Thoughts on moving from one transition phase to the next and the different shapes transition takes. Also with tarot and reflection prompts!
The Sixes are all about journeys. After the feeling of being blocked with the Fives, you have finally moved past that and are now able to make progress again. Sometimes you’ll know where you are going, and sometimes you will not. Sometimes you will be excited to be on an adventure, and other times you’ll be simply plodding forward, hoping that your circumstances will change. No matter how you feel about what you’re doing, however, the Sixes do imply that you are on the right track. The direction you have picked is the right one. All you need to do is keep moving forward.
The Creative Tarot – Jessica Crispin
Transition takes different forms, sometimes a distinct turning point and other times a slower burn or less well-defined, uncertain intention. Having written two books about transition and also been through a major transition over about five years, I know a thing or two about navigating transition times. But you know what? I am still learning more about the nature of transition and the different forms it can take. I share thoughts on moving from one major transition phase to the next transition phase of a different kind. Here are messages from reflecting on the recent past and a new reckoning transition phase
.
What transition looks like
Transition times can look like a specific event or a turning point where life is irrevocably different or you know it means no going back. That typifies major transition experiences and examples such as:
Knowing you won’t stay in a job role any longer.
Leaving a location or moving house.
Leaving or experiencing the loss of a relationship..
Death of a loved one.
Deciding on a phase of life change like retiring or leaving paid employment.
Becoming a carer, parent or empty nester.
What transition also looks like
Transition can also look like a slower burn, a less defined desire, a sense of unease and uncertainty. There may be triggers and turning point events that make you reflect on where you are and where you are heading. But they might be quieter disappointments or feelings. Experiences gather over time to send a message about where you might head next. Or perhaps they simply say in different ways: ‘This needs to change, it’s unsustainable, it’s not what you really want.’
Transition can look like: integration, recalibration, different priorities, alternative choices, choosing more rather than less, working out your own unique path. Examples from my experience and the women I coach include:
deciding that a career choice is not an either/or; it’s a both/and – realising you can be both a corporate employee and a coach.
working out where writing and other creative priorities fit within your life and making space for them.
negotiating life post paid employment as the main focus and seeing what that landscape might look like eg casual days of working, self-employment, creative projects, volunteer work, investing, property development, travel, consulting – or a mix of some or all of these.
embarking on a new career via studying or learning a new skill like coaching, professional writing, psychological type, shamanic healing, self-publishing.
expanding self-expression and support for others via writing, publishing, social media and podcasting.
Long-term government employee (30+ years) no longer feels valued or finds satisfaction in her employment. She takes steps to craft a new life based on the creative and writing goals that are dear to her heart. Up-skilling in coaching, psychological type and tarot as guides and supports, she creates a new life focused on self-employment and building on the resources and skills already developed in life with her partner. Reflecting on and sharing about the experience enables her to coach and write books to make sense of this journey and to support others along the path.
Along the way Sacred Creative Collective Group coaching brought together midlife women seeking deeper meaning and creativity via a skills, community and project focus. I created the Personality Stories ecourse and coaching program for 1:1 guided support with personality insights.
Seeing a need, I volunteered to help AusAPT, the Australian Association for Psychological Type with social media and communications. This I continue to do as well as becoming President of AusAPT in 2020, leading psychological type learning and community in Australia.
In October 2021, fulfilling a long-held desire, I launched the Create Your Story Podcast featuring inspiring conversations on personality, creativity and self-leadership. In the past twelve months, I launched (and created) two books, the podcast, the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club and The Writing Road Trip with Beth which includes a free 6 day challenge, 6 week Writing Road Map course and 6 month Writing Road Trip membership program.
It’s been a blast and a huge five years of creativity and major transition.
The publication of two books on my 60th birthday in September 2021 felt like the beginning of the end of that transition phase. Fulfilling a long held writing dream, people were reading my books. I was building on that body of work and still do. But I felt like I moved into a new transition time. It is one of reckoning, inventory, prioritising, refocusing and realigning. I’ve created and learnt so much, but I’ve had to look at how I want to live my life. And how I can make the most of what I’ve already done and go further. I’m asking myself questions like:
How can I do more of what I enjoy like writing and content creation?
Where does writing fit with coaching? – a perennial question in this midlife transition
How can I launch in less labour-intensive ways?
What about writing the novels and other books I long to create and self-publish? Where does that fit?
How much is this ecosystem of coaching and writing costing (time, money)? Is this sustainable?
Do I want to be freer to travel more without restrictions – if not now, into the future?
How can I work in partnership more as I have done with Beth with great success, providing support, backup, new insights and skills?
And to be perfectly honest, there are days when I think, I could just let this all go and not coach or write any more. Just relax and read and enjoy my days. But would this be fulfilling? Is it what I really want to do with my life? (Actually, no! Creativity is a strong motivating force and value as is making a difference in the lives of others.)
Six of Swords arrives again
If you’ve read Wholehearted, you will know the Six of Swords features as a pivotal tarot card recurring during my time of transition. And guess what? It arrived again recently via The Spacious Tarot with this beautiful card.
As Jessa Crispin reminds us in The Creative Tarot, the Sixes are all about journeys and about moving on from that place of feeling blocked. I have felt quite blocked for the past few months. It hit after experiences of exhaustion and disappointment including:
exhaustion after 12 months of launching continually.
disappointment after not being able to have live launch events for my Wholehearted books.
book sales generally being slower than I would like.
It coalesced as an overall sense of disappointment of where I thought might be now – especially the number of readers, reviews, clients, income. But if I look at what I’ve achieved, it is significant and extraordinary. Part of the reckoning process is looking at achievements, creations, taking stock and acknowledging the immense learning and creativity. Now I need to move into building on all of this in a new way, not letting disappointment or expectations stop me. And I am well-placed to do that.
Eight of Swords follows up with a message
A couple of days later, the Eight of Swords followed up with a message about how we choose to be blocked and avoid taking action. It’s easy to get stuck in a phase of being blocked. A common image of the Eight of Swords is a woman in a (possibly) self-imposed blindfold or form of captivity. In The Wild Unknown, it is a pupa phase, full of the opportunity of turning into a butterfly. As we move on, it’s important to work out the one or two actions that might take us into the next transition phase. Taking off the blindfold off and stepping into being free to transform.
Eight of Swords in various tarot decks. Top, left to right: Rider Waite Tarot, The Robin Wood Tarot, The Sakki Sakki Tarot; Bottom row, left to right: The Fountain Tarot, Dame Darcy’s Mermaid Tarot, The Wild Unknown.
Moving through to the next transition
I’m heartened by the message of the Sixes that this is the right path as I know it is. And that I need to keep moving forward. The Eight of Swords suggests how – one valuable step at a time.
Transition and transformation is an iterative process. We end one phase and move on to another all the time; sometimes longer journeys, other times shorter ones. I hope these messages from the next phase of transition help you with any changes you may be moving through.
Here are some questions to reflect on or journal about your current or next transition:
Where are you feeling you are on a transition journey?
Are you beginning, in the middle or nearing the end of one cycle of change?
If you are feeling like you are in that messy and uncertain middle, what frameworks might helps as guides? (See my Wholehearted books for many tips on this!)
Where are you feeling stuck and why?
How can you take inventory of your achievements, operations or skills to help you move forward?
What have you already created and what can you repurpose or use as a springboard? (I have a Content Repurposing Strategy list of ideas to inspire me! We don’t have to start from zero – you most likely have so many starts underway.)
What are the one or two actions you can do now to move forward?
Warmest wishes for the next transition steps or phases you are going through. I’m here to help and support you. Just shout out or explore my books or body of work for insights. Links below.
About the author and resources to help you
Terri Connellan is an author and life transition, creativity and personality coach for midlife women in transition to a life with deeper purpose. Terri works globally through her creative business, Quiet Writing, and Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook are published by the kind press.
In Podcast Episode 18, Quiet Empowerment Coaching and Creating, I chat with Jo Slessor about midlife shifts and transitions, embracing the quiet strengths of introversion and the value of creativity, crafting and rewriting our stories.
Welcome to Episode 18 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Quiet Empowerment Coaching and Creating. I’m joined by Jo Slessor, a certified Quiet Empowerment Coach for midlife women, crafter and creative.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Seeking change in midlife
Becoming a life coach
Journey of midlife change
Midlife as a stage not an age
Quiet empowerment in midlife
Being a proud introvert
Valuing crafting and creativity
The power of rewriting our stories
Power of coaching in midlife
Building a new business later in life
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 18 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 20th of June as I record this.
I’m excited to have Jo Slessor join us for the podcast today.
Jo is a certified Quiet Empowerment Coach supporting introverted and reflective women to embrace quiet and thrive in midlife and beyond. After a long career in education, working with young people with additional needs and their families, Jo stepped back to embrace gentle living, combining coaching with running women’s groups based around crafting and exploring her own creativity. Jo lives just outside London with her husband and their Cockapoo, Woody. She enjoys daily walks in nature and weekends away!
Jo and I met online via social media and as fellow certified coaches in the Beautiful You Coaching Academy. We share a focus on being midlife coaches working with quiet, reflective women across the mix of understanding introversion and embracing the opportunities and wisdom of the middle years and beyond. So I am excited to have the chance to speak with Jo on the Create Your Story Podcast to learn more about her and her important work in the world.
Today we will be speaking about midlife, shifts and transitions later in life, working with midlife women, embracing the quiet strengths of introversion, the value of creativity and crafting – and so much more.
Enjoy listening to this insightful and inspiring conversation and take some time to learn about Jo’s work and connect with her via her website and lovely, gentle Instagram profile. Links in the show notes as ever.
So let’s head into the interview with Jo.
Transcript of interview with Jo Slessor
Terri Connellan: Hello, Jo. And welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.
Jo Slessor: Morning, Terri, thank you so much for having me. It’s very exciting.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Look forward to chatting and thank you for your connection across our work in the world. Especially as it relates to being a midlife coach and working with midlife women who may be quieter and more introvert in preference. There’s so much in common in our work. And I can’t wait to explore more about you and to chat about these topics today. So to kick us off, can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do now?
Jo Slessor: Yeah, of course. How long have we got? So yeah, I come from a background in education. I probably should go back a little bit further and say that I’m English born and bred, live just outside London, and went into education when I left school as a teacher, primary school teacher. And, I worked in the classroom for a long time. And then travelled the world with my husband, with his work.
And then when I came back after I had my children, the classroom was a very different place. And I found myself moving into working with children with special needs, which I absolutely loved because I got to work with the families I got to work with their class teachers. And it was a kind of holistic support for children and the people around them.
I worked in an advisory role for quite a long time, which meant that I was going out into lots of schools and doing lots of training. And it was that working with adults and the families and the teachers that I found that I really loved most. Then, I was in my fifties when, it all started to fall apart. And I had a bit of an epiphany in the woods when I was out with the dog one evening.
I was working in a really, really challenging environment, in a rather broken system. And I was grieving. I’d lost my dad. My children were literally at that empty nest phase. And although I hadn’t realized it, I was in the thick of perimenopause. Despite having spent lots of time and lots of trips to my GP saying, I don’t feel right. I feel tired. I feel X, Y, and Z, it was never suggested to me that I was in perimenopause.
So I went home to my husband after this walk and I said, I can’t do this anymore. And he said, yeah, we’ll stop. Ah, okay, and he kind of thrown down the gauntlet. And we worked out a plan between us that we would simplify our lives, downsize, pay off the mortgage, which gave me the freedom to explore what I wanted to do next.
And I was doing a course in mindfulness, just for my own wellbeing and talking to my mindfulness teacher about our plans and how we were about to move. And I said to her, I think I probably need a life coach. And she looked at me and I’m still not sure whether she misheard me or, or not, but she said, Jo, you should be a life coach. You’d be amazing.
And that was it really, that seed was planted. And I went off and I explored courses. My initial course that I did was here in the UK. And that was it. I loved that exploration, that way of working with people. Life went on and we moved house. We took on a project and I didn’t really set up my business, but I wanted to be in that world somehow.
And then during the pandemic, during lockdown, I decided it was my time to get some more tools in my toolbox. I found the Beautiful You Coaching Academy in Australia and did the most amazing online course with people from all over the world and graduated in March 2021. And since then I have been honing my craft, working out exactly who I want to work with and who I do work with and slowly, slowly building my business. And that’s why I’m here today too Terri. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful, and there’s truly so many similarities in our stories, isn’t there? Both have a background in education. Both had that epiphany in our fifties about needing a change and then finding that pathway to coaching others through what could be a really tumultuous time can’t it?, When you decide to make a change but you don’t quite know what it is. You just know it’s time to make a change.
Jo Slessor: Absolutely. And for me it was, there was that epiphany and then there was that moment when my husband said, well, s top. Do it. And then you think, well, how do we make this happen? Between us, we did. And that’s why I’m here today, but yeah, it’s quite a journey.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, sure. It is. And there’s lots of learning along the way. So you’re a midlife coach. What does that mean to you and how do you express your work in the world in this space?
Jo Slessor: So, midlife coach is one of the terms that I use. I think like all of us, when you’re in coach training school and you’re encouraged to find your niche and your own unique coaching sauce. So I spent lots of time thinking how I express what I do and who I am. And I think very early on because of my own journey, I realized that mid-life was a place that I wanted to be because I had been through so many of those peak experiences. You know, the career burnout, the empty nest, the career change, the downsizing, simplifying your life. And also the idea of having been through the grief of losing a parent and lots of life experience.
But also once I was in training from the beginning and I discovered the introvert extrovert spectrum. Oh my goodness. That just opened my eyes to a whole new world and gradually evolved that it was the quiet and reflective and introverted women in midlife that I wanted to work with. I love the fact that I can use my skills, my experience to empower and enable my clients to find their own answers.
But actually, Terri, I also have found that there are some times and I do express myself now sometimes as a mentor. And I will say that I’m going to put my mentor hat on here and can talk with clients about experiences that I have been through, and we can use that as a mirror to help them get through their own. So I do call myself a coach and mentor. And I’m also very clear about the fact that I am still on my own journey and discovering who I am and who I’m supposed to be in this world. We’re never finished, are we?.
Terri Connellan: And I love that idea of being both a coach and a mentor. And I certainly that’s something I also do in my own work. And I know from my own experiences of going through a midlife transition, the coach I chose to work with, I valued as much being asked the questions. But also valued that person who was a few steps ahead of me giving me some tools for the next step in the journey. Don’t you think that’s just so valuable?
Jo Slessor: Absolutely. And I think, where I am in mid-life, I’m 60 this year. So I’m still very much happy to call myself midlife and, might be something we come back to about how that has changed over the years, but I do very much feel, and I look back at myself in my forties and clients that I’ve had in my forties. And think my goodness, me, that was a different person because of everything that I have been through since then.
Terri Connellan: Yes, I loved your recent newsletter you just sent out where you mentioned in your forties, you sort of get a glimmer of what you think might happen. And then the fifties is where the rubber tends to hit the road. And it’s that sense of time running out. If I don’t start to make a change now. Plus you get tired I think of where you’ve been.
Jo Slessor: Absolutely. Yeah.
Terri Connellan: My investigations into midlife is it’s a very slippery term. It’s not well-defined but I think as the lifespan gets longer, I think midlife gets stretched out a little bit. On your website, you say that midlife is a stage and not an age. Why do you think that’s an important perspective?
Jo Slessor: Well, I think as we’ve just touched on, it’s funny, I’ve been giving this some thought recently and writing about it. Because the more I found myself in different midlife communities, the more I realized both the similarities and the differences between women who identified in midlife.
And one particular community that I was in had members from 38 through to 64. And these women were all very happy to call themselves in the midlife stage. But then it’s allowed me to reflect and look back, as I am now entering my sixties, at the fact that it’s not only just a stage that is self assessed. We decide when we’re in midlife. It’s also that idea that there are definite phases.
There is that phase when you’re in your forties, and this might be for some people in their late thirties, but yes, you get the sense of time passing. Time, certainly moves more quickly if you have children and you see them growing up. But in your forties, you’re so busy, you’re still focused on your work, your career, paying the mortgage, that you don’t really have time to stop and focus, but things are changing, both mentally and in your wellbeing and in your body.
But it tends to be a sense until you’re in your fifties. And the fifties phase is, my goodness, isn’t it? Where it all happens. All the hormones. This sudden realization that actually you don’t really care what other people think anymore, which is a huge thing. And then the idea of wanting to claim the time back for yourself and put yourself first. And the fifties were really, it’s such a huge phase within the stage. And the whole perimenopause and menopause carrying you through in one way or another.
We’re all on our own unique journeys, but then post-menopause, as we enter our sixties or late fifties and sixties, I get a sense as I approach my own 60th birthday of a time of still wanting to journey and go deep into who I am, but a stage of slightly more calm. And that might be personal for me because I have come so far with my fifties. But definitely the women that I see out there, there seems to be a more confident self-assuredness for many women in their sixties, about who they are and how they want their lives to be. But we’re still happy to say we’re a midlifer.
You know, my parents’ generation, my mother was claiming an old age pension at 60 and getting on free buses. And it’s not like that anymore. So everything has shifted I think.
Terri Connellan: As we were just saying a moment ago, lifespan is getting longer, the retirement age as a marker gets pushed out. But I had my 60th birthday last year, so I do think as you move, I mean, everyone’s on their own journey, but certainly for me and clients I work with having gone through that, if you are making a big shift in your fifites, that big change, that does tend to happen.
I think once you get on the other side of that, just the amount of things you’ve worked through in the process of moving through that journey just gives you that toolkit that we can keep strengthening to help ourselves move positively in life. So quiet empowerment is a focus in your work also. Do you find that midlife women need to embrace their quieter natures in different ways at this time of life?
Jo Slessor: I don’t know whether it’s in different ways. But what I know now, so having only discovered myself that I was an introvert at 55, that was just revelatory to me, because it just explained so much about me and about how I was and how I felt and how I felt growing up and it was like coming home. And hugely, hugely empowering to me. So in working with quieter, reflective, introverted women, many of whom actually don’t, like me, don’t use that term introvert.
I now say I am a proud introvert and that’s something that I would love more introverts to feel that they could say. But what I know now is having talked and worked with lots of women who identify as introvert or as quiet and reflective, is that my own experience of feeling not enough when I was growing up, too. All these things that teachers say to parents, you know, she’s not talkative enough. She’s too quiet. She doesn’t put her hand up enough. She doesn’t put herself forward enough. Those messages really, really sink home. And I know now that it’s not just me. I really felt that for me, that understanding of what it means to be an introvert felt like I had permission to live aligned with my energy and to accept and embrace the fact that quiet is a super power.
So I think that as a focus, I really, really want other women to feel this. And I do believe that in our fifties, we’ve jolly well, forties or fifties, we’ve earned the right to live natural and authentic lives. And actually if that is quiet, wonderful, because quiet women are amazing, aren’t they? We watch and we listen and we wait until the time is right. So often we can surprise people, I think. So I think it’s about embracing it and realizing that being who you are, is so much easier than trying to be something that you’re not or feeling bad because you feel you should be more. And I think it’s just that idea that it’s time to embrace who we are and align with our energy and putting our focus where we want to put it and not where other people expect us to.
Terri Connellan: I think that’s so true. And I resonate with so many things that you’ve said there being an introvert, my business, Quiet Writing. So there’s obviously parallels there. But I think, as Susan Cain wrote in Quiet, our world has that extravert ideal and it is oriented around the extroverted personality to a large extent. So I think many introverts can feel a bit out of touch with themselves or like a square peg or know. I was always told at work, I had to speak up more, you know, that sort of language. So you always feel like you’re found wanting rather than finding ways to express that gift in the world.
Some introverts I’ve worked with, for example, I’m sure you see the same. It’s just learning to value gifts that introverts have, like the power of listening, their ability to reflect quietly on everything that’s happening in a meeting and then summarise it. It’s just valuing different strengths. Isn’t it?
Jo Slessor: It is. It is. One of the books that really impacted on me was Marti Olsen Laney’s [The Introvert Advantage] and that was the book that, along with Susan Cain’s Quiet. Actually it was Marti Olsen Laney’s book that really spoke to me. And it is this idea that quiet leaders can be quite profound in an organisation. But too many of them don’t realise it yet.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely, many strengths from being quiet in many aspects of life, whether it be employee, family member, friend, community member, there’s just so much. I love your focus on quiet empowerment. And your newsletter is a beautiful read too about just embracing that quiet spirit in how we live our lives. And you have such a lovely social media presence too, which embodies your work so well. It’s a lovely, calming, gentle, quiet presence, which I really enjoy connecting with. So what do you focus on in your social media and why might people follow you there?
Jo Slessor: Well, if I’m going to be totally honest with you, Terri, thank you for that. But you know, I have very little idea of what I’m doing. Social media, it wasn’t something I really engaged with or used before I started running my business. And it was suddenly this realization, my goodness me, I’m going to have to work at this. I very much don’t really plan. I’m very intuitive and it’s aligned with my energy. And if I don’t have the energy to post and to follow and respond, then I won’t.
I have four main themes. So I suppose pillars, which are quite obvious really: midlife, introvert, creativity, and nature, which are the things really that I talk about the most. They embody for me that quiet empowerment. And I use my Instagram as a place to build my community. It’s not about the numbers. I don’t have huge numbers, but I do have a very engaged community of like-minded women. If we’re using it as a marketing tool, I use it to direct people to my website and to my newsletter. And it’s in my newsletter that I can really talk and be myself because I know exactly who I’m talking to.
Whereas I sometimes think you’re just talking into this space and I don’t know who is looking and who is listening. And with the Instagram algorithm as it is at the moment, I think everybody is saying those people that you’re reaching are absolutely plummeting. So therefore I’ve never put all my eggs in that Instagram basket.
There are times when I love it and I love connecting with different people. I’ve met some amazing people through Instagram. But you really have to do in a way that feels right to you. And I don’t do it naturally. It took an awful long time before I put my face on my grid. And now I do almost every time because that’s where I get the most interaction from people, the most engagement..
I speak as I see around midlife, being an introvert, exploring creativity and the wellbeing that I get from nature. And if other people like that and follow me, then they’re my kind of people. And , that’s what I want. And I do go through and I do knock people out quite a lot. If theyre people and I’ve looked on their accounts and they’re not the kind of people that I want in my community, then I would rather keep it small and engaged.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. And there’s a lot to be said for being able to reach people and engage by doing exactly that. We connected via Instagram through our connection with Beautiful You. But I think it’s that ability to find like-minded souls. Whether it’s just seeing the words, seeing the imagery, seeing the story, it’s a lovely way to connect with like-minded people.
Jo Slessor: But, you know, it’s becoming an increasingly complex place to be, a quite stressful place to be, especially as an introvert. Posting photos is one thing and then we need to be posting videos and then it’s the pointing and the dancing and all this. And I have actually taken a step back and just said, no, I’m going to stay aligned with what feels. And safe to me. And therefore I’ve almost committed that I’m not doing dancing. I’m not doing pointing. And I will do video as, and when it feels safe for me to.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a great example of honoring your introverted personality and the way you want to do things. There’s always, like you said, with not posting your face initially, there’s a process of perhaps stepping outside our comfort zone too. But I also think it’s important to do what resonates with us, whether it’s how often we post, where we post, how we post. We’re curating ourselves really, aren’t we?
Jo Slessor: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Terri Connellan: That’s great to hear your approach to that. So you’re also a crafter and creator with one of your pillars around creativity, which I found really fascinating too. So tell us more about this aspect of your life and how you see creativity fitting in with midlife experiences.
Jo Slessor: I mean, it’s something that I am so deep in at the moment. But it’s always been an important part of my life. And I have expressed my creativity in different ways over the years in crafting and making. I think I was a creative teacher. I loved teaching art, either displays. I loved finding creative ways to do things. I ran an afterschool club for children in my home, which was an art club. And as we’ve gone through those stages, I’ve always learned new creative skills, but very much, they’re hands on: textiles, glass, mosaic, crafter, and somewhere, I picked up a story that I wasn’t good at art.
And I carried that for four years. That’s just the story that I’m not good at art. And I literally, this year have decided that I’m challenging that now. And it’s been honestly, revelatory to me what I’ve achieved in taking on an Instagram 100 day project where I said, okay, well, I’m just going to do something creative every day. But I am just going to be playful.
And so for me, and this is something that has been huge. And it’s something that I would love to explore with other women, I think it’s an opportunity for us to go back and revisit our inner child. Because where did this message that I’m no good at art come from when I’ve spent my life creating things. So I went back right to the beginning and I have played with paint and layers and scraping things off and mixing colors and really kind of exploring my inner child. But alongside that, I’ve got two really weird things going on, really, really tight, creating precision collage and these other things kind of going on.
So I’ve been doodling and playing and I’ve been creating very focused pieces of work and they are pieces of art. Aren’t they? So if I’m creating pieces of art, then I need to be able to call myself an artist. So for women generally, I think, again, at this stage, it’s about giving us permission to do those things that make us feel good.
And I think for our wellbeing, exploring your creativity for well-being, it’s huge. It’s a time when, I sit down with whatever it is, whether I’m knitting or crochet or making mosaics or painting or collaging. And you just get in flow, don’t you? Everything calms down, you stop thinking about everything else outside of where you are and what you’re doing.
And then the self-expression, it’s just a way to express yourself. So one of the things that I have done recently, was I decided, and this is aligned with my business, it’s aligned with finding people outside social media is that I run face-to-face groups in my community for women who craft and we literally meet together over craft, coffee, cake.
And it’s just wonderful to see the group of 7, 8, 9, 10 women crafting, connecting, talking, and the outside world disappears. And everybody just says, oh, it was wonderful. It’s about giving yourself permission. I’m going to spend two hours in the company of other women crafting with my hands and connecting.
So I think then they do take that back into their homes and we work on our own. But just that idea of crafting for wellbeing, for expressing yourself, exploring yourself, especially with that inner child, I would love to do more of that. It’s a very mindful activity. So I think there’s lots of things about crafting for your mental health, your self expression and just actually committing and time bonding that time for yourself and for your craft.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And what I’m hearing you say is that it’s about taking back time for us as creative women, particularly, certainly been my own experience, when we’ve put all our time into work, into paid employment, into other people, family. Creativity might always be a thread that goes through our lives, but it may get pushed aside. One it’s hard to prioritize it when you’re busy, trying to earn an income and bring up children.
And then secondly, you mentioned permission. It’s just that saying that it’s okay to take the time out to spend a couple of hours working creatively. And I know I still struggle with it. Even with my writing, which I know is important. It’s easy to prioritize the administration, the social media, all the other jobs than it is to sit on this desk behind me and write for an hour or two it’s, you know, it can be a bit of a battle too. So I think we’re when we can create spaces such as you’re creating where we can meet with other women to prioritize creativity, it’s so important.
Jo Slessor: Yeah. I’ve actually just made a commitment to myself that next week I’m going to come off social media completely for the week and look at the time that I spent in there this week and dedicate that time to being creative. I’d be interested to see how I feel about. What impact it has on anything in terms of, am I going to lose all my followers in a week? No, of course I’m not. But I’m going to free up that time and give myself permission to do an online course and take a holiday from social media and invest that time in my creativity.
Terri Connellan: Sounds a beautiful project to focus on. So on your website you say that your midlife transition journey to living and working in new ways involved rewriting some stories you’ve been told and come to believe. What stories did you need to rewrite and how did you do this?
Jo Slessor: Oh, right. Stories, powerful, aren’t they? One of them we’ve already talked about really was that introvert story. That story that I’m not enough, I’m not interesting. I’m not funny. All those ideas around what it is to have a quiet preference and a quieter personality. And that was definitely learning about being an introvert and realizing what it means and realizing how safeguarding your energy just helps you to flourish and live so much more authentically in the world. That to me was huge.
I think one of the other big ones was that as women in a patriarchal society, we are more and more aware of this idea that women in mid-life, well, we’re past our prime. We’re coming to the end of our useful life. What value are we to society? What role, what purpose, those ideas. Which coming back to what you were saying about extended life expectancy, extended earning potential, all those things, actually, it’s a load of baloney. And honestly, I’m happy to feel that I’m only just beginning, although this is a very different stage and phase that I’m in.
That was a massive story. And it’s a story that we’ve been sold for generations. I think finding people who inspire you is incredibly important. And seeing other women.. The whole grey movement. Women who decide to stop coloring their hair. I mean, that movement has come from a few high profile women saying, oh, I’ve had enough of this now. And everyone’s goes, looks it’s amazing. Oh, so does she, so does she.
And it can be finding people who inspire you and make you realize. Yeah. I can do this too. I can be like this. And I think for some women, that’s enough. But this whole idea of stories. Stories are really powerful. You’re a writer, you understand that. And we know that our brains believe exactly what we tell them, because they don’t know what’s true and what’s not.
So if we rewrite our own stories, in the way that we want to present ourselves and the way that we want to be, then I honestly believe that we start living life more authentically. And we step into that power. And I found myself to be a lifelong learner. That’s one of the things far from being finished. I realize now that I’m probably going to be very poor in my old age. Cause I’m going to be doing courses and learning and stepping into new things for as long as I can. So lots of stories, but I think essentially it’s that idea of rewriting our own stories and saying how we want to be and how we want our lives to be and how we want to feel is a very important way to go.
Terri Connellan: I think it’s a mix of societal stories, but also what we internalize too, from that. You mentioned your ‘I’m not good at art’ story, which can be a combination of what society defines as good art. On top of that, our own definition of what an artist looks like and same for writers. I think rewriting our stories, claiming some of those words that empower us, like artist, writer, crafter, it’s really powerful work. A lot of the work we do in coaching is about reframing mindset actually around just helping people to articulate what it is we want to be, and then finding the language and the direction around that.
So yeah, very powerful work in the world. But it certainly starts with our own rewriting of our stories, doesn’t it? So how do you help other women in similar circumstances as a coach?
Jo Slessor: Well, I think that a hugely important part of my work is about helping women to identify their own stories and what stories have they carried with them from childhood, or that have come from somebody’s bad advice or a throwaway comment or something that they’ve picked up in education, or as you say, societal messages.
And I think once we begin to realize that we do carry these stories. And that in coaching, we like to set intentions or goals depending on how your client wants to work, really. But as we work together and we find barriers and things that are getting in the way of them fully exploring or succeeding in their goals and their intentions, what stories are getting in the way.
And I think again, it’s a very powerful, thread to explore what those stories are. And we rewrite them and we rewrite them in a way in which we can explore how they want to feel and how they want to live. The power of stories and rewriting stories is huge. And we can reclaim the power that they have over us. And I think that in coaching, that’s an amazing place in which to do that.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s important work. And I just know myself from making the changes that I made and I’m sure you’ve found too, our own experiences of coaching, how it helps us realize the power for others. And, it’s hard to describe sometimes, the coaching process, but I think experiencing it for yourself is probably the best way to really understand the power of it. Isn’t it?
Jo Slessor: I’m really glad you said that because something that’s really difficult is when somebody says, well, how do you help people? And actually it is quite a magical process. And I’ve tried before to articulate what it’s like to be coach or how I help people. But actually it’s just an amazing process that has its own voice, takes its own journey for every woman, every woman’s coaching experience will be different.
My own personal coaching experience is that idea of well, why wouldn’t I, if not now, when and why wouldn’t I? Just that idea of somebody sitting in front of me asking me very, very simple questions that make me question, well, why not, why not now?
And having that accountability and somebody there to say’ if now is the time, then I’m here for you. I wish I could bottle i n an elevator pitch exactly what coaching is and how I help people. But I think it’s a very difficult thing to do until you’ve been in it yourself.
Terri Connellan: Yes. Yeah. And I think going through the process, you learn so much. But I did also strongly resonate with your comment earlier about coach and mentor. And I think, certainly as a coach, I’m sure you do the same, you’re mainly the one asking the questions to bring the information out, but there’s also a time when you can offer the right resource, the right guidance, the right book to read. This is what happened to me. Do you relate to that? And I think that part of the magic sauce too, is just being that guide, finding that little thing that’ll take the person the next step.
Jo Slessor: Yeah, it does. It sometimes really surprises me. I’m working with a client last week and there was a session which I had felt, oh, I’m not sure how much we achieved. I’m not sure that we were on the same wavelength. And she said to me, I can’t believe how much you’ve shifted me that week. So, there is magic in there that we can’t always understand or see at the time.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. And I think that our introvert intuitive skills help a lot in those situations too. So what does life look like for you now as a midlife courage?
Jo Slessor: Well, I’ll be honest. I’m living the life now that I couldn’t have imagined five years ago. You know that afternoon when I was walking in the woods as a burned out teacher and it’s due in no small part to the changes that we made in our lives as a family, which enabled me to have choices. So my life now is one that I honestly feel that I am able to live with intention. I have just the right balance of work, rest and play that aligns with my life stage and my energy. I have never set out to try and make a full-time salary from what I do as a coach, because there are other things at this life stage that I want to be doing.
And we made changes in our life to take that financial pressure away. So my life now I have to say is pretty good. You know, it’s not perfect and it’s not the life that an awful lot of people would want to live. But I have the work that I love. I have the groups that I run, which I just love the idea of community.
I have time to spend out in nature and to explore my creativity and I’ve also just got a little admin job, which buys my art materials, literally. So it’s a gentle life and it’s a life in which I’m really happy.
Terri Connellan: Congratulations for shaping a beautiful life that is what you need at this time in your life, because it doesn’t come without a lot of hard inner work.
Jo Slessor: No, absolutely. It’s been a lot of hard work and transitions and making hard decisions. And my husband and I, we’re both the same age, we both hit 60 this year. And, there will be more hard decisions to make as we do approach full retirement. But, in this stage of our lives, you make the right decisions with the right support and I think we’re benefiting from that now.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. So what are some of the challenges you’ve experienced in building a new business later in life? And how have you worked on these?
Jo Slessor: Yeah, well, building a business at this life stage is not for the faint-hearted and I know that I’m probably not alone in wondering whether I would have done so if I had known just how hard it is. And that’s the honest truth. But I love it. I love it because, I said that I’m a lifelong learner and this is part of it.
Every day is an opportunity to learn more and to celebrate every success. The biggest challenge, and I think maybe some of it is our age, but I speak to many younger coaches who are finding the same, is the tech that is involved in running a business, especially an online business.
And I would say if that is something that challenges you, there are plenty of people out there who can help you. I run my business with my hand held high that I am not a slick machine. And that sometimes it’s easier to pick up the phone and have a conversation about an appointment, than set up my diary in a particularly tricky week.
You know, I’m not a slick machine. I love the relationship that I have with my clients and the way that we work together and that’s because my business is my business and it’s authentic and a little bit messy and that works for me. But the tech is a challenge but you only need to use as much as you want to use. And they’re other ways around things. You are working an awful lot of hours for possibly not as big of a return as you might hope in those early days. And I think I’ve gotten to a point where that’s easing now, because I realize where I need to put my boundaries in place, when I need to switch off from my business.
But it’s fun. It’s new, it’s learning, it’s meeting new people and learning new things. And in order to do the work that you love, and if it is work that you love, you do it anyway, because it’s fun. I can’t imagine putting this much work into a business that I didn’t love. I think that’s probably the crux of it. If it was a business, that didn’t mean something to me, I’m not sure that self-employment would be for me.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with all the things you’ve said. For me, there’s a creativity in it too. You can see, creativity is one of your core values, as it is of mine. Even doing the podcast, I was editing today, again, it’s tech focused and it can take time. But I thought, I just love this. I love the conversations we’re having. I love taking the time to craft them, another form of crafting, to shape them into something that I can share with the world and have people listen.
And I get such joy from that. So financially it may reward me in other ways if people find out about my book, find out about my business, find out about you. So there’s rewards from our time. But I think at the end of the day, it’s very much about self-expression. It’s about sharing the wisdom that we’ve learnt over the years that we’ve been living. And yeah, then the tech, I like the tech, but it’s no denying that it takes time and it can be a rabbit hole. But I think your point that , you can make it as simple as you like. That’s a great reminder. So I love watching your business grow in particular, seeing you, your cabin, how you’re meeting with clients. I think it’s really beautiful. How we show up in the world, as you said, it’s all about authenticity.
Jo Slessor: Absolutely. Yeah.
Terri Connellan: Cool. So a couple of questions that I ask each guest on the podcast. So the first is about how have you created your story over your lifetime?
Jo Slessor: I think I’ve always been a really independent spirit and I’ve made up my own mind and I’ve done my own thing. And perhaps this does come out of being an introvert. I think perhaps as a listener and a watcher, you do live slightly independently of other people. I have been incredibly lucky to have a husband who has wholeheartedly supported me in whatever I wanted to do and whatever decision I made at every step. And we’re a great team. But, in mid life, I think it was realizing the importance of self-development and growth, to know yourself, to understand yourself and that we are all on a journey. And that journey still continues.
And I think that creating my own story has just come out of being an independent being who is prepared to learn, work out exactly who I am and what I need.
Terri Connellan: I love that. And I love how many times stories has come up in the conversation today about rewriting stories, the stories we tell ourselves. And, I think that notion of being independent and that personal development journey through midlife is just a fantastic time to reflect on the stories and keep writing new stories. Yeah. The second question that I ask folks, my book Wholehearted has 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices for women.
And I’d love to hear from the people I chat to on the show, what you would identify for people as your top wholehearted self-leadership skills, especially for women.
Jo Slessor: Right. I think the first one is listen and follow your gut. Whether you call it your intuition, your inner knowing, that has absolutely guided me over the years. And for that reason, I was so interested in seeing recently how much research has gone into how many nerve cells or neurons there are in your gut and the link with your brain. So number one, I would say, if you feel something in your gut, then it’s probably the right thing to do.
The second one I was saying is be curious. Maybe it’s part of my creativity, but be curious. Maybe this is why I love being a coach. Cause I’m always asking questions cause I want to know stuff. So be curious, ask questions. Think, well, why not? Rather than what if and I think that will get you a long way.
And then I think the last one that I wanted to say was just to have the confidence to be you in the knowledge that you are not the right flavor for everyone. And thank goodness for that. We will never be the right thing for everyone. It’s an impossible dream. So therefore, why waste time trying to be anything else than be you.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful, love those tips, especially that third one about, yeah, we’re not for everybody. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense to tailor yourself to somebody else who’s not you, does it?
Jo Slessor: Absolutely.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. I love those three really wise tips. Thanks for sharing them today. So that’s just about the end of our time together, Jo. It’s been lovely chatting with you. Can you tell people where they can find out more about you and your work online?
Jo Slessor: Yeah. I have a website which I am tweaking a little bit at the moment, but it’s still up and running and hopefully people will get a flavor of me at www.joslessor.com. I am on Instagram. And my Instagram handle is @joslessor. And I have a newsletter which is called Notes from the Cabin. We didn’t really talk about the fact that I work mostly out of my cabin in the garden, which is my gorgeous little introvert space. So my Notes from the Cabin, you can get on that mailing list from either my website or my Insta. And it’s a monthly roundup of midlife, introvert, quiet empowerment and nature and creativity and all those things that we’ve talked about today.
Terri Connellan: All the good things in life. Thank you so much, Jo, it’s been great to chat with you today.
Jo Slessor: Well, thank you for having me. It’s been lovely to talk about the things that we both realize are so important in life. It’s been great. Thank you.
Jo Slessor
About Jo Slessor
Jo is a certified Quiet Empowerment Coach supporting introverted and reflective women to embrace quiet and thrive in midlife and beyond. After a long career in education, working with young people with additional needs and their families, Jo stepped back to embrace gentle living, combining coaching with running women’s groups based around crafting and exploring her own creativity. Jo lives just outside London with her husband and their Cockapoo Woody. She enjoys daily walks in nature and weekends away!
Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me and I co-host The Writing Road Trip. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.
So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you information and inspiration for your writing journey:
The Writing Road Trip is an exciting collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.
The program has three components that we plan to keep cycling through so join us at any time. Join the email list to keep in touch with what’s available. Here are the three components!
We kick off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity, a two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing.
Then we have a six-week Writing Road Map course that helps you zero in on your purpose and direction. We work on: creating your vision, getting in flow, mindset, creativity for the long-haul and sharing your work with the world. It helps you map the writing journey your way with the support of community.
The Writing Road Trip is a longer community program for extended support as you write featuring virtual writing retreats, community calls to check in on your writing progress and writing input as required based on what you need!
We are kicking off on the Writing Road Trip in May 2022! So get on the email list for the latest news as well as regular writing inspiration and tips from us.
Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:
Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube
The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.
Transcript of our conversation
Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.
Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.
Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.
So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.
Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?
Terri Connellan: We did.
I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.
I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.
Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.
And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.
I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.
And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?
Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.
Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.
Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.
The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?
My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.
Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.
But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.
And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.
So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.
But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.
And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.
Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.
Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.
Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.
Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.
Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?
Beth Cregan:
And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.
Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.
Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.
We hope you’ll join us!
You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Self-Styling Your Life.
I’m joined by Janelle Wehsack – Certified Life & Style Coach, Creative Writer and Distant Francophile.
We chat about Janelle’s signature approaches to coaching based on clarity, mindset and action and self-styling your life. With 30 plus years in corporate along with concurrently operating both a successful coaching business and Distant Francophile focused around a love of all things French, Janelle is an inspiring example of how to intentionally shape a life that you love. Plus she is a Self-Belief Coach with an extensive tool-kit for wrangling self-doubt.
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.
Choosing to work part-time in corporate and coaching
Integrating different skills and roles
Both/and thinking
Following breadcrumbs and experimenting
Working with evidence
The value of blogging
Distant Francophile
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 25th of March as I record this. There’s been a little gap in episodes as I’ve been travelling over the past few weeks, visiting Melbourne, the beautiful Great Ocean Road in Victoria and Mt Gambier in South Australia. We had a fabulous time away and it was wonderful to see new vistas, swim in pristine water and catch up with family and friends. You can see pics on Instagram @writingquietly.
I also met my writing partner and The Writing Road Trip collaborator, Beth Cregan, for the first time in person. That was a truly joyous moment. We’ve enjoyed such a rich connection, supporting each other with our writing and then creating a writing program for others to join us. So it was so lovely to meet in real life and we presented our Writing Road Map session together in the same room instead of miles apart. We will be kicking off the next stage of the Writing Road Trip soon with a membership program to help get your book or writing project completed with opportunities to write in community with support. And have fun on the journey. You can join our email list for the latest news.
I’m excited to have Janelle Wehsack join us for the podcast today. Janelle is a certified life and style coach and a creative writer who also happens to have 30 years experience – and counting – in the corporate world. In her coaching practice, Janelle employs her signature coaching framework that combines clarity, mindset and action to support professional women to dance with their self-doubt so that they can build tailor made, self-styled lives.
Janelle and I met online as fellow Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coaches and Janelle has also worked with me as a coaching client focused on transition. Our work dovetails around self-belief, self-leadership and shaping the creative, integrated life you desire. Janelle frames her coaching work around creating a Self-Styled Life which she also shares via her Self.Styled.Life podcast too. Self-styling your life means, in Janelle’s words: ‘you write your own rules and set your own limits. Or you choose to have no limits at all.’ Janelle shapes her creative, self-styled, highly individual life and business in new and exciting ways and that’s what we’ll be exploring today in the podcast. There are plenty of gems of insight to inspire you in self-leadership and navigating a path that integrates the unique aspects of you!
So let’s head into the interview with Janelle.
Transcript of interview with Janelle Wehsack
Terri Connellan: Hello, Janelle and welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.
Janelle Wehsack: Hello, Terri. It’s so awesome to be here.
Terri Connellan: So thank you for your connection. And I can’t wait to explore more about you and your self-styled life work today. So we’ve connected in many ways around coaching, living creatively, transition and self-leadership, and it’s great to be able to share those conversations today.
So can you kick us off by providing a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do now?
Janelle Wehsack: I’d love to Terri and it is really awesome to be able to share some of the snippets of our conversations with all of your fabulous listeners. And I feel like my background is something that people might resonate with because it’s a story of decades.
So back when I was a teenager, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I finished high school and got a job in a bank, interestingly 31 years tomorrow to the day since I started in with that job at the bank. And so my twenties turned into something that I would say was full of life lessons. Or what we’d commonly call life’s lessons. I was married at 21. I had a baby at 23. I was a single mum by the time I was 25. At 27, I remarried. And then at 29, I decided it would be the perfect time to go casual at the bank and head back to uni full-time. So we squeezed a lot into that decade. And then the thirties was all about building my career, which I did quite quickly.
And then my forties probably got me to where I am today. It was during that time that I started a blog all about France. I studied life and style coaching as well as deep diving into self-belief coaching while still working in that banking career. And today my life is a perfect for me mix of a blend of my day job, my coaching practice, writing, growth, Distant Francophile, which is that blog I mentioned earlier. And it really is a life I’ve styled myself.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. What an amazing journey you’ve been on. And congratulations, firstly, on 31 years in the bank, that’s amazing.
Janelle Wehsack: Yes, can’t say that when I started there 31 years ago that I ever expected that I would still be there, but the bank’s been an awesome opportunity for me and certainly a really good lesson in the fact that you can thrive in corporate. And that you can also reinvent yourself in corporate, which I don’t think is something we talk about too much.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think something we’ll explore as we go through today is sometimes we can find ourselves being pushed from one view of life to another. And I think the fact that a theme or a thread of corporate life can be really positive thing in our life is something that ‘d be great for us to explore as we talk further.
Congratulations too, on all those incredible shifts and pivots. And I love that, like me blogging, coaching appeared as key markers and tools and supports in your journey. That’s fantastic too. So, a common feature of our work is self-leadership and as you frame it in your work, a self-styled life. Can you explain to listeners what a self-styled life means for you and what it might invite in our lives?
Janelle Wehsack: It’s really interesting, isn’t it, how we can language, what is essentially the same thing so differently? So your work around self leadership and what I call self styling for me, they both come down to really leading a self-determined life, however we language it.
Now, I dragged out the good old Collins dictionary Terri for this one. And that dictionary defines self-determination as ‘the act or power of making up one’s own mind about what to think or do without outside influence or compulsion’. And practically, I think that translates into a life where you know what you want and you know where you’re going and you live by your values and define your measures of success.
For me, when you’re living a self-styled life, you fill it with beautiful humans and beautiful experiences and objects that bring you joy and fulfillment. And I think it’s true for all elements of your life. Be it career, your relationships, your creativity, finances, your wellbeing, all of the things. And it’s about, for me having all of the areas of your life, firing, like you want them to fire. For instance, it’s not just about having a great career and no hobbies, nor should you be sacrificing perhaps your professional life or your creativity, because you’ve chosen to have kids or babies have come along.
It’s about deciding that it’s okay for you to be excited by all areas of your life. And for me, when you decide to self-style your life, you write your own rules and you set your own limits. Or you choose to have no limits at all. And I think you start to let go of that endless comparison that’s so ingrained in us from such a young age.
I’m sure some of your listeners will have heard that quote that’s attributed to Theodore Roosevelt about comparison being the thief of joy. And yet our whole societies are set up to compare us right from the start. From the minute we’re born, we’re compared by our birth weight, then we’re compared by our grades that ends up deciding what we’re going to do in terms of school or life choices. So whilst we talk about comparison being something that we want to let go of, it’s something that’s ingrained in society.
But for me, I think letting go of that comparison, or if you can let go of that comparison, that really does help you to live life your way. And I think the last thing I’d say on this one would be when you choose to self-style your life, you also build out the skills that help you deal with self-protective behaviors, like perfectionism procrastination and people pleasing that get triggered by self doubt. You’re regularly giving yourself permission to say ‘I’m okay to do life my way’. And I think that’s a really powerful thing for women in particular, to be able to do.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful. And I love that in your reflections there, we had so many beautiful words like, self-determination. I often use the word self-directed, which is quite similar, I think. Self-honoring, self- styling and a term I use in my work self leadership, and I so agree that we often have a set of experiences that takes us towards something similar, but we all bring our own take to our coaching work and our unique vision on life that leads us to shape what might seem to be something similar or something that dovetails in different ways.
So I love that self-styling and self-leadership can be two different ways of looking at one particular, or many-faceted, a gem comes to mind, something that reflects different angles.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I think that’s a really beautiful way to think about it too. And I hadn’t considered it in terms of a beautifully cut emerald or a beautifully cut diamond at all. But that’s part of the self-leadership or the self-styling for me as well is actually choosing the words that resonate for you out of that piece. And for me, I’m not sure I was comfortable enough in the early days to have chosen different language or picked the words that meant something to me.
So again, I think that just emerges as you start to get better at this stuff, as you dance with your self-doubt, build your self-belief and really start to step into doing life your way.
Terri Connellan: Yes. I think a lot of the ability to really embrace some of these things we’re talking about comes as we get older, as we mature, as we experience more, as we grow in wisdom. But it’s all those life experiences and you gave us a beautiful snapshot of all the different milestones and hallmarks that have come in your life as you’ve moved through your journey. So with all of the things that you’ve been through and all the choices that you’ve made, how have you self-styled your own life?
Janelle Wehsack: If I really reflect on it, Terri, I don’t think that I really started self-styling my life, or living life my way until I got into my forties. It was around my 40th birthday when I looked around and realized that I’d built an amazing career or an apparently amazing career, but I hadn’t really built a life.
I was working seven days a week, almost every week in my corporate role. I was fighting hard with an inner critic who told me that I was a fraud and that I was going to be found out at any moment. I had zero hobbies. Whereas my hubby Scott had heaps and I was endlessly counting the days till our next trip to France.
Then there was the fact that my role as a mum was downsizing. Our son was starting to live his own life, and I’d been filling up the increasing space with my day job. And it was all leaving me feeling exhausted and dissatisfied and seriously questioning my life choices. And I realized at that point, that’s not what I wanted my life to look like. And so I started working with a coach myself to help me build more confidence in my career and build creativity into my life. Because if I was going to be able to do it on my own, I already would have.
So that decision started a journey for me that I now know is called following breadcrumbs. And this is where the blog piece started because when I was young, I really liked to write. And then as an adult, I love traveling to France. So I started blogging about France and then because everything style-related in France is just so fabulous, that led me to doing a style coaching qualification. And then in turn that led me to life coaching and becoming a certified life coach. And then ultimately discovering self belief and self-belief coaching.
So it really was a journey that started just with that creative piece. But in the meantime, because I was doing all of those things, my confidence grew as I was taking new actions, undertaking experiments, doing all of the things and that supported me in my corporate role.
So I actually went from having a big job to having an even bigger job. But interestingly, because of all of the other things I was doing, I was able to handle it better because I had so much more, I don’t even want to say balance in my life, but I had other things in my life that allowed me to, I guess, keep my job in perspective and it could be remain big, but I had other fun things that I wanted to do. Like I said earlier, today my life looks like everything I love and I find interesting all swirled together in a way that’s just uniquely me.
Terri Connellan: Mmm, and as you were talking, I was thinking of the other women and men that I’ve interviewed on this podcast and it often seems to be a journey. I think that we perhaps spend time focusing on things like corporate or like our work, like our family, for example, being a bit one-sided. And then, realising typically as we get into our forties and fifties, for me, it was more in my fifties, realising that there’s these passions we’ve left behind or there’s these things we really love that we want to incorporate more into our lives. And, almost it’s like becoming more multifaceted as we get older, bringing those threads back in. But I think also too, reflecting on what connects them.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I’d agree. We’re back to that gem analogy though, aren’t we, around allowing things to be multifaceted. And I know for me, I didn’t bring any of that creativity forward in my life. And then I had to consciously go looking for it. And what’s interesting is how often we don’t know what it is that we want to do. So we understand something’s missing, but actually working out what we want to do can be a real challenge.
And so I think that’s where that idea of following breadcrumbs is really helpful because you can just start with something and see if you like it and then see where it leads you without putting any pressure on yourself for it to become the be-all and end-all or for it to fill up your whole life. You’ve already got a full life and you can add more in, it turns out.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful. I love that bread crumb analogy. It’s something I’ve used in my own thinking, whether it’s following the trail of the books that you love or the passions that you love, the skills that you love, there’s lots of different trails that you can follow.
And, yeah I love that idea of testing and trying and not feeling like we’ve got to find the one thing that’s the answer.
Janelle Wehsack: Yes. I agree entirely and yet, so often it is that we think we’ve got to find the one thing. But yeah, that either or thinking doesn’t always serve us.
Terri Connellan: No, not at all. So you integrate a corporate leadership role in the banking sector with coaching others in your own business. So what have you learned about how these two areas support each other.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. Well, we’ve mentioned we’ve had lots of conversations in the past Terri and one of those conversations has been around how I’ve consciously chosen to work part-time in both arenas. And that’s not necessarily typical for people to be coaching and still working in a big role in corporate. And like all working environments, both the corporate and the coaching industries have stories that tend to tell you how you’re supposed to do these things.
So if you’re in corporate, you’re giving all of your blood, sweat, and tears and your weekends and your nights to corporate if you want to do a good in inverted commas job.
And then similarly we know in some coaching circles, certainly not all, but some coaching circles, it’s the be all and almost end all to be coaching full-time and leaving your corporate role. So I know the way that I’ve put things together isn’t necessarily the norm.
But for me, apart from providing a really good example of how I’m self-styling my life, I feel like I get the best of both worlds and show up better to both worlds because of the way that I’ve integrated these pieces. Coaching’s my way of supporting others and I absolutely love it, but I also enjoy the leadership opportunities that come with working in corporate transformation, which is what I do for a day job.
I have stimulating work. I’ve got an awesome team. I have options for growth and I value all of those things really, really highly. And I feel like, although my team might tell you differently, but I feel like I show up as a better workplace leader. Thanks to my coaching skills, I have a deep understanding of those protective beliefs that hold professionals back, and I’m able to use those skills to support my colleagues’ success.
But similarly, I think I’m a better coach and mentor because I’m still working in that corporate space and I’ve got three decades of experience behind me and my coaching clients work almost exclusively in multi-national and national corporations and things shift really quickly in those spaces.
So for me remaining in corporate helps me to understand their environments, their trends, and even their language. And that I think helps me support my clients even better. And then finally, I think one of the key words in your question is around integrated and it’s become really important to me that I use all of my skills and experience in an integrated way.
It’s not something that I’ve always done, but it’s become more and more important. And as I said, just a minute ago, either or thinking doesn’t really support me or my clients or my employer. And if I can bring everything together and show up wholeheartedly in everything that I do, I think it means that I add more value both to my employer and to my clients. And ultimately to myself.
Terri Connellan: That’s an incredible story of the value of not engaging in either or thinking isn’t it? It’s that idea of, some people talk about both/ and thinking as the opposite of that. So have you found it’s easy for people to get into either or thinking about their life options?
Janelle Wehsack: Oh my goodness. Yes, absolutely. I see it all the time. And as I said, if you talked to me in my thirties, I think I’d fallen for it absolutely myself and I think what we were saying before, especially for those of us who might be in our forties or beyond, that idea of having to choose the one thing and get it right was ingrained right into us, right from the start. And you can tell from that question that we ask every child or that every child’s been asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like we have only one choice when we answer that question. And I think while it’s really pleasing that we see books like Emma Gannon’s The Multi-Hyphen Method and Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose, sharing a different message now, I think there’s still a whole lot of societal rules that tell us what you have to be, X or Y. Or you can only have one or the other, you can’t have both.
And I think for women in particular, that means that they can limit themselves. Surely you can’t have only one or two things, hobbies or passions for yourself if you’re being a good girl and putting everybody else first.
I think my best advice for exploring more integrated options is to adopt what I call the ‘and’ strategy. So whenever my clients or my team share an either or option, I always ask them to explore whether there is an and or both option available to us. One where we don’t have to choose and we can get the best of both worlds. And often I find just opening people up to that thinking can bring forward other ideas and there can be a real excitement when that creeps in, when they realize, oh, I could have both. Maybe I don’t have to choose.
But I feel like I’m the wrong person answering this question because I think you’re the real leader in positioning the fact that we can bring together the many facets of our lives in a whole hearted way. So I’m curious to know what you’ve seen in that space.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s a great question to ask of me cause it’s what I’ve certainly thought about and often work on with coaching clients. And as you were talking us, I was reflecting on my situation, which is post paid employment in the job that I was in, but crafting my own creatively focused life.
And the question I often get asked by people is: how’s retirement? So, there’s again this dichotomy in society that, you finished paid employment, therefore you are retired and therefore you’re just spending your days relaxing and freewheeling. But my life, my partner’s life, we know we both work in different ways, but similarly are both very busy and I think it’s about choosing to see that the life options that we have don’t necessarily fit into those categories that society chooses for us, whether it’s by lifespan or by definition of paid employment or role, mother or grandmother or whatever it might be, retiree.
But I think it’s important for us to tap into what we really want to do, back to those breadcrumbs and those passions and those life options, and craft a life. That’s why I called this, Create Your Story. It’s about creating the life that you want from all those different passions that you have, including earning an income in one way, shape or form, because we need to have money to survive, but also being creative about those aspects too. Like how do we earn an income? How does money come in? What’s a portfolio career look like?
Meredith answered it beautifully too in the podcast chat with her where she divided up her week into: How much time have I got for counseling? How much time have I got for making films? How much time have I got for doing psychological work? And I think that’s was a beautiful way too of looking at all the things you want to do, seeing how you can take those life options and craft them into a life. And I know that’s something you’ve really explored beautifully in the work that you do.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. And I loved the episode with Meredith. That was just such a beautiful conversation. And certainly I’d encourage anybody who hasn’t listened to that episode to go back. I thought it was just perfect for these times, but I think it’s also really great Terri, that you are leading these conversations because we’ve talked a lot about the societal norms, but they’ll only shift when we start having a different conversation about, you know, no, just because you’ve finished, paid traditional employment doesn’t mean you’re retired and it just that you choosing to do completely different things in a completely different space.
And similarly, no, you don’t have to choose one or the other. You can work in corporate and you can coach at the same time. And I think just having these conversations and normalizing this will be the start of making different choices for our children. Down the track, it sets a new example.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. And I really appreciate those comments and yeah, it really excites me to be having this conversation, to be chatting with people on the podcast about where they’ve been, where they’re going. Those turning points where you make a choice, what you decide to open things up, I think they’re important times and we have many of them in our lives and they continue. I think they’re important conversations to have. So another string you have to your very busy bow is working in self-doubt area. And you’re a self-doubt coach having graduated from Sas Petherick’s Self-belief Coaching Academy. So how does self-doubt and self-belief play out in living or embracing a self-styled life?
Janelle Wehsack: The first thing that I would say, Terri is that Sas is an absolutely incredible teacher. And so unsurprisingly working with her in that course fundamentally changed how I approached the concepts of self doubt and self belief. And in terms of coaching tools they’ve really changed the way I think about approaching these topics with my clients. Because unfortunately, oh well, it’s not unfortunate. It’s just natural, that everyone feels self-doubt at different times and different levels. The bit that is unfortunate though, is that for some of us, that self- doubt can really, really keep us stuck and it can stop us from living wholeheartedly, as you would know, it slows down self-leadership and it certainly slows down living a self-styled life.
And I think it’s really helpful to remember that any time we encounter protective behaviors like procrastination or perfectionism, it’s just our way of keeping us safe from psychological risk of things like failure, disappointment, rejection, and judgment. But in remembering that it’s also good to reflect on the fact that by not doing the things, by not following what you love, by not taking that brave step and maybe trying something brand new for the first time, you open yourself up to the same levels of feelings of failure or feelings of disappointment or judging yourself. So it becomes a cycle where whether you act, or you don’t act, you end up facing into the same risk.
Choosing to self-style your life helps you grow your self belief and your self-trust, because in taking action for the things you want, you gather a whole stack of evidence about yourself and the things you can actually do, rather than just listening to those stories that we all tell ourselves about what you can and can’t do, or even the societal stories we’ve been talking about today. And you also get to know more about you. Your own likes and dislikes. For so many of us, we’ve been almost conditioned to like what others have told us we like, and we’ve never really looked into what’s important to us.
So I think self-styling your life helps you overcome that self doubt. And at the same time, build the self-belief. So the two really do go hand in hand.
Terri Connellan: And do you think it’s something women experience, particularly that self-doubt piece? We talked about societal conditioning.
Janelle Wehsack: I think all humans experience self-doubt. It just shows up differently for different humans. I think for women it’s that there is the extra pressure, particularly I think, as any of us that have 40 or older probably came from a different era and so had different environments when we were growing up that might feed into that.
But at the end of the day, I think we all have the capacity to doubt ourselves. It’s about actually being brave enough to take a step anyway, and just build up that evidence that those psychological risks might feel really scary. But once you put yourself out there, it’s not as bad as you first thought.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s great. And I love that reminder that self-doubt looks different for different people, whether it’s from a gender perspective or even individuals. Everyone’s going to have their own brand of self-doubt. I love too that idea of gathering evidence in the face of self-doubt and it’s something I often remind my clients when I’m working with them, if there’s areas where they’re feeling uncomfortable is to just start looking at the facts.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah, there’s nothing more powerful than really questioning whether the stories you tell yourself, have any basis in fact, or there’s any factual evidence behind them. Because so often when you ask yourself the question about, well, is that true, the answers, often, more often than not, well, no, it’s not true. And it’s just a way I’ve been protecting myself from taking a step forward and things may be not going my way.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s a great way of practically tackling those limiting self beliefs that we’ve often been carrying around for many years, that just become part of how we live and breathe. Don’t they?
Janelle Wehsack: Yes they do. And that’s where I think the evidence and taking some action in the face of those things builds up that evidence of, oh, maybe it’s not true. And quite often you end up with more evidence about what you can do than what you think you can’t do. It’s just a matter of building up that filing cabinet full of evidence that says, Hmm, maybe there’s a different perspective on this.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. And speaking of different perspectives and gathering further evidence, you also have another fabulous business, life interest and website presence, which is Distant Francophile, which you mentioned early on, and that’s focused on your love of all things French and inspiring others from this.
So can you tell us about Distant Francophile and how it connects with other aspects of you and shaping a self-styled life?
Janelle Wehsack: Ah, yes, Distant Francophile. It was really my first step into exploring creativity back as I said around the time I turned 40. I’d let all of that go in my twenties and thirties and starting a little blog about France, which is a country that I simply adore back in 2014 was actually my way of establishing a writing practice.
So, I remember my son saying to me, if you’re going to start a blog, mum, you’ll need to be committed. Uh, I managed to raise you for this long, I’ll probably be able to stick to a blog for a little while. But he had a point because I think just saying that I was going to show up and write and post every week. I made that promise to myself, but I made that promise to my readers.
And so by doing that, I had to start creating and I look back at some of the early blogposts and I don’t think that they’re going to win any awards Terri at all, but, it was a place for me to just explore creativity and joy and beauty without any expectations. If nobody had ever read Distant Francophile, that was okay. I was going to show up and I was going to write and share something that I love.
And interestingly, it’s still that today, but it’s so much more and I feel like it’s almost taken on a life of its own. I would never imagine that it would introduce me to so many opportunities and amazing people. We’ve got to experience so many things in France that we wouldn’t have been able to do without the DF community.
And we talked a minute ago about those baby steps and experiments. And DF was a real place for me to experiment with all sorts of things. So. I could experiment with writing. I could experiment with recording podcast interviews. I could experiment with all sorts of different things that have then led to, or have supported me as I’ve moved into coaching and expanded in different areas.
So I would never have expected that Distant Francophile would become the jumping off point for so many other things in my life. And then interestingly, because we share a lot of my hubby Scott’s photos on Distant Francophile, there’s been a real interest in the fine art photography that we share there.
So fairly soon, Distant Francophile’s going to be a business in its own right and I’m super excited to see what the next evolution of that ends up looking like.
Terri Connellan: Hmm. That’s another beautiful story of the breadcrumbs and following the breadcrumb trails of passions and seeing where they lead. And, yeah. congratulations on your commitment. You obviously did take that advice on board and extend the success of distant Francophone. Your Instagram posts are just beautiful. Your website is stunning. And in terms of self-styled life, it really shows, you know, if you took that out of the equation, it wouldn’t be the same sort of self-styled life that you have. It gives you another dimension to style in itself and the things that you love being part of that self-styled life.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. And I think for me, it was all of the aesthetically beautiful things that I love about France was what triggered me to look into style and that then went to style coaching. And so I can’t imagine my life without Distant Francophile. It is the outlet that I can play with the pretty things and the things that just look nice just for the sheer joy of doing something that I like with that.
Terri Connellan: And I love that your creativity started as a blocker cause that’s what also happened with me because I knew I had to make more space for creativity in my life. And that was how I did it through starting a blog. I started a blog in 2010 and I remember putting that first one out in the world and just feeling so fearful.
But for me, it was about working out what I wanted to focus on, what I wanted to say, where I wanted to focus. In my ten tips for people about developing meaning and purpose in their life, blogging is actually one that I offer up as a tip because I think whether anybody reads it or not, it’s actually that beautiful way of shaping up what’s important to you, working out what you want to say, finding your own voice, plus developing skills, the amount of technical skills that I have learned through that experience that I’m applying in launching courses and podcasting. It’s also building up practically, isn’t it?
Janelle Wehsack: That was absolutely my experience of it as well, Terri. It always makes me feel a little bit sad when people say, oh the era of blogging is over and it’s like, yeah, I’m not so sure about that. And particularly for those of us who want to explore our creativity or perhaps have it on their hearts to write, but aren’t quite at the point where they’d contemplate a book or something like that, even just starting, as you say to craft your words, find your voice. I think there’s still a lot to be said about having a writing practice and the practice, as you say, with sharing it with the world, because I think we all feel like that the whole universe is going to read our first blog post or maybe our first 10 blog posts.
And then after we’ve written hundreds of blog posts, we realized that perhaps they’re not. But it still gets us used to writing and sharing. And I think that’s the powerful thing about creating and for me it created such a community. And as I said, an almost a life of its own that I would never have imagined.
Terri Connellan: It’s a beautiful thing. And again, in the podcast chat with Penelope, she gave a tip about free writing and then writing for publication and doing both. And I think that’s a really lovely way of looking at it. And blogging is a way of writing for publication, writing for audience. And I think frames up our writing in a different way to have both those lenses.
Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re absolutely correct.
Terri Connellan: And podcasting too can be a very similar thing. So I’m sure everyone listening is wondering how do you manage all these different aspects of your fascinating and rich life Janelle? So can you share some tips about how you balance and integrate it all in practical terms?
Janelle Wehsack: I’ll give you a theoretical answer and then I’ll give you some practical ones as well. I think Terri, I think the first thing is that I’m incredibly intentional about my life and the things I bring into it because I wasn’t in my thirties. But as I’ve moved through my forties, I now choose very deliberately about what’s in my life.
I didn’t like where I was at when I had a big job and an increasingly empty nest. And I’d really prefer it if I didn’t end up back there. So as a result, I really choose where I focus my time. And right now I love investing my time into my day job and the creativity of Distant Francophile that we just talked about and supporting my clients through coaching and creating new tools and new ways of thinking for my coaching clients. And building that into my coaching practice and that blend of intellectual work, creativity and service really sparks my energy. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in both of my clients and in my corporate colleagues is that when we put all of our energy into things that don’t actually make us feel good or don’t make us excited, that’s when burnout tends to creep in especially I’ve noticed in women.
And so, if the things that I have in my life really drain me rather than fill me with excitement and vitality, I don’t have a problem anymore with putting them on the shelf. And the best example I have of that is French lessons. I did French lessons for many, many years, but the minute they started becoming a chore and not something that I thought was fun and interesting and exciting, I had no problem shelving them.
And it’s not the side that I won’t pick French up again one day. But for right now, it’s just not something that I want to spend time on. And I think being able to pick things up and put things down without feeling like you’ve got to stick with things forever, really helps with that idea of, ‘No, no, I’m going to do things that fill me with excitement and energy and I get to choose what that looks like.’ So I think that’s just the first position on being intentional and choosing what you want to do is for me how I can pack things in, because any time I choose to do anything, it’s something that I love.
So I’m either creating, or I’m playing with Distant Francophile or I’m working at my day job. And when you’re filling your life up like that, I don’t get overly tired, I think because I have all of the variety. It just seems to work really well for me because I’m choosing to do a whole lot of fun things rather than things that I feel like I should do or have to do. I think too, in the downtime of that, I’ll cook or I’ll read, or I’ll walk along the beach. I’ll still do other things as well, as long as everything is, feeling like fun. So that’s sort of the theoretical position on it.
The practical things. I’m really good with my calendar. Thirty years in corporate has taught me that my day runs by my calendar. If it says I’m going to be somewhere, I will show up. And so I do the same thing with my personal life and my calendar there. If it says I need to write for DF right now, I’ll show up and I’ll write for DF. And like, that’d be fun. But similarly, if I’m coaching I’ll coach and so I’m very good at stopping one thing and picking something else up because the calendar tells me so. And I think probably just the other thing, Terri, is that, I don’t watch telly. I don’t watch telly very often. And so I always thought that I’d rather create rather than consume. So I guess that gives me a bit more time too.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, for sure. And, I love that you mentioned how the blend of things, sparks energy. And I guess it’s back to that bringing together different strands of our life and it sounds like one sort of bounces off the other. And, back to that multifaceted gem that we’ve created in this conversation, that idea of bouncing light and energy from one thing to another. Doing a range of things that you don’t enjoy might be draining. When things spark each other and reflect aspects of each other, the story that I’m hearing from you is that it’s actually energizing.
Janelle Wehsack: It is for me. And I think I knew the difference because when it was all work and I was just filling up the time that I used to spend parenting with more work, it wasn’t like that at all. And it’s interesting that it’s a different role within the same company, but I’m still at that corporate job. But by building more things into my life and not expecting my corporate role to fulfill all of the different desires and wants that I had. So it doesn’t have to cover the creativity for me. It doesn’t have to cover service for me. By just letting it give me the leadership opportunities and the intellectual part, it took the pressure off. It made me enjoy it again.
Terri Connellan: That’s lovely. So we’ve touched on aspects of how you’ve created your story, but it is a question that I’m asking every guest of the podcast. And I’d love to hear your answer. How have you created your story over your life?
Janelle Wehsack: The short answer is that I’m still creating it, and I think that I’m going to continue to create it just one baby step at a time. And the longer answer around that is that I think just following my curiosity and heading into things in a wholehearted way. And you know how much your books have really supported my thinking when it comes to living wholeheartedly. I think just still consciously doing that and understanding that I get to choose every day. I get to write my story every day, underpins the way I’m choosing to live my life at the moment.
Terri Connellan: I love that – it’s come to this point, but we’re still creating our story as we go forward. Yeah. And it’s lovely to hear that Wholehearted has been really helpful in framing up some of that thinking too and adding to your own thinking.
And I think any body of work we put into the world, it’s lovely, the way other people can receive that work and then take it forward in new ways. So thank you for reflecting that back to me too.
Janelle Wehsack: Oh it’s, such a resonant piece of work, Terri, I think. It’s certainly one that I recommend all of my clients, you know, I think you gave the world a real gift when you published that book last year. So, there is a lot to take from it.
Terri Connellan: Thank you. I appreciate that. As you know, in Wholehearted, I share 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices. So to add to that body of work or amplify, what are your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women.
Janelle Wehsack: Before I get to that. I said the word ‘ book’ in the singular. I think everybody needs to know that there’s two books and they’re both recommended reading on any list. You do share so many tips in the books for wholehearted self-leadership and I could go any which way with trying to pick out my favorite tips.
But I’m assuming you don’t want this to be the world’s longest podcast episode. So I I’ll start with the fact that clarity, mindset and action form the basis of my signature coaching framework, Terri. And I created that framework after I’d seen so many women either burnout or walk out and leave just so much goodness on the table behind them. And so it was a really career based thing when I started thinking about it.
But today I believe that women everywhere can tap into the benefits of clarity, mindset and action to live wholeheartedly. So my top tips would include getting clear on what you value and how you define success. I’d also suggest you spend some time thinking about how you want to spend your time.
And then when it comes to mindset, I think the place to start is catching those stories that we were talking about before and really digging into whether there is any truth in any of them, or if we have any of that evidence that we mentioned earlier. Finally, I would suggest that we take some of those safe forms of actions. So those experiments and the baby steps, we pop on our lab coats, or our imaginary lab coats, and we just go out there and try some things. And by trying the things, by following the breadcrumbs, that’s when I think we take ourselves as close to wholehearted as we can.
Terri Connellan: Oh, what a truly beautiful answer and example of clarity, how you could express that so clearly. Your signature program in your coaching around clarity, mindset and action is beautifully framed. And I think the ability to share that with people is also a real gift and something you’ve developed over time from your own experiences. So thank you for sharing that with us through your coaching and also through the conversation today.
So we’re just about at the end of our time together, and it’s been a lovely chat. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with me and it’s been fabulous exploring all the things we have chatted about together. Can you let people know where they can find out more about you and your work online?
Janelle Wehsack: Well, thanks so much, Terri and thank you for having me on today. It’s been an absolute honor and a joy.
If listeners are interested in self-styling their lives, they can find me on the interwebs at janellewehsack.com and make sure you check out the free resources that I have to help you do life your way. You’ll also find me on Instagram at @janelle.wehsack or on my new podcast, Self.Styled.Life which should be out in the wild by the time you are listening to this episode of Terri’s podcast. And if you’re after a dose of French inspiration, you can join me over at distantfrancophile.com or on Insta, where we are @DistantFrancophile.
Terri Connellan: So many places to be. It’s wonderful. And so many wonderful places for people to find out more about you and explore your work. So thank you so much for sharing so much about you and encourage people to check out your work, all the different angles and to engage with you if they feel called. It’s very important to connect with coaches and people’s work that feels resonant with you with.
Janelle Wehsack: Yes. I know for me, that’s how we’ve built such a beautiful community across a number of these online platforms. So, yeah. But like I said, Terri, thank you so much for having me on it’s such a joy.
Terri Connellan: Oh, my pleasure. All the best with your podcast. Look forward to listening.
Janelle Wehsack: Thanks again.
Janelle Wehsack
About Janelle Wehsack
Janelle Wehsack is a certified life and style coach and a creative writer who also happens to have 30 years experience – and counting – in the corporate world. In her coaching practice, Janelle employs her signature coaching framework that combines clarity, mindset and action to support professional women to dance with their self-doubt so that they can build tailor made, self-styled lives.
I’m joining forces with Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me to co-host The Writing Road Trip in 2022. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.
We kick off today 31 January! So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you all the information and links to join in:
The Writing Road Trip is an exciting new collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.
The program kicks off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity. This two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing for 2022.
We want to challenge you, nurture your creativity and provide opportunities to connect with other writers in a positive and affirming community.
Here’s what you need to know:
✍🏼 The Challenge goes from Monday 31 Jan to Friday 11 Feb.
✍🏼There are 6 x 30 minute live workshops Tues Wed Thurs each week.
✍🏼 Workshops are live at 7pm AEDT Sydney/Melb via Zoom + recorded.
✍🏼 Each workshop has a key focus, writing prompt & time to chat.
✍🏼 The private Facebook group is open for further connection & exploration.
✍🏼 The Challenge Workbook is ready for you to download.
Don’t forget to add us to your contacts so our emails land in your inbox.
The Challenge is free so connect with us, to get writing in 2022.
If you are already on our email list, then check out today’s email with all the Go Live links. DM us if you haven’t received it for any reason! We don’t want you to miss out.
Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube
The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.
Transcript of our conversation
Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.
Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.
Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.
So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.
Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?
Terri Connellan: We did.
I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.
I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.
Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.
And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.
I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.
And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?
Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.
Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.
Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.
The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?
My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.
Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.
But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.
And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.
So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.
But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.
And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.
Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.
Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.
Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.
Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.
Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?
Beth Cregan:
And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.
Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.
Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.
Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:
We hope you’ll join us!
You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Creating, Grief Coaching & Pro-Ageing.
I’m joined by Valerie Lewis, Grief & Loss Coach, Lifestyle Model, 60+ Pro-Ager and Creative Dabbler.
We chat about creativity as a central life value and practise and how it helps in so many ways including dealing with grief and loss. And about being a grief coach and 60plus pro-ager!
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
Life after tragedy
Embracing creativity
Choosing not to climb the corporate ladder
Dealing withloss
Making transitions later in life
Grief coaching + supporting others
Creativity + intuitive art
Being a 60plus pro-ager
Becoming a model
And so much more!
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 13th of January as I record this and suddenly we are nearly mid way through January! we’ve had a lot of rain here in Sydney so it’s humid and the gardens are going wild. But I’ve been able to swim and enjoy the mid-summer temperatures. I’ve also been reflecting on 2021 via Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year 2022 Workbook this week and also reflecting further on my 2022 word of the year (to be revealed soon). Plus I’ve been planning and preparing for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club where we focus in on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook next week together. As well as preparing for The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan which kicks off with a free challenge on 31 January. So there are lots of exciting new things this year and I hope you’ll join me in one of these offerings! Links in the show notes on Quiet Writing at QuietWriting.com/podcast and find the link to this episode.
I’m thrilled to have my friend Valerie Lewis from Visualise and Bloom join us for the podcast today to chat about Creating, Grief Coaching and Pro-Ageing.
Valerie Lewis is a multi-passionate 60plus pro ager. Through grief coaching and personal growth facilitation, she supports and empowers those who are lost and confused with the direction they want to take following a significant life event that has impacted them and their sense of self. Her interests include being an intuitive reader, Reiki and crystals practitioner and avid creative dabbler.
Valerie and I met through a project of a mutual connection Julia Barnickle, ‘What if life were meant to be easy?’ Sadly, Julia passed away early in 2021 as a result of metastatic breast cancer. We connect today remembering Julia and with gratitude to her for connecting us. And it’s fitting that we remember Julia’s message of living a creative, easeful and positive life even in the face of or after difficult circumstances, as this is the focus of the conversation today.
Valerie has been a coaching client in the Sacred Creative Collective group coaching program. We share many similar experiences including moving through deep grief and our passions – including a love of creative expression in many forms and intuitive practices such as tarot as important self-leadership tools.
Today we speak about creativity and how we respond and learn to move through tragedy, loss, deep grief and challenging transitions including ageing. We have fun in this conversation but we also traverse some tragic and sensitive topics so I wanted to let you know this upfront. We consider creativity and intuition as sources of healing and growth and how they support us in making life transitions. Valerie’s story is an incredibly inspiring one especially around how she creates as a central focus and value, has become a grief coach supporting others and is a passionate 60-plus pro-ager.
So now let’s head into the interview with the wonderfully inspiring, creative and multi-passionate Valerie Lewis!
Transcript of interview with Valerie Lewis
Terri Connellan: Hello, Valerie. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. Thank you so much for your connection and for your support of Quiet Writing.
Valerie Lewis: Thanks for having me, Terri. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Terri Connellan: I’m so looking forward to chatting with you today. We’ve connected in many ways around creativity, transition, grief, coaching and more. So it’s great to be able to share conversations on those topics today with others. Can you start us off by providing an overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now?
Valerie Lewis: Wow. Where do I start? Well, I’m originally from the north of England, south Yorkshire, and I moved to London, in the late eighties, following the loss of my only child, my daughter, through manslaughter and the resultant breakdown of my marriage to her mentally ill father. As you can imagine, that was quite a traumatic time. So I would say, that was the main reason why I moved to London basically to start a new life cause I thought, well, I’ve got nothing to lose. And before my daughter died, I had instigated starting a degree because I left school with minimal qualifications.
So it was almost like something that I needed to prove to myself. So I had embarked on the initial stages of the degree. And then after my daughter died, the tutor that I had at the time, he was very encouraging. He said, well, why don’t you apply to one of the universities or polytechnics as they were called. And study that way rather than doing it as I was going to do through the open university. In those days you received the manuals through post and then you do your assignments and work and then send them off to the tutor to mark.
So I applied and I was accepted at Middlesex Polytechnic and ended up moving down to London to do my four year degree. And, in some ways that helped me, that was a tremendous help. It gave me something to focus on and channel my energies in. And it was whilst doing the degree, a friend brought me a book. I made friends with three women at university, and we’re still friends to this day. And one of them brought me a book called Feel the Fear and do it Anyway. And you could say that started the journey of self discovery, self-development, finding out more about who I was.
Life continued. I got a job. One of my sisters had already moved down. My other two sisters moved down and then they eventually ended up moving back with their families and to buy their own homes because it was cheaper in Sheffield. And I’ve remained in London as has my youngest sister. Through that time, I worked and there was a point at which I think it was in my mid thirties. I don’t know if you want to call it a quarter-life crisis or something. Cause I worked with engineers as their admin officer and I remember looking at them absorbed in their work. And when it was time to go home, I used to think, aren’t they going home? They just seemed content to stay there in the office.
And, I just remember thinking, I don’t want to do this, you know, thinking, well, where do I want to go? I did a post-graduate course, the Diploma in Management Studies, because I thought I’m in an administrative field. Maybe that’s the direction that I want to go in. And I remember thinking to myself, well, I don’t want to trap myself. I don’t want to just focus on this. And I think it was through reflecting on who I was. Where did I want to go? I remember thinking, realizing that actually I needed to be creative because that was what fed me. And, I’d kind of neglected that. I’d always been creative. I kind of like neglected that because I was studying and basically adapting to life in London.
And so I started getting back into being creative, making cards. Then I discovered salt dough modeling and got into that. And one of my other sisters she’s quite creative too. So we used to get together and, when her children were young, the schools would have craft fairs. So we’d book a stall and we’d have maybe have a table together. She’d make her own stuff and I’d make my stuff.
And I thought I enjoy this. I thought I don’t want to be trapped in a job where I’m working all these long hours. I want to have some time away from that, where I can do some of the things that I want to do. That’s basically how I’ve been throughout the past 30 years if you like.
Sometimes I felt a bit conflicted about it because you see your colleagues climbing the ladder in one of the fields they’re in. And obviously earning more money. I did get a promotion. I went for promotion and my pay jumped quite substantially. And I felt comfortable with that because one of the things I realized after my daughter died, I remember thinking to myself, you could have all the money in the world and in some ways it’s kind of meaningless if people that you care for are not here anymore. So in some ways I’m not materialistic in that sense. I like to have nice things. I like to wear nice things. And I like to be able to have my books around me and makeup and eat nice food. But having a lot of money is not my main goal. Feeling fulfilled is more important to me, more meaningful to me. Does that make sense, Terri?
Terri Connellan: It does. Absolutely. So, thanks for that snapshot of your life over many years, and what’s important to you. I think that what comes through strongly is your values and how you want to live your life. So we’ll explore more about that as we go through our conversation today. So thank you for that. So we’ve both shared a major transition in your case from corporate life to a more creatively focused life. So can you describe what that transition’s been like for you and how long it took and the main turning points?
Valerie Lewis: That happened last January. In some ways I saw it coming because for the past few years at work there’d been lots of changes, the constant restructuring. My role, if you like became less than what it used to be. It got less stressful. Certain aspects of it, the nicer bits, if you like, the more creative bits of it were taken away and given to another department. And I remember thinking, me and my colleagues thinking, this is strange, something’s going on in the background, you know? And, the restructure that they had before we were told our jobs were going to be moved up north, it happened with one of the teams. They were restructured. And, I think a couple of people were made redundant and the other team basically transferred up north. So that’s why the two people were made redundant from that. And we thought, well, this is odd, if they’ve moved part of our department up north, what does that mean for us?
So in some ways it was almost like you think it’s going to happen at some stage. And, I actually welcomed it. So when it came, it wasn’t a complete shock.
I wasn’t devastated because I thought, oh, I’m approaching 60. I think it’s time. It felt as if it was time for me to be doing something different, something more meaningful, something that I had more control over. So the only thing that I knew that I would mentally have to adjust to was the lack of consistent income. Because obviously, when you’re working, you’ve got an income coming in every month and you know how much is coming. But if you’re not getting that income, you’ve got to create it yourself. So I knew that would be a challenge, but I thought, well, I’m up for it.
Terri Connellan: Excellent. So, sounds like you knew the transition was coming, so you had some time to mentally prepare and perhaps practically prepare for it. And I think that helps too. Certainly for my own transition, it was quite similar. I could see that writing was on the wall. You could see things were coming. And, for me, I started to make a plan for what my life might look like when that time came. So I think that helps as we move through and change. It’s interesting you mentioned that you made that conscious decision in your thirties, not to climb the corporate ladder so that you had space for creative interests. So how do you feel about that decision now? Was that a good decision?
Valerie Lewis: It’s hard to say. I mean, other people might, well, I don’t think anybody else sort of really looks at it. It’s more about me, isn’t it? There are occasions when I think, oh, maybe if I’d stayed in the job and become this, I might’ve been head of this. And then I think, no, this is the road I chose, you know, so I’m happy with it. And in some ways doing a lot of the things that I’ve done feeds into what I’m doing now.
Terri Connellan: So tell us about what you’re doing now.
Valerie Lewis: I certified as a coach. I’ve been jewellery making. So in some ways I’ve had a taste of self-employment, even though I was employed, if that makes sense and earning little bits of money, pockets of money. So it’s not something that’s totally alien to me. I think that I can use my creativity in my coaching, and in other ways to help me achieve an income.
Terri Connellan: I often talk about Elizabeth Gilbert’s line about the long runway, where we’re preparing along the way, perhaps many years before for what we end up, wanting to do that’s important to us. Does that relate to you?
Valerie Lewis: Yeah, I think so. I don’t think you realise it at the time. Do you? Because I look at other people, I look at my sister, for example, who’s an executive coach and she climbed the career ladder. And when she was made redundant, when she started to think about what it was she could do, she realised that one of the things that she’d enjoyed whilst she was employed was coaching others. So she’s taken that aspect and also got trained, did a Masters in Coaching Psychology. And is using that and drawing from her skills in a corporate or in the civil service, if you like. So I think we do draw on our skills, I’m sure in what you’re doing, you’re doing the same, aren’t you?
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And as you were talking, I was thinking of my own experiences and your sister’s and your own, there are threads that we value that we go back to over time. And often as we’re getting older, we start to stitch them together in different ways. And I think that’s a really exciting part of our journey. Fantastic. So do you want to tell us about what your life looks and feels like now?
Valerie Lewis: It’s kind of like, I’m more in charge of it. Self-leadership that word that you introduced me to. I feel very much my own person. There’s a sense of freedom, if that makes sense. I’m much more at peace with myself. I feel as if I’m more in tune with my own values and I’m not going into work and having to do things that conflict a little bit with how I think or feel.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So you really have put into practice the things that are important to you, that self-leadership, creativity, embracing who you are. It’s been a real joy to connect with you and to learn from you too and share our experiences as we’ve moved along our road.
So you mentioned, earlier about the tragic death of your daughter and only child and your Wholehearted Story that you wrote for Quiet Writing, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, you share your story and what happened, the impact upon you. Can you explain or share with us what you learned from moving through and on from such incredibly difficult circumstances?
Valerie Lewis: At the time, I wasn’t sure about what I’d learned and I remember sort of thinking. Am I strong? Am I coping with this? And it wasn’t until I volunteered with, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children? I volunteered. They have a helpline, the child death helpline. I think it might be called something different now. But I applied to volunteer for that as a bereaved parent. And it was offering emotional support to basically anybody who was impacted by the death of a child, whether they were the parent, the grandparent, the aunt, the teacher, whoever. Perhaps they were feeling upset or traumatized. It was a free helpline, so they could call the helpline and just pour out their feelings.
And we were there as a volunteer to listen and it was through listening to their stories, it made me realize that I had come a long way and that I was actually quite resilient and emotionally strong.
And I learnt that, I mean, it’s a bit cliche, that there are more questions than there are answers and that sometimes we just have to accept that we can’t know the answers to everything as hard as it is. Because that used to probably torment me in the early days. Why, why, why? And there were certain answers that satisfied me so much. And then I’d want to go beyond that and think, well, no one can tell me why.
I know why she died. I know what was wrong with my ex-husband. I know those sort of medical reasons why. But in the bigger scheme of things, it’s almost like well why was it her time? Why did she go then? And I don’t think anybody can give me an answer to that. So I’ve had to learn to accept that’s just how life is, we don’t know when we’re going to go. Sometimes we have signs, like if you’re ill terminally ill, then you know, but you don’t know necessarily why you became terminally ill, what led up to that? So there’s lots of things that we don’t know, we will never know. And we can’t know. And we just have to come to terms with that or else we’d go mad.
I’d also learnt how important it is to have a wall of support around you. It’s so important because, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here with the helpline when I say that there were people who didn’t have that support. And they were really struggling. They had no one to turn to apart from the helpline and I think just knowing that there are people around you can help to keep you, make you feel emotionally supported. And sometimes in the practical sense as well.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. I think the points you’ve raised are just so important particularly that what we learn or the experiences we go through, grief is really a journey over time. That’s certainly something I’ve experienced with the grief that I’ve experienced in my life. And I think you conveyed that beautifully in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. Just that horrible shock when something as terrible as that happens and how we start to make our way through the early days. And then over time. You talk about from fragmented to wholehearted. Yeah. So, thank you for sharing that. And I think the fact that you were able to volunteer to help others helped you realize how much you’d learned is a really powerful story, too.
Valerie Lewis: Thank you. And something else that I learned was that really there’s only, you can decide what your values are. Because I think sometimes when we go through difficult times, it does make us reflect on what’s important to us or not. And really no one else can decide for you.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
Valerie Lewis: Have you found that to be?
Terri Connellan: I have. My brother passed away tragically. So, I went through a difficult time and that’s the time that I went back to my creativity, which is my number one value similar to you. And I think the loss of someone so special and so loved and in tragic circumstances, particularly, yeah, it does. It just makes you go back to those places and I think you look at your life in a different way.
So in your work that you do now, you take those experiences to coach others, which is really beautiful that you’re able to take the hard won learning and experiences that you’ve had to be able to support others. So can you tell us about your coaching in this area and how you support people experiencing grief?
Valerie Lewis: Well, grief coaching, if you like, would be seen as a niche or a specialization within life coaching. I think it’s quite new. It’s basically aimed at individuals who’ve experienced loss, whether it’s a death or non-death related and need support and guidance on their grief journey. As you know, coaching is about moving forward. With grief, you’ve got that additional aspect of somebody who may be still going through the various stages of grief. They may still be a little bit hurt, a bit angry, in disbelief.
So grief coaching is also providing practical support using many of the same coaching tools, common to life coaching, as well as providing emotional support through creation of a safe and supportive space for the client to feel that they can heal And that they can express their feelings around grief without judgment.
So there’s a similar way. It is coaching but what I found is that in terms of goal setting, they’ve got to be gentle goals. Very small goals. They may have a big goal, but really with a lot of people who are going through grief, it’s just creating small goals to help them get through the day.
And I find that self-care comes into it quite a lot. So that’s one of the areas that I have tended to focus on with people going through grief. What can they do to be compassionate with themselves, to love themselves, to nurture themselves? What little steps can they take and turn those into goals and actions until they feel strong enough to tackle the bigger goals.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. So that’s a real form of that self-leadership we talked about before is taking control or taking care of what you can in a very traumatic, often very traumatic situation. And what’s the pathway to grief coaching, obviously personal experience of grief is…
Valerie Lewis: Yeah, personal experience and I came across the Institute of Life Coach Training. They’re an American organization. I came across them a couple of years ago and thought about it and then put it from my head like I do with a lot of things that are intuitive and I kept getting pulled back to it. And in terms of thinking about what niche I wanted to focus on, before that I’d looked at working with women who were midlife and who were looking to reinvent themselves. But then I started to think, what can I do with my experience of grief or what I’ve been through? And this is where I discovered this course on the internet and it kept coming back to me. I think it was once I knew that I was going to be made redundant, I decided right, I’m going to sign up for this course.
Because I just felt that I needed some structure. I needed some support around that. So, I mean, I thought I’d been through my own experience, but I need this extra. You know, how do you coach somebody? But as I said, we draw on very much the same sorts of tools as we do as we use in life coaching. It’s just this other additional element of supporting somebody, being there, and creating this safe space for them. And knowing that you’re going to be dealing with somebody who might be a bit fragile and also knowing within that when to refer somebody, , when to be able to say, well, perhaps this person needs more than what I can actually offer them. And it’s counseling that they should be receiving or need to get in touch with.
Terri Connellan: It’s very important work. And I think for many of us, the life experiences, what happens to us, the skills we gain, insight we gain is often what we channel into coaching isn’t it? It’s often a challenging journey, but I think the wisdom that we gain from our experiences, the insight and the tools that we develop are so important to pass on to others. So it’s great that you’re doing the work in this area that will help so many people.
Valerie Lewis: Thank you.
Terri Connellan: So creativity, obviously a very important part of your world. It’s been a touchstone for you over time and more recently you shared in your piece, The Silent Whispers of my Mind, how intuitive abstract painting has been a big part of your journey. So how has creativity been a source of growth, expression and insight for you?
Valerie Lewis: I would say, I’ve been creative in some shape or form ever since I was a child. I think it’s just a natural part of me. It’s something I turn to whether I’m happy or sad. It just helps me. I find that being creative is something I can lose myself in. Whether this taps into being an introvert, I don’t know. But I like to sometimes go into my own little world and shut out everything else that’s going on around me. And I find that obviously you can do that when you’re working on a piece, you’re doing something creative.
And I often find that in the act of being creative, and it’s silent around you, or you might be a person who likes music playing, you can ruminate, you can think, you can think more clearly. And if something’s bothering you, sometimes you find that the answers come to you.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I’m sure it can be the same for introverts and extroverts, but I think introverts definitely draw energy from that time alone and that creative space. So yeah, it sounds to me your personality type, which I know is introverted. INFP – you have a preference for introversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. It would make sense that a tool like creativity, whether it’s painting or jewelry or some of the things you’ve mentioned provides a vehicle to create a quiet space where you can energize and make sense of things.
So your intuition is also something you share a lot about in The Silent Whispers of my Mind. What I found fascinating in that piece is how you tracked through learning to listen to your inner voice over time. So can you share us with us more about learning to listen to your intuition and how it’s guided you? Cause it’s not often talked about, is it, intuition?
Valerie Lewis: No, it’s still something that I find hard to articulate because it’s abstract, isn’t it? You know, you can’t see it. And it is different for everybody. You know, you look back on things and you think, well, what helped me, and then it’s just being aware that there were certain times when I seemed to know what I was doing, I felt as if I was actually being guided And I suppose some people might say you know, it’s God. And I think, well, it could be God and then over the years, having different experiences when you think that’s what they call your intuition. Like a silent voice or a sense. It’s like your body knows the right thing to do. Something’s baffling you or confusing you, and you’re weighing the pros and cons and then out of the blue, when you’re doing something totally different an answer comes into your head or you’re doing something and you get a reaction in your body.
And it’s through experiencing that. And then learning when I experienced that, that means I’ve got to listen to that. And just learning to be aware of those sensations. It’s learning to be quiet and still, and just being in the moment. And I think being creative helps you do that. I’ve heard people say that running, for example, does that for them, you know, going for a run, clears the cobwebs away and they’re in that moment. And maybe if they’ve had a problem they’d been churning turning over in their heads, they’re getting clarity in that moment.
So there’s definitely something to be said about learning to be still. Shutting out everything else around you and really being in that moment. So for me being creative is like a kind of mindful meditation. And I suppose in some way that that’s where the abstract art came in and that was kind of a mindful meditation. I don’t know what I’m going to paint. I just have these paints in front of me and I start doing shapes and ideas come to my head. Oh, that represents so-and-so. That means so and so, but initially I might not know what it is. I want to get down on paper.
Terri Connellan: I think it’s fascinating that abstract intuitive art was what you were felt very drawn to. It’s obviously something that has called you over time. And when you describe your creativity, the power of it, intuition, it seems to bring all the pieces together. So that’s perfect.
I love that you described yourself as a 60 plus pro ager, Valerie. That’s great. I love that term. What does that mean for you? Tell us a bit about that.
Valerie Lewis: I think for me as I approached 60. I thought my gosh. Am I still middle-aged? And then I actually had to Google it to see what years middle age encaptured. And I thought, well, I’m at the tail end of middle-aged. And it was like looking at older relatives around me and thinking, there’s a part of you, that’s a little bit fearful about getting older and that term to me, it helps me allay those about being over 60 and getting older. It’s about me accepting that, yes, I am getting older. I can’t hide that and really, I don’t want to. I think it’s something to actually be proud of, because not everybody, you know, my daughter died at seven. She didn’t make it to 61. My mum’s mum, I think she died at 63, my mum’s 84 so it’s actually something to be really, really proud of.
And regardless of what society says, I think we’ve got more freedom. We’ve been allowed the opportunity for more self-expression than our parents’ generation, if you like. And I think we should take advantage of that to the full. We should create our own rules, dress, how we want to dress. If you want to dye your hair, dye it. If you don’t want to dye your hair don’t. And live life as fully as you can, within your capabilities.
I look around me and there’s people my age and a bit younger having hip replacements and, and dying from cancer and things like that. So I think to myself, life’s short. I think you’re just aware of your own mortality when you reach this age. So you think to yourself, I’m not just going to sit here and sort of accept that I’m getting older. I want to live my life. And so being pro age, it’s about accepting that you’re a certain age but not letting that age, define you or defeat you.
Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Yeah. And I was fascinated to hear that you did what I also did recently, which was look at middle age and the span, because I was asking the same questions recently because I just turned 60 not long ago. I was thinking, oh, am I still middle aged? Or am I old age now? Or what am I? And I did the same thing.
I was fascinated to find that I could see middle-aged, which is that point. And then there didn’t seem to be a term so much for after. So yeah, I do like that pro ager. I was listening to a podcast, The Magnificent Mid-life Podcast, and there was a guest on there who talked about being age-full, which is nice too. I love that. And, I certainly agree with you about celebrating all that, we’ve learned the sharing of that with others, which in your journey is really important. So yeah, I love your attitude. It’s fantastic.
Valerie Lewis: This is where the modeling comes in.
Terri Connellan: Yes I’ve seen on Instagram. Is that a new career for you?
Valerie Lewis: I wouldn’t say it’s a career, it’s a form of income but it’s another form of being creative if you like.
And it’s also about in a way me celebrating, being the age I am because if you look back 10, 15 years ago, who would have thought that somebody in their sixties will be doing modeling. But I think there’s more of us reaching a certain age. And I think companies are appreciating that their customers want to see a greater representation of people who look like them.
And so this is the right time for me to be doing this because I am not what you would call sort of fashion model. I don’t look like a fashion model. I’m not the right height. I’m not the right build for it, but I might look like somebody who you’d see in the street or your next door neighbor. So that’s basically what I’m doing. Lifestyle modelling and it’s quite fun. It’s something different and it’s fun.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. The pictures you shared on Instagram. I was just blown away. I found it so inspiring. It was fantastic to see. So yeah. Be interested to hear more about it as you get more into your modeling.
So there’s a couple of questions that I’m asking all the guests on this podcast, being the Create Your Story Podcast. It’s a big question, but it’s really just seeing what comes to mind from the question. So how have you created your story over your lifetime?
Valerie Lewis: That’s an interesting one. It’s almost like there hasn’t been a rule book to follow. So in many ways circumstances have shaped some of my story. And other aspects of my story, I’ve taken charge and shaped myself. For example, not climbing a career ladder when that’s something that society expects of you, if you like. I chose not to do that.
Some of the creative things I’m doing, such as modeling and what is interesting is meeting other people who are of the same age group, who have decided to do that as well and thinking, well, you know, this is fascinating.
So my story has been shaped by I suppose obviously my parents and people of their generation, my upbringing, being a black person in a mainly white society. That’s helped to shape it. Being a female. In two of my jobs, I worked in a more male dominated environment.
And also the circumstances I’ve been through have helped to shape my story. And also I think I’m a little bit eccentric and I’ve got a strong streak of independence. There’s always something in me that slightly wants to dance to my own tune. So that’s helped to shape my story. I’m still continuing to shape my story.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. That’s great. It’s lovely to hear all the different aspects that have shaped you, your personality, circumstances and how you’ve responded to them as well. Thank you for sharing that. So wholehearted self-leadership is obviously part of creating your story and a key part. And I’ve shared some tips in my book, but I’m interested for people on the show to share their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So what comes to mind for you as the top tips?
Valerie Lewis: I think the main thing that I would say is work on being true to you. Who are you, or who do you want to be? And that might mean a lot of self-reflecting, digging deep within yourself. I would say a good starting point is looking at your values. What are the things that make life meaning to you or could make life meaningful to you? The values that you hold – are they yours or the values of others? What do you dislike about yourself or what do you dislike about other people? Ultimately, are you living your life for you or for others?
And I think that sort of question becomes more important the older you get, especially as you reach middle age. Maybe if you’ve had a family and your life has been focused on your family, I think you can lose yourself, whoever you were. So at some point, I think most of us, you start thinking about who am I, what am I here for? What gives me joy? And that’s where the self-reflecting comes in. And as I say, looking at your values, I think that’s a good starting point because your values change over time, don’t they? And you might be holding on to things that are not helping you anymore. It’s dragging you down.
Terri Connellan: I think that’s great. I think that question about it with your living your life for yourself or for others and sometimes it’s that overlay of family with its family values, cultural values or corporate values, it’s almost like we have to clear them off sometimes just to work out what’s important for us. I relate to that, like a clarifying process. Beautiful. I love that. And that idea of working on being who you are, who you want to be, and what gives you joy, I think a beautiful tips too for women to take to heart. So, thank you so much for our conversation Valerie today. It’s been so heart-warming, so inspiring and a lot of fun. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Can you tell us where people can find out more about you and your work online?
Valerie Lewis: Okay. My website, Instagram and Facebook under Visualise and Bloom. And LinkedIn under Valerie A Lewis and people can sign up to receive my periodic newsletter. I say periodic because I’m not one of these that sends out a newsletter every month. It’s more like once a quarter. So, if they sign up for my newsletter on my website, I’ve just created a guided meditation. They can receive a free downloadable copy of it. It’s called the Violet Cloud Guided Meditation for Difficult Times.
Terri Connellan: Perfect. That’s a beautiful gift for people who connect with you. So, we’ll pop all those links in the show notes. I’ll also make sure the link to your wholehearted story, The Silent Whispers of my Mind and the piece you shared on creative transition too is there.
Valerie Lewis: Oh, it’s been a pleasure, Terri. Thank you so much.
Terri Connellan: Thanks so much Valerie.
Valerie Lewis
About Valerie Lewis
Valerie Lewis is a multi-passionate 60plus pro ager. Through grief coaching and personal growth facilitation, she supports and empowers those who are lost and confused with the direction they want to take following a significant life event that has impacted them and their sense of self. Her interests include being an intuitive reader, Reiki and crystals practitioner and avid creative dabbler.
