition, it seems to bring all the pieces together. So that’s perfect.

I love that you described yourself as a 60 plus pro ager, Valerie. That’s great. I love that term. What does that mean for you? Tell us a bit about that.

Valerie Lewis: I think for me as I approached 60. I thought my gosh. Am I still middle-aged? And then I actually had to Google it to see what years middle age encaptured. And I thought, well, I’m at the tail end of middle-aged. And it was like looking at older relatives around me and thinking, there’s a part of you, that’s a little bit fearful about getting older and that term to me, it helps me allay those about being over 60 and getting older. It’s about me accepting that, yes, I am getting older. I can’t hide that and really, I don’t want to. I think it’s something to actually be proud of, because not everybody, you know, my daughter died at seven. She didn’t make it to 61. My mum’s mum, I think she died at 63, my mum’s 84 so it’s actually something to be really, really proud of.

And regardless of what society says, I think we’ve got more freedom. We’ve been allowed the opportunity for more self-expression than our parents’ generation, if you like. And I think we should take advantage of that to the full. We should create our own rules, dress, how we want to dress. If you want to dye your hair, dye it. If you don’t want to dye your hair don’t. And live life as fully as you can, within your capabilities.

I look around me and there’s people my age and a bit younger having hip replacements and, and dying from cancer and things like that. So I think to myself, life’s short. I think you’re just aware of your own mortality when you reach this age. So you think to yourself, I’m not just going to sit here and sort of accept that I’m getting older. I want to live my life. And so being pro age, it’s about accepting that you’re a certain age but not letting that age, define you or defeat you.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Yeah. And I was fascinated to hear that you did what I also did recently, which was look at middle age and the span, because I was asking the same questions recently because I just turned 60 not long ago. I was thinking, oh, am I still middle aged? Or am I old age now? Or what am I? And I did the same thing.

I was fascinated to find that I could see middle-aged, which is that point. And then there didn’t seem to be a term so much for after. So yeah, I do like that pro ager. I was listening to a podcast, The Magnificent Mid-life Podcast, and there was a guest on there who talked about being age-full, which is nice too. I love that. And, I certainly agree with you about celebrating all that, we’ve learned the sharing of that with others, which in your journey is really important. So yeah, I love your attitude. It’s fantastic.

Valerie Lewis: This is where the modeling comes in.

Terri Connellan: Yes I’ve seen on Instagram. Is that a new career for you?

Valerie Lewis: I wouldn’t say it’s a career, it’s a form of income but it’s another form of being creative if you like.

And it’s also about in a way me celebrating, being the age I am because if you look back 10, 15 years ago, who would have thought that somebody in their sixties will be doing modeling. But I think there’s more of us reaching a certain age. And I think companies are appreciating that their customers want to see a greater representation of people who look like them.

And so this is the right time for me to be doing this because I am not what you would call sort of fashion model. I don’t look like a fashion model. I’m not the right height. I’m not the right build for it, but I might look like somebody who you’d see in the street or your next door neighbor. So that’s basically what I’m doing. Lifestyle modelling and it’s quite fun. It’s something different and it’s fun.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. The pictures you shared on Instagram. I was just blown away. I found it so inspiring. It was fantastic to see. So yeah. Be interested to hear more about it as you get more into your modeling.

So there’s a couple of questions that I’m asking all the guests on this podcast, being the Create Your Story Podcast. It’s a big question, but it’s really just seeing what comes to mind from the question. So how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Valerie Lewis: That’s an interesting one. It’s almost like there hasn’t been a rule book to follow. So in many ways circumstances have shaped some of my story. And other aspects of my story, I’ve taken charge and shaped myself. For example, not climbing a career ladder when that’s something that society expects of you, if you like. I chose not to do that.

Some of the creative things I’m doing, such as modeling and what is interesting is meeting other people who are of the same age group, who have decided to do that as well and thinking, well, you know, this is fascinating.

So my story has been shaped by I suppose obviously my parents and people of their generation, my upbringing, being a black person in a mainly white society. That’s helped to shape it. Being a female. In two of my jobs, I worked in a more male dominated environment.

And also the circumstances I’ve been through have helped to shape my story. And also I think I’m a little bit eccentric and I’ve got a strong streak of independence. There’s always something in me that slightly wants to dance to my own tune. So that’s helped to shape my story. I’m still continuing to shape my story.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. That’s great. It’s lovely to hear all the different aspects that have shaped you, your personality, circumstances and how you’ve responded to them as well. Thank you for sharing that. So wholehearted self-leadership is obviously part of creating your story and a key part. And I’ve shared some tips in my book, but I’m interested for people on the show to share their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So what comes to mind for you as the top tips?

Valerie Lewis: I think the main thing that I would say is work on being true to you. Who are you, or who do you want to be? And that might mean a lot of self-reflecting, digging deep within yourself. I would say a good starting point is looking at your values. What are the things that make life meaning to you or could make life meaningful to you? The values that you hold – are they yours or the values of others? What do you dislike about yourself or what do you dislike about other people? Ultimately, are you living your life for you or for others?

And I think that sort of question becomes more important the older you get, especially as you reach middle age. Maybe if you’ve had a family and your life has been focused on your family, I think you can lose yourself, whoever you were. So at some point, I think most of us, you start thinking about who am I, what am I here for? What gives me joy? And that’s where the self-reflecting comes in. And as I say, looking at your values, I think that’s a good starting point because your values change over time, don’t they? And you might be holding on to things that are not helping you anymore. It’s dragging you down.

Terri Connellan: I think that’s great. I think that question about it with your living your life for yourself or for others and sometimes it’s that overlay of family with its family values, cultural values or corporate values, it’s almost like we have to clear them off sometimes just to work out what’s important for us. I relate to that, like a clarifying process. Beautiful. I love that. And that idea of working on being who you are, who you want to be, and what gives you joy, I think a beautiful tips too for women to take to heart. So, thank you so much for our conversation Valerie today. It’s been so heart-warming, so inspiring and a lot of fun. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Can you tell us where people can find out more about you and your work online?

Valerie Lewis: Okay. My website, Instagram and Facebook under Visualise and Bloom. And LinkedIn under Valerie A Lewis and people can sign up to receive my periodic newsletter. I say periodic because I’m not one of these that sends out a newsletter every month. It’s more like once a quarter. So, if they sign up for my newsletter on my website, I’ve just created a guided meditation. They can receive a free downloadable copy of it. It’s called the Violet Cloud Guided Meditation for Difficult Times.

Terri Connellan: Perfect. That’s a beautiful gift for people who connect with you. So, we’ll pop all those links in the show notes. I’ll also make sure the link to your wholehearted story, The Silent Whispers of my Mind and the piece you shared on creative transition too is there.

Valerie Lewis: Oh, it’s been a pleasure, Terri. Thank you so much.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much Valerie.

About Valerie Lewis

You can connect with Valerie at her website Visualise and Bloom or via Instagram @visualiseandbloom

Newsletter sign-up: Blooming news + free guided meditation

You can also read Valerie’s Wholehearted Story, The Silent Whispers of my Mind and an interview with Valerie on her transition journey: Sacred Creative Stories of Transition.

Links to explore:

Book Club: Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – open for enrolment now, closing soon – join us for January 19/20 book club start.

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

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/

love, loss & longing podcast writing

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

love, loss & longing wholehearted stories

Year of Magic, Year of Sadness – A Wholehearted Story

May 6, 2019

This guest post from Lisa Dunford looks at how her year of magic and change was also one of sadness, the two coming together to weave a wholehearted story.

This is the 19th 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’m thrilled to have Lisa Dunford as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Lisa and I met via Instagram and share interests in creativity, coaching and travel. In this story, Lisa shares how her year of magic also incorporated times of immense sadness. How often do these two elements come together in life especially when we make major changes? So often. Lisa shares how magic and sadness have become key compasses on her journey. Read on!

Year of magic and sadness

The year 2016 was a magical one. I’d stepped back from writing travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet full-time to pursue a more personal growth-oriented path – both in my writing and in my life. It took a few years of stops and starts, but by 2016, I finally felt like things were beginning to flow. Along much of this incredible journey, the inspirational talks and writings of Martha Beck kept me company. I found the book Finding Your Way in A Wild New World particularly influential. I’d always been good at following my gut for big decisions. But Wild New World opened me to the idea of everyday connection and magic.

The more I read Martha’s books and essays, the more I wanted to learn. I took online workshops and listened to her lectures. I branched out to workshops and lessons taught by Martha Beck Institute (MBI)-trained life coaches. I hired a coach myself, and before I knew it, I’d become fast friends with a number of other MBI coaches.

Walking the walk

In spring, with just one month’s notice, I committed to walking the last 100km of the Camino de Santiago in Spain organized by three MBI coaches. Saying yes was a big deal. I’d fallen completely out of shape while living in two car-oriented, pancake-flat places. And I didn’t usually take on anything I might fail at. But a series of serendipities urged me on – Paulo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage falling off the shelf as I considered, a friend asking me to edit an essay, that turned out to be… about her Camino trip. I embraced my willingness to fail, my willingness to be wrong about failing. Taking even the first step was a win. When I managed to walk every one of the 100 kilometres without getting in the support van, I knew I hadn’t done it alone.

It’s not like the trek was easy. Every morning I had my blister-covered toes sewn up, and I popped pain relievers like candy. But the Divine was there every step of the way: in the unusually unwavering support from my spouse, the unexpected inspiration from nature and faith, and the very practical advice and assistance that arrived from friends and co-walkers exactly when needed. I had accomplished what in my mind was impossible. It began to be hard to say what I couldn’t do.

Being led

“Ok, so if you could do anything, what would it be?” asked a life coach friend. That was easy – go to Africa, I answered. It had always seemed like too big of a dream: too much money, too much distance. I continued writing, I went to retreats, I followed my path. Four months later, out of the blue, another coach asked if I wanted to take her discounted place on a South African safari she’d already paid for, she couldn’t go. Um, let me think about that… YES.

I realized I wanted to learn more of the tools taught in the MBI training, go deeper into self-discovery, into self-belief. In September 2016 I began my own life coaching nine-month training. I’d gone in thinking I was doing it for myself. I planned to use the techniques to inform my life, to help with my writing. Much to my surprise, I really loved coaching. It felt as if I was following magic breadcrumbs to a life I loved.

Things happen

And then halfway through the training, my mom died – suddenly, at the very young, very healthy-seeming age of 71. She collapsed in my father’s arms and was dead three hours later. They’d just gotten back from mom’s first – her last – post-retirement, cross-country driving trip. I was home for an extended visit from where I lived abroad. She and I talked for a long time the night before she died. She went into the tiniest detail about her trip. We made lunch plans for the following week. The next day I left for California and my MBI life coach training meet and greet.

I walked onto the LA car rental lot and discovered they’d assigned me a white Ford Crown Victoria. I was not really feeling the old school, cop car vibe. When I asked to change, the rental guy was more chipper than most. “No problem, I get it,” he said. How would I like a cherry red Mustang convertible for the same price instead? Um, sure. At the time I didn’t think about how much the car looked like the little red Mazda convertible Mom used to drive.

Feeling connected

Some nice lot attendant came out of nowhere to help me as I struggled with the seats and the top. “No, no, no,” he said. I couldn’t possibly take the freeway at this time of day. He was insistent, I had to take the Pacific Coast Highway. “Ok, ok,” I said. I agreed and he sent me on my way with a “Have a Blessed Day.”

As I inched up the coast in traffic, the late afternoon sun sparkled off the ocean waves. I alternated between watching the dancing light show on the water to my right and the orange and blue and yellow wildflowers dotting the hillside to my left. Mom would have loved it. She was the big driver, not me. I was almost to San Luis Obispo when I got the call.

I couldn’t quite process the information. After the heart attack, Mom had been life-flighted to a nearby hospital. We’d figure it out, I told my dad. In the background, I heard the alarms and shouting that meant Mom was coding – again and again. I didn’t understand. I said I would come back right away, we’d take care of her. We patched my sister into the call. We were all together, in a way, when the doctor told dad the news. She’d never regained consciousness. I did the math. She’d been with me on the drive after all.

Going deeper

I’d meant to go deeper with life coach training, but I hadn’t really known what that meant. In the aftermath of Mom’s death, things I thought I’d understood suddenly became clear. I felt everything more deeply. I cried not only for the amazing and infuriating and incredible mother I’d lost but for everything, everyone’s pain. Though I’d never had children, I could better imagine the depth of my friend’s loss as she sent her son off to college (and for mom’s when I first went away). I could imagine the incalculable pain of someone’s miscarriage (of which mom had had three). But I also saw beauty and felt gratitude more deeply. When I returned to Africa the next year, I was more – and less – of myself.

Mom had been fierce and fun-loving, but she had also been an anxious person. After her death, I had the strong sense that she was immediately free of all that. And that if she could be free in one minute, I could be. She would want me to be. So I doubled down on the life coach training. We all have thoughts, habits and patterns that are no longer serving us. I became very aware of how important this work was – freeing myself, so I could help free others. Even if I only helped my sister or my nieces break the chain, it would all be worth it.

The next steps

I would love to say that within six months after mom died, I finished my life coach training and established a thriving writing-coaching-creating business. But that’s not always how things work. And that’s ok. I took time to grieve. I was committed to feeling my feelings, to allowing intense gratitude and sadness to sit side by side. We had other setbacks in my husband’s family, a hurricane that targeted our town in Texas. We had more loss in my mom’s family.

But there’s a big difference now. I have tools to use and a community to turn to. I’m much less hard on myself. I’m not panicked that I haven’t accomplished as much as I think I “should”. I had other things to do, other things to learn. I’m still writing, still using my coaching. I’ve continued to study tools and techniques to help others as a coach. I’ve begun to build my business and a website to reflect that. And I’m still doing my own inner work because it’s a process.

I’m immensely grateful for so much from the past few years – the lessons I’ve learned, the friends I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had. But mostly I’m grateful for an amazing mom, a woman who inspires me every day to dig deeper and do more, be more, help more.

Key book companions along the way

The Pilgrimage – Paulo Coelho

Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino – Joyce Rupp

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want – Martha Beck

The Joy Diet – Martha Beck

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live – Martha Beck

Born to Freak: A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans – Sarah Seidelmann

About Lisa Dunford

Lisa is a traveler, a writer, a creator and a life coach. Her house lives on a river east of Houston, Texas, her husband works in a desert west of Abu Dhabi, UAE. She alternates between the two. Before becoming a life coach, Lisa roamed the globe for 12 years as a travel writer. She’s lived in six countries and seven states. More than anything Lisa believes that so much more is possible in this life than we tend to think. Follow her travels @lisadtraveler and her attempts at learning to draw, learning to paint and learning to live @lisadlifeartist on Instagram.

Photographs and artwork by Lisa Dunford, used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

You might also enjoy my free ‘Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches and Writers‘ with a summary of 45 wholehearted books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library which includes the Reading Wisdom Guide and so much more! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

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

inspiration & influence love, loss & longing

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

December 19, 2018

This post explores joy and grief: how I have been able to find joy alongside deep grief, the challenges and what it has it taught me.

When you see joy beside the agony, you have the keen vision of a Soul warrior.

Danielle LaPorte

Joy and grief in 2018

Joy is my word of the year for 2018. I shared the beginning of my story of working with ‘joy’ here. It certainly wasn’t what I expected. Though I knew it was never going to be an easy or straightforward journey. Reflecting on this past year, I’ve found the journey of exploring joy falls into themes or stages around the quarters of the year of finding joy…

alongside deep grief
and resilience in challenge
in travel and being away from home
in creative work and my calling

This post explores finding joy alongside deep grief and how the two can co-exist. A focus of the first quarter of 2018, this theme and learning has continued through-out this year in different ways. It’s been an undercurrent that I continue to work with even now.

The challenge of choosing joy

Choosing joy as my word was always going to be full of challenge. The end of 2016 and all of 2017 were very challenging as I supported my beautiful mother after her diagnosis with metastatic breast cancer in September 2016. After a very tough year, my mother passed away on Christmas Day last year and her funeral was in the first week of 2018. So as you can imagine, joy was not a feature of life through that time.

But I chose the word joy because I wanted more of it in my life. It’s a word often associated with Christmas and that time highlighted just how far I felt from feeling joy. Even the concept of ‘enJOYing’ life in any way can seem challenging when you are caring for another with a terminal illness and then supporting them in the final stages of life. A friend described this time as an “agonising privilege” and it is this exactly. So putting in a claim for a year around joy in 2018 always felt somewhat audacious and optimistic. I wondered what it would bring.

Finding joy alongside deep grief

Balancing even the thought of joy with grief was hard in practice especially at the start of the year. I attended the Priestess Business Workshop, part of The Goddess Roadtrip led by Julie Parker and Sora Surya No in early January. It was the day before my mother’s funeral and being amongst powerful, supportive allies and female energy felt like the best place to be. The wonderful Jade McKenzie ran a session at the workshop on being seen and what we unapologetically wanted to be. We stood up one by one to say this and be witnessed by the room and women there.

The statement I wrote down, in line with my word of the year, was: “I am unapologetically joyful.” When it came to my turn to stand up, I just froze. I couldn’t get the words out. The tears came and the room, full of female coaches and healers of all kinds, was silent and encouraging. All the women there held powerful, silent space for me as I gathered my strength and dealt with the tsunami of emotions barrelling through me.

Eventually, through tears, I was able to say the words, “I am unapologetically joyful“. I felt immediately stronger claiming joy, if also very fragile. It demonstrated the enormous tension that lies in the juxtaposition of grief and joy. I began to have a deeper sense that day of how challenging this paradox of grief and joy might be.

It’s like we are drawn into a binary view of the world, not allowing ourselves to feel joy in any way when we are in deep sadness and pain. I realised finding joy, playfulness, fun, laughter and happiness again against a backdrop of deep grief was not going to be easy. But it felt central to this year’s journey.

The paradox of joy and grief

A big learning this year is that it’s okay to feel the joy of everyday things at the same time as we feel immense pain. We tend to make it an either/or, saying to ourselves either I feel grief or I feel joy. I cannot feel both. It can feel like a terrible tension and betrayal of our pain if we feel good in any way. And feeling joy or lighter feelings can somehow feel like a betrayal of a particular person and their memory. It as if we feel we need to stay in a certain emotional space to honour that person. In this, we can deny ourselves positive feelings and experiences that can help us move through the grief and loss. Over time, this can set in and become habitual and the mindset of how we live.

Danielle LaPorte in her book White Hot Truth has much to say about the wisdom of paradox and courage to change your beliefs. She deals with a number of paradoxes such as:

Lead with your heart and… Your head.

Be open-hearted and… Have clear, strong boundaries.

Trust and… Do the work.
From Rock Your Paradoxes

For me, joy and grief is a kind of paradox and polarity we can work with, one that does rock our beliefs but brings wisdom in its wake.

Difference between joy and happiness

Danielle has something to say about that too in her piece, The difference between joy and happiness. And why it helps to know.

Herein lies the heart of the matter. The key thing is it is not about a mutually exclusive choice between feeling grief or joy. It’s not about the more fleeting feelings of happiness either. Learning to navigate the paradox of feeling joy and grief at the same time is a journey of wisdom. It’s one I’ve spent much of the year on. Danielle’s piece provides powerful insights. Here are a few perspectives that distil my experiential learning about joy and grief:

Consciousness is not an either/or equation. It’s about bothness.
The capacity to expand into bothness — the awareness of your joy in all circumstances — is so much of what it means to evolve…

Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen — ever present….

Joy is the fibre of your Soul….

This means that it’s possible to grieve with your whole heart, and still sense your joy. You can feel rage, and be aware of joy waiting patiently for you to return, and take deep comfort in that.
Danielle LaPorte

Lessons from joy and grief

So this year has been full of heart-felt lessons about joy and grief.

It’s been full of learning to live in paradox and seeing joy as a kind of oxygen. This learning set the tone of the first quarter of the year as I moved through the deep grief of losing my mother. As people who have been there will know, it’s a defining moment of your life. At the same time, I also experienced my job being deleted and becoming redundant in February. So there were layers of different kinds of grief I was working through all at the same time.

I learnt it was okay to feel joy – celebrating the joy of my mother’s beautiful life, the strength that lives on in me, my female ancestry and lineage, her loving kindness and knowing she was cheering me on as always as I moved into a new phase of life. All of these qualities and the simple pleasures of water, light, tea, sun, reading, swimming, friends and family helped me navigate much at this time.

Grief and joy can co-exist. By weaving one with the other, the passage through is deeply felt but somehow more sure-footed and grounded. Being able to smile and embrace the full gamut of emotions simultaneously is a wholehearted learning joy has taught me.

This first part of the year set the tone. It taught me that joy is often found in the smallest moments that we allow ourselves to feel even as we feel great sorrow. The light of joy can shine gently into the shadows of our sadness helping us find pockets of positive reflections to sustain us and move us forward.

I learnt more on this on the way through the year – and share further in the next posts to come.

Shared with much love and in memory of my mother, the most truly beautiful person, who taught me how to feel joy alongside deep grief in the most selfless of ways.

More information: Word of the Year resources

Working on a Word of the Year is 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. 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.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.

You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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Essential matters and feeling your way through pain

April 16, 2018

The cups will fill again and the storm will pass. Feel the pain, and keep one foot on solid ground.

The Fountain Tarot, Five 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: essential matters + feeling your way through pain

Theme for the week beginning 16 April

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #44 Make those essential actions matter.

This week is about essential matters of life and of the heart and remembering what really matters. In this, we might be feeling pain and turmoil, but it’s a time of washing away the inessential.

Often the toughest and most painful of circumstances remind us of essential matters to focus on. We need to take the time to breathe through them and learn from them, as hard as this can be.

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Let nothing be hidden behind walls of fear. Try to feel what you want to do right now. Clarify your priorities as if every minute matters.

Certainly, the more painful the time, the more we realize that indeed every moment does matter. The gift of challenge is to sharpen our awareness and help us identify what is essential and what is not essential.

This week’s guidance is about experiencing the pain and full feelings of challenging situations so we can learn from them. We are reminded to tap into the power of instinct and intuition as we move through difficult times. It’s as if we need to feel our way in the true sense of this phrase, letting feelings be our guide. This might mean going through pain and upheaval to get to the other side. Being grounded and learning as we move through is key.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 16 April

Tarot Narrative:

Change is often painful, it’s true. Spilt cups, falling towers, grey skies, stepping between worlds. It all points to the loss and transformation of something, life becoming different in essential ways. You can lose yourself in this loss, focusing on what is spilt, becoming paralysed. Or you can step into the dark clouds and feel them, know their energy and know too that the blue sky and calmer times will come again.

Reading notes:

Cards: Five of Cups and The Tower from The Fountain Tarot and #3 Between Worlds from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.

Pema Chödrön

via Rick Hanson’s

Resilient: 12 Tools for transforming everyday experiences into lasting happiness

What a fabulous quote from Pema Chodron and what an amazing book ‘Resilient’ is. I have listened to it as an audiobook the past few weeks as I have driven in and out of my little village. I’m facing challenging times yet again after supporting my mother through her terminal illness last year. In the final stages of my mother’s life, as I drove in and out of town to the hospital, I focused on the essential as I listened to Greg McKeown’s Essentialism.

Both books sing of essential matters, moving through the inessential and gaining clarity. Tough and painful times sometimes simply have to be moved through. But feeling the pain and learning from these times gifts us with powerful lessons we can take forward. We develop psychological resources we can gather if from dark clouds, to face difficult times with grace and strength.

Dark clouds and what they teach us

If there’s one thing you notice from each of the three cards for this week’s tarot narrative, it’s the prevalence of dark clouds.

The Five of Cups reminds us that it’s helpful to feel any pain and loss fully as we move through it. If we don’t, we can miss valuable lessons. It is as if we need to feel the pain to move through it. ‘Befriending Grief’, as the Fountain Tarot interpretation puts it, can be a source of moving through any loss.

The Tower can be a fearful card to pull with its top-heavy energy drawing things down. It reminds us of the pain of moving through change. But as the Fountain Tarot reminds us, it can be about ‘The Inessential Destroyed’ and getting through to what matters.

Between Worlds reminds us:

What is essential now is to admit not knowing. There is great freedom and power to be unleashed.

All of these cards especially in the light of our theme card, “Make those essential actions matter”, bring us into the realm of clear, essential, resilient actions.

We can focus on the dark clouds or we can focus on the light coming through.

The photograph above was taken this evening as dark smoke fills the sky from bushfires not so far away. It’s been a sobering time lately in many respects and my thoughts have been with those battling the fires and trying to keep their homes and loved ones safe. The fight is not over. But whatever we are battling, light and optimism will help shine out the dark and keep us focused, even if we must acknowledge the challenges at hand in very real terms.

Essential matters and resilient practices

I shared some learnings from my reading of ‘Resilient’ last week in my post, Creative healing in times of sorrow and challenge. This week’s focus on essential matters continues this theme and highlights these practices.

The two practices prompted by reading ‘Resilient’ that have helped me the most these past few weeks have been:

1 Honouring my psychological resources

Sadly, I have been through a lot of pain, challenge and loss in my life. On one side, I can focus on this and let it get me down. Or I can see that I have had the opportunity to build psychological resources to be more resilient and strong.

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 to know 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 can dig into my learning and bring all of myself to bear to get through. For example, I am much better at contacting people and talking when I need it now rather than battling on alone.

2 Feeling the beauty in small everyday joys as well as feeling pain

A big learning over time for me has been that it is okay to feel the beauty and joy of everyday things – the full cups – even as we feel immense pain.

We can tend to make it an either/or, saying to ourselves either I feel grief or I feel joy. I cannot feel both. It can feel like a terrible tension or betrayal of the feeling of pain if we feel good in any way.

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.

I have found special joy in swimming, reading, writing, sitting in the sun, cups of tea, coffee and connection with special friends and family at this time. The simple act of getting these tarot narratives out each week is a blessing and wisdom I learn from.

What are your essential resilient practices?

So take some time to identify your essential matters and resilient practices:

Where are you feeling pain and can you acknowledge it for what is?
What beautiful and special things have you enjoyed or witnessed lately?
How can this light you up even if feeling pain?
Where have you felt darkness descend and why?
What have you focused on or done to take you there into that darkness?
When have you lightened up and what helped you to do that?
What psychological resources have you developed over time and how can you honour this and build on them?

Take a moment to list:

Your psychological resources, learning and supports and what helps you get through
The blessings and joys that bring light into your life even if there are still dark clouds and if only for a brief moment.

This is a great week for honouring our psychological strengths, appreciating any pain and blessings and getting to the essential matters of life.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear what is working for you as you reflect on the essential matters of life.

All best wishes for this week of being clear on the essential, removing the inessential and developing resilient practices.

May you find strength and resilience in the clarity and peace of essential matters. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

loss

Living a creative, easeful and positive life after loss

Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of interview with Valerie Lewis

And I thought I enjoy this. I thought I don’t want to be trapped in a job where I’m working all these long hours. I want to have some time away from that, where I can do some of the things that I want to do. That’s basically how I’ve been throughout the past 30 years if you like.

And I often find that in the act of being creative, and it’s silent around you, or you might be a person who likes music playing, you can ruminate, you can think, you can think more clearly. And if something’s bothering you, sometimes you find that the answers come to you.

About Valerie Lewis

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Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of interview with Kerstin Pilz

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About Kerstin Pilz

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Year of magic and sadness

Walking the walk

Being led

Things happen

Feeling connected

Going deeper

The next steps

Key book companions along the way

About Lisa Dunford

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

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When you see joy beside the agony, you have the keen vision of a Soul warrior.

Joy and grief in 2018

The challenge of choosing joy

Finding joy alongside deep grief

The paradox of joy and grief

Difference between joy and happiness

Lessons from joy and grief

More information: Word of the Year resources

Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

Share this:

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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’

Share this:

Like this:

The cups will fill again and the storm will pass. Feel the pain, and keep one foot on solid ground.

The Fountain Tarot, Five of Cups

Theme for the week beginning 16 April

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 16 April

Book notes:

You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.

Pema Chödrön

Dark clouds and what they teach us

Essential matters and resilient practices

What are your essential resilient practices?

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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