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Creative and Connected #4 – the wholehearted edition

July 7, 2017

 

wholehearted

Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected and an exciting wholehearted Quiet Writing guest posting opportunity!

Here’s a round up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms with a focus this week on being wholehearted in life and creativity.

One of the core concepts behind Quiet Writing is being wholehearted and having the self-leadership to connect with others and feel integrated within ourselves to achieve our creative goals.

This week, Creative and Connected explores this theme:

What is wholehearted? Why is it important? What are the factors in having a great life? How can we bring our whole selves to our careers and creative practices?

And there’s a special opportunity for you to share ‘Your Wholehearted Story’ on Quiet Writing! Yes, I’m putting out a call for for guest bloggers – I’m looking for some special people to write for Quiet Writing about what being wholehearted means to you. More on this below but I’m very excited to be opening Quiet Writing up to our collective voices so we can share the living of a whole, creative and connected life in support of each other.

Podcasts on wholehearted living

The 3 Most Important Factors for Having a Great Life with Jonathan Fields

Jonathan Fields is a leader in helping people create meaningful, connected and happy lives. In this interview on Melyssa Griffin’s Pursuit with Purpose podcast, he shares his work across different careers including shifting from law into different directions that were more in line with his heart and what he wanted in life.

Key points for me were:

  • Jonathan’s core set of questions and metrics to consider when making a life change
  • The three areas of your life that determine whether or not you’ll have a fulfilled, happy life: connection, contribution and vitality – and suggestions for how to achieve these.

Elizabeth Dialto on The Wild Soul Woman

This fabulous podcast chat between Julie Parker and Elizabeth Dialto on The Priestess Podcast was so much fun. Elizabeth is the founder of Wild Soul Movement, author of Untame Yourself, and host of the popular Untame The Wild Soul Woman podcast.

This conversation is about how the Divine Feminine can mean all manner of things for women in being untamed including embracing less traditionally female archetypes. The podcast also explores some of the traditional roles that women play that can keep us in people pleasing mode and not embracing our fuller, wilder, more assertive soul within. Super enjoyable and an invitation to wholehearted divine feminine living!

Books and reading notes

Reading wise this week I started Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard about a dysfunctional family of apple-growers in 19th century America.

Tracy Chevalier is a favourite author of mine. Her specialty is historical fiction and she has a wonderful way of taking a historical story and building on it with a fictional narrative. She is especially strong on creating a sense of place. ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is probably her most famous book but my favourite is ‘Remarkable Creatures’ set in Lyme Regis in Dorset and based on the real life story of pioneering fossil hunter, Mary Anning.

Tracy Chevalier announced on Twitter this week that Remarkable Creatures is currently being made into a movie.

This is so exciting! When I read Remarkable Creatures it just begged to be made into a movie – it’s so evocative and visual and such a fabulous story. Plus if you love Lyme Regis, Dorset and fossils as I do, it’s just pure heaven. It’s a story of discovery, self-belief and strength, especially of female strength and courage, in the face of opposition.

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

There have been some interesting blog posts on wholehearted living, being clear, moving through and understanding your personality type and its influence recently:

The only 3 things you need to live a good life explains Jonathan Field’s concept of how the joy of living can be seen in terms of three simple buckets: connection, contribution, and vitality. It’s easy to focus on and check in with, clear and remarkably helpful.

In Why your introversion doesn’t dictate your career path over on The Introvert Effect, Rebecca McFarland explains how being an introvert doesn’t limit you with your career paths and ways of working. You just need to learn to work it differently. Rebecca shares some fabulous tips for managing career and roles outside your comfortable energy zone.

In a great post on The Leadership Styles of Every Myers-Briggs® Personality Type, Susan Storm explores each MBTI type around the strengths and weaknesses of its unique leadership style. The key message?

Any type can be a leader, but every type is going to do it a little bit differently.

Insightful, thorough and grounded in practical experience, it’s a valuable reference for understanding leadership and personality type.

A post that spoke to me deeply this week was Nicole Cody’s Small Steps and a Pep Talk for Hard Days. It seems I’m not alone in finding this year to be a challenging one. Sometimes it’s hard to see that we are making progress. This post is a great reminder to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come. This is also a theme that popped up for me this week in my Tarot Narrative intuitive messages.

My own post on 10 Amazing Life Lessons from Swimming in the Sea was also really positively received in all sorts of ways which was so heartening. I loved writing this post on the many things that swimming in the sea has taught me this year. It’s been such a valuable learning experience in exercise, connection with community and feeling more whole through vitality and being coached by inspirational fit women buddies, Jeanette Buchanan and Samantha Wheatley.

sea swimming

An invitation to guest post on Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’

And now to an exciting opportunity to guest post on Quiet Writing!

Quiet Writing celebrates wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity.

But what does wholehearted mean to me – and you?

It’s a word I found coming out of my mouth in a negative sense firstly. About a year ago, I found myself saying, “I am just not feeling wholehearted any more.” And this sense started a deep search and a time of transition to a more wholehearted way of creating and living that is expressing itself in many ways. This is through Quiet Writing here, in my writing, in learning to be a Life Coach, in becoming certified in personality type assessment and in working more with intuitive tools such as tarot and oracle. And it’s also expressed in my developing work in coaching to support others who want to feel more creative and connected. And I am so loving all of this!

In the early stages of this transition journey, I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast “Who gets to decide if you’re a legitimate artist?‘ with poet, teacher, storyteller and artist, Mark Nepo. In discussing how to help Cecilia, a poet who has become marooned with writing because of not feeling good enough, being rejected and not being able to get into an MFA program, Mark offers her the word ‘wholehearted’ as advice and reads his beautiful poem:

Breaking Surface

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won’t let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can’t be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.

I listened to Mark reading this poem on the podcast again today and cried (again). It touches me so deeply and is what Quiet Writing is all about: letting no one keep us from our journey and being the creative explorer of our hearts.

So I’ve decided it’s time to hear more voices around wholehearted living and what it means to us here at Quiet Writing.

I am offering you the opportunity to consider guest posting here at Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’. Initially, I have six places on offer for 2017 – one per month to be featured here so that we can learn from each others’ journeys of the heart in this space.

I am hoping that we can also consider a regular or one-off publication or online magazine as well. I feel that there is a wealth of wholehearted stories to tap into to support us all, as source that we can add to and connect with over time.

wholehearted

What is ‘My Wholehearted Story’?

So here’s a summary of what I am thinking and what I am looking for:

What is wholehearted?

  • bringing your whole self to career and creative practice
  • not leaving parts of you, especially the creative, poetic, spiritual aspects, at the door, any door
  • being whole, being authentic, being light, being present
  • self-care and care of and connection with others
  • yin and yang, dark and light, strength and weakness, shadow explorations
  • living our unique passions, gifts and influences
  • being our body of work in the world

How does it connect with Quiet Writing?

Quiet Writing focuses on the core values of being

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

It’s about the strength that comes from working steadily without fanfare in writing and other spheres to coalesce, create, influence and connect. And it’s about honouring the process as much as the product; the being, becoming and journey, as much as the arrival. It’s about the artistry behind closed doors and how it merges and weaves into that of everyday life.

This beautiful quote, from Irene Claremont de Castillejo, in the frontispiece to The Heart Aroused by David Whyte captures the feeling for me around this more soulful kind of living:

Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes….Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting opposites together. But there are some who have no recognised artistic form to serve this purpose, they are the artists of the living. To my mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.”

What might you write about?

I’m interested in the ways that you have strived to build all or any of these values – creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected – into living more wholeheartedly. And how you have worked and written and created quietly to make this happen, behind the scenes, as a form of the art of the living.

I’m interested in guest blog posts and writing around these types of questions:

  • What makes you feel wholehearted and what does it mean to you?
  • What have your learnings been about being whole in heart and mind?
  • What tools, tips, practices, do you have for others?
  • Which intuitive tools, exercise, learning, skills or courses have made a significant difference for you?
  • How have you worked your strengths and weaknesses to blend and find wholeness?
  • What have been the challenges, the shadow journeys and how have you overcome them?
  • What fears have you faced and wrangled on the way and what have you learnt from this?
  • Which passions and loves come together to make you feel whole?
  • What have been the features of connecting to feeling more whole: rhythms, women’s voices, cycles, the journeys of others?
  • What have been your key influences: which book or other inspiration helped make sense of all this for you?
  • What aspects of your identity or personality journey have you worked through eg introversion, extraversion, understanding of your personality/MBTI type, your artistic or poetic self?
  • Which critical learnings about an aspect of your personality made all the difference in feeling whole and comfortable in your uniqueness?
  • What symbols, archetypes or natural cycles work for you and how do you work with them?
  • How have you practised self-leadership to feel more wholehearted?

As you can see, there are so many ways of looking at this concept of wholeheartedness and what makes us sing and be able to do our unique work in the world. I’d love to hear your story!

You would need to contribute:

  • a 2000 word (maximum) blog post draft to me a week in advance of an agreed date for publication
  • any suggested accompanying images and photos that you would like to include
  • a bio and accompanying photo

What are the benefits?

The benefits for you are:

  • being featured as a creative and connected voice in the Quiet Writing community
  • the opportunity to share your work, business, writing and learning
  • the opportunity to flex your writing muscles in new ways
  • the chance to reflect on your journey and experience in being wholehearted and share this
  • increased connection with like-minded others
  • the possibility of inclusion in a regular or one-off online publication if there is sufficient interest

The benefits for the Quiet Writing community are:

  • our voices coming together to celebrate being creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected
  • sharing journeys to living more wholeheartedly so we can help each other to shine
  • feeling more connected with a community of like-minded people around creative living and blending this with career and other aspects of life
  • the opportunity for publishing as a collective of voices to help inspire others in wholehearted creative living

If you’re interested?

Initially, I have six guest blogging spots available for each remaining month of 2017. But I’m hoping that the response will be such that we can consider an ongoing ‘My Wholehearted Story’ feature each month or more regularly as well other ways to showcase our stories together.

If you are interested in one of these initial guest blogging spots, please contact me as soon as possible at terri@quietwriting.com with your immediate thoughts on what you would like to focus on for your piece.

I’ll provide more details on specifics following this but I’d love your initial thoughts and a sense of response.

Or feel free to provide any thoughts on the concept of ‘My Wholehearted Story’ in the comments or via email. I’d love to hear your thoughts and can’t wait to receive your responses!

wholehearted

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Underwater swimming image via pexels.com

Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free ebook on the books that have shaped my story is coming soon for subscribers only – so sign up to be the first to receive it!

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

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

You might also enjoy:

6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers

Creative and Connected #3 – on self-care

Creative and Connected #2

Creative and Connected #1

Personality, story and Introverted Intuition

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

creativity inspiration & influence

Creative and connected #2 – this week’s inspiration

June 23, 2017

creative and connected

Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected!

Here’s a round up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms:

Podcasts

My favourite podcast listen of the week was Joanna Penn’s recent chat (5 June 2017) with Nick Stephenson on The Creative Penn podcast: How to Manage Your Time and Automate your Author Marketing.

creative and connected

The conversation focuses on designing our businesses to suit our personalities and reflects on how especially for introverts, some activities can be especially draining and not a good return on the time invested. Joanna and Nick talk about how to say no to opportunities and options that aren’t a good fit. There’s also a special focus on how to automate parts of your business so it’s not so labour intensive. Whether you are working on an author or coaching business or just looking at how you prioritise and manage your time, it’s excellent and fun listening.

Books and reading notes

Much of my focus in reading right now is going into the ebook that I am writing on the books that have influenced me. I look forward to sharing this with you soon. Plus my daily Tarot Narratives on Instagram feature revisiting favourite and connected reads that tarot inspires. So there’s a lot of reading going on traversing realms I have already visited that is only making me want to read many books all over again!

I’ve also focused on finishing the books I’ve been reading recently. I finished ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ which was an enjoyable fantasy read – and not a genre I read very often. I’m also close to finishing ‘Rise Sister Rise’, by Rebecca Campbell which is inspiring me every time I open it and is highly recommended. I’m also making good progress with Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur by Joanna Penn as an audiobook when I’m on the road. All these were mentioned in more detail in last week’s Creative and Connected post.

I’m looking forward to starting some new reads this coming week. My planned reads are:

Love Warrior – by Glennon Doyle Melton – a memoir I’ve heard so much about and want to experience.

Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, by David Whyte – recommended by my dear friend Katherine and a book I know I need to read right now. It’s well overdue. This book is about work as an opportunity for discovery and growth.

The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life, by Mark Nepo – a book that’s been sitting close by because I know I need to read it. It popped up in one of my Tarot Narratives this week to remind me it’s time!

Both David Whyte and Mark Nepo are favourite authors because they focus on journeys to wholeness – such as how the corporate world and poetry come together and living a life with nothing held back whatever the context. These are themes that I connect with so strongly as I develop my coaching and writing work in the world and support others with feeling wholehearted.

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

In terms of reads and posts on personality and MBTI preferences and functions, I enjoyed these reads:

  • On Life Reaction:  this read about managing intuitive and sensoric functions in relationships
  • This video from Carl Jung and shared by @uber_chill also explains these differences.

I love this story told by Carl Jung which has helped me understand the intuitive vs sensory type differences.

You might also enjoy my own post here on Quiet Writing on Personality, story and Introverted Intuition which provides a brief overview of personality and focuses on my dominant function, Introverted Intuition, as a starting point.

Many thanks to Quiet Writing reader Claire of the beautiful Nest of Mist for alerting me to Debra Eve’s Later Bloomer website where ‘Creativity Never Gets Old’ – and hooray for that! Debra’s website is a fabulous celebration of late bloomers from all walks of life – artists, athletes, explorers and writers – and encourages us to embrace creativity wherever we are in our lives. I especially enjoyed the post on James Michener – one of my dear Dad’s favourite authors. I can remember summer holidays by the beach with ‘The Source’ and other similar epic novels being eagerly embraced with such relish and joy. The post made me think of how creativity and a love of reading is communicated through family connections and through what we see others enjoy. I think my Dad was an INTJ MBTI type like me – he also really loved Ayn Rand!

On Instagram, there’s been a fabulous week of prompts around #mywritinglife created by Vanessa Carnevale which started on Monday 19 June. The prompts are:

  1. Writing Space
  2. Current WIP
  3. Favourite Books
  4. Inspiration
  5. Writing Fuel
  6. Current Read
  7. TBR Pile

There’s still time to join in or just take the time to make some new writer connections via the hashtag. There’s inspiration and insight there into workspaces, works in progress and favourite books.

Here’s my post for day 4 Inspiration based on a walk in the Royal National Park and location as muse – my local environment is such a source of inspiration!


I am also so enjoying my Tarot Narrative project and posts each day on Instagram, working with tarot and oracle cards to prepare the guidance intuitively, linking them with books and the interactions arising from this. It’s become such a deep practice to start my day. Thanks for the engaging connection with this work – I hope it’s helpful and welcome any feedback!

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday. I hope you enjoy it – I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too! Have a fabulous creative weekend.

Here’s a final thought from Julia Cameron:

#creativity #juliacameron #theartistsway #artist #writing

A post shared by Julia Cameron (@juliacameronlive) on


 Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free ebook on the books that have shaped my story is coming soon for subscribers only – so sign up to be the first to receive it!

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

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

You might also enjoy:

6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers

Creative and Connected #1

coaching intuition personality and story

Personality, story and Introverted Intuition

June 19, 2017

Knowing your personality type is a way to explore your deeper story. Here’s a brief overview of personality and Introverted Intuition as a starting point.

personality

As an INTJ Jung/Myers-Briggs type, Introverted Intuition is my dominant function and preference. I wrote about this function recently on a guest post on Life Reaction.

It’s certainly a mysterious one though and it’s taken me time to really trust and learn from it. Becoming certified in personality type assessment via the Majors Personality Type InventoryTM  based on Jung/Myers-Briggs theory has enabled me to dive more deeply into the way it works. 

This training has helped me to understand that personality is a story, a life story, that can help us to weave and find our way in the world. It provides a framework that helps us understand our dominant preferences or gifts, why we love what we love and how we can work these gifts to shine brighter.

As well, it can provide an insight into the less developed aspects of our personality that we might illuminate to feel more whole. It can also help us to understand individual differences in orientations and why other people such as our partners and work colleagues may operate so differently to us in some ways. 

The landscape of personality

So where does ‘Introverted Intuition’ fit into the landscape of personality?

It’s a deep and complex topic but here’s a brief overview. I look forward to continuing to explore these areas of personality in future posts here and elsewhere including in my coaching interactions.

For context, The Myers and Briggs Foundation provides the following key advice:

The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives.  The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment.

Carl Jung’s theory of personality identified eight functions – four are Perceiving functions and four are Judging functions. The functions are used differently depending on whether they are expressed in the internal world or the external world.

The summary overview below is based on Mary McGuiness’s excellent book ’You’ve Got Personality’ including her keywords for the functions.

The four Perceiving functions are:

Extraverted Sensing – abbreviated as Se – Sensory Experience

Introverted Sensing – Si – Sensory Memory

Extraverted Intuition – Ne – Exploring possibilities

Introverted Intuition – Ni – Visionary insight

The four Judging functions are:

Extraverted Thinking – Te – Logical outcomes

Introverted Thinking – Ti – Internal analysis

Extraverted Feeling – Fe – Harmonizing people

Introverted Feeling – Fi – Universal values

Further work by Isabel Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs based on Jung’s work added the fourth dimension into the picture – Judging and Perceiving. From this work, the four pairs of preferences were developed that form the basis of the 16 x four letter MBTI® type references we know today:

Extraversion vs Introversion (E/I)

Sensing vs Intuition (S/N)

Thinking vs Feeling (T/F)

Judging vs Perceiving (J/P)

Each type has a Dominant, Auxiliary, Tertiary and Inferior function and these are dynamic frameworks within which our personality plays out and which we can use as points of orientation.

For my type, INTJ (Introverted, Intuition, Thinking, Judging), for example, Intuition is introverted and Thinking is extraverted. As I and other people of my type prefer introversion (I), Intuition is the Dominant function and Thinking is the Auxiliary function. INTJ types typically use Intuition to make sense of the world from an inner, reflective and symbolic perspective and use Thinking (logic) in the outer world to organise, frame and structure things.

In terms of the eight Jungian functions, people are able to develop all but some are more instinctive for each type than others. Understanding your type and your preferred functions helps you make sense of the way you perceive and organise the world, internally and externally.

You can read more personality basics here.

Personality types and functions

So what does all this mean for understanding Introverted Intuition and whether it applies to you?

As I say in the Life Reaction article:

If you identify as an INTJ or INFJ (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®) personality type, Introverted Intuition is typically your dominant function; if you identify as an ENTJ or ENFJ, it’s your auxiliary function; for ISFP and ISTP types, it’s the tertiary function and for ESFP and ESTP types, it’s the inferior function. It plays out in a lesser way for other types. You can read more here. And if you don’t know your type, it’s not a huge issue; if the words ‘Introverted Intuition’ speak to you, chances are they are natural preferences for you or areas on your radar for development.

So if you don’t know about personality types or know your type, trust your intuition and if it feels like something you’d like to know more about, read the article!

If you do know your personality type and you’re not sure how the functions work in terms of your type, Angelina Bennet has a fabulous analogy in ‘Shadows of Type’. She describes them in terms of a car analogy: the dominant function is the driver of the car; the auxiliary function is the passenger in the front helping with navigation; the tertiary function is the teenager in the back; and the inferior function is like the baby in the car seat occasionally screaming for attention especially from the driver!

So Introverted Intuition, for example, could be playing out in all sort of ways in your personality and life even if it’s not the dominant piece, just as all functions in your particular type have the potential to do.

A deeper dive into your personality type with a coach or person with certification in the area can help you work through the rich detail. This helps you know how to apply this valuable knowledge in a practical way.

Personality, story and life coaching

I’m loving exploring personality and story in the context of life coaching. Working with pro bono clients now, it’s amazing how personality type weaves its way into the conversation implicitly or explicitly.

With my training and professional background, it’s something I can bring to life coaching quietly or overtly. I love the framework for personal growth it provides.

Understanding our personality is a key to gaining insight into our story and working with our gifts. It’s a way of knowing what we can develop to be more wholehearted, calling on our less developed preferences.

Knowing your personality type is a way to find your deeper story.  It’s a fascinating journey to go deeper into its threads and mysteries.

And as Isabel Briggs Myers has said:

It is up to each person to recognize his or her true preferences.

So personality is a story you write with the natural preferences you have been given.

I’m developing my personality offerings including identifying your type via the Majors Personality InventoryTM, and linking them with my Life Coaching offerings, so sign up to Quiet Writing via email to keep informed.

But for starters, head on over to Life Reaction and read about how Introverted Intuition has helped me pull the threads together and write my personality story.

Happy reading and welcome any questions and thoughts on personality, story and Introverted Intuition.

persona

Thought pieces

As well as my Life Reaction piece, you can read more about the fascinating world of Introverted Intuition here:

Introverted Intuition (Ni) – Dr A J Drenth (Personality Junkie)

The Magic and Mystery of Introverted Intuition – Susan Storm (Psychology Junkie)

Introverted Intuiting (Ni) Explained – Michael T Robinson (Career Planner)

Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and whole-hearted self-leadership. This includes personality skills, Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type developments, coaching, creativity, writing and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. You will also receive my free 95-page ebook 36 Books that Shaped my Story – so sign up now to receive it!

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.

You might also enjoy:

Personality skills including how you can be the best you can be as an introvert in recruitment

Introverted and Extraverted Intuition – how to make intuition a strong practice

Being a vessel or working with introverted intuition

Overwhelm, intuition and thinking

Intuition, writing and work: eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers

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family history transcending

The journey back

October 7, 2012

To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.

Chinese proverb

It was a day when I felt a bit lost. For a number of reasons, I was drifting, moving between, floating, without roots, between one place and another, one state and another.

As a result, I ended up with one precious commodity – time – something that seems so scarce: some wide open, spaced and sacred time to fill. Though not in the best frame of mind, I set out to fill it in a meaningful and productive way. I was driving, heading west into the sunshine and mountains, music sustaining me and opening me up as it always does; Tom Petty singing:

It don’t really matter to me baby,
You believe what you want to believe,
You don’t have to live like a refugee.

And then Echo and the Bunnymen pumping out:

If I said I’d lost my way
Would you sympathise
Could you sympathise?
I’m jumbled up
Maybe I’m losing my touch
I’m jumbled up
Maybe I’m losing my touch
But you know I didn’t have it anyway

Won’t you come on down to my
Won’t you come on down to my rescue

Then Matchbox 20:

Baby, baby, baby
When all your love is gone
Who will save me
From all I’m up against out in this world

It was that sort of day, the music and lyrics exactly corresponding with my somewhat disconnected state; the sunshine somehow leading me along.

It felt like a day for investigation, with the gift of time to try to find an answer to a puzzle about one of my ancestors; it’s a branch of the family I am particularly drawn to, as if working to understand their story might help me with my own. They lived and worked and in some cases, died, in the country I was driving through so I took a detour to try to find them. I found the old graveyard I was looking for, hidden behind a high hedge,  so many souls buried in the sunshine, the stones standing still and quiet as if patiently waiting for my attention.

I wandered through the rows of washed out stones. There were so many of them I couldn’t read; they were covered with moss or lichen or the words had vanished, weathered and erased away, the story lost. I felt for the lost words with my fingers, trying to trace the story and bring it back. But sometimes there was simply nothing left except a rock, blank and weathered. And sometimes there was less, just a grass space, unmarked between other stones.

I found some connected relatives including my third great grand aunt, Ann Sweet nee Honeysett, who came out in 1839 on the same ship as her sister, my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Colbran nee Honeysett. I have chased their story to Herstmonceux in East Sussex from where they departed to Richmond in NSW where they ended up, carving a new existence in a new place. The enormity of their journey and the extent of the ties they severed never fails to amaze me.

I know much of Ann’s story, her leaving, her arriving, her new family, its background, her children, the sad events, the new beginnings. I know it better than my own great, great great grandmother’s story which still has huge gaps despite my searching. It was good to find Ann’s resting place, other members of the family close by, a part of the mystery I am trying to understand.

Whether it was the sunshine that bathed my pores as I walked around scouring the old stones, or the act of connecting with these souls and their history, I found myself strangely grounded, blossoming in the linkage, surrounded by the ones I seek but cannot exactly find the truth about. An invisible thread linking us, a few degrees of separation joined and resulting in a stitching of myself.

Australian actor, Vince Colosimo, in a recent ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode, talked of a sense of finding his team as he searches for his family background. I know this feeling. As I have lost people in my immediate family, the desire to know more about my broader family history and the qualities and experiences of my  ancestors has strengthened as I search to know the roots of my own journey. A sense of teamwork in getting me through much suffering has been part of this, as if they are somehow helping me along.

So less of a refugee, less in need of rescue, less in need of bright lights and touched by the sun, I climbed back into the car re-energised and continued on my drive with the sound of bell-birds, the lean of curves and the guidance of trees taking me back to my temporary home. It’s as if the act of remembering, the conscious act of seeking my ancestors, my silent team of supporters, cast something of a connecting spell on the present time and I was carried up and forward once again.

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creativity writing

Gems #5 Facts, inspiration and story

July 26, 2010

Some recent writing gems on fact in fiction, inspiration and writing a story:

I loved the post, Making True Fiction, from Shanna Germain. It contemplates how true the facts need to be in fiction and how far you need to go with your research and accuracy in writing. It contemplates the conundrum of:  ‘In order to make stuff up, you have to convince your readers that it’s real. Both emotionally real and world-wise real.’

I am interested in this as the novel I am planning is in the historical fiction genre. I can see myself researching forever in the name of factual accuracy when the emotional authenticity of the story is the real issue. But how to get the balance? Starting out with the image of drowning vs the reality, Shanna explores what’s true, what’s fact, what’s accuracy and how much we need of these for an authentic reading experience. It’s an excellent thought piece I continue to think about on many levels. Some great readers’ comments also.

The guest post by Benison O’Reilly,’ Writers, Inspiration and the Ideas We Collect,’ on Suzannah Freeman’s ‘Write it Sideways’  was always going to grab me, based as it is on my favourite bird: the beautiful, sleek, dark blue, satin bower bird. The bowers of these fabulous birds are the result of the most amazing courting ritual of gathering blue items to attract a mate. If you ever see a nest, it’s littered with blue bottle tops, blue pegs and other (blue) detritus. All these riches to attract a mate  – check out the great pic in the article.

The point of the article is that writers need to be like bower birds, gathering, noting, recording, attuned to detail so we can use it for writing:

‘Undiscovered gems are scattered everywhere if you care to look. Keep your eyes and ears open and be disciplined, record everything.’

Read it – it’s brilliant just like the blue of the satin bower bird!

And finally, a custom made article just for me. From reading the author’s blog of C Patrick Schulze and a follow-up twitter conversation, he asked if there was anything specific I needed help with in my writing. I mentioned planning my novel as that is what I need to do next. I have done the research, have the idea but need to plan and get started. The result was a fantastic post with my needs in mind, ‘Don’t write a novel, write a story’. I expected structure, plot, planning details but this overall approach to how to manage the framework of the story was perfect for me just now. My main character’s journey doesn’t seem so heroic on the surface, but this is what I feel – a hero underneath to be resurrected, a victim of circumstances and difficult times that lost her way. I am honoured by the article and its helpfulness. Special thanks to C Patrick Schulze!

Image, Gems by Orbital Joe from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license.

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family history love, loss & longing transcending writing

The healing power of family history

July 5, 2010

 

My family has had a traumatic time over the past years. My younger brother died very tragically in November 2007. It was the saddest day and life was never the same. My father then died suddenly in May, 2009 so another wave of loss ensued and my happy, stable family of four was halved. Like all people dealing with grief, I struggled to get through the days, the weeks, the months after each episode and still feel the deepest sense of loss. I connect to them, especially my brother, through music as I drive to work first through the bush and then through the traffic. Music is such a powerful source of memory and connection.

Another way I found myself managing these terrible waves of grief was through family history.  I had already begun my search before these events, tracking back like a detective through the generations following the links. With the separation and the trauma from the deaths of those so close to me, family history and  ‘looking back to look forward’  has become a link to my brother and my father. My extended family, also their family, the closest link.  I could find the line anchoring us. I could lose myself in the research and discovery about where we came from. And from that, the story of our history could emerge and connect us. New narratives could form; old buried stories could be brought alive. Christina Baldwin in Storycatcher (details below) talks about tending the fire, the responsibility of being a storycatcher and the power of story to connect, ‘heal, remind and guide us.’

It’s not the only answer but:

  • if moving through is having something to cling to that helps you think about the future, ironically by planting you firmly in the past….
  • if moving through is knowing more about where you came from and the shared history you take forward…
  • if moving through is finding stories that connect you, knowing more about the stories of your ancestors and finding those that resonate…
  • if healing is about losing yourself in something so you are not completely overwhelmed by thoughts of grief and moment to moment anguish…
  • if story helps anchor your creativity and move you forward into something new, to integration and resolution even if it’s all not perfect or ever the same as it was…

then family history offers a healing place, a space to learn and engage with your origins, as far as you can, to take you forward to help you face a new future.

I am not a therapist or an affiliate of any family history sites or the resources below. I speak from the experience of working through family history as part of a  personal healing journey over the past few years. For me, it has led to an immense inner resource of narrative that I wish to tell in other ways such as through the writing of novels based on the stories of my ancestors. I am researching and planning this work at present.

For some people, family history research may not be possible or easy for various reasons, but I encourage people to consider the value of story to help connect in whatever way possible. Our stories of being disconnected also need to be told. The story from my family history that is the most compelling is one of absolute disconnection and  it is demanding to be told.

Some resources I have found useful on this journey are:

Ancestry: Amazing site with so many electronic data bases of records and existing family histories. You need to join up for the full benefits but there is much to gain from this.

Storycatcher: making sense of our lives through the power and practice of story, Christina Baldwin: an excellent book on story and the value of narrative to help frame new worlds.

The pictures on this page are some of the relatives I have found out more about through my searches. The woman above is one of my great, great, great grandmothers, Susannah Morris ( nee Richardson). The man below is her husband, William Morris. Both were early Australian settlers. How these photos have survived from such an early time, I do not know. My thanks to extended family member, Allan Morris, for passing them onto  family member and fellow researcher, Alex McDonald and I. This is the other thing that happens – you find new family connections and forge new links that you never knew you had.

Do you have any stories to tell about the healing power of family history?

 

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