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love, loss & longing transition wholehearted stories

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

March 1, 2018

This guest post from Kerstin Pilz is about how grief and pain can be our most important teachers on our journey to wholehearted living.

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

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

I am honoured to have Kerstin Pilz as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Kerstin for sharing her story and photographs. Kerstin’s wholehearted story tells of how she moved from passion through to grief and loss and then to deep healing. It’s a story of learning ways to heal through silence, meditation, yoga, writing and living freely. Kerstin now employs her learning from her journey to help others through her work as a writer, yogini, meditation practitioner and online teacher. Read on to find out more!

Beginning the journey

My journey to a wholehearted life began exactly a decade ago with a tragic false start.

I’d sailed around the world aboard a converted cruise ship for four months, teaching intercultural communication to university students from all over the world.

Copies of Eat, Pray, Love circulated onboard. It was hot off the press and everybody but me seemed to be reading it. I’d recently found love and I was busy writing the next chapter of my own life.

Between port calls in Capetown and Barcelona, my Italian sweetheart and I got married off the coast of West Africa, 1 degree south of the equator.

I was living a fairytale. Even before our final disembarkation, I knew that I couldn’t go back to my old life.

I had a tenured, senior position as Head of Italian Studies at one of Sydney’s Universities. It came with good pay and annual trips abroad. Options to climb the career ladder beckoned.

But there was a side of me that was unexpressed. Ever since I was a little girl I’d wanted to be a writer. Leaving Germany at age 22 to explore the world, had muted my writing voice. But the passion had remained.

At 45 I had enough academic publications to prove to myself that I could really write in a foreign language. It was time to explore another, more creative part of myself.

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion

Long service leave allowed me to take an ‘adult gap year’ to chase a new, wholehearted life. I had a year to work out if I could transition into blogging and freelance writing.

Months of careful planning went into preparing my sabbatical. I booked a Spanish course in Buenos Aires and stopovers in exotic locations. I did evening courses in freelance writing and photography. I fired off pitches for travel writing assignments and started my first blog.

When I handed the keys to the tenants who’d be living in our home for the next 12 months, I felt a pinch of foreboding. We’d planned the perfect year. What could possibly go wrong?

You can’t prepare for life’s worst-case scenario

On the day of our long-awaited departure, my husband felt a pea-sized lump behind his ear. We’d forgotten to plan for life’s worst-case scenario.

He knew straight away that we’d be going on a very different journey – one from which he was unlikely to return.

And just like that, my world imploded. One day I was about to step into the year of my creative transformation. The next day I walked into the nightmare of a progressive terminal illness – metastatic melanoma – and all that it entailed.

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

Without a home to return to, we were forced to live with his adult daughter. Instead of speaking Spanish in Buenos Aires, I became trapped in an Italian melodrama. It unfolded across two continents as an antagonistic family came together in pain and anger.

I’d wanted to write a new chapter for myself and here it was. Except I hadn’t written it. Trying to fit into this alien scenario and its shifting emotional alliances slowly eroded my own identity.

I was unable to read and I was unable to write the travel and lifestyle pieces I’d researched. My own story consumed all of me. I became paralysed by the fear of death and the prison of toxic family dynamics.

Being a full-time carer to my gradually diminishing husband, gave me a sense of purpose and joy, despite the exhaustion.

Eventually, we relocated to a beach-side home in Far North Queensland, but the Italian melodrama never went away.

It was as if a second cancer had spread. Emotions and estates were negotiated amid the tragic suicide of my husband’s son and the discovery of my husband’s infidelities.

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

The healing power of writing

I discovered the healing power of writing by accident. Living remotely, I didn’t have easy access to counselling. My journal became my on-call therapist.

Watching my life implode felt like watching a movie in slow motion. It had more plot twists than I could’ve ever come up with.

I wrote my story in mad, obsessive bursts. Naming my pain and anger felt liberating. Without noticing, I started to treat journaling like a creative writing assignment. The many hospital visits – flogging the old car for long distances across the wild remoteness of Far North Queensland during an epic wet season – became little vignettes. Creating word pictures was intuitive. Trying to capture the irony of my situation, finding beauty in pain, was a form of therapy.

Writing allowed me to become a detached witness as my story unfolded amid the ruins of Rome and the Sardinian coastline of my husband’s homeland.

In my journal the dramatic settings and the ongoing family feud wove into an epic tale. For several years I thought of it as a blueprint for a novel.

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life

My second attempt at creating a self-directed life started somewhere in the pages of my journal.

When I accepted that death was inevitable, my writing showed me that this was a chance for deep transformation. If I was open to it.

I knew that to find myself again, I could not slip back into my old life. For two decades I’d taught Italian Studies at universities. Italian was the language I spoke at home after I’d left Germany. But the Italian part of my identity died with him.

I needed a new identity and a new professional direction, but I had no clue where to find it. My sabbatical year had been spent being a full-time carer. Resigning from a tenured position in mid-life was considered foolish. Everybody cautioned against it, but I followed my heart.

I was scared and at my emotional rock-bottom, when I stepped into the unknown.

Learning about the impermanence of everything

I’d planned to give myself a few months to grief quietly surrounded by my beautiful community in remote Far North Queensland. The remoteness made me feel safe. I would have time to consider the next steps. But life had another dramatic instalment in store for me.

Less than three weeks after the funeral I was asked by State Emergency to evacuate my beachfront home. The biggest cyclone in living memory hauled all night, blowing my beach-side haven to pieces. The next day an entire community was grieving. Overnight, my own grief became eclipsed by tales of lost homes and devastated gardens.

When the airport re-opened, I caught the first flight out. The devastated landscape was a mirror of my inner devastation. I needed to look at things that were whole, not broken. I needed to speak to people who weren’t grieving.

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing

For many months I didn’t speak at all. I locked myself away in austere meditation retreats all over Asia. Meditation, like writing, became fundamental to my healing.

Sitting in stillness, listening deep inside, trained me to recognise the voice of my inner knowing. It took months for the noise in my head to subside. Vipassana meditation taught me to become a detached observer. Watching pain and physical discomfort rise and fall for 10 hours a day for many weeks, was healing.

Everything in life is impermanent. Nature’s fury had already hammered home this fundamental Buddhist lesson. But I needed to hear it again and again from my teachers.

Sitting in the presence of His Holiness for two weeks in Bodhgaya, I learned about the true nature of suffering. Pain is inevitable. My story wasn’t unique.

Yoga was another important anchor in my healing journey. My body became grounded through asanas. Living with death had made me tired and skinny. I didn’t sleep enough and I drank too much red wine. Yoga made my body stronger. Conscious breathing felt like reviving a dead tree. I was finally breathing oxygen back into myself.

Finding my writing voice through journaling

The landscape of my beach-side home has healed itself, as have I. After sadness has followed joy. I now know that deep pain can fade if we allow ourselves to heal.

A sealed plastic box with two dozen moleskines is still the first thing I’ll throw into the back of my car the moment a cyclone warning goes out. I am no longer defined by my pain, but I keep my journals safe because they are an important record of my transformation as a writer.

For the two years of my husband’s slow decline and during the years of my healing journey, I wrote compulsively. I told the same story over and over until I was finally free of it. It trained my writing muscle like nothing else could have.

I haven’t opened my diaries for some time, but I know they contain some of my best writing. It’s raw and straight from the core.

Finding joy after grief and pain

Ten years after my first attempt at a life-changing sabbatical, I feel happier than I ever have. Going through the fires of grief has transformed me at my very core.

The journey was long and lonely. Crashing head-first into my own vulnerability has taught me that we can rise strong after falling hard.

It took many years to find a new professional direction. I revived my old travel blog. I worked as a Volunteer for International Development in the Maldives. I reviewed luxury resorts as a travel writer. All of it was fun, but none of it satisfied my core.

For several years I exhausted myself, trying to prove that resigning from a flourishing career in mid-life hadn’t been foolish. I was surprised by how naked I felt without a career.

Giving myself permission to heal, was met with envy. It was considered a self-indulgent luxury. And yet, the inner work I did in the aftermath of those events, laid the foundations for what I do today.

When I finally allowed myself to be guided by the voice of my heart, not the expectations of an achievement-driven society, things started to fall into place.

A new partner walked into my life. A new domain name appeared in the pages of my journal. I finally saw a new way to combine my passions of writing, travelling and yoga with my professional skills. I identified an income stream that allows me to be location independent.

I taught myself basic graphic design, photography and how to build a website. I did a yoga teacher training course. I radically decluttered my house and listed it on Airbnb. Then I packed a small suitcase and headed to Vietnam to make my dwindling funds last a little longer.

Today I live for most of the year in a rented home in the beautiful World Heritage town of Hoi An in central Vietnam.

I’ve always loved teaching and I am finally teaching again. Sharing the tools that have helped me in my healing journey is deeply rewarding.

In Hoi An I lead a weekly writing group. With my partner, who is a professional musician, I teach yin yoga and sound bowl meditations. Once a month we combine it with journaling in our signature “Journey to Self” workshop. Through my website, Write Your Journey, I run online courses. My first writing retreat will be held in Hoi An, this September.

After years of stagnating, I gained momentum when I allowed the voice of my heart to write the next chapter of my life.

Living a wholehearted, self-directed life is the only way to live the nanosecond we have on this earth. But make no mistake, it’s not the easy option.

People tell me all the time how lucky I am. But luck had nothing to do with it. Hard work, the courage to follow my passion and being open to uncertainty is what allows me to live the way I do.

PS: I wrote this post lying on my daybed on a tropical summer’s day with this view in front of me.

Photos by Kerstin Pilz, except where noted and used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

While my own story unfolded into a story of grief, I found it very hard to read fiction. Instead I found solace in memoirs about grief, in the words of Buddhist masters and in Natalie Goldberg’s zen-inspired writing practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Claire Bidwell-Smith, The Rules of Inheritance

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within

About Kerstin Pilz

Kerstin Pilz Phd is a former academic, writer, photographer, yogini and meditation practitioner based in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she teaches a weekly writers group and holds workshops and multi-day retreats combining yoga, writing and mindfulness meditation. Through her website Write Your Journey she offers e-courses and downloadable guided soundbowl meditations. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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

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

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love, loss & longing transition work life

Finishing on a high note – closure, letting go and moving on

May 25, 2017

Some of us think holding on makes us strong;

but sometimes it is letting go.

Hermann Hesse

Finishing on a high note is important. As one thing ends and we cycle into new beginnings, it’s vital to pause and reflect on closure and tie up any loose ends. And depending on the situation, it’s also a moment to restore, forgive, show gratitude, bed down our learning and celebrate what we have achieved.

Here are some thoughts on unfinished symphonies and opportunities for ending on a high note and shifting into a positive journey in moving on.

Unfinished Symphonies

The beautiful ‘Unfinished Symphony’ card from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle deck has popped up for me a few times in the past weeks. Each time, it’s reminded me of the power of appropriate closure and reflection on what has passed before moving on.

The first time it appeared, it prompted me to focus on some administrative loose-ends – paperwork, small things I’d been putting off that were hanging over my head and stopping my forward movement.

The next time, it was about finishing off an e-course that was very valuable to me that I was close to completing and hadn’t quite finalised. It was a reminder to thank the creator personally for what they had given me through the process and to take the lessons forward and integrate them fully into my life.

Most recently, it was about honouring my skills, my body of work, as I reflect on my next steps in my career and vocational life. Skills are transferable and we develop many in our lifetime. It’s so easy to close the door on skills that are valuable as we shift into different roles or environments. It’s important to take stock of all the varied knowledge, experience and values we bring forward as we recreate ourselves again and again in career and vocational roles and through our own businesses.

Closure, completion and finishing off

As we shift to the end of something and into a cycle of completion and restarting, it’s so easy to rush forward and forget the reflection phase, the opportunity to pause and integrate what’s just happened.

As the Guidebook for the Wisdom of the Oracle says for the Unfinished Symphony card:

Take inventory so that emotional and psychological closure can occur and the answers you seek will be found. You can’t move forward if you are leaving things unfinished. Reflect on what has passed so that the symphony can finally end on a high note.
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We might be leaving something or somewhere because we choose to. It might be retirement or the end of a relationship or a move of location. Other times, it may not be through our choice. It might be a case of redundancy, betrayal, just not fitting in any more or circumstances beyond our control.

Whatever the situation of finishing up or leaving something behind, it’s valuable to reflect on how we can leave gracefully with wisdom and a sense of completion. We can move forward with a spirit of reflection and learning, and with a practical attitude of taking what will serve us well on the onward journey. It’s important not to leave loose ends, unfinished business or pieces of ourselves behind.

Ways to finish on a high note

Here are some practical ways to finish on a high note:

Tie up the loose ends

As Colette Baron-Reid says: “Tie up loose ends so you can move forward with surety, knowing you’re on a prosperous path.” It might be paperwork, it might be some difficult task still to be done you keep putting off, it might be picking up some special belongings from somewhere where they no longer belong. But this symbolic tying up and finishing can be a powerful way of stepping through into a new purpose.

See things through to completion and celebrate that

If you’ve created something valuable and special, see it through. Finish it, see how it can be developed further, update your CV to reflect your achievement and apply your learning in practice for positive outcomes. See where whatever you have created can shine brighter. Publish it, write about it, adapt it, finish off its potential and bed it down into the fabric of the world. Celebrate your part in it and let people know what you’ve achieved.

Say thank you

If you’ve finished a course, a book or time in a job role, say thank you to those who created the circumstances or the work. Finish the work, then round it off with appreciation and gratitude, sharing the joy of what you learned, what will take you forward and why it was important. The end of your cycle will help fuel your own and another’s journey.

If it’s a challenging thing like a relationship ending, the thank you might be in the form of an unsent letter or journalling, but still take the time to realise the benefits of what was given to you. Don’t lose the good in the shadow of the bad. Even if you feel bitter, it’s better to brainstorm the positives about what the disappointment or betrayal taught you than to drown in the juices of your anger. Find the pieces to take forward and let go of what’s not helpful.

Forgive

Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth has wise advice on forgiveness. When you’re ready, it’s a powerful thing and it’s often as much about forgiving ourselves and our perceived complicit involvement as it is about others. That’s where a lot of energy is being drained away as we carry it unnecessarily:

As Lady Ninja of the Light put it to me: “I see forgiveness as releasing congested energy that’s not needed by the energy body. No stories, no players, simply time to release and move on to brighter ways.”
You stop letting past hurt affect you in the present. You rinse down the story, you take what you want, and let the rest go up to the Light so it can be put to better use. You give yourself forward.
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The ways we forgive can be many and varied and don’t always need to involve the other party; sometimes it’s just not possible anyway. But diluting the negative impact of that story and releasing the energy is so important in moving on.

Take what’s valuable with you

Don’t leave what’s valuable behind and take what you can with you into new circumstances. Reflect on the transferable and portable knowledge and experience you can carry forward.

You might have been in an organisation for a while and suddenly there are changes which mean that they no longer value your skills and experience. But you can. Identify the ingredients, skills and experiences that make up ‘you’, your brand, that you can market to a new employer or use to build up your own business.

As Pamela Slim says in Body of Work:

No one is looking out for your career any more. You must find meaning, locate opportunities, sell yourself, and plan for failure, calamity, and unexpected disasters. You must develop a set of skills that makes you able to earn an income in as many ways as possible.
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Cycles, abandoned success and the Eight of Cups

The Eight of Cups tarot card has reappeared many times in the past year as I negotiate a time of transition and reflect on endings and beginnings. It’s a deep card that speaks of abandoned success and choosing to walk away but it’s also a reminder not to leave pieces of ourselves behind.

The Rider Waite image of the card shows a figure choosing to walk away from the cups. As Benebell Wen describes in it in Holistic Tarot:

There has been an abandonment of past fruits, the Eight of Cups is about a soul-searching journey; ascending to emotional higher ground. The Seeker is leaving behind something he or she spent much effort and care to nurture and develop. There was disappointment in a past undertaking and this the Seeker has abandoned his or her previous work.
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There’s a suggestion of leaving on our own terms, but there’s that future we imagined, our identity we shaped there that we feel we are leaving behind. So there’s sadness and a kind of grief. As Jessica Crispin explains it in The Creative Tarot:

And it’s not just our work but our actual selves that we pour into what we do. Leaving it, admitting that the end result is no longer worth it, is difficult.”
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So there is often a sense of loss even if we are choosing to do the leaving or the finishing. Everything is so inevitably bound up together.

The stunning and wise Art of Life Tarot Eight of Cups reminds us that in each ending there is a new beginning. So let’s start as fresh, unencumbered and as energetic as we can, taking the positive and valuable learnings and leaving any baggage or drag on our energy behind.

Resilience is as much about letting go as it is about moving through. Whatever the circumstances, let’s finish our personal symphonies as positively as we can, on a high note, with gratitude and reflection, bringing it home with the brightness of a new song.

And your unfinished symphony?

Would love to hear about any unfinished symphonies you can work on or are working on as you move forward into new times. Share in the comments below or via the Quiet Writing Facebook page or on Instagram so we can support each other as a community to move ahead positively.

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Remembrance and unconditional love: thoughts on ANZAC Day

April 28, 2017

Anzac Day

25 April is ANZAC Day here in Australia. It’s a day of remembrance for those of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who served and died in war and related activities including peacekeeping. And a day to remember those who serve now. Celebrated on the day of the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915, the spirit of Anzac and its qualities of sacrifice, courage and mateship have immense meaning for Australians and New Zealanders around national identity, bravery and freedom.

For me, it’s always a very emotional day. As a Queen of Swords, INTJ, Virgo, (some might say ice maiden) type, it’s surprising how this day seems to touch me so deeply and I am in tears for much of it.

I don’t know exactly why but it’s the stories that touch me, the young men and what they went through in World War I and II and other conflicts. Stories we really can’t fathom or ever truly know. And our own personal connections with that through our family history or people that we know directly involved now.

It’s the families and loved ones left behind and impacted when they came back. It’s those who serve now and what they face and experience. The solitary courage of it, the fear, the silence of those who cannot or could not tell their stories. The inner strength they need to search for and the support of each other. It’s the sadness of it all, that it just should not happen, the unnecessary waste of life; that people should not have to go through all this and the aftermath of physical, mental and spiritual pain and suffering.

It’s also that we can be thankful that we have people who can be strong when it’s needed to do this work for the freedom, support and safety of others. Mostly men, mostly young, mostly strong but also vulnerable.

Postcards from the war

In the last few years, I received a box of memorabilia and photos that belonged to my great aunt, Vivie, who died in 1992. A strong woman who never married, she was a connector and recorder within the family, capturing daily life in photographs and keeping in touch with many in the extended family.

In this box was a beautifully embroidered postcard sent from the Western Front in France in 1916 by my great uncle Walter to Vivie, his sister back in Australia.

The stitching, perfect and precise, must have caught Walter’s eye and he has written on the back of the postcard. It’s a message saying he is well and not really saying much more except that he will be in touch with other family members too. What could you say about those horrors of war except that I am here, standing now? And I am thinking of you and love you.

I knew a little about Walter’s war service but I looked into his war records on Anzac Day this year. Joining up with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) on 1 February 1916 and leaving the country on 13 May that same year, he was on the Western Front in France in the 55th Battalion and saw active service amidst some of the most difficult conflicts of the war.

He served in the Anzac Light Rail as part of this, building and running light railways on the Western Front to provide transport through the difficult terrain. I cannot imagine how hard all of this work was and the terrible conditions in which it was carried out. He was discharged from the AIF on 16 July 1919.

Walter received a Military Medal in 1919 for:

“conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during an attack on St Denis Wood Perone on 2/9/18. During the initial stages of the attack heavy machine gun fire was encountered. This man, noticing this with great courage and deliberation worked his way forward into a position from where, by sniping he was able to place an enemy machine gun out of action, not withstanding that he was under enemy observation and continually fired at the whole time. This soldier’s action in silencing the enemy machine gun enabled a Lewis Gun to be brought forward thereby greatly assisting the attack. The man’s courage and disregard for personal safety during the operation was most noticeable and his action through-out were a great incentive to his comrades.”[1]

This is not to condone violence or war in any way. Personally, I find violence in any form hard to contemplate or witness. But it happened and for Walter it was real. The postcard is a poignant reminder of the fragile and powerful connections with home in all of this – beauty amidst chaos and war; love of his sister and family sent from afar; such vulnerability and risk.

I cannot imagine how precious that card was once received in Newcastle in Australia on the other side of the word, in so few lines saying so much. Or hard it was for Walter to find words to say along the lines of “I am okay” when the reality was most likely far from that.

Closer to home

The other overlay of emotion for me on Anzac Day is about my brother. Martin served as an Australian Federal Police Officer in East Timor in 1999 as part of the United Nations peacekeeping effort and was awarded the Overseas Service Medal in 2003. Martin is no longer with us now, having passed away tragically in 2007.

The memory of Martin as an unarmed police officer who went to East Timor, now Timor Leste, to provide support, peace and justice to people in the most challenging of circumstances, fills me with pride and love. It symbolises the strong sense of justice and fairness that drove his passions and focus in his career and life.

Here he is in action in East Timor, featured at that time, in Time Magazine on 27 September 1999 and in Aussie Post Magazine in October 1999:

I don’t know what he saw there. I don’t know what he experienced there. Like many first responders and police officers, they cannot always talk about what they saw, experienced and felt. And whilst I am proud, I sense that the experiences in East Timor somehow had a deep impact on the sensitive soul that was and is my brother. How could they not.

A poem of remembrance and peace

So in the early hours of Anzac Day this year, these words come to me:

On Anzac Day

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
wreathed there,
amidst the days, red poppy lights
flare occasionally,
lighting up your smile,
buried beneath granite, grass,
days of pain, cascading
hours of grief.

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
at nearly dawn here,
for you, my own service,
my own dawn,
my own not forgetting
that war somehow
touched you
and led you down a path
I wish you had not gone.

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
amidst tarot, words, books,
the morning’s nearly dawn,
the marching of feet,
to come,
the early days towards
ten years of remembering you,
to come.

I lay a flower in the remembrance of your heart.
I shift that stone of trauma laying there.
I hold the hands of our hearts in peace.

Rose, rosemary and remembrance

Shortly after on Anzac Day, in an Activate sessions with Amber Adrian, working with healing energies and guides, both rose and rosemary comes up as energies to work with, with remembrance as a strong message.

We are reminded to activate our inner love, work with remembrance and our true divine self, and to connect with that unconditional love that is our essence. We are reminded to work with protection techniques every day especially around protection of judgement of others and ourselves.

It’s an emotional day. You can see why the tears come.

Tears of memory, gratitude, appreciating sacrifice and remembrance. And the lessons I’m still learning of unconditional love.

Let us all keep focused on these immense qualities in moving forward:

focusing on the beauty in life
maintaining a passionate sense of fairness and justice in everything we do
and finding a love that can transcend every difficult moment.

And may we all be peacekeepers.

Sources

[1] Source: Ancestry.com. Australia, WWI Service Records, 1914-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: National Archives of Australia: B2455, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.

The Rose of Unconditional Love in the featured photograph is from the beautiful Plant Ally Healing Cards deck by Lisa McLoughlin.

Thought pieces

Ask for help, talk to others

This was not an easy piece to write especially with regard to my dear brother. However, I felt it needed to be written as there is too much silence. I also want to highlight the power of remembrance and unconditional love in healing and moving towards peace.

I am aware it may not have been easy to read for some people. If anything I have written in this post triggers anything for you, I encourage you to reach out to others for support. Talk to a trusted family member or friend. Or contact organisations set up especially to provide support. In Australia our key organisations for support are Beyond Blue and Lifeline. International support organisations can all be found here.

Keep in touch

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Poetry into the light: Sapphire

October 25, 2016

Sapphire

Letting go the lovely images
I watch them slide
out to this sapphire stretch
of water, your eyes riding
sometimes between the waves,
grass catching in the dark
lines of your hair,
silver turning into grey,
translucent with the sun’s
invitation upon your warm skin.

Can you feel your body
superimposed here
upon the landscape,
your face,
the varied impressions
I study?

Sometimes between the sound
of the waves curling
and the calls
of birds catching in the wind,
I can almost hear your voice
inflecting the most
commonplace words,
marking my stare
as the blue of the ocean
intensifies.

Thought pieces:

Experience October 2016:

This post had its genesis in Experience October 2016, initiated by Rae Ritchie and mostly taking place on Instagram. Sapphire was the prompt for day 12. Some prompts take you to a moment in time on a given day; some take you much deeper as this one did, back to this poem written many years ago. It’s been good to brush it off and bring it into the light. Thanks Rae for a thought-provoking and inspiring October and for this creative nudge especially. You can go to #experienceoctober2016 on Instagram for more creative inspiration and connection.

Poetry into the Light:

A key focus in Quiet Writing is bringing poetry into the light: the writing of it, the celebration of it, the reading of it, the sharing of it. Poetry is often the quietest writing of all – unseen, unheard, but the lifeblood of so many of us especially at difficult and threshold times. You can read more about my thoughts on this here: Poetry into the Light. I’m still working out how to do all that here but have shared quite a few of my poems here along the way. I am less inclined towards chasing the submission/rejection and formal publication process at present and leaning more to sharing here and self-publishing. With social media and online creative links, I think poetry has the opportunity to reach more people that way. I look forward to sharing more here and connecting with other poetry writers and lovers.

Recommended poetry blog:

On that note, I recommend Claireylove: a Poetry Shaped Life – the beautiful blog by my online creative buddy, Claireylove. I love how she is sharing her poetic works and creative endeavours. Here’s a quote from Claireylove’s blog to round off our thoughts here:

Poetry is about connections and their ambiguity: how meaning, sounds and images create associations and how these associations are interpreted. Writing poetry can help us to make connections about the events and patterns in our lives. It strengthens our intuition and satisfies our souls’ deep need for spiritual meaning.

I so agree that poetry is about connections, intuition and spiritual meaning. One of my Core Desired Feelings is ‘connected’; others are ‘poetic’ and ‘intuitive’…..all such lovely words that coalesce so well.

So do please connect here and tell me your thoughts about poetry and bringing it into the light, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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blogging introversion writing

Welcome to Quiet Writing

September 13, 2016

Hello and welcome to Quiet Writing

I’m so excited to be launching my new look blog. I’ve been preparing, quietly writing and crafting in the background for the longest time and it’s time to dust off this blog, formerly called Transcending, and transition it to reflect my focus for writing and new ventures going forward. It’s the heart of a new life and business and and I hope that you will join me here as I move through this time.

I’ve kept Transcending intact within Quiet Writing with its history over more than six years, as that journey has led to this one, coming out of pain and grief as its core. The spirit of Celebrating the extraordinary power of the ordinary self: strategies for rising above, cutting through and connecting will continue in Quiet Writing as its secret power. So if you have signed up to Transcending previously, I believe you will have transitioned over here to Quiet Writing and I hope you will stay for the next part of the journey.

So what is Quiet Writing about?

It is the summary of my passions and Core Desired Feelings of:

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

To explain, I love the words of Monicka Clio Sakki, creator of the Sakki Sakki tarot deck:

“The Artist is still an Artist even behind the closed curtains. Being an Artist is a process, not a state.”

Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect. It’s an opportunity to muse and reflect on my core values and the interplay between them. In this, I draw on and connect my various experiences and interests as well as connecting with others who share them.

Many of us have been on what Elizabeth Gilbert calls, in one of her wonderful Magic Lessons, ‘the long runway’ and it’s valuable preparation we need to acknowledge. I want to honour the process as much as the product here; the being, becoming and journey as much as the arrival; the artistry behind the closed curtains and doors.

The Artist card in the Sakki Sakki Tarot deck beautifully symbolises this potential and opportunity:

This is not to say that publication, product and stage are not important and a desirable outcome; but we can focus too much on that external validation and not value our work and its process as it evolves in the present. The act of quiet writing and the solitude to capture ideas and craft them, especially for introverts who so need this, is the space from which so much can flow, connect and be created. The conditions, environment, relationships and influences which enable our creative endeavours to flourish are also crucial shaping factors.

I’m interested especially in the gift of writing and finding our unique voice to articulate our place in the world and express the artistry of everyday life.

This is something I’ve been interested in and committed to in my working and creative life for a long time. One of my earliest blog posts from 2010, ‘The value of howling into the wind” captures this:

So ‘howling into the wind’ is about running with the wolves and the ‘longing for the wild’ as (Clarissa Pinkola) Estes calls it. It’s about stoking the creative fire with winds that might feel a bit uncomfortable and cold at first. It’s about the strength that might come from tuning into such intuitive sources, making connections and finding that to which we belong.

And through whatever means – writing, photography, a business idea, a new perspective, the shape of a poem – forming something unique that is your voice that others may also tune into, relate to and take something away from. So let’s keep howling.

It’s funny how we resonate more deeply with our own themes over time; though sometimes we need to learn to listen to ourselves a little more and honour our enduring passions as they play out.

You can learn more about me here but in short, I gain great heart from reading about the journeys of those who seek and enjoy things like creativity, the gifts of introversion, authenticity and celebrating a reading and writing life, and especially hope to celebrate the lyricism of this in my own journey and in connecting with others on similar journeys.

So what can you expect here at Quiet Writing?

Reflections on my experiences of quiet writing as I negotiate it as a central value
Ideas on the writing process and how to grow, express and value your unique voice
A focus on the strengths of quietness and introversion to cultivate depth and connection
A lot about the art and value of living quietly – creative spaces, our environment, relationships
Conversations about books, reading, influences and podcasts that celebrate this kind of life
Thought pieces on creative connections: tarot, astrology, symbols, Jungian psychology
An exploration of contexts such as leadership, innovation, productivity, planning, strategy and managing introversion in public roles.

And into the future, I am planning much more, with Quiet Writing being the core of a heart centred gathering of like minded people with sharing of influences and connections to bring us all alive.

Key influences:

In starting anew here, I’d like to express gratitude and acknowledge the key influences, connections and reading, writing and personal development projects that have brought me here. They include:

Susannah Conway’s e-courses such as Blogging from the Heart, Journal your Life and The Inside Story and her inspiring journeys on building a heart filled creative life and business that have supported and nurtured my own;
Danielle LaPorte’s everything and especially The Desire Map Core Desired Feelings and Style Statement work, her energy, passion and constant encouragement in creativity;
Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn and her generous and informative blog, resources and podcasts and for the powerful and inspiring role model of her business and writing life;
Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking and The Quiet Revolution which have helped me make sense of so much and which I hope to build on in my own unique way here as a voice empowered by this strength;
Sage Cohen, writing mentor and author, whose books including ‘Writing the Life Poetic‘ and ‘Fierce on the Page‘ are always close at hand and who has helped me get back to writing and to navigate some very difficult times with courage and grace;
And finally, my creative buddy, Victoria Smith, who inspires me always with her mojo, wise words and practical magic and who has been such a valuable support in recent times as my life coach as I navigate new horizons.

I’ve written about my influences previously in this post and you can see that Susannah, Danielle, Joanna and Sage have been strong influences since 2010 so I owe them enduring gratitude for their inspiration and support.

Acknowledgements:

I also want to acknowledge my family and friends at this time of making a new start, for without them and their sacred place in my life, I would not be writing quietly here now:

To my partner Keith, for supporting, enabling me and loving me for who I am. Strong, independent women can make it on their own but it can be lonely; having the support of a strong and independent man who lets me shine is a rare and valued thing. I am lucky enough to have had two such men in my life: my Dad and Keith: Thank you, Keith, for your support and for our ability to negotiate tough times with humour and grace. Our love is deepening as we enter this new time.
To my daughter Caitlin, who embodies the spirit of quiet writing in her beautiful being with her love of language, reading and solitude: It’s the greatest of treasures being your mother and watching you grow into the independent and strong woman that you are. You teach and inspire me constantly in so many quiet ways as you always have and I love you so much.
To my father and mother: My father taught me so much about the strength of quietness without me even realising. No longer with us, I realise now that he was probably an INTJ just like me and my quiet strength, love of books and reading and so much more comes from him. And my beautiful mother who is the bravest person I know, who has loved me and my brother so fiercely and managed the most challenging times with such quiet resilience I can only wonder at. To both: the fiercest of love and gratitude back to you.
To my little brother Martin, who left us so tragically and suddenly by his own hand in 2007. The impetus of much of this blog and its creative work stems from the time of his death. I wish it had come to me another way than through the grief and learning from such terrible loss: The hole in my heart is so large and I try each day to fill it with light. I know you visit in the butterfly spirits that come by so gently and we need to learn to speak of you more. I will keep your spirit alive here, transcending into quiet writing and as I said at your funeral, in the words of ‘Crowded House’:

And if you choose to take that path
I will play you like a shark
And I’ll clutch at your heart
I’ll come flying like a spark to inflame you.

To my family, friends and especially my creative friends in real life and on Instagram and in other special places like the Mojo Lab Inner Circle: linking with you gives me such great heart for the journey and I love our connections each and every day.
And to my ancestry, my lineage, especially the women in my family who scribbled poems that I have found, tucked into recipe books and who signed their names as an X: I am sure you wrote quietly in your heads, hearing your own voice, and who knows what might have been in different circumstances. I thank all those who have gone before me to enable this room of my own to be able to have the voice that I have and the ability to use it. May I use it wisely and with passion and influence to likewise blaze a trail for others.

Thank you for staying to read to this point. I know it’s long but for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, these things need to be said here as a threshold piece in moving forward. The card I drew today, the Six of Swords (shown here from the Sakki Sakki deck) is a clue I think – there is a passage, a crossing over, a heading into and a leaving behind at this time.

So let us begin here.

I look forward to connecting with and learning from you and I encourage you to connect with me.

You can sign up at the top so you receive ‘Quiet Writing‘ posts and information via email. I promise I won’t bombard you and I’ll respect your space. I’ll be aiming for about 1-2 posts a week that I hope will inspire you and this way, you can also keep in touch with new developments here as they unfold.

In the spirit of connecting and commencing here, I’ve opened up about ‘Quiet Writing‘, its background and how it expresses my unique voice. I’d love for you to say hello and tell me in your special two words (or more, given I’ve taken so many!) how you express your creativity and uniqueness in the world.

Let me know your thoughts as I start out anew. I’d love to hear from you so I’m not just howling into the wind, as valuable as it is.

Terri x

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introversion love, loss & longing poetry

People hide their love

July 28, 2013

When I was in high school, I used to travel to stay with a friend and her family at a little cottage high on a hill overlooking beaches on the south coast of New South Wales. It was a wild place, wind-swept and exposed; you could sit on the bed at the back of the house and see hang-gliders cruising past like coloured seagulls surfing the wind’s current.

The house smelt of kerosene lamps, wooden floor boards and that not disagreeable but musty smell of holiday houses. Above all it was homely. There were books, blankets, beds and beaches. You could lie on the bed and read and sleep. There was nothing you absolutely had to do.

In that house, in those holiday breaks, I discovered something of the essence of poetry. I found an old edition of ‘170 Chinese Poems‘, one of Arthur Waley’s books of translation of Chinese poems, originally published in 1918. In there, I found what has since been one of my favourite poems, ‘People Hide Their Love’:

People Hide Their Love
By Wu-Ti, Emperor of the Liang Dynasty (AD 464-549)

Who says that it’s by my desire,
This separation, this living so far from you?
My dress still smells of the perfume that you wore;
My hand still holds the letter that you sent.
Round my waist I wear a double sash;
I dream that it binds us both with a same-heart knot.
Did you know that people hide their love,
Like a flower that seems too precious to be picked?

This poem, these words, have stayed with me over the years like an underlying theme. I owe to them, to Arthur Waley’s book of translations I found in that musty holiday house, my love of poetry. It was about this time that I started to write. I was not aware at the time but these words and the spare and simple beauty of Chinese poetry stitched their way into my heart.

I don’t even know what it all means that people hide their love. I do know that there are reasons why we might hide our love: circumstance, loss, not knowing if our love will be reciprocated, just not finding the time until it is too late, not knowing if it is the right thing to do or say, not knowing if it is the right person, not knowing if we are good enough, or so we say to ourselves. And through all this, there is a sense of intense longing that this poem so delicately captures.

Perhaps my love of poetry also is something I hide. I don’t talk about it, like it’s some rarefied jewel or hidden piece of me, sometimes held a little too preciously. I let it languish and there is a distance I feel from it despite it being the essence of me. The poems I have written over many years are the heart of me and yet feel so far away.

Perhaps there is something there also of not knowing if it is the right thing to do, if I am good enough (or so I say to myself), if there is really any point, of who will read these pieces of my heart anyway and what does it really mean to be a poet. And for these reasons, the distance can grow across the years with some time before anything else is written or said.

Perhaps we hide our love of valued things like poetry as well as people because it is too much for us, too precious, or we feel a sense of not being up to them. Sometimes this might be out of our control due to circumstance; sometimes we might impose this on ourselves, this hiding of our love becoming potentially a loss of ourselves and to ourselves and what we might otherwise be or create.

Why are we not saying what we think, what we feel, to people? Why are we not writing the poems that are in our hearts?

You can see why this quiet poem can be the voice of a lifetime.

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loss

Beginning the journey

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion

You can’t prepare for life’s worst-case scenario

The healing power of writing

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life

Learning about the impermanence of everything

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing

Finding my writing voice through journaling

Finding joy after grief and pain

Key book companions along the way

Read more Wholehearted Stories

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

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Some of us think holding on makes us strong;

but sometimes it is letting go.

Hermann Hesse

Unfinished Symphonies

Closure, completion and finishing off

Ways to finish on a high note

Tie up the loose ends

See things through to completion and celebrate that

Say thank you

Forgive

Take what’s valuable with you

Cycles, abandoned success and the Eight of Cups

And your unfinished symphony?

Keep in touch

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Anzac Day

Postcards from the war

Closer to home

A poem of remembrance and peace

Rose, rosemary and remembrance

Sources

Thought pieces

Keep in touch

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Thought pieces:

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Hello and welcome to Quiet Writing

So what is Quiet Writing about?

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

So what can you expect here at Quiet Writing?

Key influences:

Acknowledgements:

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