Raising Social Justice Awareness with Meaghan Katrak Harris

May 5, 2022

In Podcast Episode 16, Raising Social Justice Awareness, I chat with Meaghan Katrak Harris – author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism about her book and how the arts can be a powerful medium for raising social justice awareness.

Welcome to Episode 16 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Raising Social Justice Awareness.

I’m joined by Meaghan Katrak Harris – Social Worker, Academic, Consultant, Writer and author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism.

We chat about writing Memories and Elephants, genres, influences, publishing, casual racism and privileged practices and behaviours and their impact on individuals and society. And how the arts can be a powerful medium for raising social justice awareness.

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

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Meaghan’s background in social work and academia
Meaghan’s Book, Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism
Lived experience and telling your own story
How we’re all more than one story
The insider/outsider dance
Creative non-fiction and memoir-based narrative
Creative influences and inspiring authors
How privilege plays out in racism and other contexts
Raising social justice awareness through the arts

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 16 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 5th of May as I record this.

II’m excited to have Meaghan Katrak Harris, author of Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism join us for the podcast today.

Meaghan is a social worker, academic, consultant and writer. She has a long and diverse social work background. This includes extensive experience and commitment to working alongside First Nations Peoples, families and communities. When not writing, Meaghan lectures and researches in social work at the University of Sydney and works in private practice across social work supervision, individual, group work and organisational change. Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is her first creative non-fiction book.

Meaghan and I have connected online as fellow the kind press authors, publishing our books within a few months of each other. It’s been exciting to watch Meaghan launch and share her important book, Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism with the world. We chat about Meaghan’s book as well as her work as social worker, academic and writer, and her key themes and lived experiences. They all weave together around the value of community and raising awareness of social justice issues and impacts.

Today we will be speaking about writing Memories and Elephants, genres, influences, publishing, casual racism and privileged practices and behaviours and their impact on individuals and society.

Enjoy listening to this insightful and inspiring conversation!

I hope it encourages you to read Memories and Elephants and to take some time to think beyond the dominant narrative.

So let’s head into the interview with Meaghan.

Transcript of interview with Meaghan Katrak Harris

Terri Connellan: Hello Meaghan. And welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Hi, thank you for having me.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for your connection across our writing and books. We’ve connected online as fellow authors in the kind press around writing and publishing. And it’s great to chat further on this today. So can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do know?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. Yes. Thank you. So I’m a social worker and I have been for probably nearly 30 years now, working alongside communities in various roles. Probably about the last 15 years, I’ve also been an academic, teaching and researching in social work. So that’s been my career to date and social work’s such a broad profession, it’s given me the opportunity for lots of different ways of working with people. And, academia, I guess, has led me into doing more writing as well.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. Yeah, so it’s great to see how all the different strands of your personal life and professional life have come together to this day. So let’s have a look at your book, particularly, I’m really excited to talk about Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism.

And congratulations on your book published in early December, 2021. So we’ve both recently enjoyed that process of taking a book from that idea from jotting things down, through to published book. Can you tell us a bit about what that process was like for you?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. It actually happened quite quickly, the process, which was exciting and interesting. And it actually started with my submission to the This I Know is True book through the kind press. And that happened really just because a good friend of mine, Annabel Sharman, who writes the introductory chapter, said to me, you should put a chapter in this book. You should get into this. And I looked at it, I looked at the submission and I thought, this looks awesome, but I don’t think that I’m the right fit.

Anyway, I said this to Annabel and she said, look, please just talk to the publisher. Talk to Natasha [Gilmour], everything that you talk about, she has a similar view on crossing genres and perhaps, maybe disrupting genres a bit and writing across academia and also creative writing. And, supporting women led businesses, the whole gamut. So the long story short was I did do the chapter and then I got into a conversation.

I’d already written the essay. And I got into a conversation with Natasha and I said, look, I’ve got about 12 I’d like to publish. And, several months later there we are. I’d nearly finished all the essays. I did another self sort of lockdown to get the last bit done, but, I had the work there and it was just a beautiful fit to find the kind press, I think for me.

Terri Connellan: Yes, I absolutely loved working with the kind press too. Natasha and her team are just really fabulous. Kind, as their name suggests and groundbreaking, I think in the approaches that they take to different voices and as you say, cross genre work, pushing the boundaries a bit. So in terms of the actual pieces, were they written over many years?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh no, I smashed it in a few months, probably in lockdown. I got a bit of inspiration and one of the first essays was the privilege of sharing parenting fails. And I wrote that as a response to what I was seeing happening and kind of my internal discomfort with it.

And once I started, I just wrote them all. And, I guess, lockdown probably had something to do with that, time to think, walking and thinking, because I’d written them all in my head. By the time I kind of sat down and put them down on paper. But, I always saw them as a collection. So that’s why I was so happy to put them out together because I kind of felt like it told a story. They are each a standalone essay, but I felt like in their entirety, it was a better story if you like.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I found reading it that there’s a lot in the spaces between what you write. There’s the spoken of what you experience, but also the unspoken. And I think, as you say, across the essays, it connects off into a bigger picture. So can you share with us a snapshot of what Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is about?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Sure. So I describe it as a series of sociopolitical memoir based essays. So while they’re memoir based, I share my experiences against the backdrop of a bit of a socio-economic analysis of Australian society, culture, you know, the way we see ourselves.

And I kind of try to shine a broader light on the story, on my story, which I think can be extended to other experiences. So I guess for me, the analysis is as important as the memory or the memoir. And that’s kind of was my focus. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, they’re beautifully told, and I think to me, the power of them is really just capturing those moments in life, when, as you call it casual racism and casual because it just seems to slide off, people’s tongues because of that privilege that people feel. And I think it’s that ability to capture the moment, but also the impact on you. You talk about feeling winded at times and the physical reaction of what happens on you is really beautifully told, but also must’ve been hard to tell.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It was, you know, I shed tears writing it, but I felt like it was an important story to tell. The hardest thing was deciding whether it was in fact, my story to tell. And again, I consulted with people I love and my family and basically, they said, well, you know, this is your story, this is your story. If you can’t tell your own story, then what can you write about? But I was very careful to not to appropriate an experience that wasn’t my own. Because I’m also a white Australian person. So I have with that, all the inherent privileges, that every other white Australian has, but I have borne witness to this casual racism with my Aboriginal family and my multicultural family.

And, it is my lived experience, but I really wanted to be clear to position myself as to not to be appropriating the lived experience beyond what was mine. And I think doing it as memoir based, I just told it how it happened. So hope that that came across and the feedback I’ve had so far is that it, that it did. That’s how I came up with the ‘we’re all more than one story’, we’re all more than one defining characteristic. And, I could be defined by lots of things and lots of things that don’t define me at all, based on my appearance or where I live or what I do when we’re all so much more than that.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. I loved that point where you said, you know now we are all more than one story and I think that intricacy to the insider/outsider dance, that’s hard to get right in your memoir. I was interested to hear more about that dance. It’s a dance you’ve engaged in for many decades now.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I guess it is, but I think it’s probably something that, as we get older and wiser, we think about more, perhaps the complexities of when we’re younger and we’re living our life. And I was always very sure of my place in my family. Absolutely. And I still am in and in my community. But I guess I talk about when, being part of an Aboriginal community and the commitment to the advancement and activism, when that morphed into work, I felt there was a change in me that I became more aware that I could be taking up, as a white person, taking up space.

And I was never made to feel like that by other people. This was my own internal dance, if you like. And I think it’s an important one to be aware of. And I know at times, I consciously stepped back from employment and changed to work in mainstream as we call it, because I was so fortunate to start my career as a community worker in an Aboriginal community controlled organization. And, that was a privilege that has shaped me beyond anything I could say.

But then I also reached that time in that dance when I realized that, you know what, this is part of who I am too. And if I’m not honoring that, I’m not honoring my Aboriginal family and friends. If I’m feeling like I can’t honour that part of my life, then that’s not showing respect to those people that have had such an impact on my children, my family. And I feel like, in some ways maybe the essay, particularly, The art of casual racism was kind of my showing up for that and saying, okay, this is it. This is how I see it. This is who I am, and this is how I’ve lived it and continue to live it.

Terri Connellan: And I think, as you said before, touching into your lived experience is a really powerful lens for each of us. Particularly for you, telling your story with so many different cultural experiences and community experiences and diversity, which is fabulous. Thank you for sharing that. So, how would you describe the genre that you write in and what were your influences? We mentioned cross-genre before.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Creative nonfiction, I guess. They’re memoir based narratives. I have always been a big reader. and I guess I never really realised the impact that reading creative nonfiction has had until quite recently, when I started writing these. And I talk about it in the first essay where I am suddenly drawn back to reading this genre because my head’s in that space. I’m writing these stories in my head. So I’m back reading Helen Garner, I’m reading, Joan Didion, I’m reading Roxanne Gay. I’m just really quite obsessed with reading other people’s stories. And I found that very validating because there is so many different ways to do this. There’s not one right way to write it. You write it as it comes, I guess. But yeah, I don’t think I’d realised the impact that creative non-fiction has had until now.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And you mentioned Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence too, which I also read when I was writing my book and I found that a really validating book.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Absolutely. And I’m glad you reminded me of that because I read that after I pretty much finished that essay. It came out or I got hold of it anyway. Julia Baird talks about, 20 years ago, as a young uni student, I think finding Helen Garner. And I thought, oh gosh, I’ve talked about that. And then I thought, of course, that’s not an accident. We’ve all talked about that because it is such an influence. So hence, my line about. I know, I felt late to the party, but in good company. So yeah, I found that I bought a copy from several friends. I found that book so important.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, and I think that’s been my experience and from reading your work, I think it’s that trying to find a way to bring our personal life experiences into a narrative that it also shines a light on ways it can help people or guide them on their own journey or give them some tools to think about things.

So, you write in the second person, which I love. It’s one of my favorite voices, I guess, in literature. Why did you choose that? How did you come to writing as you, rather than I, or we?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I can’t do this question justice and several people have asked me. People have contacted me specifically to ask me why I chose to write the essays like that. And I’ve got no good answer, Terri, other than that’s just have they came out. And I don’t know if future writing will come out like that. I don’t know, but I just couldn’t write them any other way. That’s how they came to me in my head. And so that’s how they went down, and any analysis I’m doing now is retrospective.

I’m wondering why did I need to step back from it? But I don’t know. This is all, you know, with the benefit of hindsight and it’s interesting to think about, and I guess part of the answer will be how any future stuff comes out. If I continue to write it in that style or not.

Terri Connellan: I found it interesting. You said you wrote , the ‘parenting fails’ piece first. Cause that’s the one where I actually really noticed how you’re using ‘you wonder’. The piece is about that ability to joke about something with parenting fails that in other contexts would have dire circumstances or have judgment. And what I found was you were saying, you wonder, hmm, you wonder. I particularly loved how you used it in that context.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, thank you. And that was, like I said, I would come home and I would say, can you believe it, this happened or that happened. And I was in a way, naively amazed at how people could not see that or understand, or, even feel a bit embarrassed to be able to joke about these things, because it is such a mark of privilege. You know, I would’ve died before I told anyone that my kids had nits and I’m still like that. And I know it’s a socially responsible thing to do, but when people send those messages, oh god, how can they do that?

If you’ve never been judged, if you’ve never been stereotyped, if you’ve never felt that society could be making assumptions about you, then you have that freedom. And I got such great feedback about that essay. One of the best bits of feedback I got was someone messaged me and just said, ‘Ooph – that got me in the gut – and thank you.’ And that was from the perspective of someone who was in a position to be able to do that. And she had never seen that that was a privilege. And I wondered if I’d been a bit harsh then, but, she was very gracious in her feedback.

Terri Connellan: That’s so amazing to hear. My feeling of reading the piece is I think, cause you took people on the journey with you, of like you said: I’m seeing this, and I’m thinking this, and I’m trying to work this out. I think it just works incredibly well to get the point across and for people to hear you processing, with all your knowledge and all your life experiences, where does this fit? This is not right. And I think, that way of approaching that type of content is going to have more impact than people saying ‘don’t do that’, for example. Yeah. I guess it’s raising awareness, isn’t it and consciousness about the impact?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It is. And I think honestly that’s probably one of my motivators for doing the essay was I actually feel that the arts is a far better way to address social justice issues and awareness, than straight academia. You know, I joke about, as academics, we might write a paper for other academics to pretend they’ve read or students to read because they have to. It may be great work, but it’s to meet certain criteria for academia and it doesn’t necessarily reach a wider audience.

And I’ve long felt that the most powerful stuff that, I think it can be life-changing has been creative and in the arts. And I didn’t consciously think now I’m going to do this. I got a bee in my bonnet about it. I started that. And then there was that sort of ripple effect where it grew from there, but I feel like that’s where I can make a contribution, if any.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. But then also your academic work is important in another way.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh yeah. I’m not diminishing it and I’m not a serious academic like some people are but then I’ve written a few things and I’m part of some great research that I’m very committed to. But I don’t have a full on tenured position. I have had in the past. Then I consciously chose not to stay on that path and it’s important work, but I get far more joy out of creative writing, far more joy.

Terri Connellan: And was it hard to shift from the academic voice or academic way of working to the creative, more personal?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: No, no, this is like the natural state, I think. It was great because a colleague and friend, another academic, who read the book messaged me, and this is the wonderful things you learn about people. She said, ‘oh, fellow over-user of capital letters’. Because I talk about in the acknowledgement that I had a very kind gentle editor who let me have my desire to capitalise important thoughts.

And this friend said, you know, I do that too. Everyone who knows me personally knows I do that. And we joked about it and I joked about how my PhD supervisor many years ago had to beat that out of me. But, in creative writing we can do these things.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it is great. My work was in government and in the TAFE sector, mostly where you’re writing strategic documents and there’s a certain way of writing. So for me, I still think I’ve got a long way to go to get back to probably my more natural voice. It’s sort of dusting off, or shifting from that academic voice. Yeah.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Exactly. Because it is very different . It’s far more rigid in corporate or academic writing. Of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Terri Connellan: But as you say, it sounds like the way that you’ve worked with Memories and Elephants it’s like you’ve hit your natural gear, found a way to really write joyfully and perhaps express things that have been there for a long time.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Yeah. And it was an absolute joy to do. Absolutely. I loved doing it. I had so many ideas and thoughts that I wanted to get down. And as I said in the first essay, I probably think I only had about 12 stories in me. Well, I did, I had 12 and I knew I was done then with that, I felt like that was enough. And I know I spoke to Natasha from the kind press, when I talked about putting them together. And I said, but I’m worried it’s not enough. And she quoted Elizabeth Gilbert, who’s another writer that I really admire as well, in saying that the story tells you when it’s finished, to paraphrase. That the story will end when it ends.

And I honestly felt like that. I would have had enough material, but I just felt that’s what I wanted to say. And I feel that collection is enough as it is. And funnily enough, lots of feedback has been, I didn’t want it to end. And I thought for a minute, oh gosh, is it not long enough. And then I thought, you know, what? It was finished when it was finished. So that’s not a bad thing.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I think it’s beautiful just the way it is. As I said before, to me, it’s that sense of each piece stands alone, but they reverberate and echo and also keep you thinking a long time after you’ve read and something to go back to. So yeah, I think they work incredibly well. So you’re a social worker, academic and author in the social justice area, as well as we’ve mentioned, across all sectors of government and non-government human services. Can you tell us more about your focus, projects and writing there?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: At the moment I’m teaching at Sydney Uni. I’ve been teaching there for the last three or four years, and I’m working on a few research projects with my colleagues there, that I’m really committed to and feel very fortunate to be involved in. So that’s my academic work at the moment. And I’m also working on a couple of other creative writing projects that I’m hoping will come into fruition this year.

Terri Connellan: Oh, fantastic. That’s great to hear there’s more creative work in the pipeline. Yeah. And I’ve spent some time just reading through some of your academic work too. So it’s been interesting just to see the different perspectives. In a way, your theme is pretty much similar.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: It is, my work is all, whatever it is, social justice, underpinned with my commitment to social justice. And it was interesting when I told a friend of mine about the creative work I was doing… he’s a filmmaker, artist, musician, activist. Richard Franklin, his name is, and he’s a very dear friend. And he said “oh, you’ve been dancing around the edges of the arts for a long time. So it’s about time you jumped in.”

Cause I would always be involved, as a participant, as an audience member, as an advocate and a supporter. And I found that very validating from someone, who’s achieved so much in this space.

Terri Connellan: So have you got any advice, if there’s people who have a similar passion or a similar theme or focus in life around social justice and want to write more personally, would you have any particular tips or thoughts for them?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Honestly, I think finding your authentic voice is the key. Then I don’t really have any advice other than particularly as females, particularly as women to be unapologetic about wanting to have a voice and wanting to put something out into the world, not make ourselves smaller or feel we have to justify and apologise for wanting to do that. I think my advice is take up space, find your big voice. As one of my dear friends and colleagues, Dr. Mareese Terare talks about in social work, is find your big voice and find your authentic voice. I think that would be my strongest advice. And it doesn’t matter, if you’re not ready to share your work, I feel that it helps us grow so much in doing it. And you will find your audience.

Terri Connellan: That’s beautiful. I love that. Find your big voice, that’s great.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I love it too. And I quote Mareese very regularly with that beautiful term.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And as you say, it’s not all about publication. Just working with a group of women writers at the moment and I think publication is important to think about as a potential path. But it’s really great to have that free writing and that exploring and that ability to find your big voice comes from play.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Yeah, I think that we know what we want really in our heart to do with that work. I know when I had written a few of the essays, I told a friend. They said, oh, you know, maybe you won’t want or need to get them published. Maybe writing them will be enough. No, it won’t be, I want them published. I knew, I felt I had something to say and I knew I wanted to put it out in the world. And it’s just about finding the right way to do that and, and the right time and things like that.

Terri Connellan: That’s great that you did find the right way and the right time then. And I think that’s just part of the author journey, isn’t it? It’s meeting the right people, collaborating, the publishers, the editors, the people encouraging us behind the scenes. It’s all part of the rich journey.

So, a question that I’m asking all people on the podcast being the Create Your Story podcast is how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Oh, gosh, how have I created my story? I think that I’ve never really had a plan particularly. I know that works for some people. I’ve always been open to opportunities and not been frightened to take risks, creatively like, in my career, you know, leave a job, find another job. I think I’ve kind of just tried to live true to my values.

And my commitment to my family has been my driving motivator. But, even if five years ago, someone had said that I would be doing creative non-fiction, I would have been like really? It’s not like I had that on the plan. It’s not like I thought I really want to write, I’m going to sit here and think about what to write about. Like, the stories came to me and I just told them, and I feel like a bit of a witness in that sense, that, it’s our obligation to share what we learn. So I guess my plan has just been to try and do no harm and live a good life.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. It sounds like share your wisdom along the way too.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, we hope we get some the way. I don’t know, but we hope so don’t we? I say to my students, the more I know, the less I know, I know. And that remains true.

Terri Connellan: Yep. That’s true. So, my book, Wholehearted, is about wholehearted self leadership tips for women and practices. Thank you. And, so I like to add to the body of work I’ve created by talking to people about their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So I’d love to hear yours.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Honestly, more and more. And I just had a conversation with a dear friend today about this, it’s about, you know, we say, lift a sister up. Let’s take every opportunity to support each other, to promote, to validate, to do all those things that lift us up individually and as friends, but also helps all of us, as women, as writers, as creatives, whatever it might be.

And about that authenticity, about just showing up as you are, doing your best to support the cause is what I’m pretty big on. I think it’s kind of that simple and that complex.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And it is too, but I love that lift your sister up and yeah, I just really appreciated your support all the way through my writing journey there in the background saying, well done. Thank you. And you know, just liking posts and things. It really helps.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: I feel like we talk a lot about supporting the arts or creativity whether it be black businesses or, and I have this conversation with students where they say they might really want to support a female led business or a black business, but they may not be in a financial position to do that.

And, you can share a post, you can like a post, you can spread the word. And that is helping, that is supporting and that’s showing up. There’s lots of ways we can do that for each. And if we are in a position to purchase something, let’s think about it. I read a quote recently, the way we spend our money basically is a vote for the world we want to live in.

So, do we want to try to support small business, female led, all those things, and less the, you know, big multi-nationals. If we can do that, we should try try the best we can.

Terri Connellan: So true. But I also agree with your point, that there’s so much you can do that doesn’t cost money too. Doing reviews for people, sharing their podcasts, different reviews on blog posts. It’s certainly been part of my journey to both acknowledge others and be acknowledged by others. Again, it’s another type of dance that we can engage in with others and I know my life is so much richer for it as I can see yours is too. So thank you. And, that wraps up our conversation for today. It’s been lovely to have a chat with you, so thank you for your time.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Thank you for having me, Terri. I’ve really enjoyed thinking about some of those questions you posed, so thank you.

Terri Connellan: My pleasure. So where can people find more about you and your work on line?

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Well, I’m on Instagram and there’s a link to my stuff there. I’m late to that party, but you know, I’m there for it. I’m finding it a very supportive environment. I’m on Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn also. So I’m not hard to find.

Terri Connellan: And we’ll pop the link to your book too, in the show notes and yeah, just encourage everybody to read Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism. It’s a really important book. I think everybody should read it. And make sure you do all those things we’ve talked about: post a review and share it with others.

Meaghan Katrak Harris: Thank you very much.

Terri Connellan: My pleasure.

About Meaghan Katrak Harris

Meaghan Katrak Harris is a social worker, academic, consultant and writer. She has a long and diverse social work background. This includes extensive experience and commitment to working alongside First Nations Peoples, families and communities. When not writing, Meaghan lectures and researches in social work at the University of Sydney and works in private practice across social work supervision, individual, group work and organisational change. Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is her first creative non-fiction book.

You can connect with Meaghan

Memories and Elephants

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-meaghan-katrak-harris-37718a209/

Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism is a collection of memoir-based essays set against the socio political background of Australian society.

In these essays—written with clarity and compassion by Meaghan Katrak Harris—you’ll explore the intersectionality of Australian culture, classism, racism and identity as the author has lived it.

Drawing on her experiences of being a teenage mother, a member of a large multicultural family, a social worker, and an academic, Meaghan uses powerful personal narrative to illuminate often uncomfortable aspects of our society—the elephants in the room that have been historically downplayed and ignored.

Taking you from memories of country life to the city, from the street to national television, Memories and Elephants invites you to think beyond the dominant narrative of Australian identity.

Terri’s links to explore:

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

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

My coaching & writing programs:

Work with me

The Writing Road Trip email list – community writing program with Beth Cregan

Connect on social media

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

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

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Welcome to Episode 10 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Intuiting, Channelled Writing and Connecting.

I’m joined by Natasha Piccolo, Mama, Author, Speech Pathologist, Life Coach and Small Business Owner .

We chat about Natasha’s soon-to-be-published book, The Balance Theory and how it was written in a channelled way. And Natasha’s multi-faceted life and the threads that connect it together.

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

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Following your intuition
Writing The Balance Theory
Channelled writing
Knowing when a book is finished
Dealing with loss
Being in balance
Healing our inner child
Connecting as a core value
Multiple life roles and how they connect
Mental health challenges + learning
Practical self-care tips
And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 20^th of January as I record this. We’re enjoying pretty much the heart of summer here with magical swims in silky water and many fish swimming around us. It’s truly joyful!

I’m excited to have the lovely Natasha Piccolo join us for the podcast today to chat about Intuiting, Channelled Writing & Connecting.

Natasha Piccolo is a mama, small business owner and author. She is always up for a good chat as her main work roles include clinical Speech Pathology and coaching. Her business, Resonate Holistic assists clients to facilitate healthy communication across the life span. Her first book, The Balance Theory is out in March with the kind press. She has recently contributed to This I Know Is True – a collection of stories to inspire community progress alongside 18 other women in the health and wellness space. Natasha hopes that her words motivate others to live a life that is consciously aligned.

Natasha and I met through Instagram and as fellow authors in the kind press community. It’s been wonderful watching Natasha’s journey as a writer and author, and we discuss writing her book The Balance Theory as an intuitive and channelled writing process over 10 years which is fascinating. Natasha has many strings to her bow and we chat about the common threads of these roles and passions in her body of work. Natasha also speaks about her mental health challenges, the difficulties and the learning and perspective they provided over time. Natasha is a wise young woman with much to share so enjoy these insights and the very practical tips provided.

In my writing and coaching life, this week I’ve enjoyed working through Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition with the Book Club group that has formed. The ability to work through Wholehearted with a group of women focused on transition is a real joy. There’s nothing like working through a book you’ve written in a practical way with women applying the insights. A coaching and reading community program that will be offered on a regular basis, consider joining in for the next round.

The other focus right now is The Writing Road Trip Free Challenge I’m hosting with my friend, co-writing buddy and brilliant writing teacher, Beth Cregan. The challenge starts on 31 January with 6 free 30-minute workshops over two weeks. So, sign up for our mailing list now. We’ll be sending out the Challenge information this Friday (21 January) with a link to our private Facebook group and the Challenge Workbook. We are going to have so much fun, and you’ll be inspired to engage with your writing plans and writing self in new ways. Plus connect with others also focused on writing. So, if writing is a priority for you in 2022, join us. Links are in the show notes. Head to quietwriting.com/podcast and click on Episode 10.

I also shared how my word of the year is NOVEL and what that means over on Instagram @writingquietly if you want to check that out. It’s a mix of excitement and a little fear as often happens when we step up into a bigger or different version of ourselves. I look forward to sharing more about that with you in 2022.

So now let’s head into the interview with the wise, intuitive, multi-faceted, creative Natasha Piccolo!

Transcript of interview with Natasha Piccolo

Terri Connellan: Hi Natasha. Welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast.

Natasha Piccolo: Hi, it’s beautiful to be here.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. And thank you for your connection and your support of Quiet Writing.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. You’re a beautiful inspiration. So I’m more than honored to be here.

Terri Connellan: Ah, that’s wonderful. And I’m so looking forward to our chat because you too are a fantastic inspiration. And we connected around writing and publishing as fellow authors in the kind press, which is very exciting. It’s been wonderful to watch your growth as a writer and an author. So, can you provide an overview of your background about how you got to be where you are and the work you do now?

Natasha Piccolo: It’s a beautiful, big question. I’m a wearer of many hats. Professionally and clinically my role is a speech pathologist, with a life coaching context as well and that’s shaped so much of my worldview. But then on a personal level, in terms of being an author, an upcoming author, that’s just, I think, innate to who I am. So I’m now 30 and I’m at a point in my life where these two beautiful worlds are starting to come together and here we are. I’ve followed nudges. I think that’s the best answer here is that I’ve just followed the intuitive hits and I’ve created this union of who I am at the very core with my external roles. And I wanted to write it all down and tell some stories.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful, what a beautiful blend. And it’s amazing that you’ve been able to bring so much together at the age of 30. And particularly as you say, following your intuition that’s very wise. And I think something that often takes a long time to develop. So congratulations on following your intuition. I think that’s a great skill.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. I think it’s something that I didn’t really realize I was doing until probably the last three years when I really did have a big spiritual awakening. And I realized the whole time I was being guided by nudges and that was coming through in the form of meditations. And I thought, hmm I think this little voice has always been here. It’s intuition. That’s what it is.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. It’s amazing. You might’ve heard of the Wholehearted Stories that are on Quiet Writing and women tell their stories. And it’s amazing how intuition features as such a strong theme of women of all ages particularly when they’ve had a big transition, like a turning point or when they’re going through difficult times. It’s just fascinating how intuition pops up as a theme.

Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely. I always liken it to the inner child voice. So when I think about it, the childhood version of me is the voice that I listen to, as funny as that sounds, and as I became more and more adult and the conditioning around that developed, I realised that it was that little girl that I was listening to the whole time. She’s the creative side of me.

Terri Connellan: Oh, I love that. A great way to personalise it. Thanks for that wonderful overview. So we have both recently enjoyed, or we are enjoying the process of taking a book from that crystal or that gem of an idea through to draft, through to published book. Your book, The Balance Theory is ahead of publication in early 2022, which is very exciting. So congratulations.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you so much. We officially launch in March.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Tell us about your writing journey, what it was like for you.

Natasha Piccolo: The journey of The Balance Theory. It was completely channeled. And when I say channeled, it was listening to that little niggling voice of intuition coming through in a collection of downloads. And I had been writing the core content of The Balance Theory for the last 10 years. That part’s incredible when I think about it, that I actually pulled the book itself together in the last 12 months, but the writing and the channeling and the concept development has been 10 years in the making.

And I do share this quite openly and deeply in the book, that channelling process started after the death of a very close friend. So I was 19 at the time and we got a phone call that one of my closest friends had fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit a tree. And I was fresh out of school. You know, that whole idea of world at your feet ready to explore and yeah, naively maybe, just the best was yet to come and all of that. And we got that very soul shaking phone call. Very abruptly. No time to say goodbye. And yeah, I think all artists can relate to a point in their life that something really flipped. And I think that flip did happen quite early for me. And I had a big surrendering moment to the universe and I just said, what are you doing? What are you doing? I, yeah, naively had it all together and I was ready to explore what was coming after school. And instead I had a big trip down the grief process, clinical depression, clinical anxiety, a very, very big shake-up at a very core level. And The Balance Theory was actually born from surrendering to the universe and asking for the answer.

Why, why did you rip this part of my life away or this experience? And the answer to that question came through in intuitive hits in a meditation, which I didn’t even realize I was meditating at the time. But it was just in that quiet moment when I was still, I could hear a voice saying because the universe needs balance and I didn’t really understand what that was at the time at all. But I started noticing. And I think initially, when I look back at those very early writings, it was just self comfort that I was putting a question out and writing down things that would make me feel comfortable or try to articulate the grief and I realized that I was tapping into something that was bigger than me. And over the years it shaped. So that’s the journey there. Like I think it took about five years clinically, like I was in and out of therapy for a long time, to realize that I could channel and transmute it into an art form, but it took a long time to get there. Initially it was purely just comfort writing to process grief.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and I think as you say, many creatives.. I certainly can relate to your story of going to that deep place where something incredibly challenging, something like the loss of someone really dear, and in a sudden way, particularly can be a terrible shock to the system. I’ve experienced that too. So I really sympathize with you on that and just know that it makes you look at your life differently, completely differently. At a young age that must’ve been a real shock to the system.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, my friend Dylan, so I do use his name in the book too, at the time he was my boyfriend, high school sweethearts. So my husband’s best friend. So the three of us had our teenage years together and even to this day, like my husband and I, he’s a huge part of our family. We can feel his presence, especially guiding this book. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: That’s amazing. And it’s incredible the way you described that, from that time, the process of writing started. So it’s a book that’s been shaped over a long period of time. And, that idea of channeled writing is really incredible too, that idea of being a conduit or being open and receptive to what comes through. Is that how you describe it?

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. I kind of feel, and I do say this in the book too, that The Balance Theory, the concept has come through me. I’m the vessel and I’m just transmuting it out into the world. So it’s for us, it’s for the collective, but it happened to come through my life event or my story. I’m kind of that middleman, I guess. That’s how I feel. Like it’s got its own energy really.

Terri Connellan: Did it feel like a calling?

Natasha Piccolo: Yes. Yeah. And there were times, I mean, like writing over 10 years, there was probably two other times before I actually got signed with the kind press that I thought, okay, the book is done, you know? It wasn’t. Like, it was never published at 0.1 and then 0.2 didn’t happen. And then it was third time lucky, but there was actually more life experience that I needed to have before I got to the point where it actually was published.

And funnily enough, it all came to fruition two weeks before my son, who’s a year old next week, was born. So I think because the whole concept is balance and life death cycles is the tying-in theme, I needed to actually experience rebirth in the form of becoming a mother. And I think that’s what really nailed the final concept that just felt unified when I then approached the publishers.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that idea too. Again, it’s something I’ve experienced where, sometimes you wonder if you’re procrastinating in not getting writing done. And then I know I put my draft away for quite a time and it was like it had to incubate or sit until I experienced more and put the pieces together. So I totally understand what you’re saying.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. My process and yours similarly, I think once you are really tapped in, on that intuitive level, the book actually tells you when it’s finished. You get that kind of, yeah, okay, I’ve told the story or stories I need to tell. And now it’s just about fine tuning.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That idea of getting the message out that you want to get in some form because I just find it fascinating how it begins as an idea in our head or is channeled. And then we shape it into something that we can share with others. It’s quite miraculous in some ways, isn’t it?

Natasha Piccolo: It is. What I find funny is that, especially because clinically my work is speech pathology and a lot of that study was like, that hardcore formal language, understanding grammar and structure and how the spoken voice and the written voice can be different. And it’s so clinical. But then in channeling this piece, sometimes I would write and the voice of The Balance Theory or intuition is really quite illogical because I do liken it to that childhood voice. So sometimes the grammar’s a bit weird or the content is like, oh, we really gonna use that word. Like I’m talking to whatever that entity is. And then like now The Balance Theory is in its editorial phase now, like have that logical layer over the top where we’re actually going, okay, does this read properly? Does it flow? And that part’s coming in now, but the actual writing itself was quite intuitive.

Terri Connellan: That makes sense. Perfect sense. So can you share with us a snapshot of what The Balance Theory is about? You’ve touched on it, but can you tell us a bit more about what The Balance Theory is about?

Natasha Piccolo: Sure. So in essence, the idea of the concept is that the universe is attempting one goal and that goal is to seek balance. And if we are open to observing that at all levels of life, we can see it. So from the cell level to the cosmic level, and I love the idea of like the fact that I by nature am intuitive, but clinically I’m a scientist. I actually observed the same thing. So when we’re looking at human cell biology, the way cells behave. There’s an attempt at what we call homeostasis or the quest for balance essentially, but in a clinical term. We witness it in the way that organ systems interact with one another. We witness it in the way that we attempt to emotionally balance ourselves in terms of our mental health and the impact of that when we’re not balanced.

It’s almost like the book’s split into three sections. So that’s dealing with the self and then we look at one self to another, how they interact with one another and the idea of the energetics of human connection. And then finally the final concept is soul level connection. The final section is actually called kismet connection. So how the energetics of a soul kind of balances itself and in between all of that, I weave my personal stories to illustrate that. So that’s The Balance Theory in a nutshell and what you can expect from it.

Like I was saying, it feels like it’s a concept that needs to be shared for the collective. And I find it particularly interesting that I actually finished it during COVID. Because I think we can all agree in this modern history, if there was ever a time where we really reviewed what balance meant it was when we were all locked inside for a long period of time. And that idea of we were thrown way out of balance. It was almost like thrown out of the arena so we can observe what’s playing inside. Yeah, super interesting. And when we talk about that idea of it not being finished, I think COVID had to happen too before I finished the book.

Terri Connellan: More experiences and circumstance to integrate into that whole idea of balance by the sound of that.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. And it’s actually quite funny because before COVID was a thing, I remember logically trying to think about how am I going to articulate The Balance Theory on a collective level, so that there is something that is unifying for everybody’s life experience. And then the logical part of my brain’s saying, well, everyone’s life experience is different. How can we possibly all connect on one thing? And the pandemic happened. So I was like, well, there we go. There’s something we can all talk about. And we’ve all got a take on it. We’ve all experienced what it’s like to be in and out of balance in that time. And I know just from speaking to my circle, there was so many people that… we have that relationship with the pandemic where I was like, oh, we actually love being locked inside. It’s given me time to really evaluate my life and where I’m at.

And then the next day, you’re absolutely on that roller coaster of hating it. And then there’s fear. And then there’s gratitude. Like the whole spectrum of emotion came out to play during that time. And it was interesting channeling that as I was writing.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s been the whole experience of COVID. My work is in transition, so that idea that it’s just been this huge shift and change, and that’s really thrown it back on us, on our internal resources and what toolkit we have, what understanding, what frameworks, how we’re using our personality or all the different aspects we can bring to it. So yeah, I think your book is incredibly timely to pick up on all of those themes that are happening.

So with your channeled writing process, were you surprised at what came through? Like was there, was it sort of landing more than… I guess all writing in a way has a sense of coming from a muse, doesn’t it? Do you see that?

Natasha Piccolo: Definitely. So there were times where, cause I do feel like I had that relationship with whatever the entity was that I would writing and I’d be like, oh, this is so controversial. I don’t know that I want to write this down. And again, like that’s where I speak to that idea of, put on the page and then your logical brain and the brain that understands that this is going into the world and it’s going to be open to a lot of people now, you can shape the language so that it actually comes across in an eloquent way. But there were definitely times where I was like, oh, okay. There was some little shocking moments here and there. And I was curious with it. I was just like, sure, let’s go on this journey.

Terri Connellan: And were there particular sort of rituals and practices that you did as part of your channelled writing?

Natasha Piccolo: Well, I definitely would get quiet before writing, right in the thick of the newborn phase of having a baby too. So there were times where it was easy to achieve quiet and times where it wasn’t depending on baby. But I would at least try and factor in three to five minutes of stillness before going to the computer. Having said that though, there were times where I would still old fashioned hand write. So I found that interesting. A lot of the writing that I did in 2020 in that first lockdown was handwritten. So there are sections of the balance theory that I had to then put onto the computer and it transmuted again when I typed, it came out differently.

But, I think in real time, I’m actually reflecting on this, I think because I was pregnant, I just found it so much easier to jot down in a notebook at the time and then get to the computer. But then all the writing that I had done in this period, which is like the current 2021 lockdown period was all typed. So there wasn’t really anything specific other than stillness, finding the right time of day when baby was sleeping and just having space to open up or to have that intention to open up that channel.

Terri Connellan: So it sounds like you’re a naturally intuitive person. Like it’s probably one of the strengths of your personality by the sound of it.

Natasha Piccolo: So I’m a Pisces moon too, so I think I’m tapped into the collective just by nature of my soul level.

Terri Connellan: Who you are. Yeah. Beautiful. So you’ve also recently had your story When Saturn Hadn’t Returned published as part of the brilliant kind press collection, This I Know is True, which is sitting beside me here. Beautiful book with lots of incredible writing by women and curated by Natasha Gilmour and Sian Yewdall. Could you tell us a little about that story that you wrote and contributed to that collection?

Natasha Piccolo: Sure. So When Saturn Hadn’t Returned, I always preface this by saying I’m not an astrologer, but the idea of a Saturn Return is that every 30 years or so you get a big life lesson governed by Saturn, which is the planet of the life lessons and the responsibility. And the story of When Saturn Hadn’t Returned, again came through in a meditation as that being the title. So that actual title dropped in before I even actually thought about what that meant.

And I thought, okay, so I’ve got the title. What does that mean? And then I just had in my physical hand-written diary a bit of a brainstorm around what that statement means for me. And I realised what I was doing was telling the story of all the lessons I had learned before my Saturn Return at 27 years old. So that was the nature of that.

And essentially the biggest life lesson there was around the importance of healing the inner child,. Because, again, I don’t think it wasn’t until I was pregnant, that I had that full circle journey of realising that there was still a part of my childhood self that wasn’t being seen or heard, not in terms of anybody else, but myself.

And yeah, I guess 2020 was a big year of me going quite inward and I had the space with the lockdown to do that before giving birth to free that little girl. And it was I guess ironic that the contract for the kind press came through the same year. So it really was a healing process. And I pitched that idea to Natasha the publisher at the kind press, and she loved the idea of When Saturn Hadn’t Returned as a concept. And so I got to work. Bubs was eight weeks old when I wrote that. So I was still very fresh into motherhood.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Motherhood certainly takes you into very creative space. That whole idea of creating a human being naturally takes you into a very fertile space. So it was amazing you could tap into that, but also having read the story, I loved the way you went full circle with your inner child and the birth of your son as well. It was beautifully told.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you. It was so cathartic to write and I think it actually shaped my first year of motherhood because I wrote that quite early on in becoming a mum. It’s nearly been 10 months that that was written now, which is crazy to say, but whenever motherhood was challenging this year I would actually just reflect on that and say, okay, what part of my childhood, like what part of the wound is coming up? Because he’s obviously triggering something in me. It’s got nothing to do with him. He’s just this little soul navigating his first year. And, it was actually a really beautiful touch point in my first year of motherhood. So I’m very grateful to that writing process.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. It’s amazing how creativity can create something that we need that can help us on our journey. I’ve found that with writing my own book and a bit like yours, it was a blend of personal experience and things that were coming to me. I didn’t quite feel it was channelled, but there was certainly a lot of intuition in the writing process. And I think sometimes we write what we need for ourselves as much as to share with others.

Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely. Did you find that you were writing more of the memoir first or were you writing the concepts first in your own process?

Terri Connellan: I found that I had a pretty clear structure of what the book looked like, which was quite intuitive. I think I shared the mind map in the launch session. I had quite a sense of where it was going. Then I started with the memoir, I think to frame up the story, but I think it was as much to work out my own learning as it was to share it with others. Guess it’s a reflective process to tap deep into that experience to be able to write about it. It’s probably how I’d describe it.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Very cathartic.

Terri Connellan: It is very cathartic. So you’ve mentioned a little as we’ve spoken today and I know you’ve spoken in your writing about your personal mental health journey, about the challenges and what it’s taught you. So what would you like to share about that for people who are listening today?

Natasha Piccolo: Well, firstly, I’m very grateful for my mental illness now. I share in my book that my psychologist, 10 years ago almost, said those words: one day, you will tell me you are grateful for your mental illness. And at the time I was very unwell. And I said to her, like, you have no idea. And she’s like, well, no, I don’t because I’m not you. But one day, trust me, there’ll be a reason, a rhyme and reason. And you’ll be able to express that you found light. And I thought, here we go at the time. Definitely it was not open to seeing the light at that point in my life.

But I guess my biggest thing that I’d want to share with people that are experiencing something that feels quite dark and scary is that it’s an opportunity to be kind to yourself and to see that the shadow side is just as important as your light and to not fear it. And not to take away from the experience because the lived experiences is terrifying at times, but I think when it is terrifying, it’s actually showing you that something’s not balanced in life.

So for me, it was like a compass pointing me back to what I already knew, intuitively that there is light in the world. And to experience that you need that dichotomy and that spectrum. So you need the shadow to see the light. You need the light to understand that there’s shadow. And there is light at the end of that tunnel. It’s a journey. It’s the dark night of the soul. You need to go through it. It’s part and parcel of being human. I’m saying that with a lot of hindsight, though. So it’s a chance to be kind and to forgive self.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for sharing about your experiences. And again, it’s something else that’s popped up in conversations on this podcast. And, it’s just that reminder that sometimes going to the shadow side, the darker side…they’re difficult, horrible, uncomfortable experiences. But if we can, particularly when we’ve been through them, take the opportunity to step back and look at the wisdom, the light that was shed from that time. It can be really powerful for us. So, yeah. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And it sounds like it’s something you talk about more in your book too.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. The Balance Theory gives that a nice big chapter. When I was studying as well, I would have been halfway through therapy at the time, I could feel that I needed to give back with the experience of mental illness. And I did a thesis on understanding anxiety and depression in youth. And I reference that in The Balance Theory, the actual study itself. But it’s such a common thing and yet it’s so lonely. And if I can be just one other voice out there that is willing to talk about it on a public level, I think we are inspiring, healthy, functional conversation around it.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Thank you for being a voice for that while we’re chatting today. I really appreciate that.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you.

Terri Connellan: So, as well as being an author, you’re also a speech pathologist and a life coach, as well as being a mumma of a little one as you’ve shared. And you also run a gelato business with your husband too.

Natasha Piccolo: A bit of fun.

Terri Connellan: So you’ve got lots of different streams and passions in your life. So just wondering how the streams and passions come together and play together, and you’ve talked about play, the inner child and play. And I’m wondering too, if there’s a thread that unites your body of work, because often there’s ingredients cluster together that connect things for us and sometimes there’s not.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s kind of like what joins speech therapy and ice cream together. That’s one. But there is a common thread there. It’s connection. So I actually want to share this story. It’s a beautiful story that highlights why I do what I do, I guess. So the backstory of this is my husband’s side of the family come from a long line of ice cream makers, gelato makers in Italian, and my husband is now taking that baton and makes amazing gelato. And we decided that well, it was his dream to have the gelato cart that we do events with.

And we were doing our very first wedding. And I’ve just finished a full clinical day. And a lot of my work is in autism spectrum disorder. So I’d just seen a whole bunch of patients that day and went straight to the wedding to help my husband serve. And at the wedding I heard a little boy really, really upset, and he had run out of the wedding because he was overwhelmed from the light and the sound.

And I then learned he had autism. But he ran behind the gelato truck and was hiding in the bushes really scared, really upset, overwhelmed, sensory overload. And I could sense straight away. I knew what it was, like just clinically, I could see it. And I went around the bush and I pulled him out and I said, ‘Hey mate, do you want an ice cream?’

And the only word he could say at the time was chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. And I said, sure. We went to the back of the truck, made him a chocolate gelato. And his mother came around and apologized and she was saying, I’m really, really sorry. You know, he has autism, I don’t mean to upset your service.

And I said, whoa, I know. And it’s okay. He can stay with me the whole night. And I then went on to see that little boy clinically. But the one thing she said to me was we were coming to see you because it’s the first time I’ve seen him voluntarily want to connect. And I saw that. I saw that in the way he just took to you. Maybe he sensed that you were there to help him or to give him that experience of having a chocolate gelato.

And it’s just a beautiful story that I always come back to when I am sometimes wearing a lot of hats. And when you come back to yourself and you say, why am I doing this? Or what am I doing this for? And it’s that, it’s the love of connection. And if I can make a difference, start conversations, then I’m doing my job.

Terri Connellan: Fantastic. Yeah. I love that idea. And connection’s one of my top five values too. So, which is interesting, that it’s a thread for you as well. And I find with connecting it often can be about connecting ideas too. Do you find that? Like it’s about connecting people obviously, and that beautiful story that you told, but it can also be from what you’ve said from the writing you’ve done so far, it’s about, how does this idea connect with this idea and then how do they come together to create The Balance Theory in the first place?

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, I think connection would be my top value because it does it weaves through everything. Why am I writing a book? To connect people or to connect thoughts, to connect ideas, to start a conversation. Why am I a speech therapist? Very same reason. Why do I hand people gelato? Because they smile and the non-verbal connection is fantastic. And then obviously being a mama, it’s I think the height of human connection, parenting.

Terri Connellan: Fantastic. So, this is a big question. There are two questions that I’m asking everyone on the podcast. So the first one big question, but interesting intuitively to see what comes up.How have you created your story over your lifetime?

Natasha Piccolo: This is my favorite question. Yes. I am an observer of my life, I think. So that’s the intuition saying that. If we go back to inner child stuff, I think from the moment I could pick up a pen, I remember saying to my parents that I was going to be an author. I’m going to have books, people going to read them. My first work at five years old was about an elephant, but, something about, remembering it now, but all airports in the world had shut. Maybe I was channeling COVID. Elephants needed to be the way that we got around. No idea, but I think I have always observed some kind of creativity in telling stories and I have always loved to put them on paper. So first I observed my life or the things that are going through my head. And then I write, and that practice of journaling and retelling has just been paramount to how I’ve created my life story.

And I think then, shaping that and articulating it as I got older, it became about wanting to start and initiate important conversation. So then I kept retelling my stories through telling my own story and sparking chat. My favourite thing to do.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. You mentioned in your bio that you’re always up for a good chat. So that idea of having a conversation. So what I’m hearing there is that you create your story almost by telling the story or by storytelling.

Natasha Piccolo: Yes. Yeah. And then I think I’m also a fan of collecting stories. I’ve always loved reading, like on that level, but I just love to hear somebody else’s story and to find the lesson in listening to someone taking that story and if it’s going to help, passing it on. Yeah. What would you answer to that, Terri?

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s a big one. For me, how have I created my story over my last? One of my top things is reflecting. My background is as an adult educator and one of the key theorists that I really liked in that area was Donald Schon. And his work was about being a reflective practitioner and I love that idea. So I think for me, it’s been very much about experiencing and reflecting. I think again, it’s a very introverted and intuiting process, which is my strength, but very much that idea of taking things in and then sorting them out internally and then getting a structure to them and sharing them with the world. So, yeah. So similar to yours in some ways.

Natasha Piccolo: I think putting that practical way of then giving a message, like reflecting, transmuting and then telling.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And then, but I do think structure and being practical to me, and it sounds like for you, two are very important because, again, I think it’s like two parts of my personality and it sounds like potentially with yours, it’s that, here’s the intuitive, but then how do I structure that into something that others can read and get value from?

Natasha Piccolo: How does it make sense? I think because especially intuitive thinking can be so ambiguous and huge. And I know that that’s been a wonderful challenge with The Balance Theory. How do I actually get this into a form that somebody could pick up similarly with like your Companion Workbook and actually do something with it, apply it to life.

Terri Connellan: Yep. It’s a big challenge as a writer. So the next question is, again, something I’m asking people, because, I’ve written my book with wholehearted self-leadership tips based on my experience, but I see it as a toolkit we can all add to. I’ve shared 15 things that work for me that I think will work for many people. What would be your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practice, especially for women.

Natasha Piccolo: Thank you for asking that question, because I think these are the questions that people can take something away and apply tomorrow, or even in the next hour. I’m actually working through your Companion Workbook at the moment. So I’ve just read the part about your self care practices essentially, and how they shape, can set up your day really.

But I would say, I think maybe because speech pathology is such big part of me as well, having an honest conversation. And I mean that first with self every day, every morning, just that check-in of like, where am I at? What’s going on today? What’s my intention? How can I shape this day to work in my favor so that I show up as the best version of self? That’s probably my little go-to before I do anything else before I get out of bed with breath work.

And then I have a little fun thing I do on a Sunday night. Fun for me because clearly I like practical things. But I look at the calendar and I commit to one self-care practice a day from the Sunday to the next Sunday. So I just looked at the calendar, what’s going on this week and I’ve got my self-care menu of things I like to do. And then I just plot them in. So it’s like a meeting that I promise myself I’ll show up for.

And it can be as small as putting on a face mask while Alfie has a nap, my son to making sure I make a date to go and have a coffee with a friend I haven’t seen. It’s like a self care Sunday hack that I do. It started in lockdown and it’s really, really helpful. And it’s fun. It’s a challenge too. It’s like, well, I’ve had a few coffee dates, maybe I need to go and have a massage, or I need to look at booking a yoga retreat, or I need to just sit in the sun with a cup of tea this week. And, but it’s just been really practical about it and committing to it.

Terri Connellan: I love that. I think I might copy that idea, add that to my toolkit. And I love the idea of having a menu so you’ve thought ahead about what the things might be. And it’s a bit like a plug and play, you know, what does the day feel like, mixing it up with something different.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. And making it work for your week. Like there are weeks where like, work is really busy and sometimes it’s just committing to three minutes of meditation or having a big glass of water before you get out of bed. So it’s like, I just need to be really hydrated today to function. That’s my thing. I love a good tick a box, so I just feel like I’ve done. I’ve done me and now the oxygen mask can be on everyone else after that.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. Yeah. I love that. Thanks for sharing those two practical tips we can take away with us. I love them both so thank you.

Natasha Piccolo: Pleasure.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much for sharing about you or about your life, about your writing, about your books. And we look forward to The Balance Theory coming out in March, 2022. So, that’ll be something for people to look forward to. So where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Natasha Piccolo: Thanks, Terri. I just want to thank you as well, because I think you are an incredible voice and you have a lot to give, and this podcast is going to reach so many people. So I’m just going to extend my gratitude to you. Thank you for having me. And the best way to connect with me is over on Instagram. I love a good DM chat. So @tashspeaks one big word as a handle, and my business is Resonate Holistic for speech pathology and coaching. So yeah, that’s the two, well, I hang out there quite a lot now, especially with the writing process. So come and find me come and say hi.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I love your Instagram. It’s fantastic. And you’ve got some lovely snapshots about the book too, and foreshadowing about the content, which is exciting. Congratulations. And we’ll pop those links in the show notes too, so people can connect with you. Warmest wishes, thanks so much for being with us today and we’ll look forward to The Balance Theory.

Natasha Piccolo: Thanks for having me.

About Natasha Piccolo

Natasha Piccolo is a mama, small business owner and author. She is always up for a good chat as her main work roles include clinical Speech Pathology and coaching. Her business, Resonate Holistic assists clients to facilitate healthy communication across the life span. Her first book, ‘The Balance Theory’ is out in March with the kind press. She has recently contributed to ‘This I Know Is True’ – a collection of stories to inspire community progress alongside 18 other women in the health and wellness space. Natasha hopes that her words motivate others to live a life that is consciously aligned.

You can connect with Natasha

Website: www.resonateholistic.com.au

Instagram: @tashspeaks

@resonate_holistic

@pina_piccolina

Email: Natasha@resonateholistic.com.au

Book purchase links:

This I Know is True

Australia | Booktopia | Amazon AU

International | Amazon UK | Amazon US

The Balance Theory links – forthcoming when pre-orders open in March 2022.