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Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life. Audio excerpt from Wholehearted

September 4, 2022

Terri Connellan shares insights on beginning the journey of a wholehearted life with an audio excerpt from Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition, Chapter 1.

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Welcome to Episode 20 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life. It’s a solo episode celebrating the first anniversary of Wholehearted’s publication. And other significant life and Quiet Writing anniversaries and a birthday (mine)! I share insights to support and guide you in your own journey of change and transformation to a life that resonates and aligns with what’s important to you.

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, I share about:

  • The first anniversary of publishing Wholehearted & the Companion Workbook.
  • The sixth anniversary of leaving full-time work and starting Quiet Writing.
  • The beginning of transition journeys.
  • How uncertain and unsettling they can feel.
  • The beginning of my own transition journey to a more fulfilling life.
  • Steps and processes that can help in navigating major change.
  • What can help us in the beginning stages of a making a significant change.
  • How my Wholehearted books can help guide you if you are going through major change.
  • How to get your copy of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook.

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Episode 20 of the podcast. It’s the 2nd of September, 2022 as I record this and an important time for me as I head into some key anniversary times.

It’s six years since I left full-time work and began to carve out a new, more creatively focused, fulfilling life.

Plus it’s six years since I started Quiet Writing as a website, business, community and concept.

And it’s one year on the 6th of September, my birthday, since my books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook were published by the kind press and shared with the world after five years of writing.

These books were crafted from the heart of a deep and transformative time of change. My whole life focus and work changed. I learnt that change is external but the real work is in the transition piece. How we respond, integrate, shift our mindset, skill up in new ways, live with intention and find systems, structures or frameworks to guide and support us through change. For me these included: creativity through writing, intuitive tarot and oracle work, psychological type personality frameworks and becoming a coach. 

I share my personal journey of transformation and transition. And what helped me to navigate moving through such uncertain times in Wholehearted.

So I thought it was fitting for these milestone times to share the first pages of Wholehearted with you in a different way, in audio form. It has also been a valuable way for me to honour and revisit these times through voicing them again. I hope that hearing my words in this way helps you in some way especially if you are navigating challenging and changing times. And these times are not one off. I know I’m going through another big time of transition and change. They’re iterative, and these skills can help you over and over again in new ways as you move through.

Get your copy of Wholehearted

You can get a copy of the transcript of this audio, Beginning the Journey, the first part of Chapter 1 as a download by heading to quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1. Or head to quietwriting.com/podcast to find a link to the blog page for this episode, Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life and all the key Wholehearted book links.

If you would like to purchase a copy of Wholehearted and/or the Companion Workbook in ebook or paperback, head to books2read.com/wholehearted where you can find links to all digital stores easily.

Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook

I hope you enjoy listening to the first part of my Wholehearted book, hearing about the beginning of my journey to more fulfilling, creative living. I’ve really enjoyed revisiting my own words at this special and tender time of anniversaries and celebratory milestones.

Thank you for being with me on the journey, whether here since the beginning or connecting for the first time. It means the world to me.

I’ll be sharing some more solo episodes over the coming weeks and months. They are centred around the key themes of my work: creativity, personality, self-leadership, transition and wholehearted living. I look forward to sharing insights to support and guide you in your own journey of change and transformation to a life that resonates and aligns with what’s important to you.

And now, let’s head into Chapter 1 of Wholehearted!

Get your free copy of the transcript of Chapter 1 of Wholehearted as read on this podcast here: https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Terri Connellan

About Terri Connellan

Terri Connellan is an author, creative transition coach, accredited psychological type practitioner and podcaster. Her coaching and writing focus on three elements—creativity, personality and self-leadership—especially for midlife women in transition to a life with deeper purpose. Terri works with women globally through her creative business, Quiet Writing, encouraging deeper self-understanding of body of work, creativity and psychological type for more wholehearted and fulfilling lives. She lives and writes in a village on the outskirts of Sydney surrounded by beach and bush.

Terri’s links to explore

Books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-book/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/wholehearted

Wholehearted Companion Workbook: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-companion-workbook/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/companion

Free resources:

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

Personal Action Checklist for Creating More Meaning + Purpose: https://www.quietwriting.net/checklist 

36 Books Creative Influence Guide: https://quiet-writing.ck.page/36bookspdf

Coaching and writing programs:

Book your free Self-leadership Discovery call: quietwritingcoachingappointments.as.me/schedule.php

Work with me: quietwriting.com/work-with-me/

The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan: quietwriting.net/writingroadtrip

Connect on social media

Instagram: instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: twitter.com/writingquietly

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

wholehearted stories writing

Women’s stories and their uplifting value in wholehearted living

August 30, 2021

Other women’s stories helped me on my journey to wholehearted living and have so much to offer you. Telling your story can be healing and also light the way for others.

In the writing and publication of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition, I’m highlighting people who’ve been a shining light and support on the writing, living and publishing journey.

Stories of Wholehearted Living

First up, here is the most amazing group of women – authors of Stories of Wholehearted Living guest posts on Quiet Writing.

Wholehearted Stories authors

As I went through my journey to living more wholeheartedly, I wanted to hear other women’s voices. Feeling alone and only hearing my voice, it was important to hear what other women had been through. I wanted to know what helped them to shift and integrate life experiences and learning towards living more fully. And I wanted to share this with other women to inspire their journeys and wholehearted lives.

In the middle of 2017, when I was also writing the first draft of my Wholehearted book, I reached out to women I knew. I offered women in my community the opportunity to step forward to write their story.

‘Wholehearted’ emerged as a focus when listening to a Magic Lessons podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert speaking to Mark Nepo. They chat with Cecilia, who lost heart about her writing because of not being accepted into MFA programs. Mark Nepo reads from his poem Breaking Surface which begins ‘Let no one keep you from your journey.’

My book Wholehearted and the Stories of Wholehearted Living all centre around this theme of getting to what is important and not letting others or ourselves stop us. They are women’s stories and voices sharing experiences of challenge, transition, insight and how they moved through to claim wholeness, creativity and strength.

This body of women’s stories has grown over the past few years since then. I’m working on stories with new authors whose stories are imminent. The invitation is always open. The guest posting is a supported writing experience. I bring my writing, teaching, coaching and editing skills together to help you craft your draft into a published story you can feel proud of.

How other women’s stories helped mine

As I was writing Wholehearted, I revisited these stories shared and crafted together. Some feature in the Wholehearted book. These women’s stories and voices inspire me each day, helping me see common connections in experiences. I hope they can help you too because it supports us all to hear other women’s experiences. We feel less alone when we can read another’s story that connects to ours.

Reading of another’s journey through challenging times can give us hope and practical tips. Each author also shares the books and other influences that provided women and insight as they moved towards feeling more whole and wholehearted.

These women’s stories share common themes and strategies like:

  • how to listen to our inner voice.
  • the learning from and working through grief and trauma.
  • how to write our way through and journey with writing.
  • what transition looks like.
  • the resources and learning that can help us gain strength and insight.
  • how art can help us and others heal.
  • practical strategies to get back to what matters and centre it in our lives.
  • how we deal with the toughest challenges in our lives.

Each story tells the author’s journey over time, moving through the challenging middle time of change towards a fuller life.

Turning points in our lives

There are often turning points in our lives when transition takes hold and our lives shift.

For me, it was not being given the opportunity to do a job I felt well suited for in a very changeable work environment where I was struggling to find my place. It sent a powerful message about being out of place and lost with the gap in alignment between myself and the organisation growing. After that, so much changed, and I reached out to a coach for help to make a journey of transition from the long-term government role to a new life. This is the story I share in my Wholehearted book.

Wholehearted story author Heidi Washburn tells of travelling home one day when she experiences a voice speaking to her.

A quiet, gentle but firm voice, not just a thought.

‘I don’t want to do this anymore.

What?

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

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

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

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

From ‘When the inner voice calls, and calls again

How other women’s stories can light the way

Reading other women’s stories can light the way and help us not feel so alone. Each story offers an experience you can relate to and learn from.

Lynn Hanford-Day tells in Breakdown to Breakthrough of getting to the point of a breakdown before making change. Her sacred geometry and mandala art became the way through, and this continues as a sacred creative practice in her life. You can see her beautiful work and process on Instagram.

Katherine Bell went through a huge life transition, leaving behind her country, job and marriage after gaining courage from reading ‘David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea’. She shows us Our Heart Always Knows the Way.

Penelope Love tells her story of her Journey to Write Here and how writing in various forms has helped her navigate so much wisely.

Sally Morgan tells a story of Writing the Way Through and trusting her writing practice in the seasons of her life, especially when she loses her voice for an extended time.

Bek Ireland goes on personal retreats in her own town to shape the quiet she craves and to hear her inner wisdom. She tells her story in The courageous magic of a live unlived.

Shalagh Hogan explains how she gathers her lessons over time, doing the hard inner work and integrating learning to shape wholehearted Creative Soul Living.

Many women form their versions of what wholehearted living looks like to them with their own language, like Sylvia Barnowski’s Maps to Self. These powerful insights from other women’s stories help shape our journey to wholehearted living.

Thank you to these women for stories shared on Quiet Writing


So thank you to: Katherine Bell, Elizabeth Milligan, Colleen Reagon, Jade Herriman, Lynn Hanford-Day, Kerstin Pilz, Shalagh Hogan, Chantal Simon, Amie Ritchie, Sylvie Kirsch, Penelope Love, Sylvia Barnowski, Heidi Washburn, Maura McCarley Torkildson, Olivia Sprinkel, Bek Ritchie, Emily Lewis, Lisa Dunford, Kamsin Kaneko, Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom, Sally Morgan and Valerie Lewis.

Thank you for sharing your wholehearted story, creativity, life hacks, special reads and learning from challenging times to inspire our journeys. You’ve all helped mine immensely and you’re stitched into the pages of Wholehearted.

📖 Head to Stories of Wholehearted Living to read more about the project and the guest posts. Or click on the individual names of authors above.
✍️ If you would like to contribute as a guest post author, pop over to Wholehearted Stories to read the invitation.

wholehearted stories
Stories of Wholehearted Living

Book and light photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

love, loss & longing wholehearted stories

The Silent Whispers of my Mind – Journeying from fragmented to wholehearted

September 16, 2021

This guest post from Valerie Lewis shows how learning to listen to the silent whispers of our mind can help us shift from feeling fragmented to more wholehearted living.

This is the 23rd guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here–the invitation is open.

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

I’m honoured to have Valerie Lewis as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Valerie and I met when she joined me as a coaching client in the Sacred Creative Collective. In this story, Valerie shares how tragic life circumstances affected her so deeply. And how she moved through grief and feeling fragmented to connecting the pieces of herself through listening within. Thank you for sharing your story, Valerie.

The Silent Whispers of my Mind – Journeying from fragmented to wholehearted

My only child was killed at the age of seven. Amongst the shock and disbelief of what had happened and feeling as if I had been thrust into some horrific, unimaginable nightmare, as the days and months passed by, my mind felt so jumbled and filled with chatter. One minute my mind would tell me I couldn’t cope or I didn’t know how to think or couldn’t think straight. Sometimes at night when all was silent around me, my mind would tell me it was all a very bad dream and tomorrow I would wake up and my life would be as it was before and back to normal. 

There was one time, though, when a voice, which seemed different and to come from a deeper place within my head and upper body emitting a warmth and calmness which I temporarily felt (as it spoke), assured me I would get through this. Afterwards, I was to wonder if I had actually had this thought or not because I couldn’t determine whether the voice that had spoken was in my head or outside of it.

Life can be scary

We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn’t always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.

~ Zoraida Córdova

During this painfully surreal time, I had a lot of decisions to make, some minor and many major, and there were practical tasks to be attended to. Some of my biggest decisions revolved around the fact that I was no longer who I used to be. Indeed, who was I now? I can look back and realise that the voice within my head, you know, the one I said felt as if it came from a deeper place within me, the whispering voice that was calm, matter-of-factly and assuring, really came to the fore (not sure why—maybe I was just more sensitive and receptive), and guided me in some of my decision-making (such as the decision to file for divorce and also officially change back to my maiden surname).

Of course, sometimes it was a battle, as the internal monologue was overwhelming. It was as if diverse thoughts vied for attention. Thoughts of the past, thoughts about the present, thoughts about the future that could have, should have been and thoughts about a future that I couldn’t really define, visualise or even fantasise about. Fear and an overwhelming sadness were predominant emotions during that time. But there was also a strong will to make it through that existed within me as I embarked on my journey to discover who I now was and the eventual decision to move away and create a new life for myself in another city. I was not to know then that my ‘journey’ was a journey of self-leadership and would involve so much discovering and learning.

A fragmented life

There were times when I felt too scared to look ahead to the future. The future I had envisaged and had been working towards was now a shattered dream. Many of the tangibles in my life were no longer there in the form I had previously known them – my husband (was committed to a secure hospital for the manslaughter under diminished responsibility of our daughter, and diagnosed as schizophrenic), my daughter, our home, our car, even our cat Smokey – our relationship was now different as he was ‘adopted’ by an aunt and uncle and was no longer ‘my cat’ as such. Even the non-tangibles – routine and familiarity were now changed.

I no longer felt whole. I and my life were fragmented, with many of the pieces, like a jigsaw, now no longer there. Would I ever wake up one day and my heart not hurt so much? And would I someday feel happy again, and how was it even possible for a human being to shed so many tears? Would I ever become a whole person again and when would it happen – next month, next year, in five, ten years or never? How would I know, how would I feel then?

Feeling my feelings

When I said I didn’t know how to move forward, not necessarily in a practical sense, but in the way I felt and dealt with my feelings, someone suggested to just take each day as it came. It made sense to me. Instinct told me that to survive, I had to go through what I had to go through. I had to feel the feelings I felt. There was no other way if I wanted to remain sane. I would get through this. The calm, matter-of-factly voice had whispered that one time to me. No matter what the other voices said, I needed to hold on to these particular words and the lesson I was learning, that it is best to not ignore feelings (emotional states).

Somehow, we have to find ways to go through them. Sure, we can try to circumvent them, but feelings are pretty tenacious and can be quite slippery. They can sneak back into our minds and bodies and cause us to remain stuck with hurt and grief or to become ill.

One book, gifted to me by a dear friend in 1988, ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’, by the now deceased Susan Jeffers was perhaps the first ‘self-help’ book I devoured as I sought guidance on how to deal with my inner fears and confront and cope with life’s challenges. 

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them—that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.  

~ Lao Tzu

The silent whispers of my mind—my inner wise Sage

It was some years later that I really grasped and understood that my silent whisperer, the one that stood out (and still does) as differing from the other whisperers, was my intuition. This developed during the late ’90’s and early noughties. I became familiar with energy healing (namely Reiki); explored astrology, colour therapy, crystals, tarot and oracle cards; embraced creativity and journaling; and read many more self-help/personal development books. I also gained a better understanding of my personality as an introvert and thus my natural inclination to go within to seek answers and understand the world and my existence within it. Personal development classes with someone I now look back on as a mentor type figure, and also some spiritual development classes also helped to integrate this realisation.

My calm, silent whisperer does not repeat their initial message – they say it once. Sometimes they don’t even speak. I just have a deep sense of ‘knowing’, or some might say, ‘a calling’, a feeling which seems to fill my upper body. This is unlike the everyday mind chatter or internal monologue that goes on in our head. That calm whispered message or deep sense of ‘knowing’ can occur ages before I’m in a position to act on it. This is to the point that as time goes by, I start to question if it really happened because the other voices have started to interfere and jostle to make their point of view known and dissuade me, or life gets in the way. 

Trusting the silent whisperer

I trusted the silent whisperer’s message without question a couple of years or so after when I met the person who is my partner now and moved in with him, after being hesitant about sharing a home with someone. Another example is from 2014, when I felt called to track down and contact the woman whose personal development classes I’d attended over 10 years previously. I was pleased that although now retired and not actively marketing her services, she was happy to work on a one-to-one basis with me providing directional support and using guided meditation to reconnect with my inner self.

Follow the tugs that come from the heart. I think that everyone gets these gentle urges and should listen to them. Even if they sound totally insane, they may be worth going with.

~ Victoria Moran

I’ve trusted the messages of the silent whisperer when it has seemed to make sense, but sometimes the scenario that plays out makes little sense. Life has presented me with more challenges and no clear route on that path. I’ve had to learn (AND am still learning) to trust that in time (maybe even many years later), the road would become clear, things fall into place and the initial messages would make sense. 

Who am I?

I can’t remember why or how I came to purchase my first deck (Rider Waite). Or the book that I also purchased the year before my 40th birthday and spent many hours studying (Principles of Tarot by Evelyne and Terry Donaldson) still on my quest to discover more about myself and journey towards becoming whole and less fragmented. Evelyne and Terry say that “it is not so much what is ‘in the cards’, as what we ourselves are able to see in them”. Also that ‘the Tarot is really a set of windows through which we can look at life from a different perspective.’ Two of my favourite cards are the High Priestess and Empress – archetypes which I feel represent my inner and outer self.

High Priestess

The High Priestess is the Goddess within. She is the feminine principle, the Yin, the receptive side. She represents the intuition. She shows us the path to realisation is reached by overcoming our own self-doubts, and by listening more trustingly to our own feelings and intuitions.

Empress

The Empress teaches us how to love. It is love that makes our lives unfold and grow. As opposed to the High Priestess, the Empress represents the physical (tangible) world. The Empress is there to show us how we can learn about emotions and feelings through self-expression.

Extracted from the ‘Principles of Tarot’ book

Floating – by Valerie Lewis

Self-expression and intuition

I feel more whole but keep on growing and becoming even more whole. For a good while, intuitive abstract painting has intrigued me and, a couple of years ago I decided to give it a go. The painting above ‘Floating’ reflects the words of the below quote and combines, for me, the two tarot archetypes:

In this life, your so called ordinary life, you must be rooted; and in your inner space, in the spiritual life, you must be weightless and flying, flowing and floating.

~ Rajneesh

Below is ‘Pink Haze’. She serves as a reminder that our life issues are rarely a monochrome black or white. What is in between those two colours, especially in times of transition, if we learn to listen to our intuition, can inspire and guide us onto a path that is true to who we are being/becoming and to living a life that is wholehearted and authentic.

Pink Haze by Valerie Lewis

My experience has shown me it is not always a straightforward path. There may be a circling back, dips, curves, stumbling blocks and so forth as we journey along this path we call life. The truth is, we are all born with intuitive abilities. We use intuition (hear those silent whispers or feel it within our bodies) every day of our lives, some more than others, but often we might be unaware of having done so.

Through perhaps fear, listening to the many voices (inner critic or ego), we ‘rationalise’ or dismiss what we have intuited. It often becomes easier to turn to others for help and guidance. But ultimately—the answers we seek are within us—and we already know what we need to do (even if we think we don’t)—to live life with a mind and soul more wholehearted and less fragmented.

Key book companions along the way

Just a few of the many books that have made an impact on me and my journey:

Feel the Fear (And Do It Anyway)—Susan Jeffers (1987)

The Successful Self (Freeing Our Hidden Inner Strengths)—Dorothy Rowe (1988)

Principles of Tarot—Evelyne and Terry Donaldson (1996)

The Magic Path of Intuition—Florence Scovel Shinn (2013)

The Artists Way—Julia Cameron (1992)

Tune In (Let Your Intuition Guide You to Fulfilment And Flow)—Sonia Choquette (2013) extract free with Spirit and Destiny Magazine

Healing Grief (Reclaiming Life After Any Loss)—James Van Praagh (2000)

Love is in The Earth (A Kaleidoscope of Crystals)—Melody (1995)

I am Diva (Every Woman’s Guide to Outrageous Living)—Elena Bates, Maureen O’Crean, Molly Thompson, Carilyn Vaile (1999)

Inspiration Sandwich (Stories to Inspire our Creative Freedom)—Sark (1992)

About Valerie Lewis

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

You can connect with Valerie at her website Visualise and Bloom or via Instagram @visualiseandbloom You can also read an interview with Valerie on her transition journey.

Photographs by Valerie Lewis, used with permission and thanks.


Read more Wholehearted Stories

If you enjoyed this wholehearted story, please share it with others to inspire their journey. You might enjoy these stories too:

Women’s stories and their uplifting value in wholehearted living

Writing the way through – a wholehearted story

Lusciously Nurtured – a wholehearted interview with Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom

Learning to live on the slow path and love the little things that light me up

Year of magic, year of sadness – a wholehearted story

From halfhearted to wholehearted living – my journey

The courageous magic of a life unlived – a wholehearted story

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

Tackling trauma and “not enough” with empathy and vision – a wholehearted story

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

Maps to Self: my wholehearted story

The Journey to Write Here – my wholehearted story

Ancestral Patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through – my wholehearted story

Message from the middle – my wholehearted story

The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

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

Breakdown to breakthrough – my wholehearted life

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

Becoming who I really am – a wholehearted story

Finding my home – a wholehearted story

My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

Keep in touch 

Quiet Writing is on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so keep in touch and interact with like-minded and kindred souls in the Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

podcast writing

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 1

November 2, 2021

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podcast Page | RSS

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

This episode is the first Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch event on 9 September 2021. I chat with Penelope Love and Kirsten Pilz, who have been key partners and supporters on the journey of writing Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook.

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

  • An introduction to my book Wholehearted.
  • How the concept for the book was born
  • The writing, editing and crafting process, especially with Penelope
  • The value of retreat in the writing process, especially with Kerstin
  • Personality and writing
  • Tenacity and the long-haul writing process
  • Shadow careers and developing journeys
  • And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Create Your Story podcast. This is a recording of conversations from the first Wholehearted virtual book launch event, just after Wholehearted was published on the 6th of September, 2021. Being locked down when the book was published, all the initial events were of necessity of virtual.

It was an opportunity to connect with people who’ve been on the journey with me in various ways. So in this episode, I’m joined by Penelope Love who received the very first long draft of Wholehearted and helped me to take that draft into a form, able to be submitted as two books for publication.

Penelope is a publisher, speaker and winner of the International Book Awards as an author of Wake Up in Love. And she is also an incredible editor and partner in the book writing process. We chat about bringing the books to life together in an accessible and sacred way in this conversation.

I’m also joined by Kirsten Pilz, who has been a fellow traveler on the writing and creative solopreneur journey. Kirsten is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and yoga teacher. She’s a retreat leader and I’ve had the pleasure of joining Kirsten on a writing and yoga retreat in Hoi An Vietnam in 2018. We talk about the value of retreat and how this time was a really important part of my writing journey with Wholehearted though it took me quite a while to realize it in hindsight. We’re also joined in this conversation by Natasha Piccolo, who is a fellow author at the kind press with her new book, The Balance Theory, which is forthcoming next year.

We chat about so many aspects of Wholehearted, the book and wholehearted living, writing, editing, long haul creativity, retreat, personality. I had so many tingly moments listening back to where we really touched on some heart-filled and deep aspects of writing, truth and life. In the show notes, I share links about where you can find out more about my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook as well as more about our guests, Penelope and Kirsten. The great news too, is that there are solo episodes coming up with Penelope, Kirsten, and Natasha where we dive deeper into their stories, their writing, and how they’ve created their story. I hope you’ll enjoy listening and that you’ll gain some insights to help guide your life, especially if writing and creativity are a really important part of it. Enjoy listening.

Transcript of Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch chat

Terri Connellan: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining me for the first virtual book launch of Wholehearted it’s fantastic to have you here. And all people who have been on the journey in some way, shape or form, writing, family, readers, advanced readers, connections on Instagram. So thank you so much for being part of the journey. it’s a real honor to have you here. So, first up, I’ll share what we might track through as we go through the session. First of all, welcome to two special guests who are joining me today. Penelope Love who’s been my editor all the way through, received the first, very large, a hundred thousand word draft, and has been on the whole journey with me as my editor, particularly shaping one book into two, which has been incredible, so great to chat with Penelope, and Kerstin, and also has been on the journey for a long time with me, both are authors of Wholehearted Stories on my Quiet Writing website.

And we’ve connected in lots of different ways. I think through social media initially, I went to a writing retreat, with Kerstin in Vietnam, which was just a beautiful way to, I think get in touch with my writing self. So we’ll explore some of those particular touch points.

 First of all, I thought, I’d talk a little bit about the book just briefly, as an introduction, for those who may not know it so well, and about, what it covers, why I wrote the book, how it fit in.my life. Then I’ll have a conversation with Penelope and with Kerstin about their roles and also about Wholehearted generally. They’ve read the books so they can share some thoughts about that.

 So first of all, what is, Wholehearted? Why did I write it? When did it come from? So, the book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition emerged from my journey. So I went on a transition journey deciding what to do with my life and realised that I didn’t want to stay on the path that I was, which was working for 30 plus years in a government organization, in the technical and further education system in Australia.

And I started to make a path from that. But as I was going through, I found it was really important for me to write about it and to start to shape the journey in a writing sense so as well as going through it, I felt the need to capture it. And my why was very much about helping me to write, make sense of what I was going through, but it was also about supporting women to develop self-leadership in their own lives.

Because I think if you’re making change particularly midlife, but at any time in life, there’s not a lot of guideposts for us or ways to support us for going through that change. So I thought I’d share with you my notebook from 2017 of how it started. So there you go, this a lovely mind map of the first ideas of what Wholehearted might look like.

And then there’s another page of a summary. And I was just looking at it. That’s sort of the chapter summaries, which actually is what it ended up, looking like you know, chapter four, chapter five. The thing that got fleshed out was the wholehearted self leadership skills, but down the bottom here, there’s three boxes that say the structure could be personal narrative and application and exercise.

And that’s pretty much exactly what it ended up being. So it’s interesting that time four and a half years ago thinking, here’s all the things that I’m going through that I want to be able to put into a book. Here’s how I want to help women, here’s what I’m learning and through that, just knowing that it was a mix of experiences, it was a mix of what I’ve learned from it. And it was a mix of how can I help you with with those experiences. So in that 100,000 word draft all of that was in there. So it was quite a big book, but when Penelope received the first draft, she wonderfully said to me, I think you’ve got two books here, which was like, oh my goodness.

It was an amazing moment. So together with Penelope, we’ll talk about that more in a moment we went through and worked out, which things belonged in the main book, which belonged in the second book. And the second book was a workbook, much more practical. So we teased out those aspects and that journey of writing two books at once commenced, but the focus was on the main book, first of all.

But knowing that in the second book we were tracking along with the main book, but then working out how the two came together. It was like a whole, like a piece of marble and there were two pieces in there and with wonderful help, we went through and pulled out the pieces and brought it together.

Kerstin Pilz: How long is the final book, the main book, how many words?

Terri Connellan: The main book’s about 75,000 and the workbook’s about 37,000. So there’s still quite a lot of text in the second book. And what we worked on was bringing out the examples. Do you want to comment Penelope on what that was like, going through that, seeing the two pieces

Penelope Love: Well sure, you know, today I pulled up our first initial conversations on email, about the book, just to refresh myself on the long journey and the initial steps of it.

And what happened was when I read your outline, it came back to me, it was seven pages for this book and that’s, and it was so Terri, it was so thorough. And it was an experience reading the journey, the outline itself, it took me on the full journey of the book. And I, I saw the one big section of the outline that I put a big circle around.

And I said, this could be a book in itself and you know, Terri asked well. How do you know? And it’s a very intuitive process. And I think it also is combined with, I’ve been editing books for 24 years, or I should say editing material for 24 years , books for about 17 of those. And. I think it’s just a matter of seeing so many books over the course of my career and knowing when something is just too much for a single book. But I couldn’t, and no one could deny how this material worked together. So it was a great initial run. And what I really loved about the process is that in the beginning you could feel overwhelmed or you could feel no pressure. And I took the no pressure approach as I read through it.

I just put a very large liberal highlight over areas that I thought were not the main book. And then I put it in Terri’s court and she was able to that big highlighted section, start to see what I mean and then I think the back and forth made it not overwhelming. If it’s one person facing all of this task of having to sort through and say, which is which it’s not, but it was a really neat little, like a tennis game.

And we, and we pulled together. Or we pulled apart two angels in the marble.

Terri Connellan: Yeah . We actually color coded it. So I think you color-coded at first. So we had blue for the main book sort of a pinky color for the workbook. And then there was another color for things that we thought didn’t belong, but we, we also took the view that everything could be repurposed somehow.

Penelope Love: It’s true. It’s true. And I also embraced that philosophy whenever I edit that nothing is really ever wasted. And I knew that these little sections of texts that didn’t really fall into either book could be perfectly saved in archives, for posts to help promote the book or even the seed of a new book. So that’s how, and when you treat it like that in the beginning, there’s not pressure to do something with everything. It just puts a relaxation around the process.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. Thank you for that. So what the sort of shape that we ended up with that process was you come into the book hearing about my experiences. So I start with my moment – often with transition and turning points, there’s a particular thing that happens in your life. And many of you may have experienced this where, you know, I’m not staying here, whatever it is, relationship, job, place of living. Just a point in life. There’s often a point. In our Wholehearted Stories on Quiet Writing , you see that again and again, and the story is, Heidi’s one, for example, she hears a voice saying “I don’t want to do this anymore”.

And it’s just this thing that often happens to us. For me, it was a particular situation in the workplace where I wasn’t given a job that I thought it was a great fit for. Not a big issue, but in the context of that, it made me realize I could no longer stay where I was.

So it was a real turning point that, took me down a fair way and then had to rebuild. So I write about that in the first part. And then I talk about that journey back. So, what sort of toeholds and footholds helped me to connect back, some major themes that helped me. So things like connecting with our passions and personality, knowing who we are, our body of work, and then there’s 15 wholehearted self-leadership skills that but is sort of the bulk of the book, but they particularly just my learning on the journey, but also ways that people can also support themselves through any type of change or ongoing in their life.

So I guess that’s where that mix of personal narrative and practicality comes from. You have read the book, so I don’t know if you want to make any comments about how that comes together for you just as a reader. That’d be interesting to hear.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. I mean, I thought on the one hand, there’s the very organized, the what is it in your, in your personality type? The…

Terri Connellan: INTJ

Kerstin Pilz: which is lovely. And then there’s that interest in the tarot, which I just find so fascinating because it’s not at all encouraged in these workplaces and you and I both have been in Education. And so I’ve found that really fascinating, how that opened a new way of approaching yourself and your life through that emphasis on intuition and also tapping into the archetypes. And in fact, that is one for me, one of the more interesting results of reading the book, the shadow stories and so on. So maybe talk about that a bit more. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So there is a chapter, Chapter Eight about the shadow side and I found as I went through my journey, there were a whole lot of things that kept cropping up and learnings about things like shadow career. So that’s a Steven Pressfield idea that we often, for example, be a writing teacher when we want to be a writer, be the roadie in the band when we actually want to be the musician. And write the PhD on something when we actually want to be that person. So yes, it’s a great insight into what might be in our story that we can amplify and tap into and also what might be holding us back from that. So that’s helpful. And then those other things like grief, envy, I talk about envy and often when we feel envy or feel that strong jealousy of something or desire for it, if we can try and see that as a force for good, rather than get sucked into the comparisonitis, that can be really powerful too. So there’s actually quite a lot in that chapter. It was interesting. That sort of shadow side, I think, as you’re working through anything, particularly when it’s difficult.

My mother had a terminal illness and I was supporting her in that time when I was writing the book too. So it was actually written from a really challenging place as well. So, it’s important to honor those energies of life too.

Kerstin Pilz: And may I just ask a follow-up question, with your emphasis being on wholehearted and that’s often also not at all where leaders comes from in the workplace, although I’m finding perhaps a little bit more, like my last boss was female and she’s very much an intuitive person. And also heart-centered, I was wondering,are you finding this maybe since you’ve left the workplace, which is now a number of years ago, has there been a shift with regards to that being a little bit more encouraged or are you still a sole pioneer in that field?

Terri Connellan: Well I think I’ve been lucky because of the coaching training that I did with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, which is very much a female led heart-led community that I’ve been more connected with that sort of energy. But , I do think that more intuitive, receptive side of leadership is starting to come to the fore. It’s probably still got a long way to go, but it’s beautiful to be part of an organization with Beautiful You, for example, that is female led and is pretty much totally coming from that place and just feeling the difference. And I think, you know, for me, that was a beautiful counterbalance from, from where I’d been before.

So I think we’ve got a long way to go with that, but it was interesting to think about where leadership and self-leadership fit together. And the reason I was thinking about self-leadership was because of my experiences in the workplace and how that grew from that.

I think perhaps there’s a lot of self-leadership to be done in our leaders perhaps of all genders to tap into that female, not just female, but the intuition side. Because I found when I was in the workplace, it was very damped down, even though it was my strongest cognitive function, I tended to rely on the extroverted sort of things. It’s a good question, but I, I think we’ve got a long way to go. I might handover to have a chat with Penelope, and further about our relationship. So that’s just a bit about the book and we’ll keep talking about the book as we go through.

So to introduce Penelope more formally. This is her beautiful book Wake Up in Love a beautiful memoir that was published earlier this year written over 16 years and so a long writing journey. Penelope is a publisher at Citrine publishing a writing mentor and editor, and, as I said, Penelope received the draft and really helped me through that whole journey and has continued to be a point of contact and support the whole way through for which I’m very grateful. So thank you for that. So what I’d be interested to explore with you Penelope is what did you see in Wholehearted when you first received it? We talked a bit about that, but what was it like to receive it? I’m sure it was quite overwhelming. It was a long draft.

Penelope Love: I made my initial comment that the outline itself was seven pages. It’s not, nothing is daunting, you know, to a fellow. I N something Jay, because my introversion, lets me be very quietly with these ideas and I, and I love it. So in a lot of ways, the more the merrier. But, you know, I’d been following you on Instagram. I believe we met through a Susannah Conway challenge, something like that. And so when I received the manuscript, we’d actually done a get to know you call probably a year beforehand or maybe six months. And that primed me to sort of watch you and watch your postings in a way that I probably wouldn’t have had we not had that get to know you chat. And so when I saw the outline, it was like everything I knew about Terri in seven pages. And I could, I see the way her mind works. She’s very, very good at collecting details and organizing them. And so I had appreciation for where she was going, because I had been following her journey online. So that led it to not be so overwhelming. Another thing that had I had done, and I can’t remember, I believe this was before you’ve handed me the manuscript, I enrolled in the Sacred Creative Collective. And so in between following you on Instagram and then enrolling in your Sacred Creative Collective, and then receiving the outline and the manuscript. Perfect. This is a textbook for everything I wish I could have gone deeper into during the Sacred Creative, but not in, in that interactive format.

It was like part of it was in PDFs, part of it was in discussions, part of it was on Facebook postings. And so this book outline was, oh, great, everything’s in one place now I get to help organize it. So, it really opened my whole heart. It allowed me to do the work I do best . You know, there’s a fine line between shadow career and what you’re supposed to do. And I know that somebody who has wanted to be a writer and a published author all my life, it’s very easy to find yourself in the shadow career of editor. And I wrote about that in my own Wholehearted Story. At the same time, you know, I couldn’t deny that I was meant to do this project.

It was almost like a karmic fated sort of thing that it fell in my lap. Just before I went through a career transition. So the book itself became a guide for me, guiding me through the year I was editing it. And I’m in the middle of the summer, of the year 2020, when everybody was in COVID crisis of, you know, what am I doing, really with my life? This book was just, it was such a gem to be able to have that, even though it wasn’t in its finished form, I still had all the information and access and I was using it actively. And as a publisher myself, I find that the books that are written from that place of experience that Terri went through with the transition from her job, from her career to her heart career you know,, it vibrates that, it resonates as I was reading this book, I was finding and fine tuning my own career to make it more authentic and wholehearted.

And I was finding, and most of the pieces are there. But during that period, I did find other aspects of esoteric interests that I like to study. And Terri’s brave sharing about how she goes wholeheartedly into tarotist studies, despite the taboo nature gave me the permission slip to do the same thing when astrology came my way.

And I know I read astrology into my daily life and daily work in a way that, I wonder had I not been reading Wholehearted, would I have embraced this?

Terri Connellan: And now Penelope is encouraging me to get into astrology so, it’s that lovely effect of you know, the things we do and the things we share really help us with that next step of the journey. So…

Penelope Love: yeah, and the spiral metaphor that is in her logo and on the cover of the book, I feel it’s, you know, always really spoke to me and the book helped give it meaning and more reflection. And, I feel this is part of the spiral and we find more interests and we go deeper and deeper.

Terri Connellan: In the structure of the book, that was in my mind too of going big and then going a bit more detailed with the chapters. But yeah, that idea of layering, the learning like this, there’s quite a lot of repeated stories and different angles in there, but it’s sort of how we learn over time and we learn in another way. And we often we go back to the same things. Don’t we, look, we repeat, we go back and we’re moving through and that’s, to me what the spirals about is that, that idea of layering and learning and continuing, and I tried to build that into the book too. So I don’t know how, if you had a sense of that, as you were editing that how that sort of energy fits with the narrative.

Penelope Love: It does. And it, what it taught me is that, you know, when you get to this other sort of familiar place along the perimeter, but you’re not the same as you were the time you visited it, so you can go deeper.

Terri Connellan: . Thank you.

Kerstin Pilz: I just had a question too about that process if I may, because I think that might be interesting for other writers, because you said when you sent me the first draft, which obviously I’m sure wasn’t the first draft. I was just wondering how long did it actually take you to get to a point where you felt confident to send that to an editor? And then how long did it take for Penelope the editor to work with you to shape it into what you then send on to your publisher?

Terri Connellan: I’ve got my timeline here to remind me, so I started writing properly in the first half of 2017. I think I sent it to Penelope in the middle of June 2019. And actually I finished that first long draft when I went to Vietnam with you, September, 2018. And then I didn’t know what to do with it apart from just fix up the spelling. Like, there was lots of editing, but it wasn’t structural. And that’s what I didn’t know how to do. And that’s when I reached out to Penelope because I knew what I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to do next. I just didn’t have the skills. And I think that’s what I’ve really learned is that power of collaboration and of reaching out to people to help. Most of that was pulling the two out, working out the two drafts and then working on the first book. And then the second book, I mainly finished by myself later with the kind press.

Penelope Love: And this is a book mind you that had over a hundred thousand words in the first manuscript. If somebody has a 50,000 word manuscript, the process is not going to take as many months. Somebody asked me that the other day, you know, how long does my book need to be before I send it to you? I mean, I’ve taken a book about 30,000 words and fleshed it out. And then if books come in about 50 to 70, they generally stay around that. And then usually when they come in over a hundred thousand, we’re working at trimming them down. Just as a practical matter of business. That was another consideration that I brought to the table for Terri was that if you put everything in one book, it becomes such a huge book. You have to charge a lot for it.

 And. You know, this is a way that now there’s two books and it becomes maybe more affordable. Somebody can get book one and then get book two at another time. So there’s all these considerations that you make when you see things from that outside perspective, that when you’re writing a book, you’re not looking at it that way. Another reason to bring in people with other skillsets, because these points of view help to make the project whole.

Terri Connellan: Oh, they do. And I knew it needed to be less, but I didn’t know how. And then when you said it was two books, that made perfect sense. To be able to just take out the more practical pieces, made a lot of sense.

Kerstin Pilz: Are they sold as a package or individually?

Terri Connellan: Individually, but like on Amazon they package them up together too. You can purchase the two which is good and in terms of working through, you can read the main book without the workbook, but everyone will be different. But the way I envisage is, someone what might read through the first book and then perhaps do another reading and go back and work through and do it in a detailed way.

And I’m starting a coaching program too to collectively work through the book as a group, which I think it’d be really nice way to do it because again, as it was a solo journey for me. And that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, it can feel quite lonely when you’re going through a big change. So I think even if people are working through the book, it might be really nice to connect around that journey and have those conversations, because just as I’ve learned from your stories and the other women’s stories, we all learn from each other too.

Kerstin Pilz: And so that workbook essentially also could be used by a course facilitator for their own course. So it’s like a resource, like a textbook, I guess in a way.

Terri Connellan: Meredith Fuller wrote a lovely review, and she’s a psychologist, she got an advanced copy. So she’s actually been working with a client who didn’t want to do psychological work via Zoom. It didn’t feel comfortable cause they were locked down. So she gave them the book and the person’s worked through the book at a time when they didn’t feel able to have face-to-face consultations. So that’s really interesting to hear. She said, she sees it as valuable for individuals, groups.

Kerstin Pilz: So that’s beautiful feedback already from your book. That is an amazing resource you’ve created.

Terri Connellan: I think so. And that was always how I saw it too. Like it’s got multiple uses.

So what do you think Wholehearted offers women? You know, it really well. What would you say Wholehearted offers women?

Penelope Love: Well, you know, I think it comes down to it being born at this very time, following the year of the pandemic and people really getting this chance to look at their lives and see, am I doing what I’d like to be doing? Am I in my shadow career or is there another step I can take toward getting out and living a wholehearted life where I have my own career, that feels good to my heart. And every day I look forward to doing it because it’s what I love. Wholehearted is a guide to that.

Going in order is always an option, but there’s so much that you can, the book is so modular and that’s what I love. So a lot of people that I know over the course of my career, they like to, open up to whatever page and seeing what they open to. And Wholehearted can almost be read almost kind of like a tarot deck. You open and then you see what chapter and that very much could resonate where you are in your journey and what you need to work on now. I feel that because of Terri’s connection with that esoteric system, that the book invites that and can even be used that way to play with. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So that’s true. Cause I mean, there’s that linear reading through, but there’s also a bit like a tarot where you pull a card, there’s a way of just engaging with what resonates at the time. And that’s interesting because that’s actually how I wrote it too, because I used NaNoWriMo that 50,000 words in a month model, even though it wasn’t a novel and I actually had the outline and then I’d do my morning pages, do my Tarot and then I’d tend to write with the structure in Scrivener of where I felt drawn. So if something like envy was popping up, then I’d write about that cause it was bubbling up for me. So it was very much written from that time. Even though the structure was linear, the writing process wasn’t particularly. That’s really interesting.

Meredith in that article says “As an introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging female INTJ her work is well structured while enabling the reader to meander.’ So that’s really nice. Thank you for highlighting that. And thanks so much for everything you’ve done on the journey. It’s been absolutely unbelievable having you there and we’ve developed a really deep and close relationship from that whole journey too and so appreciative and thank you. And we’re going to do a lovely double up of me holding Penelope’s book and Penelope holding mine.

Penelope Love: It will be here tomorrow. US, they shipped them out on Monday, but so I’m getting it Thursday. So as soon as I get that, we’ll coordinate.

Terri Connellan: So Kerstin is a writer, writer for wellbeing coach, hosts beautiful writing retreats one of which I attended in Vietnam, yoga teacher, and is also writing a memoir, just about to the end of the first draft called Falling Apart Gracefully, and shared some of those experiences in your Wholehearted Story.

So we thought we might talk about some of our touch points Kerstin and particularly the retreat, the value of retreat, the Wholehearted Story and the role of challenge in our lives. So I found when I went on that retreat and it probably is only in hindsight. I did a presentation on personality and writing, and I looked at my whole journey, psychological journey through the process of writing the book. And when it came to 2017-18 and the writing retreat, I’ve put writing retreat Hoi An Vietnam and then introverted feeling, extroverted feeling, extroverted sensing all these things that are not my strengths. It was a time of my muse reconnecting and coming back. So obviously retreats are important to you and you lead them. What do you see as the value of retreat and incubation in the writing process?

Kerstin Pilz: So for me, actually, I went on my very first retreat when I had what I would call an emotional and mental breakdown. And I went to Thailand to a very hardcore, Vipassana retreat with just locals. And afterwards they said to me, look, for us, we do this every year. It was a lot of burnout housewives and it’s part of our spiritual growth. And I thought, how interesting, I had always thought, you know, holidays should be, and we only get 20 days of annual leave here in Australia. I think in the U S is even less. And I thought, I want to spend those days to do something really constructive with my life. I don’t want to be sitting in a meditation room and just listening to my thoughts in my head, that’s really boring and unproductive. So that was the time that opened my eyes to the fact that the retreat is actually a way to replenish yourself and to do really important inner work, going on an inner journey, because my holidays had always been about exploring adventure, outer journeys. And so the value of that inner journey, and especially for a writer, because when we work on a project, like you said, at the beginning before we started recording, I believe you know, we’re so focused on what we’re putting on the page, but a lot of the information is subconscious and intuitive.

And even as I’m writing my book now, I always give myself plenty of time when I just switch off. And that’s when you actually connect with a lot of the deep messages of the book or the stories you want to write. O r go on an artist’s date, you know, like Julia Cameron says.

So a retreat, I feel is a really important way to just slow down. First of all, slow down disconnect from all the devices. A lot of authors and I love that you are very active on Instagram, which is of course where we met. And where you and Penelope just said, you met. Which is wonderful, but it is so distracting. So that often, you know, when we just give ourselves that time, it doesn’t have to be a whole week to go on a retreat.It’s a time of replenishing withdrawing. There’s a book that came out last year by Catherine May called ‘Wintering: the need for rest and retreat in difficult times’. And it really just explores fully. And for her, it was also leaving a career and becoming ill and then period of resting and retreating and actually exploring what the value of that is, which is not valued in our society. You know, I come from Germany. My father was really judgmental about me resting and retreating for almost a year during my grief time, because I wasn’t in his eyes contributing anything to society, but you do because you actually replenishing from the core and that’s so important.

Terri Connellan: Just to reflect on what you are saying. The reason it came up for me and thinking about that time of retreat was reading this beautiful book The Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer which I’ve written a post about recently. And she compares the writing process to bread making. And she talks about the Muse and the Scribe as two different mental processes, but she talks about bread making, but it’s, the Muse comes in when the bread’s rising, you know, you got to let it sit and I know in taking a long time and it just sat on my desk over there where the finished book is now, and it was like a piece of dough rising and it was, I had to integrate more experiences too and make sense of more things. Sometimes I think it’s letting things come in isn’t it? It’s that, I don’t know, integrating, allowing, receiving.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And it’s also sitting with the idea because a book, unlike an article or blog posts is, a long-haul journey, it’s a marathon. And so to actually sit and have a whole week or even a weekend, just to stay where you’re not answering emails, where you’re not worrying about mundane, everyday things where you’re not even with your partner, having conversations, whether they are good or bad that you normally have. It’s a luxury that you give yourself, but it’s sort of essential.

And also I found when we were on retreat in Vietnam, which is of course interesting again, because you’re in a different country. So like you just said, you’re extroverted skills and suddenly on overdrive because there’s so much visual and olfactory and whatever stimulation. But I find on a retreat that is often also when, especially in my retreats, we do our morning workshop and then we might go to the market and look at the colors or as we did, drinking freshly squeezed juice and, and often that’s when things ferment and compost, somehow deep inside. And then you go back to your afternoon session and something unexpected comes out on the page. There’s a freshness. You wouldn’t find just sitting in your office, looking at what’s going is the day over yet? Have I produced enough?

Terri Connellan: I remember we went to the markets and it was just an explosion of color and smells and I think often we get dulled down too, sitting inside and not engaging with our senses.

And then we cook the meal from the produce and then we ate the food and it was just sensory experience. So for me, I think it, and it’s taken me a while in hindsight to realize that, that time is really important for allowing the work but also allowing myself, to just get back in touch with a broader range of myself and from a personality perspective, some of those things that are not my natural bent, but which really enrich me. So thank you for that experience. It was a really important part of activating the muse in the middle of the journey.

Kerstin Pilz: Yes. And it gives you that distance also, I mean, especially going away whether it’s overseas or to another country, or just out of your comfort zone, it gives you that beginner’s minds lens, you’re looking at it through fresh eyes and I’m sure editors, like Penelope would tell her writers, just let it sit and then come back with fresh eyes after you have some distance. And that’s what a retreat can do as well. Beginner’s mind.

Terri Connellan: So in your Wholehearted story, and I know your memoir is about really difficult times, going through grief experiences and challenge. And certainly my story, different story about, I guess, the similar theme is that theme of going through difficult times and from that creating a positive outcome.

So how do you see challenge and growth fitting? How does Wholehearted play into that, your book? Just interested to explore.

Kerstin Pilz: First of all, when I met you, I said, oh my God, there’s someone on the similar journey and you can actually give your self permission to tap into that, heart centeredness, like you say, in your book. You were at work, feeling like you’re crying in the bathroom or something. And you feel when you then step back into your role or, you know, proper, again, you’re leaving parts of yourself behind and if you have a 30 year career, like you did, mine was almost 20. I realized, and this is thanks to you that I’m an introvert. I had always known, but I hadn’t really consciously thought about how my work as a lecturer was actually forcing me everyday to be an extrovert. So being able to use that wholeheartedness as a pass through life and giving myself permission and understanding why I would feel so exhausted sometimes. It came from being outside of my natural comfort zone is an introvert, which doesn’t mean I’m shy or can’t connect to people.

It just means I have a lot of quiet time, quiet writing, connecting with myself. So I think the difficult times, those threshold moments when our lives become turned upside down they also break us open to a different dimension of ourselves.

If we are in that sensitive, receptive mindset to stop and to just stand still and say, what can I learn from this? What is this opening up inside of me? Because society teaches us to just power through grief and to armor up and to be strong. And like Brené Brown says the really courageous are those who allow themselves to be vulnerable and to sit with the grief and to actually listen into it and to be present to all of those difficult feelings rather than going, oh, let’s just quickly numb ourselves with some wine or run away from the feelings.

So I think it’s a moment of deep growth of possibility, for evolving in ways you possibly consciously couldn’t achieve in the same sort of impactfulness.

Terri Connellan: Mm. Thank you for sharing that. And also how we connected and a sense of synergy along the way, because it does help, it’s hard going through it. You can feel really alone. So to see others who are also forging a path, providing insights, tools, pathway, such as you provided for me through your retreat too. I think we can all help each other grow and understand that, you know, it’s not easy either that work.

The other thing we talk about in the book is a piece you wrote about the role of luck versus hard inner work. And for me there’s certainly elements of luck in our lives, but I think we often can attribute too much to that and not realize just how much hard inner work it does take to deal with situations like this. It’s a long process.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, exactly and thank you for bringing that up. I often, and I’m sure you probably get that too when people say, well, how lucky are you that you have the time to write this book? Well, hello I was retrenched. Or how lucky are you, people tell me to be writing a memoir. It’s like, yeah, but I’m writing a memoir about losing the person I married thinking I’d be married to them forever. And then finding out something that I didn’t actually want to know, namely, that he had a second life. So the lucky part is that I allowed myself to actually be open to what these difficult times have to teach us. I think that’s the lucky part that I’m not running away from it,

Terri Connellan: neither are you.

But I think it’s that decision to when it’s another transition, it’s a turning point moment where you think, well, what am I going to do with this? And, as I tell in the book, I reached out to other people, I looked at what they were doing. And that was when I started my blog a long time, 2010. And for me, that was about finding my voice because writing was important, it was just a way of getting that back front and center out of fairly recent grief experiences to take me forward. So Penelope, do you have any comments or questions?

Penelope Love: I was relating very much to the retreat comments that you were making Kerstin because of the trip I just took and my husband’s asking me, well, what exactly did you like about these places that we visited? Cause he wasn’t necessarily resonating in the same way that I was, but what I was. Now, I have a better answer for him. And it’s this process that was occurring. You know, it’s not so much the streets of any one city that made me really love that city, but what I was loving, what was happening inside me when I was seeing something different that I’ve never seen before.

So yeah. Thank you for helping me put words on that. Cause that’s, and I couldn’t agree more of how important that is in the writing process. Because when I look back, you already speak about writing your memoir as a long haul and it’s different from a blog post or an article. I once at the beginning of my journey had an editor say to me, oh, well, if you write enough articles, one day, you’ll wake up and realize you have a book.

And that always stayed with me and I never really thought as I was writing the love life column, that became my book, that it was going to be a book. But when I had that critical mass of articles and I did start to see it, and then the weaving process of past articles, it becomes its own monster of a process.

But what happened was that as I was living my life, I realized that when I went to India, when I first met my husband and when I went to Costa Rica, these were the two places where the book really got started. And they were not on American soil. And there were lines and journal entries that became the foundational pieces of the book. And they were both from India and Costa Rica. So had I not traveled, had I not journeyed I would not have been able to tell this story of being on home soil. So it’s very interesting. The retreat dimension. I love this very rich conversation.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s beautiful. That process too, with the blog for me, a lot of the pieces in the book began as blog posts too. So I think it’s that finding a way to write and get your story out and find your voice in any way, shape or form, they can then become pieces in other places, just as the pieces that weren’t in the book can become something that goes somewhere else. So I think what you’re saying is really true about honoring that writing self in any way we can.

Kerstin Pilz: But that also ties in with something you say in your book, which is about the importance of having these networks, because it was actually very important for me. Like when I found Susannah Conway who started also because of her grief journey and then you Terri, it’s like, oh, I can give myself permission to write this. It’s actually like for a long time, I thought, well, what happened to me was terrible for me, but really I didn’t experience genocide. I’m not a female in Afghanistan, you know, it’s not that bad. But I think the networks are really important to actually validate any story is important, any story of profound transition. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s what I’ve loved about the stories of wholehearted living and I’ve just gone through and read them all again, putting them into one document to look at the next step with perhaps publishing them. And it’s incredible how, like the themes in there are in my book. I think the first story Katherine Bell’s prompted your story, Kerstin, so it’s like all the stories and experiences prompt each other’s voices to feel a bit freer and to feel a connection.

In one of them, one person writes a letter in response to Heidi’s story so I think that whole importance of women’s voices and stories and sharing and working collaboratively. One thing I’ve learned and, if you look at the acknowledgements of my book, you think writing is a solitary experience. And then when you stop and think, all the people and all the experiences and all the particular group experiences that helped me: group coaching, mastermind, coaching myself, retreats, all of that was part of this rich journey. I know you said, Penelope, writing acknowledgements was so important to you and your journey too, that thinking back on who was part of it, who helped you? What made a difference? And when there’s still many, many more people I could have included, but I had to stop somewhere, but it just makes you realize writing a particular book is so collaborative and so important.

So thank you both for being part of that journey. So just one last question for you, Kirsten. What do you Wholehearted offers women particularly around writing and creativity and those aspects?

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah, I just thought, first of all, it gives you the permission, like we just discussed, you know, to actually believe that you have a voice and that you have a legitimacy to tell your story. And I like that it is a personal story. So I’m following your journey which is nice because you think I’m not alone, and it gives you very practical tools namely the tarot. I’m aware of Susannah Conway. I have somebody, my community here, in fact teaches writing via tarot cards, but I’m still dabbling in it. And I think that’s a really interesting tool that I would like to explore further. And also of course the whole shadow work, the Jungian shadow work and the personality type, which for example, I used to teach in my work as an intercultural communications lecturer, but I never really thought about it so much with regards to how it actually impacts my own personal life and reading about it in your book that really opened up new ways of thinking.

Even of writing, even writing a character, maybe I identify their profile before I create the character in the book. So I thought that was really helpful. And also the emphasis on writing, being a writer, on a retreat I get a lot of people who say I’m a, ‘want to be’ a writer. Penelope, I’m sure you know, this, everybody resonates with this. We want to write. But we end up in the shadow careers, imposter syndrome. So I think that’s really helpful also in your book that you show people that you are a writer just by writing morning pages, for example, every day..

Doesn’t matter whether they end up anywhere or whether you get accepted to the PhD program at Wollongong University, you’re still a writer. And I think that’s really strong message of encouragement.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s beautiful. It’s lovely to hear the particular areas of focus that resonate with you and that also we had a lovely conversation when I was writing with Beth this morning and another lady, co-writing, we were talking about the long haul writing and the word tenacity came up. And Beth, was saying, it’s very much about tenacity, but it’s about realizing that everyone just starts an ordinary writer and you just keep sticking at it and sticking at it and going through to be extraordinary and it’s, but anybody can do it with what we’re saying. We all have different talents. But it’s very much about by sticking at the process, what we can bring to it, as we go through.

Kerstin Pilz: Yeah. And that’s the other thing, I just wanted to say, because you’re a very organized person and disciplined. Writing a book does take discipline. Cause you know, there is that like Liz Gilbert says, you have the fantasy of the artist and then there’s the artist and the writer who like her sits down. She says, I’m like my farmer parents every morning at six o’clock and I write yes.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, exactly. Because the other lady we were writing with was asking questions about how long it took and what the process is like. And she said, tenacity, it takes tenacity and we went, oh yeah, that’s a good word. It does. Thank you so much. Have you got any questions at all Natasha?

Natasha Piccolo: I just want to congratulate you. I really enjoyed hearing your process. And it’s amazing, like being a young writer I’m only just 30 and having a book out next year. It’s amazing to learn from somebody who has been writing for years, years, years, years, years, almost double my time. And it’s beautiful because it gets me very excited for my career.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you so much. That means so much to me. I’m excited to be able to inspire you. Cause I know people inspired me too when I was younger and I think we all need that inspiration to keep us focused on our dream because it starts, like I showed with my book. It starts as that sort of mind map.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah, I really resonated with that. Because my book, I started writing it when I was 20, so it’s been literally a decade. And I’ve got probably 20 journals and scrapbooks and brainstorms and like a whole archive from the last 10 years that, it just made me really excited to release my baby next year.

Terri Connellan: That’s very exciting.

Kerstin Pilz: What’s your book?

Natasha Piccolo: The Balance Theory. So it looks at the idea that the only universal goal that you can truly observe from cellular to cosmic is that the universe is attempting to balance itself.

Kerstin Pilz: It’s a non-fiction book.

Natasha Piccolo: Yeah. Narrative nonfiction, very similar process. So clinically I’m a speech pathologist. So a lot of my understanding of this concept has come through my clinical work over the years. But in my personal life, there was a lot of loss, grief, trauma that was basically mirroring the lessons as I was going through it clinically with clients so there’s that marriage of science and spirit, which is what the whole book is about.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Yeah. I write about that in the postscript, how those things are coming together. It’s like consciousness, the map of consciousness work of David Hawkins and that sort of energy work. Things coming together. So that would be a really challenging book to write too.

Natasha Piccolo: It was, it was a beautiful process though. It was channeled, so I did it through meditation. I would meditate and there was one big meditation that came through as the divine nine. So there was nine chapters and that’s what the proposal was based off, that meditation. And after 10 years of scribbling ideas in journals for a very long time and not actually forming a manuscript. I went that’s what it is. It’s the divine nine. And now I’ve got to work backwards and go from that point. So just this morning I finished the first full draft, so that will be sent to Natasha at the kind press today.

Terri Connellan: Oh, wonderful. And she’s a beautiful person to receive your work. She’s just been amazing.

Natasha Piccolo: She’s a dream.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I’ve been very blessed to have Penelope with the developmental editing and then Natasha and her kind of press team with the next step of the journey. She’s incredibly supportive. So we will be fellow writers in the stable.

Kerstin Pilz: May I ask a final question about your writing process. So developmental editing with Penelope. Did you have somebody also, who did your line editing or was that done by the kind press? So, you know, your typos.

Terri Connellan: Do you want to answer how you saw your part, Penelope? Because I’m interested too, because it wasn’t just developmental. We did far more than that too didn’t we?

Penelope Love: Yeah. You know, that’s the thing when you’re working with someone like Terri and you have that soul connection, it’s really hard to separate the developmental part from the detailed part. And so especially because that process of finding voice. Not really finding it, but fine tuning voice. It goes hand in hand. So I would say we were able to work that process almost simultaneously. And then at the end of the developmental process, we were relatively confident that when it was going to the kind press, that it would only really need a polishing over. And that has a lot to do with Terri’s willingness to be involved at that level in the process.

Not every writer works that way. Some people just want to get it on paper and then I’ll worry about the lines then I’ll worry about, does this paragraph merge into this one? Fine. But Terri and I were able to do that work along the way.

Terri Connellan: And once we got the shape, right. We then worked through chapter by chapter. And we did the moving things around and sometimes bits moved. But at that stage, it was much more about the content within that chapter. And then the draft that went to the kind press was, it was a strong draft because it had been through all that editing and then the editing team, and Natasha hands-on edits as well. And she has another editor who is very skilled and has worked with a lot of the top houses too. So I’ve been really honored to work with some incredible people and, and I wanted to independently publish. That was always my choice. So you know, for me, it’s been a really great fit and great journey.

Natasha Piccolo: Congratulations.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for joining us today. So thank you for coming live and being here. It’s been really lovely. So I’ve popped in that review just because it was such a lovely one. That’s the first review it’s by Meredith who is part of the psychological type community. It’s been lovely to have people such as yourselves Penelope and Kerstin who know me and know the book and get it. But then others, like Meredith, who haven’t been as closely involved, she knows me through the psychological type network, but her review is really beautiful about how it fits with coaching and client work. And also she understands personalities, being a personality type person. So she highlights that too, that link between structure and meandering, which I was conscious of as I was writing. But it’s lovely when someone reflects that back to you. So that’s really very kind of them.

There are Book Club notes. So if people who were working through book clubs, I’ve created some book club notes, and some coaching opportunities coming up, walking people through the book as a whole, in a coaching space. So how do you think that would be I’m interested in your comments?

Natasha Piccolo: That is definitely what I would be doing with The Balanced Theory.

Terri Connellan: Is it? That’s a nice way to go!

Natasha Piccolo: Absolutely like, just from the structure, it’s because it’s teachable learnings as a coaching module. It works well. And I think that your book is very similar in that structure. Very tangible.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And it’s one thing to read a book and to do the activities, which you can, and sometimes people will intend to do it but it’s hard to get the time. So another thing too, is that structure helps create the time to do it. Yeah.

Kerstin Pilz: They can work through it as a week by week program program.

Penelope Love: Terri, I think it’s going to be amazing because the Sacred Creative Collective was almost like an early incarnation of what’s possible. I think you’ll find it probably a lot easier as a leader of such a collective to have this resource.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. I appreciate that feedback. Awesome. So any other questions or comments before we close?

Penelope Love: I have one comment. I just wanted to say Natasha. It’s so nice to meet you. We connected on Instagram and this is almost a rare opportunity to meet somebody that you’ve connected with in a more live way. Look forward to connecting over our posts in the coming years.

Natasha Piccolo: Definitely.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Great to connect with you too, Natasha. It’s exciting. You’re getting to that stage with your book and yeah. Keep in touch. Thank you so much Penelope for everything and for joining today.

Penelope Love: Thank you too and I didn’t mean to overlook, it’s just that I feel almost like a colleague shift that we’ve had through the Wholehearted Stories and Natasha is completely new in my life, but I’m going to make sure that I’ve also connected with you on social media and then refresh myself on your story and stay more connected with you as well.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much Kerstin for coming and being part of it. And for your support over the years, Write Your Journey and Quiet Writing have been very much kindred souls.

Kerstin Pilz: In parallel.

Terri Connellan: We connected in Sydney, totally synchronistically we were in Frankfurt at the same time and then in Vietnam. So we’ve had some lovely in-person catch-up.

Kerstin Pilz: And now we’re all grounded in Australia!

Penelope Love: Really remarkable. The chances of that, that’s amazing – that’s some really aligned stars there.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much for being here.

Kerstin Pilz: Good luck with your next one. Have fun and enjoy the moment.

Terri Connellan: Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

Links to explore:

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 books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – kicking off December 2021

Review of Wholehearted by Meredith Fuller

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

Connect on social media

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

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

About Penelope Love

Penelope Love, MA, is a publisher, speaker and winner of the International Book Awards as author of Wake Up in Love. In 2000, her career launched in the editorial department of the University of Michigan Press, followed by Barnes & Noble, and the original publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul. As she expanded into book design, production and business management, it was a natural evolution into the role of publisher. In 2016, she founded Citrine Publishing based on a visionary publisher-author partnership. Penelope passionately supports people in writing the books that only they can write, while also sharing the memoir only she could write, about sexual trauma healing and marriage to her spiritual teacher along a united path of Tantra and Self-Inquiry, illuminating these essential steps on the journey to liberation.

Penelope’s Blog: https://www.wakeupinlove.com

Citrine Publishing: https://www.citrinepublishing.com

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

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/penelopelove

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/penelopelove

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PenelopeLove

Subscribe to Penelope’s Love Life Column: https://wakeupinlove.com/subscribe

About Kerstin Pilz

Kerstin Pilz PhD is a published author, former academic with almost 20 years university teaching experience, a TEDx speaker and a 200 RYT yoga teacher. She is currently completing her memoir Falling Apart Gracefully. Her previous publications include academic monographs and travel features in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the New York Times and travel industry magazines. When tragedy turned her life upside-down, she discovered the healing power of writing and now teaches creative writing online and on multi-day retreats in her beautiful home in Mission Beach, Far North Queensland, Australia and in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she lives part time.

Kirsten’s website: www.writeyourjourney.com

Instagram: @writeyourjourney

Facebook: @writeyourjourney

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

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

Natasha Piccolo

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

podcast

Welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast

October 29, 2021

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Podcast Page | RSS

Welcome to the first episode of the Create Your Story Podcast!

In this episode, I share about myself and about what to expect in the podcast.

You can listen above or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

  • An introduction to me and my work.
  • How the podcast came about.
  • The signature elements of my work as a coach and author focused on transition.
  • Three signature elements: Creativity, Self-leadership, Personality
  • How insights from these areas can help in navigating chance.
  • The difference between change and transition
  • Why having a transition mindset is so powerful.
  • The value of community when going through times of transition.
  • Upcoming episodes and what to expect.

Transcript of podcast

Hello, I’m Terri Connellan, your host for the Create Your Story Podcast. And welcome to Episode One of the podcast. Today, I’ll be sharing why I’ve created the podcast and what you can expect in future episodes and conversations here. Firstly, I’m so excited to be kicking off the Create Your Story Podcast and sharing conversations on creativity, self-leadership and personality to inspire your wholehearted life and transitions.

So just a little about me, I’m an author, creative transition coach and personality type practitioner. I work through my business, Quiet Writing, and I’ve been on a major five-year transition journey from leader and teacher in the adult vocational education sector in Australia, since 2016. I’ve learnt so much during this time. And I’ve made significant mindset shifts as I’ve totally reshaped my life and crafted my coaching business and offerings, as well as writing two books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. And this was all in my late fifties. I turned 60, not too long ago as I record this first episode in mid-October 2021.

With all of that life change, I’ve also connected with so many fabulous people, having the most incredible and inspiring conversations. And that’s what I want to share more publicly with you here on the Create Your Story Podcast. So why Create Your Story, you might be wondering? I have a piece of paper on my wall here as I speak to you with a mind map of all that I wanted to create and what I’m still manifesting over time in my business.

And at the centre, are the words Create Your Story. It was created some time ago at the beginning of my transition journey. And it’s been a guiding light in all aspects of this journey and creative projects. What that means to me is being an active player in your life story, being the author of your journey, not being a passive participant or bystander, or feeling that you can’t influence events or circumstances in your life.

It reminds me that we’re capable of change at any time in our life, we’re capable of pivoting, shifting, recalibrating, re-evaluating and making sure that we have the tools and practices around us to be able to do this. It’s also important that we don’t leave critical pieces of ourselves behind on this journey.

My book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition shares my personal experiences of how I’ve created and recreated my story over time during my transition. I share my experiences, feelings, and the strategies that helped me to make a positive shift as well as the challenges along the way and how I dealt with them.

Wholehearted self -leadership and create your story are really one and the same concept, slightly different language, but they’re both about that same mindset of being the active creator, author of your most fulfilling life. There are four key elements to creating your story, to wholehearted self-leadership and to my Quiet Writing business.

And you will see these concepts woven together as strands in all that I do in my writing, in my body of work and in the conversations in this podcast. So I thought I’d walk you through those four key elements today. So they are firstly Creativity, secondly, Self-leadership, thirdly, Personality, and fourthly Transition.

So let’s have a walk through each of those briefly as an introduction to my work in the world and to what you might expect on this podcast. So firstly, creativity. Creativity is the number one value in my life and it relates to self-expression. So I express this in many ways through my writing, my creative business and finding creative and innovative solutions to meet client needs, to problems in my life and also to how, people, myself, and others transition to what they desire.

We can all live creatively and strengthen the role creativity plays in our life, whether it’s finding flexible solutions to problems; bringing together our passions and unique strengths in new ways; engaging in creativity to stretch our minds and insights through reading, writing, and art. Many of the conversations on the Create Your Story Podcast, feature people who are creative in how they make a living and how they find solutions to be the active author of their life.

Secondly, self-leadership. I shared in my Wholehearted book how self-leadership developed from my leadership roles and experience as I went through my transition journey and changed my life. It’s about being self-directed and it’s about having choice. Self-leadership takes concepts from leadership, but it applies them first of all, to ourselves. It’s about being active and engaged in practices and insights that help us take conscious leadership of ourselves. And it rests on self-awareness and bringing what is unconscious or less conscious into the light more so we can see it and work with it.

It also means taking responsibility for ourselves. It’s so easy to blame ourselves or circumstances for not feeling like we can make change. And we might often find ourselves saying, “when this happens”, whatever that is, “when I get more time”, “when I reach this milestone” I’ll begin that change or take that action, but often there’s much more we can do to initiate or further the changes we desire to shape in our lives at any point in her life.

And often these are small steps, small tweaks that we can take that can make a huge difference. In Wholehearted, I share 15 self-leadership tools, practices, and mindsets honed from my experiences that can support you when you’re in transition or contemplating life changes. These are frameworks and anchors to support you through the uncertainty that a change of identity or circumstances often brings.

 So thirdly, personality. A big part of self-leadership is knowing ourselves well. Personality relates to self knowledge and self awareness, and it’s about how much we are consciously aware of our natural preferences, our strengths and gifts, and also how much we understand our less preferred areas. The more, we can be consciously aware of how we’re naturally wired and how we’re naturally wired also interacts with, how we’re brought up, what we experienced through life, but how we’re naturally wired has a huge impact. The more we can recognize and play with our strengths c an be a really key part of this learning. Understanding and respecting our uniqueness helps us to honor our own ways of working. And therefore we engage less in comparisonitis and envy, and we do that wonderful thing, which is swim in our lane. This helps to recognize a particular brand of saboteurs or self sabotaging mechanisms that we might see happening again and again in our life, and to have strategies for countering them is the most important thing.

As we shift into midlife, we often find ourselves stretching into our opposites and our more unconscious areas as we develop. And this is a really powerful source of growth. But it can also make us feel quite off kilter at times, because it’s not where we feel skilled or where we feel adept. It can also make us think about what we’ve done in the past and whether it was the right thing. So we can feel a bit lost. Personality frameworks can help us make sense of what’s happening. And I’ve found Jungian psychological type frameworks incredibly helpful personally. And that’s why I’ve chosen to focus on this in the work that I do with my coaching clients.

I offer a Personality Stories coaching program that provides both an introduction to psychological type and also insights into your personal, psychological type frameworks. And that can help you with guiding your growth and development. I also weave this knowledge into everything I do, including this podcast and coaching. So I hope you’ll find concepts of personality really helpful for you as we go on this podcast journey..

And the fourth area is Transition. And this is a really important area because it’s where the rubber hits the road. So we have these great practices of creativity, of personality, of self-leadership, but how we use them when we’re negotiating change is where I think we have powerful tools to help.

So an important distinction is that change is external. It’s what happens to us. We might initiate it, but it’s still something that’s external to us, but transition is internal. It’s a psychological process that occurs on the personal level. So you might see it as change is the facts or what’s happening. And then the transition is the how, how we move through that process. How we adjust, how we shift and how we make sense of what’s happening. So using the three tools and insights, from creativity/self-expression, self-leadership/ self-direction and thirdly, personality, which is self knowledge. We can work consciously at these points of change to manage uncertainty and to plot a new path with confidence.

There’s so much we can influence in creating our story. Especially when we’re creating a new story at times of transition, having the framework of these three areas helps immensely to see where we can focus. It helps us to develop practices and anchors we can use each day to keep us on track and moving positively towards our design, goals and intentions. And this is the case, even when the times are tough and when there’s lots of ebbs and flows in our experience. And from my experience, that’s exactly what happens at times of change. It’s rarely a smooth path. So getting these three areas working well together means we have a strong toolkit of practices and mindset that we can call on at any time to support and strengthen us, and also to make sense of what’s happening and to be more conscious about our story and journey, rather than feeling like a passive bystander or participant in our own lives.

And all of this is about making a transition to a more wholehearted life where we feel fulfilled. And when we’re not feeling half-hearted or like we’re in a soul sapping situation, or like we’re living an unlived life. It’s been a dream for, four plus years now to host a podcast, talking about all the ways we can create a wholehearted story going through transition, managing challenges and uncertainty, making decisions at key points, writing books, making art, learning new skills, shaping creative projects and lives and how we thrive and grow through it all and connect with others. Community is so important. So some of the things we’ll be covering as we go through are things like the self-awareness and self-leadership journey and process, learning along the way, what I’ve learned along the way, what people particularly women have learnt along the way, tools, strategies, and tips, how we work with our personality strengths and develop our less preferred areas, realizing how we self-sabotage and what we do about it and community, what we can share with others to inspire their stories, journeys, and creations, so we all don’t feel so alone. And so we can learn from each other and not have to reinvent the wheel every time we’re going through such situations. We can learn so much from real stories from ordinary people, shaping extraordinary lives, honed and crafted from the moments of every day.

So that’s what Create Your Story is all about. I’ll be hosting conversations with writers, editors, publishers, teachers, coaches, coaching clients, creatives, personality type practitioners, psychologists, artists, bloggers, and others interested in creating and shaping their stories in the richest of ways.

I’ll share my insights as author, as creative transition coach, as psychological type practitioner and as midlife woman in transition. I don’t think we hear enough about the lives of women, especially from the perspectives of midlife and beyond and the wisdom learned from the life story journey. We’ll explore all that we’ve learnt along the way and are still learning because connecting with each other through the transitions we make helps to shape our deepest story and is so powerful.

It’s life enhancing, sparking more connections and inspiration, and it helps us not feel so alone. So I hope you will enjoy me in creating your story, listening to the podcast and sharing it with others. Leave a review to help others find it and share it with your networks too so we can encourage others to create their most inspired and fulfilling story.

I see this as a community journey. It’s certainly something I’ve learned through my work that every story that’s told, every blog post that’s written, every podcast that’s shared has the opportunity to have a huge impact on others. So I just encourage you to engage with that community spirit, with Create Your Story.

The next episodes feature conversations from the virtual launch of my books, Wholehearted, and the Companion Workbook, as well as with women, who’ve been pivotal connections on the writing and publishing journey and in my Quiet Writing business. I hope that you’ll enjoy listening. Thank you so much for being here and may these insights and conversations support you in shaping your most fulfilling and wholehearted life story.

Links to explore:

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 books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

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/

creativity podcast writing

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 2

November 22, 2021

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podcast Page | RSS

Welcome to Episode 3 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

This episode is the second Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch event on 10 September 2021. I chat with Beth Cregan, Lynn Hanford-Day and Meredith Fuller, who have been key partners and supporters on the journey of writing Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook.

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

  • About my book Wholehearted.
  • The value of co-writing and community to help write with Beth Cregan
  • Moving from Breakdown to Breakthrough with Lynn Hanford-Day
  • How Wholehearted can help people in transition, with Meredith Fuller
  • Tarot and intuition
  • How creativity, writing and art can help us heal, grow and transition
  • And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 3 of the Create Your Story podcast. This is a recording of conversations from the second Wholehearted virtual book launch event, just after Wholehearted was published on the 6th of September, 2021. Being locked down when the book was published, all the initial events were of necessity of virtual.

It was an opportunity to connect with people who’ve been on the journey with me in various ways. And chat about our connections as they relate to Wholehearted, some key themes arising in the book and about the value of the book for people going through transition.

So in this episode, I’m joined by Beth Cregan who is my morning co-writing buddy who supported me as I completed the edits and prepared Wholehearted for publication via our early morning writing connection. Beth’s a writing teacher, storyteller, writer and founder of Write Away With Me and has a soon to be published book on teaching writing.

I’m also joined by Lynn Hanford-Day, visual artist specializing in sacred geometry, Islamic patterns, mandalas and yantras at her business, Sacred Intuitive Art. And she’s also a Wholehearted Story author on Quiet Writing and we’ve connected through social media and our stories have lots of parallels. Lynn’s story Breakdown to Breakthrough is mentioned Wholehearted and is a story I found myself going back to as I wrote because of the parallels, so it was lovely to connect with Lynn in launching and publishing Wholehearted.

I’m also joined by Meredith Fuller, a psychologist, psychological spokesperson for the media, author, playwright, theatre creator and a fellow psychological type practitioner, which is how we met. And she also wrote the first fabulous review of Wholehearted, for which I’m very grateful. Meredith has some fabulous insights about Wholehearted can help people in transition and shares how she is using the book in her work with clients with positive results.

This was a deep two hour conversation, edited down to 1 hour, about Wholehearted, the book, getting to what matters, moving on from an unlived or unfulfilled life, strategies for dealing with uncertainty, how creativity can help us heal and so much more. There’s so much in this conversation that you can apply to your life and to work with clients. In the show notes (below), I share links about where you can find out more about my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook as well as more about our guests. The great news too, is that there are solo episodes coming up with Beth, Lynn and Meredith too where we dive deeper into their stories, their writing, and how they’ve created their story. I hope you’ll enjoy listening and that you’ll gain some insights to help guide your life, especially if making a shift to more wholehearted living and writing and creativity are important for you. Enjoy listening.

Transcript of Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch chat

Terri Connellan: Well people, thank you so much for joining me for the online launch of Wholehearted. It’s really important to me to have you all here from different parts of my life: long-term friends, family, colleagues, people I’ve met through social media, Wholehearted Stories authors, my psychological type connections, my morning writing buddy, people from so many places. So you’re all welcome. It’s lovely to have you here.

 I’m delighted to be joined by three special people today who are going to chat with us about writing and about the journey. And I’ll talk about the book as well. So firstly, to welcome Beth, my morning co-writing buddy. And we’ve been both writing books for quite a long time, getting up at 5:30 in the morning and writing together by distance between Melbourne and Sydney virtually co-writing, which has been fantastic. Beth’s a teacher, storyteller, writer and founder of Write Away With Me and has a soon to be published book on teaching writing. So welcome to Beth.

 We also have Lynn Hanford-Day. Lynn’s a visual artist specializing in sacred geometry, Islamic patterns, mandalas and yantras at her business, Sacred Intuitive Art. And she’s also a Wholehearted Story author on Quiet Writing and we’ve connected through social media and our stories have lots of parallels. Lynn i s mentioned in the books, I thought it’d be lovely to have Lynn here to chat today, too. So thanks for coming in early from England.

Lynn Hanford-Day: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Terri Connellan: It’s great to have you. And Meredith Fuller. Meredith is a psychologist, psychological spokesperson for the media, author, playwright, theatre creator, a fellow psychological type practitioner, which is how we met. And she also wrote the first fabulous review of Wholehearted, for which I’m very grateful. So welcome to Meredith and friends from all parts of life celebrating Wholehearted with me. It’s great joy to have you here.

 So what we’ll do is I’ll tell about the book, about writing the book, why I wrote it. And what I think might be in there for people who, who are looking to engage with the book then we’ll have a chat first with Beth and then with Lynn and then with Meredith, but feel free to ask questions any time.

So first of all, about the book. There is Wholehearted and there’s the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. So the two books very much go together. This is the main book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition. And the Wholehearted Companion Workbook sits alongside it, but the two books were born from the same draft. So when I wrote the draft of Wholehearted, it was a 100,000 word draft. And when I sent it to Penelope Love, who was my editor for the book, she said to me, you’ve got two books here, which was lovely to hear. Cause I knew I had to cut it back. But I didn’t quite know where to start. So we went through the big draft and color coded which parts went in the main book, which parts went in the workbook and which parts maybe went somewhere else to be repurposed. But most of that draft was used in some way, shape or form.

So the why of the book. In some ways the book chose me because my experience was that I was moving from a 30 year career in the vocational education sector and teaching and leading within that sector. To wanting to shift towards more creativity and writing, coaching, just getting my life into creating my story in a different way, from the way it was going. And I think getting back to what was important to me, right from the outset in my life, but perhaps going down different paths, sometimes we don’t quite go down the path that we wish to go down. So I found that as I was going through that journey, I had plans to, still have plans to, write a novel and to write other things. But I just found this book was really calling me to write about that story as I was going through the journey of the experience.

So the why of Wholehearted was partly for myself, to make sense of what was happening, to fulfill my dream as a writer, but it was also about supporting women to develop self-leadership resources to live more creative and wholehearted lives. Because what I found is, as I went through the journey, there weren’t a lot of other resources to help me. I actually felt quite alone. And it was quite uncertain. It was a very difficult time. And often when you embark on a transition or a change, other things happen in that mix.

And it was about finding the signposts, the way out. It was about connecting back with what was important to me, about honoring my body of work. From that I developed a suite of 15 Wholehearted Self-leadership skills, which are in the book about things that really helped me to anchor myself and live the way that I wanted to live.

So I shaped all of that learning up. And in there as well there are some shadow aspects too. Often with any journey, there’s the light and the dark side, and some of the shadow aspects were things like having a shadow career which is a concept of Steven Pressfield’s. For me, it was about being a writing teacher when I probably wanted to be a writer. He uses the example of someone who’s a roadie for a band when they really want to be the musician. So it’s interesting just to look at what might be lying alongside or beneath the shadow careers that we’re pursuing as well. Things like grief, comparisonitis, envy are all things that I explore in the book as well.

Meredith had a lovely line in her review. She says, ‘As an introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging female INTJ, her work is well-structured while enabling the reader to meander.’ And that was definitely how I felt when I was writing. I knew where I was going. I actually had the structure pretty much sorted. That’s a mind map from February 2017, which pretty much captures what the book’s about. It says the structure could be personal narrative and application and exercise. And that’s exactly what it ended up being. So a mix of memoir, personal narrative, people engaging with it themselves and then working through it as well. So, yes, so there’s definitely structure there and it certainly is an INTJ structure. The cover of the book with the Nautilus shell, the symbol for my business is very much that idea of spiralling, going over our learning and often the same lessons will come to us or the same experiences and we’ll keep spiraling up through. So that’s, the meandering structure and often in the book, I’m revisiting things from a different perspective because I think that’s how we learn.

So the why that kept me going was that very much about completing the book to support other women. Part of it was about my journey and capturing that and the desire to complete a book and publish a book too was also very strong, but it was very much about that ‘why’, about supporting women to lead more Wholehearted lives through having the self-leadership resources and the skills and the strategies and a bit of a roadmap and a compass or a toolkit to know how to do that.

Beth and myself and another writer were having a chat and the word tenacity came up. And we was saying that it’s a psychological journey of, you know, here’s the ideas and you go through the drafting and for me, it was a four and a half year journey to get from that mindmap to where we are today. And it does require tenacity and it requires a real commitment to the outcome. But also to the process, I think it has helped me to understand the process. There’s a lovely book which Beth recommended to me called the Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer. She compares it to bread making, but you get the ingredients and you mix it up and then you let it sit. Then you let it rise. You move through that stage. And I think for me, that long journey was very much like that, that whole experience of letting things rest, letting them grow. But there definitely were times when I felt like It was all too hard because one, it takes an extraordinary amount of time and two it’s complex and three, it’s just a slog. Beth, do you want to comment? Cause we were chatting about that. You had some lovely insights too, because Beth’s just finishing her draft to head into her publisher. So she’s very much in the slog phase.

Beth Cregan: I feel like I’ve just finished the worst of the slog phase, but apart from the dynamics that you’ve already mentioned, I think for me, part of what was really tough about staying with it was that I feel like I’ve had, not so much a crash course, cause it’s been going for awhile, but a course in learning how to fail and learning how to put yourself up each day and not get it right. Learning that you can write and get notes back to say this argument doesn’t hang together. And I’m not someone who grew up in a family where failing was okay, really. We learned, we had plan A and plan B and plan C and you learn how to plan not to fail. So for me, turning up each day and not getting it right which is part of writing. So I feel like in a way it doesn’t matter what happens with the book. I think for me, part of the journey was learning how to not get things right. And be okay with it. I think that’s part of writing, don’t you think Terri too?,

Terri Connellan: Yeah I do and I think for me, particularly I’ve been surprised at the endurance that it does take. Like a marathon versus sprint mindset. You start with the plans, you do the draft and you don’t know where you’re going. And I had a bit in the middle where I had that first draft finished a hundred thousand words, and I sat it aside and I would tinker with it. I’d fix up the grammar and, move a few paragraphs or sentences around, but I didn’t know what to do with it too. So a lot of it’s about the level of skill you have. And what I learned on that journey was to reach out to other people. And I’m a person who’s very independent and will try and work things out myself, but it was really important to reach out to Penelope who is a publisher and editor of 25 years experience. And worked through with me on that a hundred thousand word draft working out, which was which book. And then chapter by chapter back and forward. One thing I learned is that it takes as long as it takes. Sometimes you can’t rush things. You just have to sit with it. And I found the sitting was sometimes about that incubating and also about letting other experiences come in as well. So I could write what I needed to write. So it was almost like the wisdom had to catch up with the draft.

But the hardest part for me was the editing. I had no idea how hard editing a book is. There’s the developmental editing when you get the structure right. And then we went through chapter by chapter. And then after that time, we probably went back through both books another six or seven times. So you’re just reading and each time it’s a different read.

Sometimes it’s fine-tuning, but it’s still reading. Other times it’s looking at the structure as a whole. So it’s interesting, cause by background, I’m a teacher of reading and writing. Knowing all those things about narrative and structure and writing, and then taking my skills to another level, which has been a really exciting journey. And one I can help others with too, also do some more writing, which is great. Beth and I are going to do a podcast chat soon about all the lessons we’ve learned through that journey.

So I might ask Beth a few more questions, now we have started chatting. We write in the morning. So we hop on usually at six now and set our timer, write for 25 minutes chat for five minutes about writing and about mindset which is fantastic. And then we do another 25 minutes. And you do two or three rounds. We try for five mornings a week and that’s a great way to start the day. So Beth and I formed a really lovely connection through that. So we thought it would be nice to talk about the role of co-writing and support in the writing process. Beth, how has that helped you that whole co-writing, writing together as we’ve written our books?

Beth Cregan: I would say it’s instrumental. I was thinking because you’d sent through the questions, I’ve been thinking about it in the last couple of days and I was really lost. So I had written a book or a manuscript and it had been accepted and then the publisher had changed hands sothey’d been overtaken by another company and they said, this manuscript, we’re not going to go with it as it stands now. We want it to fit into a different structure. So I had something that I envisaged was ready to go and it suddenly wasn’t. And at the same time that that happened lockdown started. So that was March last year. So I was basically without my job, which is writing workshops in schools, which I love. So I’d lost my work. I was in a house with my two daughters who were both working from home and my husband who’s super loud, working from home, like on the phone a lot. And I really felt alone and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to keep doing it. I just got this idea that I was going to see who would join me to write at dawn. And at that time it was 5:30 in the morning. So we used to wake at five and be ready to go at five 30. So Terri wasn’t part of that first crew and the other two came and sort of left. And by the time they were ready to go, Terri and I had connected. So it’s really been the two of us that have been doing it all that time. I actually don’t think I would be here without that. So it was foundational to get up and to start my day in community with somebody who was a little bit further ahead of the journey than me in terms of, I think you were editing. When you started, you were doing what I’ve just finished. So you were probably a year really ahead of the game. Or a process ahead of me anyway. And without that, I don’t think I would have kept going. So it started, it gave me a structure, it got me out of bed, but it also gave me courage. It was hard. It was a hard job for me to do, to take something that was organized in one way and throw it all up in the air and put it back together. And it required real courage. And it makes such a difference. You’re not writing together, you’re on screen, but you feel the energy, you feel the support and it does give you tremendous courage to do the work that you need to do.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It was, and that was the same for me because when we connected, I was going through one chapter at a time. And cause I had two books. I didn’t make it easy for myself. I was doing writing two books at once. So as one chapter came and the next one would come back and it was like this constant iteration going through. And then when I finished one book, we go on to the other book and then when I finished that one and then we go back to the first book and it’s a really hardcore process and it does take commitment. So just that ability to have others, as in my acknowledgements in the book I’ve acknowledged many people here and in one way, shape or form. And it made me realize, you think writing is sitting down with a pen and or computer or any creative act, but there’s actually, all the influences, all the connections, the camaraderie that we’ve enjoyed. I totally agree. The other thing we’ve talked about a lot is the value of routines and getting that work done too. So just that discipline, we often know by 7 30, 8 o’clock we’ve got done what was important.

Beth Cregan: That’s exactly how I feel. I feel like by the time I finish, usually my husband wakes during the end of our morning and as we’re finishing up, I can smell the coffee and you know, that it’s time to finish and you do. I come out of that room thinking I’ve done the best of what I need to do. Everything on top of today is a bonus, but I’ve actually met my creative self for the day. And that to me is the most important. It’s not always the most commercial. It’s not always the bit that earns me money, but it is the bit that’s most important to me. So it feels like church, dawn writing.

Terri Connellan: It’s important. For me, it’s about getting what’s important, done because often particularly running a business and earning money. Writing is not a fast way to earn money. It is a way we can combine with other methods to earn income, but it’s actually something that’s easy to put aside because it doesn’t seem like it’s a quick path to income. And because it’s a long haul, it’s easy to put aside. So yeah, to me that camaraderie has been so important. So you’ve read Wholehearted. What would you say it offers women? Who would you recommend it to and what would you be saying to them?

Beth Cregan: Well, I think it’s for anybody who wants to live aligned to their values. And that was really what spoke to me about it. And I think when I wanted to start a business and do something different, I did work in schools originally, it was because I wanted to follow my values. I wanted to put what was important to me first in my life. And I feel like Wholehearted is about that. It’s about living in line with your values and the tools that teach you to trust in yourself. And I think that self-trust is so through, I was always interested. I always had Oracle cards and those sorts of tools available to me. But I think it was after reading Wholehearted that I really thought, it’s not just a fun thing to do when you have a quiet moment, it’s a way of training your intuition. It’s a way of trusting yourself. So I feel like it, that to me really stood out. This is a way to learn to trust your gut instinct and align with your values.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for those insights. I love that idea of self-trust cause we talk about like self leadership to me means lots of things: being self-directed, fulfilling ourselves, but that idea of self-trust I think is a lovely dimension. So yeah. Thank you.

Beth Cregan: You know Terri and I’ve never met each other face and yet we wake up together every single morning.

Terri Connellan: That’s funny. The first person we see

Beth Cregan: It’s a very powerful way to form community without that face to face contact. I wouldn’t have thought it was as possible as it is online.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. It’s been really powerful. And I think for anybody who’s writing or thinking of writing or working on creativity, because I’m an introvert, Beth’s an introvert. One thing I’ve really learned from my journeys… I would walk to the beach on my own, I’d write on my own. I now write with other people. I walk with other people. I’ve actually found that – I don’t know if it’s because of midlife and seeking the opposite, but it’s actually helping me to have that community to get things done. It’s probably lockdown as well. It’s doing things in different ways.

Susan has asked what role did the Oracle cards play and what benefit did they bring to you? So thank you for that question. So tarot and oracle are in my book, I use them quite a lot. And Beth was just mentioning how she’s picked up on that practice too, from reading the book and putting it into place. So when I started my transition journey, I had three goals. So one was to become a coach, apart from writing which was the reason for it, to become a coach, to become a psychological type practitioner and to learn about the intuitive art of tarot.

So I didn’t know why tarot was important but I knew it was something I wanted to do. And as I’ve explored in the book, what I found over time, that it was actually my personality where my extroverted thinking side had been dominant in the workplace. And what I found was I had to get more in touch with my intuition. So what I do in the morning, I do Morning Pages just to write about how I’m feeling, what’s happening and then I do the tarot work and I find that it’s very much about tapping into the wisdom that’s beneath the surface of what’s happening. It’s a structured way to listen to my intuition.

Do you want to make a comment Beth too, I know you’re exploring at the minute.

Beth Cregan: I used to use oracle cards. Just to ask questions and perhaps look for answers. I don’t think I ever looked that much at the symbols. I would pull out a card and then quickly go to the guidebook and find the answer. So I sort of expected that someone else had the answer and I was going to access it through the Oracle cards. And I think through tarot I’ve started to just pick one or two cards, look at the symbols. See if any of the symbols actually speak to me. So maybe use one of those symbols to think about to anchor that week. So last week it was a pomegranate. That was one of the symbols that came out. So every day I would check in and think how does that symbol speak to me today? Is it the fruit? Is it about feeling juicy, which is an Ayurvedic term for having something to give. I listened to a podcast where the woman suggested that you draw your cards and then you write yourself a spell and that is little rhyming spell. It’s the This Jungian Life podcast and it was an episode about tarot. And I love that. So now sometimes I write myself a little spell and I’ve had some real breakthroughs. I’m finding that really astounding. I’m sure you’re totally used to that, Terri but I’m finding that things are coming up and I’m just like, whoa, that was exactly what I needed for that day.

Terri Connellan: That’s how it works for me. And what I’ve found with writing the book too. I had that structure of where I wanted to go based on that mind map and putting the structure, which I put in Scrivener, which is a writing software, which some of you may be aware of. So when you put it in the Scrivener, you’ve got the whole structure there and you can write wherever you want to write. So, I did most of the bulk of the writing in one month. I wrote 50,000 words in one month using NaNoWriMo, it’s National Novel Writing Month, but it wasn’t a novel. So I wrote 1,667 words each day. And through the practice of Morning Pages and Tarot, I would find that something was surfacing. About my passions or maybe about envy would come up. And then I’d think, well, that’s what I need to write about today. So it was a nice way of tapping creatively into what was surfacing at that time. So I hope that’s helpful, Susan. There’s heaps more in the book about it..

Beth Cregan: And I guarantee you’ll be, curious, and interested in learning more.

Terri Connellan: Thanks Beth, and really appreciate your support and our co-writing together. Thanks so much.

So perfect segue, talking about intuition, to have a chat with you, Lynn. So Lynn Hanford-Day is a visual artist, particularly sacred geometry and her website and her work is around Sacred Intuitive Art. I think we connected online through social media. I have a Wholehearted Story series on my blog. So whilst I was going through my writing of my journey and going through my own journey, I also invited other women to write stories for my blog. And Lynn wrote a story called from Breakdown to Breakthrough, and I found it was a story I kept going back to again and again, as I was writing my story because it echoed so strongly. So that’s one of the many reasons I thought it would be lovely to have Lynn here today. So Lynn,do you want to tell us about moving from breakdown to breakthrough? And it was a huge story, but how you see that process, what it’s like to move from really tough times through to breaking through, to being more wholehearted or whatever language is important for you.

Lynn Hanford-Day: Yeah, thanks, Terri. I look back on that blog post now and see it as a kind of really important milestone in my own recovery, if you like. So I had a breakdown in 2013 which came as a huge shock to me and everybody else who worked with me. Looking back on it, I think that the signs were there. I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t notice. So I’d had a 30 year career as a Human Resources Director. Along the way I qualified as a psychotherapist and as a coach. And that was back in 2008. Yet, having had all that training, I didn’t recognize what was happening for me. So I woke up on January the seventh, 2013. I couldn’t move. And. I told myself for three months that I was fine. Even though I was being signed off sick a month at a time, which is quite unusual in the UK, it’s usually for a fortnight, they keep reviewing, but it was when I accepted that I was unwell, that things began to shift for me.

And during that time I received an email from an artist. I’d bought one of her paintings, which was a very ethereal painting. And she was offering a workshop in meditative art. I had no idea what meditative art was. I hadn’t done art since leaving school. What really called me was the word meditation, and I’d got it into my head that to meditate was my way through to recovery. Although my counselor had said, you’re too ill to meditate. What you need is to learn to relax. So off I went to this workshop and it was a portal for me and it was really a process of automatic drawing. So we had a guided visualization. And then with closing our eyes, we just allowed the pencil to move across the page.

And then we looked at the scribble and noticed whether there were any signs, symbols, actual figures, you know, a house, whatever it might be and then redrew that. We sat in her kitchen and drank lots of tea and ate lots of cake. And it was a very kind of nurturing space for me, but that ignited m y exploration of creativity. In a very kind of monochrome world, I was fascinated with color and it was through those workshops that I was able to play. And I think I hadn’t had a lot of play in my life. I was very much my job. I was very much the career woman or single parent. I’d got divorced in 1999. I’d got a son who at that time was at university. I was going through the empty nest kind of feeling, feeling very lost. And I was living for my job and I also had a lot of unresolved grief. You mentioned grief earlier, so I kind of revisited Jung and in reading various other texts, this whole idea that you’ve mentioned Terri, about the shadow life, but for me, it was about the unlived life. And I became really interested in the symbology and meaning. I was also really fascinated by tarot and oracle. So I kind of started playing with that. And I’ve always had a love of mandalas. So I’d got a coloring book and I would spend hours coloring in cause it switched off my chatter in my head. And as I began to feel better, I tried to find a workshop to learn how to draw Tibetan Buddhist mandalas. That’s what I was after.

Couldn’t find one and ended up buying a book off Amazon, a pair of compasses and a protractor hadn’t used since it was at school. And again, I started playing and I also discovered something called intuitive arts because I don’t view myself as an artist. Intuitive art was a kind of a “real thing” that meant people who couldn’t paint could be allowed to paint and it involved a lot of layers. It’s a paint for the process and the sheer joy of the experience, rather than having to paint a particular outcome or anything representational. And I absolutely loved it. And it was , coming from within, hence the word intuitive. And so not having to draw or to create something that someone could look out and say, haha, that’s a picture of the house down the road cause I really didn’t want that. So a lot of things kind of coalesced and over the course of a couple of years, I did eventually find some classes. There’s a college in London in traditional arts, which are all based on geometry. And I kind of moved from making the stuff up and drawing my own patterns through to learning a lot of the underlying principles of many designs that you’ll see across the world be it in Christian churches or mosques or Shamanic stuff or Native American Indians. This is worldwide. And I was fascinated by it. So I’ve kind of progressed from there. And that was, I think, pivotal in terms of the breakthrough. I know if somebody had said to me, you’re going to become an artist with an Instagram account and people around the world are going to love your work enough to want to buy it.

I would have like, what are you smoking? That’s just not me. And here I am, I still work full time. I became self-employed. So I earn a living through consulting and coaching. Sometimes I take on contracts back in the world of HR. So my art is done at weekends or in the evening, and I’m not an early bird. So my practice is frequently late in the evening or on the weekend.

Terri Connellan: Thank you so much for talking us through a many years journey and a beautiful journey. And I think the reason why your story resonated so much with mine and with the book, I think we’ve tracked along journeys in that we both had long careers, mine was in a government environment and yours in different corporate environments. But that idea of getting to what’s important, not knowing what the path is necessarily, but that’s where intuition comes and that’s what I’ve tried to describe in the book too. Just the whole process of how we can follow our heart and move, seek out people to help us.

And skills. It’s interesting you mentioned courses. For me, skills was the framework. And I don’t know if that’s because I come from a background in skills training, but it was like, and I hear it in your story too: I want to learn this skill. I want to learn this skill. And it’s like a sort of stepping stone that we we go through to get back to what’s important or to get to what we perhaps should have been doing all the time, even though we didn’t know what it was.

Lynn Hanford-Day: Completely, I still do a mix of kind of making up the pattern myself, as well as working with some kind of very pre-defined patterns, particularly from Morocco or Persia, Persian patterns, but that tradition going back to say the 13th or 14th century. But for me, it’s so much more than the pattern because the underlying meaning and symbology of those shapes is really quite profound as is the geometry. So I’ve had an incredible learning experience, which again, I wasn’t expecting because a lot of that underlying meaning takes us back to people like Jung.

There’s a psychology, there’s a lot of numerology that sits within it. There’s a lot of connection to the cosmos. So I absolutely love patterns that reflect the cycle of the moon or Venus. And each of those planets create their own orbital patterns which are truly beautiful and timeless. I often set the pattern on layers of color, which is the kind of going back to that original inspiration about intuitive painting.

So as a creative process, it’s given me the space in my life and within me to do something completely different to the corporate world. And I think that’s why it’s become such an important practice for me.

Terri Connellan: And I think that whole journey you describe in your Wholehearted Story and in what you’re describing, and what I talk about in the book is that in all the discussions we’ll have today, we’re all interested in Jung. We’re all interested in intuition. We’re all creatives, so it makes you see why we’ve connected. It’s about that journey of wholeness often has those elements and we see it time and time again, of how creativity saves us, doesn’t it, art or writing.

Lynn Hanford-Day: Yeah. I think particularly with drawing of any type, it takes us to the right brain. And I’ve lived in a very left brain world and emphasis on the rational and the logical. What I’ve also encountered through working with arts is how it brings up the inner critic. If you want to encounter your inner critic, ask somebody to go and paint a picture because it’s right there immediately. And I think whatever your creative passion is, then the inner critic is very much alive and well. So I suspect you encountered that through your process as well, Terri. Learning to accommodate that voice and learning how to quieten that voice. And as you’ve mentioned as well, learning patience and the art of slow, because for me, the voice of the heart is often a whisper and we have to be quiet to hear that and to really pay attention.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for those beautiful words. And again, that’s in my journey and also in all the Wholehearted Stories that different women have written. You hear again and again that hearing a voice, sometimes it’s an actual voice, sometimes it’s just learning to listen to that intuitive pull towards some sort of work or creativity. But there’s continuing themes about that importance of listening to our intuition. I saw it in terms of my personality structure, just as our world is extroverted more than introverted, it’s sensing more than intuitive. One, cause she can’t see it, it’s not a logical thing. It’s not easily seen. A lot of what we’re seeing is that ability to reflect and Lyn has made a comment: ‘this pandemic will have triggered significant reflection on the way we have worked and lived our lives. Wholehearted seems therefore very timely.’ I think that’s exactly what it’s about too, that journey from being very focused and often it’s about money. It’s about income. It’s about identity. I found a lot of my transition shift was about identity. I don’t know if that resonates with you Lynn?

Lynn Hanford-Day: Completely, I realized that I was my job and my identity was very tied up with that. So I also knew I needed to change the way I lived my life. Otherwise I was in danger of repeating the experience. You know, relapse into depression is actually quite high and I was terrified of that happening. I think it’s the most frightening experience I’ve had. I had ovarian cancer in 2004 that you were either terminal or not, but with a breakdown, it’s like, how long is this going to last? Am I losing my mind? All of those things were very present for me. And to trust that I was going in a descent that was an important message for me. So to come out the other side of that living life differently and making considered choices. I think the word is discernment, which is often something a bit tricky to define and to tune into what gives me joy. And I think the pandemic has perhaps brought this into a place of clarity for many people that what really matters to us are not necessarily material things. And you know, what matters to me is actually having the time and the space to paint. I can cope with most things if I give myself that space.

Brian Walsh: I’ve been touched by, there’s something that permeates the three stories from Lynn and Beth and yourself about the capacity that you’ve demonstrated to be able to go to that place of not knowing and to believe it and to live it, despite all the difficulties and then to break through and deliver something.

I think that’s incredibly inspirational and I congratulate you all for doing that..

Lynn Hanford-Day: Yeah. I remember at the time, those opening verses to Dante’s Inferno about being lost in a dark wood. And I was really aware of that and, you know, memories of myths, like Inanna’s descent and so on. I was so conscious that that’s the place I was in and maybe it was intuitive, but it was like ‘I’m here.’ And although I’m trying to resist it and keep telling myself I’ve got the budget to do at work. And like ‘I’m in this place’ and like I said, it took me three months to kind of surrender into it. But that was the moment when healing began.

Terri Connellan: And for me it was choosing to walk away from a job where I felt I was quite successful. Where I got value from it, where I was getting money from it, part of it is stepping away from the certainty of things. But not feeling in alignment, not feeling valued, not feeling it was where my creativity would flourish. And that idea of feeling half-hearted rather than wholehearted is something I talk about it. And Lynn uses the phrase ‘unlived life’, they’re all different versions of the same feeling. I think of that sense of loss of self or not feeling fulfilled where we are. That’s why I love that whole idea of transition and that Six of Swords card that I talk about in the book. If anyone knows tarot because it’s about going on a journey when you don’t know where you are heading. It’s very uncertain and part of what I’ve tried to capture in the book and the conversations we’re having tonight are about is how you find those footholds and frameworks and compass es that help you which is why for me tarot, writing, psychological type, we’ve mentioned Jung a few times, for you, art Lynn. You know, the writing journey itself, all those things help us to move from the unknown. But definitely for me, that whole phase of uncertainty was incredibly stressful. I think that that living in the unknown, why the pandemic itself is also a huge change. We’re all going through our own transitions about it because it’s that unknown and that uncertainty of what the future is and for personal transition, it’s very much about that idea of what our identity will be.

So that’s why I wrote the book because particularly for women, but I think men can benefit from reading the book. I think it’s about how we can heal in lots of different ways and have tools to help us as we move through change to getting to what’s important.

So Lynn, do you want to make a comment about what you think Wholehearted offers women.

Lynn Hanford-Day: I sent Terri a note only yesterday, I can remember her writing that first draft. What an incredible creation you’ve made. I think it does offer inspiration and I love the way you’ve woven together memoir and personal narrative and the invitation for people to explore for themselves. I think the power of story and memoir can’t be underestimated. It’s the invitation for us as a reader to witness you and at the same time go, oh yeah, me too. And because you also have a story that shows a progression that you’ve also achieved many of your dreams, and that’s also inspirational to people who may be feeling a bit lost or just needing some more encouragement to keep at it with the tenacity. So I loved it and I’m sure many other people will.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, we’ve been on that journey together, so it was beautiful to have you be one of the first readers to provide feedback. So thank you so much for those words and for being here tonight.

Thanks for your comment, Lyn… (in the chat) “it was a loss. I could only feel half-hearted in my leadership roles. There a dream would be that we could work in these critical roles and feel wholehearted while doing so.” And I guess that’s a challenge for the workplace, all workplaces generally about how we can bring our whole self to work. That’s why David Whyte’s work, which I know many of you know David Whyte, the poet. He worked with in workplaces. His book The Heart Aroused is about bringing poetry into the workplace which really resonated with me and his book Crossing the Unknown Sea is very much about how we move from one space to another. He talks a lot with people in work places in all those books about the poetic and how we bring those things more into the workplace so we can feel fulfilled, which is a big challenge.

It’s hard. And particularly if we’ve been in an organization a long time and the organization’s changing, which happens, and everyone has different journeys. But for me, trying to squeeze what was important to me, which was writing, which was creativity, into like, I’d try and do it on in coffee shops on the way to work. And then I’d try and do it when I came home and what I started to do was I, arranged to job share with someone which created time to start to make a transition. And then my mother became ill and I never went back to work, which is what I’ve described in the book. It was a really difficult time, but if we can’t find ways to feel whole in the work that we’re doing, then I think to honor to ourselves to find a way to do that, whether it’s part-time, making a transition, it could be a sideways move within the organization. I’m not advocating people need to leave. It’s about trying to find places or work differently so that we can all get to where we want to be.

Beth Cregan: And I think we have so many more options now than perhaps we had 10 or 20 years ago because it is working for yourself. I always tell a story to the kids that I work with, that when I was about eight or nine, my dad who was a fabulous storyteller, said, the question everyone asks, which is what you want to be when you grow up.

And I said that I wanted to be a storyteller. And I think I probably said that because he told fabulous stories. I wanted to be like him, but I remember him saying, well, you can’t really, being a storyteller is not a job. So you’d be able to tell your stories at night and it really stayed with me that there were set ways to fulfill your dreams, but now you really can be a storyteller. A lot of the boundaries have broken down now. And you would think that would make it much easier, but I wonder sometimes if it makes it harder, because there are a lot of options, if you don’t like what you’re doing, you can see all these people making decisions outside that organization.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. There’s lots of different paths but I think what I’ve tried to do with Wholehearted is provide that storytelling you mentioned, that memoir, that gives people some hope and some footholds. I haven’t talked about money and obviously that’s part of how we make these shifts but I was more interested in the inner journey and the hard inner work of making those shifts because I think whatever the transition is, whatever the change is, that’s how we can negotiate how the money making happens and how we make those shifts.

Moving towards what matters and to feeling more whole, to feeling more integrated and certainly the challenges that I went through with family. And with lots of different challenges where you do hit rock bottom in different ways and you feel really tested. I think it’s that shadow side too where you go into the really difficult emotions and the hard spaces of grief, of rejection and of disappointment and then you work out what next, and I think it’s moving through that gives you the emotional skillset and the tools to be able to move through. And I think they also teach you what does matter.

 Thanks so much, Lynn really appreciate your beautiful sharing of your story and thank you for your support on the journey and for being here tonight.

Yes. So I wanted to introduce Meredith and just have a chat with Meredith. So we connected via psychological type. We are both members of the Australian Association for Psychological Type and both of us value the role of using Jungian concepts. Psychological type for me, it was one of my three pillars of change was learning psychological type because it made such a huge difference for me. And I know it’s something you use in your work as a psychologist. You’re a fellow tarot lover and you also wrote the first review of Wholehearted for which I’m very grateful and a very generous review. Thank you so much for that.

So I wondered Meredith, if you wanted to share about what you see in the book and in your own life about the value of psychological type and personal insights in making change?

Meredith Fuller: One of the things that I was struck by in the book is so many of us are in that liminal state because we don’t know what’s to come. And it is definitely the process of vocation is confusing now for people who are looking at their third part of their life, in their forties, fifties, sixties, even seventies, what next? And there’s no safety, there’s no security, there’s no structure. And given the comment we made earlier about so many people in our society are not like us.

And they are really struggling with the concept of not knowing, the concept of moving towards something that has no guarantee, that makes no sense that it’s so vague and amorphous. And so what struck me about your book for many people is that we’re trying to help other people who get the call and the call can be illness. Our bodies speak to us, they won’t get up and get us out of bed, or there’s some sort of crisis, whether it’s a retrenchment or COVID generally or whatever. And often that dispirited thing that we’re upset, we’re sad, we’re angry, we’re grief stricken, we’re lost. We’re desiccated, what’s happened that we can’t continue.

And in that liminal space that is taking quite a period of time. There isn’t much that is around to help the vast majority of people who can’t trust that inner voice. And they might want to go to see a careers counselor or coach or a psychologist or whatever. And what’s happened is that there’s not enough of us. We can’t service the needs adequately. People are having to wait inordinate amount of times to see people. And also for a lot of us working on the zoom or the technology is not necessarily the best way when you’re doing psycho-therapeutic work. So it’s very frustrating.

What struck me about your book, and I agree it’s good for men and women. And I’ll tell you a story about a man shortly because it’s very pertinent. This is something that I’ve actually started to recommend a number of our clients purchase. As of now, and I’ve explained why and how and we can give them homework and they can be actively engaged in sitting with that not knowing, sitting with the lack of guarantee, sitting with a frightening process, but being held and doing some active work so that when we can hook in and connect with them, given whatever happens with lock downs and whatever, there’s been a sense that they’ve been accompanied as they’re going along this journey, rather than feeling that staccato stop start experience, holding their breath, which is what’s going on for a lot of people who aren’t getting that help.

I see this as something that is an aid or a tool right now for a lot of people because people are being asked to do something frightening, to let go. So they’re afraid to let go and afraid to hold on. . But what your book does is help the vast majority of people who need structure, who need a plan who need to know how, this will guarantee if I take the journey that I’ll end up somewhere. It gives them a process that they can work with. And that’s why I think it’s really helpful. I’ve got two clients at the moment. One of the clients is a female who’s about 57 going through tremendous grief and loss of self and the difficulty was, we just couldn’t see each other very much because of the pandemic. So I actually got her to go through the workbook and then we’ll check in and I found that very helpful for her because she was being held. So that was important.

The other thing is I have another client and it’s very interesting. He’s a man who was in the army. He worked in about 20 or 30 different countries. So he’s always been moved around. School-wise, home wise, lifestyle wise, became very involved in physical fitness and health. During COVID his business disappeared because he can’t see people to help them. And he had a massive break where he absolutely lost it. And he was trying to get some work in a corporation. And of course he’s a feeling male which we know is about 25% of the general male population and a very difficult experience, but he’s also a sensing. So he’s a sensing feeling man which makes it very complicated for him. And he’s a J, very organized man. Very lost. But what happened was, as he was negotiating with the corporations, he was stuck with how political they were, how much they lied, how much he went away, thinking I’ve got the job. They said, they loved what I did. It’s all happening. And nothing happened. And he felt so betrayed and he was really not coping. And the idea of trying to go on a journey where there’s no guarantee. No “you can’t just go and try something else and that’ll earn your money and that’ll work” was absolutely terrifying for him. So I’ve actually been getting him to go through the book because questions are very relevant for a feeling tone male who’s absolutely lost. Okay. But, this is the comment I made about why I like how you’ve done your work. Often there’s this dichotomy. We can purchase career books and they’re like a business book and they’re so twee and tight and structured that they’re really of little use when you’re talking about an internal world in your heart, or you can buy pieces of fluff that are just absolutely not anchored anywhere and are quite silly and vague and amorphous and don’t help.

What I think you’ve done is you’ve created a space where we’ve got enough exploration for the intuitive world we’re moving towards. And certainly the more matriarchal world we’re moving towards but enough to help the vast majority of people who need some kind of plan as they explore what it’s like to know we’re going to come out of the other side of COVID, totally changed everything disintegrating and we’re actually talking about a new sense of how we live and work, et cetera. So for me it’s a psychological type book that’s come at a most helpful time for us to suggest other people read it, to go through it ourselves, that somehow isn’t a dichotomy, it’s a continuum and that’s what makes it a very precious thing that you’ve done.

And I’ve found the other thing is in how you’ve written it because you’ve been so generous and open and how you’ve talked about how other people have helped you, how their resources have helped you. There’s such a baring of your soul that people feel that they can trust you.

That was my experience. The other thing I thought I have to tell you, because this has just blown me away. I started getting involved in tarot when I was 15. So that’s over 50 years ago and my whole life has been about collecting unique, different tarot. So we’ve got several hundred bizarre, queer, odd tarot decks. In all my life. I have never met anyone else who can tell me about other tarot decks I’ve never heard of. You have been remarkable. The other thing you’ve done is your personal interpretation of what you’ve done with the symbolism has been interesting to me because it makes sense to me as we’re losing this very materialistic, 3D world, and we’re going into a very intuitive wave world, communications is very much more on that telepathic connection of using symbolism and synchronicity into how we’ll be living, which is really what the tarot is about. It’s using our unconscious, it’s using how we can embed each other with the messages and tell ourselves that messages and then interpret.

But your particular way of discussing cards particularly the Eight of Cups I’ve never come across before. And I really love the themes that went through the book that transcended every other definition, every other deck and so forth. So for me, your originality was something that I’ve been struck by in the work and why I say, even if you’re very comfortable knowing tarot, there’s something you, new, if you’re very comfortable doing careers counselling, there’s something new. So for me to feel comfortable to say to my clients, take this, go through this. And when we can see each other again, we’ll have done so many chapters or whatever was just such a relief.

Terri Connellan: Thank you so much for those beautiful comments. After four and a half years of writing, it’s so amazing to have readers and looking forward to hearing more feedback as we go forward. I really appreciated that the book can be used by individuals in a psychological coaching/ counseling context. It’s designed as a self-help process, but I wanted it to be whole, reflecting what the book’s about. It’s got my journey, it’s got the tools and then it’s got the support that takes people through. So that’s great to hear that for those people who were quite isolated at the moment with the impact of COVID and also your insights on tarot cause I know you’re a great devotee. So for me it was also making it accessible for people who didn’t know anything about cards which I’ve tried to do. And it’s great to hear that it also has insights for people who know the decks and cards really well. So thank you for that.

So you do think Wholehearted offers something for women and people of all genders? Cause I um’d and ah’d about whether to make it a broader title, but I did feel I was particularly talking about the experiences of women, but it doesn’t stop it being read more widely. Does it?

Meredith Fuller: No and I think that’s why it’s helpful for practitioners because the practitioner can say to a client who may be male or maybe gender fluid or whatever. Take this and do this with it. And then they can guide a person through that. Whereas if you tried, I believe if you tried to make it all men, women, all LGBTQ, everybody, I think you lose a lot of the potency because it really is primarily for the women who are looking at a particular journey, but it also picks up a number of the minorities who don’t quite with our typical corporate world. So to my mind, the care that you’ve taken to make it so personable is better than having it so broad that you can’t go as deeply as you would have liked. And I’m sure that people will be able to recommend,’ look, read it”. That’s enough for people to say, hey, this is helpful.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I know a few people have bought it as gifts for others. I think that ability to gift it to someone as an experience and a journey. Quite a few of my friends have said, oh, I know someone who that will be really invaluable for. So thank you for your comments, that idea that it can be an experience and a journey to help people who really need it. And that it does come from the heart cause that was the question that popped up yesterday about moving into intuitive leadership and from a more rationally oriented extroverted sensing world in. So, I was tapping into my strengths in writing the story and I was conscious, it was a very introverted, intuiting book, but I thought I’ve got to write what I’ve got to write.

So thanks so much for those comments Meredith and for your support and particularly the review. So there’ll be more conversations about wholehearted self-leadership, writing, creativity. Some of the great things we’ve talked about tonight. So thanks for joining and thanks for your support.

Links to explore:

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 books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – kicking off December 2021

Review of Wholehearted by Meredith Fuller

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

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

Connect on social media

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

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

About Beth Cregan

Twelve years ago Beth combined her passion for creativity with her great love of writing to launch her business, ‘Write Away With Me’. Since then, she’s presented hundreds of writing workshops to inspire and encourage young writers to find their voice, develop their writing skills and connect with their inner storyteller. Her work has branched out to include presenting writing workshops for adults of all ages and stages and taking on the role of a writing mentor. She believes writing simply makes life better so in 2017, she set out on a journey to write a book to inspire teachers to develop a daily authentic writing practice in their classrooms. Soon to be published in 2022 by Hawker Brownlow Education, writing this book was a transformational experience both personally and professionally. Beth lives in Melbourne.

Beth’s website: Write Away with Me

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/write.away.with.me/

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

About Lynn Hanford-Day

Lynn Hanford-Day is a visual artist working with sacred geometry, mandalas and Islamic pattern. Lynn is also dual qualified as a coach/psychotherapist and works with women in transition who are seeking meaning, purpose and wellbeing. Lynn is especially interested in creativity and intuition, positive psychology and strengths, helping people to access and express their inner wisdom. Lynn helps women discover clarity and confidence, path and purpose. 

Lynn’s website: Sacred Creative Art

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

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

About Meredith Fuller

Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwrightcolumnist & media commentatortalkback radio guesttheatre director & producer, TV co-host, actorpsychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.

Meredith’s website: https://meredithfuller.com.au/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fuller.walsh

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