Penelope Love Archives

Waking up in Love, Life & Writing with Penelope Love

December 5, 2021

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

In this episode, I’m joined by Penelope Love, publisher, speaker and winner of the International Book Awards as author of Wake Up in Love and editor of my Wholehearted book.

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 cover:

Penelope’s book Wake Up in Love
The process and experience of writing Wake Up in Love.
Collaboration on the writing journey
Love, relationships and life connections
Balancing writing and publishing journeys
Writing practices
Spiritual practice, Sadhana and Self-Inquiry
And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to this episode of the Create Your Story Podcast. This is the first one on interview episode which will be the predominant focus in the podcast so it’s wonderful to be stepping into the deep one on one heart-filled conversations that are what this podcast and Quiet Writing are all about.

Today I chat with Penelope Love, who you might remember featured in Episode 2 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch. Penelope received the long draft of my book and helped to shape it into the book it is. Today we focus on Penelope’s story more as well as your collaboration and touchpoints and it’s a magical interview.

But first, a personal update and something you might like to be part of. As I speak it’s the 5^th of December 20201 and the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club is now open for enrolment. This is a year-long, actionable, community read of my books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. So it’s part book club, part group coaching and a transformative reading experience where you can do the work of transition over time with accountability and community, and make space for the deep shifts you desire.

We kick off with an orientation in mid-December ahead of a section by section read of Wholehearted together in 2022. So head to the Book Club links in the show notes transcript on Quiet Writing or the links in my Instagram bio, where I am @writingquietly to find out more and join us.

Payment is with upfront or via monthly instalments and 50% scholarships are also available to encourage participation and equity. I’ve aimed to make it as accessible as possible for those who wish to do this deep work with me as your coach. There’s a fabulous group f women gathering, so I hope you will join us for this journey and co-creative read of Wholehearted to make the transitions you desire in your life.

Now to introduce today’s special guest.

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

Penelope holds a very special place in my heart as a friend and editor of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition. She is also author of the wholehearted story, ‘The Journey to Write Here’ on Quiet Writing. Today we will be exploring writing, editing, publishing, becoming an author, working collaboratively as part of our wholehearted journeys, the spiritual practice of self-inquiry and so much more. I am thrilled to share this conversation with Penelope with you.

Transcript of interview with Penelope Love

Terri Connellan: Hi Penelope and welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast.

Penelope Love: Hi Terri. Thank you for having me.

Terri Connellan: Thank you so much for your support of me, my book Wholehearted and Quiet Writing and congratulations on your book. Wake Up in Love being published earlier this year.

Penelope Love: Thank you. And you’re so welcome. It’s an honor.

Terri Connellan: So we’ve had lots of conversations about writing, editing, publishing, and so much more on our journey together. And it’s great to be able to share those conversations with others today. So can you tell people about what you do now, how you got to be here and your new book.

Penelope Love: Sure. Well, I’m an editor and a publisher and also an author. I recently walked through the pearly gates of authorship in January of 2021 when I published my memoir, Wake Up in Love after 15 to 16 years of writing and editing, and working on it. In that time, I was also running a freelance business. Prior to that 15 year period, I did get my start earlier in a career in editing and publishing in the book industry, working at the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher, the original publisher that is, and they’re based in Florida, where I was living at the time.

And Wake Up in Love actually taps into that journey of leaving the corporate world when I found that I was editing books about changing a life, but I wasn’t really changing my own life. And when I started going into that deep dive of changing my life, that’s when my freelance career took off and I became skilled in not only editing, but designing, and then publishing books and then learning the business end of the publishing side. And over the years developed myself into a publisher.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. What an amazing journey you’ve had. That’s incredible. We’ve known each other for quite a long time online, but we really connected when I reached out with my 100,000 word draft of Wholehearted, which you received so beautifully, and you’re such a magical editor, so supportive. Could you tell us about your work as an editor and why you love editing?

Penelope Love: Editing is just like my heartbeat. I don’t know. It comes effortlessly and naturally, and I feel like it has to do with the way I grew up, patterns of hyper vigilance and being very conscious of what I was saying. And if it was going to make anybody mad or not mad, and also trying to predict what they were thinking. And that is a survival skill in a way. But when you become an artist, you turn your survival skills into creative forces and that’s what editing is for me.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. So you’ve worked on editing a long time, it’s been a longterm career for you?

Penelope Love: Yeah. You know, I didn’t get into it intentionally. When I was in college, I saw an editorial internship bulletin on one of the boards in the religious studies department. And I’m very interested in different types of spirituality and religion. And this fluorescent yellow poster just called to me. Interestingly it said, ‘seniors only apply’ and I was a junior and I still applied. I don’t know it was something in me said, why not? And I went ahead and applied and I ended up working for two years for this teacher who ended up being quite karmically connected.

Terri Connellan: And what do you love about editing? What’s so special for you?

Penelope Love: Well, it’s the relationships that I develop with the people that I work with. It is such a close, connected, intimate relationship. Editing somebody’s book, their book is an expression of their soul. It is their heart’s song playing to the world and I get to be a part of helping them shape it. It’s an honor and so much fun.

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ve certainly experienced that as someone who worked in an editing partnership with you. So it’s a true gift. So thank you for sharing that with me. So at the same time we worked on my book, you were also completing your memoir, Wake Up in Love. So tell us about your writing journey of creating that book.

Penelope Love: Well, it’s funny, in the book, there’s actually a chapter about starting the book and it’s called The Book of Love. And I remember when I met my husband. Maybe I’ll just share a bit of backstory. The book begins where I meet my spiritual teacher, and then I marry him two weeks later. It actually begins a lot earlier in childhood, but it comes forward to this moment. And that’s the beginning of the writing.

And I sat down to write this book of love because I had fallen in love and I was married to him for probably about two or three months. And I just thought I knew absolutely everything about love. And I was 29 years old just hitting that Saturn return, you know? I was ready to take on the world as an author. And I wrote the introduction and then I didn’t really know what or else to write. And he looked at me and he said, well, maybe it’s because you don’t know what love is yet. And I’ll spare you my response, there was an expletive in it and it’s in the book, but I went ahead and became very angry. And yet I used the tools that I was learning from him along this journey, one of which is called the self-inquiry and I took this process inward. I took my anger at that thought that I didn’t know what love was inward. And I went on a journey that lasted about 15 years from the first time I put that pen to paper to write a book to the time it was actually published.

Terri Connellan: Wow. That’s amazing. So the writing over 15 years, what did that look like? Was it like lots of different periods of drafting and editing? Or was there times where you sat down and wrote a lot of the book? How did it work in practice?

Penelope Love: Yeah, in my case, it was a really cool mix of old journals that I’d kept during those years of my early Sadhana, Sadhana being a spiritual practice that you enter when you commit to a spiritual path under the guidance of a teacher. And so I had these journals from my early Sadhana, one of which I started writing on my first trip to India in 2004, when I had no idea, I was beginning to write a book. It was just writing my journal, writing my thoughts for that day. And I feel like that’s a lot like life. I think we don’t really know when our book is exactly being written because we’re just living our life.

And so there are these bits of moments in my life that got recorded in my journals that eventually became fodder for what became the book. We lived in Costa Rica between 2007 and 2010. I went through a period of trying again, to write this book of love. And in that time I was practicing the Morning Pages. So that became a tool and a lot of free writing and beautiful ideas coming out across the Morning Pages. And during that time, a local editor who was starting a magazine, asked me if I would write a column for the magazine. And that’s when I started to write some articles. And I did write about relationship because that was an obsession of mine. Ever since I was young, I was looking for a relationship.

There’s a karma to that too, at the same time, you know, it is one of those human desires. And at this point in my evolutionary journey, exploring relationship in an intimate context, it was the biggest step that I personally could have taken on the journey. So going ahead and, and writing about that process really brought a level of consciousness to it that I think would not have been present had I not had pen and paper. And that quiet time alone to explore what was happening in the relationship. And I applied these wisdoms to the articles that I was writing for the magazine and I got a great response.

It was a local magazine published in Santa Cedro Costa Rica between 2008 to 2009. And it was called Montaña al Mar. Everybody loved when this magazine would come out. People would come up to me in the grocery store and just give me a hug and tell me that they related to what I’d written. And it gave me a lot of encouragement. And I had another mentor of mine say to me, once, you know, if you write enough articles one day, you might wake up and realize you’ve written a book. So I think that time came around 2012, where I had written some of these articles in Costa Rica and I’d taken them also online. There were some websites at the time, sort of like Huffington Post-ish type of websites. And I was putting some of the pieces on there and yeah, those pieces that I created for those contexts, it started to look like I had the material for a quilt that could be a whole piece.

And I remember one day I took every single article I’d written. I wrote the title of it on a sticky note, and then I stuck them all on the wall and I arranged them in different orders. And that started to be the beginning of Wake Up in Love. It was a wall full of sticky notes at one point. And then I said, there’s some order here. There’s some structure, there’s a spine. Now let’s give it some legs. Let’s give it some arms. And over the years I started to become clear what pieces were missing, what pieces needed more fleshing out.

And there was one point , an editor pre-reader, beta reader read it. And I had written this whole book about my journey of sexual awakening through self-realisation, through the exploration of tantra, combined with Self-Inquiry. And I had written this whole book and the editor said, yeah, but I really could use a sex scene in here.

And you know, I was feeling most vulnerable about writing about certain topics, that being one of them. So when she asked for it, I knew it was time in the journey to put that forth into the book. And it actually was the crowning piece, even though it’s in the middle of the book. And that to me speaks a lot to the writing process. You can’t put things in a logical order at first. You have to let it be a wild, creative throwing. You know, some people say throwing spaghetti at the wall. One of my clients uses that term. And there’s some truth to that. There’s not an orderly process when it comes to some aspects of the creative process. And then there’s other parts of the creative process where that order is absolutely essential. And if you don’t have it, your projects won’t ever come to fruition.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I really relate to your story, having gone through my writing journey. And for me, it was a mix of sometimes having to stop, to integrate more experience, you know, to work out either what you’d written or what you’d lived and then to bring it all together into a new phase. So it’s sort of like an iterative process.

Penelope Love: Yeah. There’s most definitely that time of integrating in between. It definitely calls for patience and that’s real soul growth. That’s real important work that’s being done, even when it seems like no work is being done on the manuscript. And then of course, in the final stages of putting a book together and in the style that I did, where it was from pieces written over the years, was bringing it a sense of coherence to sound like, because it really is the journey of somebody’s awakening over the period of time. There’s some things sound very elementary in the beginning and they should, because that’s where the voice was at that point. But when you’re trying to stitch something together, that’s written over the periods of time, there’s a lot of editing work that has to go into making it make sense and keeping the raw parts raw on purpose and polishing up the polishing of some things that you were really just writing cause you needed to learn it yourself.

We call it like taking the preach out of the book. And I had an editor and she’d done the same thing with a book of essays she’d written on parenting and she said, you know, we were just busy taking the preachiness out of our book because we were preaching early what we needed to learn. And then when we learned it, it had been integrated and now you can take it back instead of telling the reader of the article or the essay, ‘you need to do this’. I could take it back to first person and say, oh, when I was going through this process, this is what I learned. And there’s a vulnerability in coming back to that first person perspective. It’s much more vulnerable than saying, ‘here’s what you need to do to have a great relationship’. This is what happened to me. And I had to go through this and I had to fail in these ways and I had to learn these lessons in order to have the successful relationship I have today.

Terri Connellan: I so relate to that from my experiences. And I guess it’s that ‘show, don’t tell’ too, isn’t it? Rather like showing what you went through rather than telling, like you said, this is what you need to do. I think that’s so powerful. So you’ve mentioned some of the challenges you came against writing Wake Up in Love. Is there anything else that comes to mind as particular challenges or insights you might share from your writing journey?

Penelope Love: Patience, I’ll echo that. It was a really challenging piece because the world began moving very quickly. 2004, there wasn’t even YouTube. I did a little research on that for my book actually, cause when I went home from meditation the first time when I met my husband that night and there had been this photograph of his teacher on the wall, behind him, Ramana Maharshi, and I needed to go home and Google Ramana Maharshi to find out, you know, what I was getting involved in. And I ended up searching only on Google and, you know, cause YouTube wasn’t really a thing. Otherwise I will certainly, would’ve gone to YouTube if I could catch a video of this man. So anyway, long story short, patience, the time. That dates me on how old I was or how young I was when I started writing the book and in the information explosion since then with social media and, you know, the proliferation of book publishing through print on demand, everybody seemed to have a book or a website or a blog and every time I tried to have one, it just wasn’t happening. It wasn’t coming together. It just wasn’t the time. There needed to be a maturing process that, the only way for a maturing process to happen is over time. So I couldn’t rush that one. And that was challenging because I really wanted to be an author like so many other people.

Terri Connellan: I relate to that too. And you are also an independent publisher at Citrine so I’m interested in how becoming a publisher has dovetailed with supporting or conflicting with your own writing, because it must’ve been a bit of tension in there. Working with books all day and then trying to write your own at the same time must have been challenging.

Penelope Love: That’s exactly right, Terri. And that was the thing, I was falling into that, ‘I’m helping everybody else write that book’ and when is it going to be the time that I dedicate to the message that I know is on my soul to communicate with the world and that took grace and patience again. Other types of challenges that come from just the sheer amount of information and really sorting through, you know, what is my message? What is my voice? What is my authentic knowingness? And how do I put that in words and sort out the other voices that are constantly coming into my mind all day, because I’m reading so much information.

So I did end up taking time off last year in the months leading up to the publication of my book. Another man was running my company and he did a wonderful job while I was on this sabbatical, even though at the time, the way it happened was, and I won’t go into the full details of the story, right now. But the way it happened was that I was actually really, truly believed I was giving the company away and that Todd was going to be running the company. And I was just going to be helping him and supporting him. And I truly had to believe it was completely out of my hands or I would not have let go. And it was so gracious the way it came back into my stewardship a couple months after Wake Up in Love came out. Then Todd said, I was only always holding this company for you. And I was like, wow, what a friend, what an amazing person. And he was one of the first authors published with Citrine and he has been by my side in every way. And I’m grateful for him. And not only him though, all of the authors were so supportive of that time that I needed. And even though they thought I was not necessarily going to be their publisher anymore, they supported me. And it’s that type of relationship that I’m even in this whole work for, that connection, that bond, that caring about each other. I think the publishing process holds up a microscope to that. It lets us really explore it and feel it and live it and know a quality of human relationship that I’m not sure you know, is possible in other types of contexts.

Terri Connellan: Hmm. Yeah. So what I’m hearing is that I guess it’s about holding your own space for your own story whilst holding space for other people’s stories and just how that, that whole tension gets managed and it makes sense to me that you would need in a way to step away so that you could sort of get space around your own story to bring it to life. Makes perfect sense.

Penelope Love: And it was wonderful too, because it was a luxury. I got to finally walk the talk I’d be talking for all these years that I knew in theory. And I knew it pretty intimately because my husband went through this process and so I was up close and personal with my husband and seeing what he went through as an author. And that was actually a big part of what played into the formation of Citrine Publishing was just watching the way that his publisher dealt with him. I want to create a company that treats authors the way I know they deserve to be treated and not the way they necessarily are treated in the traditional publishing world. Not to say that all traditional publishing goes that way, but a great deal of it is. There’s not that personal connection that I feel can be one of the strengths of independent publishing as I feel you’re experiencing right now with the kind press.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. For me, that whole writing/ publishing journey has been a real learning process for me, but certainly that relationship you have with both the editor on the way through, the publisher. I’ve been really honored with the kind press to have a very similar experience. It’s been great.

Penelope Love: Yeah. And it’s one of those things I think I may have even said this to you along our journey. It’s something that I often reflect on, you know, the first publisher with a printing press and the first author with a manuscript, having their conversation. What did that look like? Who said what to who, and you know, how did that go down? But I’d like to get to the essence of, look at, what a powerful partnership that was. And so every time I’m speaking with someone who has a manuscript, I try to harness that original creative energy of that, like archetypal conversation. How do we do something? You have a talent, I have a talent. How do we make it synergistically more than it is the individual parts alone.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And for me, it was a real journey in learning about collaboration with you and with Natasha from the kind press. And I reached out to you because I felt so lost, you know, with what to do with my book. I had created the draft. And then I got to a point, I had planned to self-publish, but I just didn’t know what to do and what step to take and I’ve come to realise writing is such a collaborative process. So is that your learning also, how do you see collaboration as part of the writing and publishing journey?

Penelope Love: Well, I feel like partnership is one of our greatest tools for evolution or heading towards self-realization. That collaborative opportunity to master our own communication because ultimately we are talking with nobody, but our own heart, our own self. And if we know that our outer world is a reflection of our inner world, then we can really use our partnerships in collaboration to master that knowingness and to realize who we are. And I feel like the writing and publishing partnership holds an extremely effective magnifying glass to that process. Because writing freezes everything in time and lets you look at it and notice it. And then if something is not quite right about it, you can edit it and you can change it. And so this freezing in time that writing does, it forces us to be clear with our words. And it ties into that self-realization that is in my own experience, the purpose of being alive.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. And I think there’s often that view that writing is a solitary process. But the moment it really all fell into place for me was when I wrote my acknowledgements and there was this cast of many, many people who were involved in the writing process and all the inputs. And is that how you feel too about it? We can feel like it’s a solitary performance, but it’s so not.

Penelope Love: I love that you’re saying that because it’s really making me think about it and reflect on my own experience. And it was those times when I was trying to be the writer in the cabin in Costa Rica, you know, Walden, my own personal Walden Pond, creating for myself, that I was struggling the most with writing. But when I was living my life and having the daily stresses of running a business, those precious mornings or couple of hours. Sometimes I do my morning pages at night. But I didn’t call them Morning Pages. I would call it my Nocturnal Journal. And I went ahead and when I found those moments, that’s when life is happening all around me and I was dealing with people and that gave me not only material to work with, but emotions and feelings that could come through on the page.

You know, I don’t think writing can be done in a vacuum. That said, there’s a paradox for everything. And sometimes I really do need that solo hermit time to get something exactly the way I want it to be. So I think it’s balance.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I agree. I think that’s what I’ve learned from my experience, but it certainly shifted my stereotypical view of the writing process.

Penelope Love: Yeah, maybe that taps into sort of that patriarchal view of like the solo man in the cabin and Walden Pond, writing. And to not deny the beauty of those manuscripts and those publications just, I mean, there’s some awesome literature. At the same time, that image that gets perpetuated in culture, I think we’re really challenging that now with our new technologies and our new capacity for relating with each other, and we’re able to explore more of the collaborative aspect of writing and the power.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And so part of our collaboration too, has been through you sharing a story on my website and my blog as part of the Wholehearted Story series, which some people might be familiar with. And your story in that series was called The Journey to Write Here, which is about your calling as a writer, your relationship with writing over time. So what writing practices have supported you and have evolved over your time as a writer?

Penelope Love: Yes, Morning Pages, of course. I could sing their praises every day and never get tired of it. They are just such a wonderful, wonderful tool from The Artist’s Way and Julia Cameron, I’m sure your listeners will be familiar with that already. And then free writing. So like there’s nothing like a good free-write. But, that said, I also had another contrasting practice to that, and that would be writing for publication. I think, setting some goals to write for publication started to give order and structure to the free writing and Morning Page chaos that would be upon my eight and a half by 11 line paper in the morning. Because I would start to take the golden nuggets out of those ideas and start to shape them and polish them for publication. And as I alluded to earlier in the interview, when I spoke about writing for the Montaña al Mar magazine, in Costa Rica, that was my first experience of giving structure to those ideas. And it was so helpful. Because now we’re walking that balance out of the writer solo in the room and in the collaborative environment.

And then when you write for publication, that is another key piece, I feel, of practicing. Your early publications won’t be as good as your later ones. I mean, never say never because you could have a really, really awesome first time that you tried to do something like a lot of artists do. And then, you know, then the doer will kick in and the one who wants to try to do that again and try to make it as good as the first time. So we see that with a lot of musical artists. It’s almost more easy to hear in music than it is to see in writing, but it happens in all craft when you first start something, that one who’s trying so hard to be the writer isn’t there and the writing flows, and then the more you practice.

And it’s the same thing with meditation. That happens with meditation too. Sometimes the first time people come to meditation, they will have great, deep profound meditation. And then they’ll start trying to meditate. And that’s when it becomes a more restless experience until you learn to consciously tune out the the doer.

For me, that has been my spiritual practice of Self-Inquiry, using what I learned from my husband, but which is a lineage from Ramana Maharshi in India. And if anybody wants to look up that teaching, it is really profound. And the reason that I got hooked on it is because of our mutual friend Carl Jung. Carl Jung wrote a forward to Ramana Maharshi’s book. And I write about that in Wake Up in Love. I write about how I was very uncertain being a Catholic raised woman to go to a meditation class and start taking instruction from a man in a dhoti. But at the same time, when I read that Carl Jung had written the forward to Ramana Maharshi’s book, I said, you know what, I’m going to give this guy a chance.

And so the Self-Inquiry practice of taking any anxiety I had inward, including the anxiety of ‘I need to write. How do I write? This needs to get done.’ You know, ‘I’m not a writer yet’. Well, who thinks that? I do. And then I was able to be like, oh, I’m not the one. If I’m aware of the one who wants to be a writer, am I that? No, I have to be something so much vaster so much greater, so much beyond words.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Two things come to mind for me, from what you’ve just said. First is that writing for publication can be a really important part of our process. So for me, blogging filled that that way of writing. And I started a blog in 2010 for exactly that reason. I think it helped me to work out what I wanted to write and how I want to write it. So that was an important part of my writing for publication journey.

Penelope Love: Yeah. That’s beautiful. And I think blogging has definitely filled that… I’ve never formally read it or heard it stated anywhere that there’s a sort of like structure or balance you need to hit as a writer to develop your craft. But you know, maybe in our conversation here, we’re coming up with a sort of template that people can use, which is, make sure you’re doing some free writing or Morning Page styles and make sure you’re also doing some structured writing for publication. And that will help you develop your craft into a well-rounded craft.

Terri Connellan: I love that. And the other thing that came to me from what you were saying too, is that it’s a continuing sort of self-development, self-growth such as you went through with your meditation, which is about the mindset of writing too, isn’t it? It’s about , how we see ourselves as a writer and how we respond to our calling, which I think you’ve mentioned a few times today as we’ve spoken. Yeah, just so important.

So this is the Create Your Story podcast. So a question I’m going to ask people each time on the calls is how have you created your story over your lifetime? For me ‘create your story’ is that idea of being active. Active self-leader, active creator in our story and the decisions we make, turning points. It’s a big question. I know, but just what pops up for you around, how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Penelope Love: How fun to dance with you in this question, Terri especially knowing that this will be the podcast question that everybody gets asked. It’s beautiful one. You know, I think I struggled the most when I tried to create my story. And we could look at that literally with the years of struggle that I experienced in trying to write my memoir and get it to a publishing point prematurely.

And that was really, really painful. It started in the book in Wake Up in Love when I said I’m going to write my book of love and my husband questioned, maybe I wasn’t ready yet. And that was my first time turning inward with this process, but that was not the only time I had to turn inward about the idea of wanting to have my writing out there in the world.

And when it wasn’t happening, I’d really have to take it back inward to that question of like, who’s doing the writing, who is the creator of my story. And when I merged with that which is creating the story through my meditations, then I could become the instrument. Like the body mind Penelope could become used and played as an instrument in order to write and show a story and show one perspective of the human experience.

So I would say that’s how I created my story, but really without creating my story, with surrendering to that, which is creating the story.

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s so beautiful. Yeah. And I think that it’s often that tension again, we’ve used the word tension a lot, but life’s a lot of tensions between what we want to do. And then also allowing, like that, being/ doing tension too, isn’t it?

Penelope Love: Yeah. I love the word tension. You know, I used to be so afraid of the word tension and you know, my counselors and anxiety. And I mean, I can’t believe I didn’t even touch on this yet. Although I did a little bit with the idea that editing is a great outlet for the type of hypervigilant upbringing that I had, but also OCD. I had OCD and depression and these types of things that create a lot of tension in one’s life. But when you look at even sexual energy, that leads to orgasm is full of tension. And like, I love tension because when it releases, it’s freedom. And so why should we fight with tension? And when we stopped fighting with tension and we actually are able to find the joy, the peace, the bliss, the orgasm, a lot easier. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: That’s wonderful. Yeah. I think that’s great. It’s about that, again, reframing of what we go through and just shifting our mindset to, to embrace something rather than fighting it all the time. So I think that’s a valuable insight.

Penelope Love: Yeah. So I’m happy we played with the word ‘tension’ today and I love it. And I don’t even mean to take the tension out of tension. Well, you can’t, but the idea is like if tension is there, let it be there. Like enjoy it because it is part of the human experience to love, to relish, to be like, frustrated that something’s not coming to terms yet or coming into being yet, because you know, when it does, it’s going to be so much more joyful than you can ever imagine. And that I know from publishing the book.

Terri Connellan: I can relate to that. I can relate to that too. The many times I nearly gave up because of that tension. And I think it’s that sort of pushing through and that Yeah, that just desire for completion and commitment to ourselves is really important.

So, you know my book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition very, very well because you’ve been on an intimate journey with me and you know about some of the tips that I recommend, but what are your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women.

Penelope Love: You know, it’s an honor to be asked that question by the woman who wrote the book on wholehearted leadership, because I’m like, Hmm, what else could I add to that book? Or what else could I add to that body of wisdom? And I’ll have to reach back into my early experience of Sadhana again, spiritual practice. And I make reference to this in Wake Up in Love as well. I was given a tool by my teacher called the conscious daily planning sheets. And that is a process of setting your daily agenda with intentions. So you’re not only writing down what you have to do, but the feeling of completion or the feeling of connection that you want to have when you’re doing those activities.

So you’re spending your time at night, doing your daily agenda for the next day. And you’re practicing those feelings before you go to bed and you’re taking them into sleep with you. So that the next day, when you wake up and you go through your day, your day’s already played out in your subconscious mind as you’ve been sleeping and it becomes the way you wanted to feel the night before it starts to happen and unfold in an effortless way.

And the practice of this daily sheet actually ultimately removes the doer, the sense of doership or volition, from your daily activities. And that’s where you find a sense of surrender and freedom and more creativity in your life when you practice this. So in addition to the daily agenda part of the sheets, it has a daily review where you’re looking at, and as a Virgo, you’ll love this, a checklist. Did I exercise today? Did I do conscious reading? Not only reading, you know, the tabloids, but did I read a book by an awakened Sage? Did I let that highest consciousness, Rumi poems, did I let those poems slip into my heart today?

Did I eat consciously? How present was I when I was working? There’s a whole checklist on these sheets. And there’s also a walkthrough of the self-inquiry and it’s broken down into the questions of the process that eventually becomes an automatic happening as you practice inquiry. But the sheets are like training.

So they go through each of the steps of the inquiry and you will take anything that made you upset during the day. And you would use the self-inquiry process with that to get behind the sense of I that has the problem and to find the solution. And then to go in forward into the communications you need to have with the people who were involved in the upsetting situation to clear the space and keep the space clear so that you can move forward with your life in a productive way.

And so these sheets, they took about an hour to do every night. And then at the end of the month you’d have 30 sheets. And you would take a log of all the things that upset you and you would write them down again. And you could look and see, do I have repeating patterns of upset? Are things continuing to upset me? Because if they keep coming up, you know what, you’re not getting clear. You’re not taking that inquiry piece all the way home. And so it was a really beautiful process that I was given by Nick, my husband, my teacher. And in the context of the conscious living center that we had, and everybody who lived there did the sheets and you know, the communal center where we lived, this came in really handy because in our communications with each other, and if something upsetting happened during the day, we would resolve it right then in there. And if it wasn’t resolved on the spot, it was at least resolved by the end of the day, before we went to bed and those problems were not carried forward into the day. And it created an efficient and beautiful and loving organisation. And I feel I applied those skills that I used and learned, the muscles that I built from the sheets, in my life. And that was a very wholehearted practice for me that I did for many years. And I affectionately now call them the holy sheets because the idea of doing and cataloging all of these things about your everyday. It takes somebody with a dedicated mind, who really wants to wake up to the truth. But when you commit yourself to that process, there’s no limit to what’s possible.

Terri Connellan: Well, thank you for sharing your practice with us and something that’s been honed over a long period of time too which I’m sure has made a huge difference to how you live and how you create your story. So thank you for sharing that with us.

You just spoke about poetry. Is there anything you’d like to read us from Wake Up in Love before we close?

Penelope Love: Sure. You know, my book is a tapestry of poetry and prose, and it’s funny, I didn’t know I could write poetry until we started, I hopped on Instagram about 2014 and you know, there’s some newsletter and I got an account and people started posting the challenges and I started taking photos with my phone and then these little beautiful ideas would come to me as I was taking the photos or looking through my photo album and they started to come to me as poems. And I taken poetry in college. I got a C, and I was pretty much a straight A student and it was really upsetting to me that I had gotten a C in poetry. I had to get that doer taken out of the way. That one who thought it was writing the poetry and just allow these, these ideas and words to come. And so it was a very beautiful addition to the book that came later that had I published the book three or four years into the writing, it would not have the poetry dimension.

I’d love to share one. And I think the best one to share is, this one is called, Take a Backward Bow.

All the exploration is preparation

for the moment the wind blows just so –

you forget everything you know

and fall in love with the endless show

as you take a backward bow

to the miracle of how

The One you’ve been looking for

finds You

and the exploration begins

anew

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That was just magical.

Penelope Love: I love that one because it’s not only about meeting a soulmate in life, but it’s also about the creative process and ultimately about meeting yourself.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. Thank you. So I thoroughly recommend to people to seek out Wake Up in Love. We’ll put the links in the show notes. Penelope, can you tell people where they can find out more about you, your book and your work online?

Penelope Love: Yes. Sure. I have a website that is accessible through PenelopeLove.com and I am also active on Instagram. My username there is @penelopelovely

Terri Connellan: Wonderful. And it’s been such a joy to connect with you over many years on Instagram, as the editor of my book and and through our blog writing together. And, just so many beautiful conversations. It’s been such a joy to share those with others today. Thank you so much.

Penelope Love: Yes, Terri, thank you. It is a joy to add to our body of conversation and I look forward to many more years of our friendship going forward.

Terri Connellan: Thank you.

Links to explore:

My books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – open for enrolment now and kicking off December 2021

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

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

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

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

Connect on social media

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

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

About Penelope Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

podcast writing

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 1

November 2, 2021

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Create Your Story Podcast!

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

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

Show Notes

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

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript of Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch chat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terri Connellan: INTJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terri Connellan: . Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terri Connellan: neither are you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terri Connellan: That’s very exciting.

Kerstin Pilz: What’s your book?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natasha Piccolo: She’s a dream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natasha Piccolo: Congratulations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natasha Piccolo: Definitely.

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

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

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

Kerstin Pilz: In parallel.

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

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

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

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much for being here.

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

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

Links to explore:

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

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

My books and book club:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club – kicking off December 2021

Review of Wholehearted by Meredith Fuller

My coaching:

Work with me

Personality Stories Coaching

Connect on social media

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

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

About Penelope Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Kerstin Pilz

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

Kirsten’s website: www.writeyourjourney.com

Instagram: @writeyourjourney

Facebook: @writeyourjourney

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

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

Natasha Piccolo

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

wholehearted stories writing

The journey to write here—my wholehearted story

August 30, 2018

This guest post from Penelope Love explores how following our deepest calling as writers can shape the journey of our wholehearted stories.

Write at home, Asheville, 2018

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

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

I am honoured to have my friend Penelope Love as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Penelope explores writing as a deep calling shaping her journey over time. She describes how her writing life has intersected with love and spirituality as key themes in her life. My sincere thanks to Penelope for sharing her personal story and photographs as well as the books and vital practices that have influenced her journey. With her new book – a memoir, ‘Wake Up in Love: From Sex and Romance to the Ultimate Understanding’ – imminent, read Penelope’s reflections on knowing your calling, writing and love to guide your story!

Beginning my journey to write here

To write or not to write was never the question.

My love for writing was born of sheer enchantment with the dance of my elfin fingers and a No. 2 pencil pressed against the bumpy margins of a newspaper left strewn across the kitchen table. Whilst my mother washed dishes, I perfected my letters… slowly, slowly carving out my name. I tingled as the life force pierced my body and brain. Waving a pink-tipped golden wand, I witnessed the alphabet come to life before me… oh, t’was magical!

A rainbow of writing accolades soon spanned my horizon. As early as my elementary years, the parents and relatives branded me “the writer in the family,” their New York accents spinning legends of a little girl who would traject this gift across the world.

As I approached high school graduation, my father often spoke of his friend’s daughter who made a living as a writer. In fact, she earned six figures and was even flown around the globe with her happy pen in hand. Imagine that! I did indeed—first-class flights to Rome, Paris, Strasbourg, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Perth, and Calgary, not to mention being lavished with more money than one could ever need, just because a girl could write?!

Write about what?

Write in the clouds, 2017

Write about what? I didn’t know, but the question of her subject matter never crossed my thirsty teenage mind. I just wanted her life in the azure sky, miles above the clouds and close to the shimmering sun. In no time, I’d be like her—rich, self-sufficient, and far away from people who expected miracles from me.

It was the mid-1990s when I entered the university with a typewriter in hand and later departed with a laptop bag draped over my shoulder. In four short years, the new-fangled digital tools of the trade had literally changed our world and most importantly for me, the way this English major now wrote. Possessing a “delete” key, I lost countless writings to self-doubt, and even more to lack of remembering to hit Control + S. The fluorescent palette of Windows 95 proved a more addictive drug for a perfectionist than any erasable pen. It was too easy to tweak e-scribblings that never seemed quite good enough. The brave new world was now here and I was not sure I wanted to be a writer anymore.

Despite my uncertainty, I could not shake my writer crush on Alice Walker—her novels, poetry, essays, activism and how she effortlessly transformed rage into beauty that inspired social change through her poignant words. With this level of mastery as my barometer, I pursued a master’s degree in English, though to expand my career opportunities I eventually phased over to the college of journalism. Focused first and foremost on getting “published,” writing seemed far from the mystical endeavor I’d fallen in love with as a child.

Then it happened. As I formulated my thesis, I discovered that I no longer enjoyed writing. Yet I sure was in love with the professors who taught it. To my chagrin, my finest writings never extended into the realms of passion I fantasized about. Writing? Huh. Why expose my soul before teachers who just left my heart bleeding overnight while they went home to their lives, of which I had none? Why torture myself when I was deft enough at this craft to instruct others on how to do it? Why write if I could swap my black pen for a red one and wear silky scarves and blouses, sexy skirts, stilettos, and tortoise-shell glasses? I mean, why write if I could be an editor!

Writer in hiding

Writer in reflection, 2018

By the late ‘90s, the U.S. economy had exploded during the .com craze—so much in fact that some corporations were even paying the lowly interns—yes, me! Here my lucky star landed me an editorial apprenticeship in the personal finance and lifestyle department of the prestigious Bankrate.com. I had recently married a business student and I was acquiring a taste for the freedom that came with earning my own paycheck. I was not flying high yet, but I’d circumnavigated my existence as a puppet dangled by parents who had kept me mostly in the dark about all things financial. As fate and good fortune would have it, my Bankrate internship enriched me with both income and invaluable knowledge.

Following graduation, my then-husband and I moved north to pursue our dreams of working in the Big Apple—Manhattan! I dressed the part and perhaps imagined that even the pigeons stared as I sauntered down Fifth Avenue as an editorial assistant. Within three weeks the Twin Towers came crashing down, along with my fantasies about commuting to the city and wielding my editorial prowess in New York. Since I was actually residing in safer haven of nearby Princeton, New Jersey, I stayed put and soared up the corporate ladder, so high that I didn’t even bother keeping a diary over the next five years. Too busy had I become for my own words when so many people were counting on me to perfect theirs.

Falling back in love with writing

When life led me back to Florida in 2003, it was the stress of destructive family dynamics and an impending divorce that led me to an Al-Anon meeting, where the facilitator urged me to crack open my journal again. She was right—I needed to know if I could still hear my own voice beneath the deafening volume of all the mental noise I’d let in over the years. The higher up the corporate ladder I scaled, the more it felt tilted 180 degrees away from the happiness, inner peace and deep healing I desired more than anything in the world.

Dear Emptiness, 2003

This may sound fantastical but when I re-opened my diary, her empty lines smiled as if happy to see me, their old friend. She embraced my every tear, question, and hopeful new conception of reality bubbling up from my long-silenced heart. I confess, my journal entries reflected the soul of a woman consumed by primal desires for true love and red hot sex. Yet as I returned to the joys of pressing my pen to paper, I experienced an inkling of falling back in love with writing.

The proper care and feeding of writers

Loving a man and loving writing were ultimately not two separate things, although I’d fallen into a discordant thought-pattern of either-or:

Either I could pursue my writing career or I could care for a man, but not both.

Such a black-and-white attitude sounds imprudently restrictive now, but this worldview was branded into the layers of my soul since birth. My mother lived as if it were her sole responsibility to care for my father and for us children. The notion that I could gallivant about the globe as a writer—although it had been dangled before me like candy—conflicted with other familial attitudes I was forced to swallow regarding about “the proper care and feeding of husbands.” Could I ever balance true love, a nourishing sex life, and a successful writing career? This clash of seemingly incompatible desires and my utter lack of control to manifest them catapulted me onto the spiritual path with full surrender.

It was 2004 and the spiritual teacher to whom I was led was a jnani in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi. Nick Gancitano disseminated Self-Inquiry as the spiritual director of an ashram in Florida, where I attended Satsang for the first time. My earnest desire for inner peace was met with a revelation of karmic destiny, as Nick became my lover and we were married within two weeks of our first meeting. Our sex life unfolded as an intuitive exploration of the ancient ways of Tantra. Here I found that with an authentic state of surrender, true love was not only possible—it was inevitable, transforming sex into a meditation that trumped my most exquisite erotic fantasies.

To top it all off, during the course of this adventure, I discovered something truly worth writing about. Scribble down insights I did, vowing that one day, once the tender fragments in my journals had been laced into a manuscript reflecting my heart’s knowing, I would publish it. And I would come out as a writer.

Write from the Heart, India 2004

Morning Pages and the journey to write

As quickly as I moved into the ashram, my spiritual practice deepened and creativity flowed now with greater frequency. I’d hopped off the corporate ladder and went freelance, consciously reducing my workload toward a deep dive into the inner life. Yet despite my newfound time freedom, I only wrote in spurts. As much as I respected my daytime profession, my heart knew that an editor is actually just a writer in denial. In 2007, I expressed my frustration to a Satsang friend, a prolific fashion designer whose overstuffed sketch book I admired. She recommended Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, wherein I discovered the Morning Pages that would leave ink stains on my hands and a mark on my life.

Between 2007 and 2010, I folded my freelance business when the ashram relocated to Costa Rica. There amidst the cloud forest I exercised the Morning Pages with the intention of writing my book. I invited Nick to write these Morning Pages with me, and within six weeks a full-fledged, 280-page manuscript busted the seams of his notebook. And once again, I found an excuse to avoid writing as I turned creative attention toward the development and publishing of the book that had come through him and not me.

Write into nature, our Morning Pages view in Costa Rica, 2008-10

Patterns emerging in the journey to write here

This provided me an opportunity to observe a pattern as destructive as avoidance—blame: It was now my husband’s fault that I’m not a writer. When we returned to the States in 2010, it seemed that years of energy were required to re-establish myself as a freelance editor and eventually form my own successful publishing company. In the intermittent creases of successive projects, I finally returned to the Morning Pages in 2013 and the past patterns of avoidance and blame resurfaced only to unwind before my very eyes.

Soul mates in the sun, Hillsboro Beach, 2011

Initially, past learned behavior of putting what I perceived as my husband’s needs before my own re-emerged fiercely. I hadn’t chosen the worldly path of self-sufficiency; I’d chosen love, the inward path of Self-Inquiry, and reliance on God to care for all my needs. For weeks, months and years at a time, I foolishly convinced myself that the Morning Pages were incompatible with the teachings of Self-Inquiry—for if the world is an illusion, then why write? And I couldn’t have the mornings free anyway, because if I didn’t snuggle and meditate with Nick first thing, would I be sinfully putting my personal desires before love?

But that was all in my head. Nick became the biggest advocate of my relationship with the Morning Pages and with time and flexibility, I discovered it was possible to experience the holy trinity of writing, snuggling and meditation in my morning routine. In a way, I owe my forthcoming memoir to Love in the shape of Morning Pages. Here is an excerpt from them as testimony to the brilliance of this tool that intimately reacquainted my soul with its calling—the mysticism and magic of writing.

Love looks me in the ‘I’, 2018

Write here in my Morning Pages

It’s happening again. I hear my husband’s voice in the other room and my senses latch on to his every word and I blame him that I can’t find a quiet space to write—which is ridiculous because I might as well blame the iPod speaker on the bookshelf. Yet it does not have the same magnetic pull as Nick in his sentience, his unpredictability, his wisdom, his love. Aha! Look. Curiosity about what he is up to has once again (almost) drawn me away from this sacred whitespace where all complaints dissolve and contradictions resolve before my eyes.

Now I’m perfectly capable of closing the door and inserting the earplugs in an effort to be “more” present, but isn’t the point of Morning Pages shedding that thick skin called “effort” by writing through any and all distractions? Why am I here in the first place? Writing is just the excuse. I am here to remember what matters, to let go of what does not, and to write like no one else is reading it. In Reality, I am not even here to write. I am here to Be, to be naked of all sense of other… and paradoxically, that makes me a better writer and a more gracious lover.

The writing is flowing now (The Savegre River in our backyard, 2008-10)

When Steven Pressfield, talking with Oprah on SuperSoul Sunday, affirmed that everyone knows their “calling,” even if only carried as a secret in their heart, I could not deny my intuitive first response: writing!

What exactly pulled my attention so far from it all these years? I actually don’t like or dislike the act of writing. It is after all—just like when I practiced my letters at the kitchen table—just a happening. What I don’t enjoy is “the resistance,” the feeling that arises from expecting myself to express profundity. The one with these great expectations is the same imposter saying “I don’t enjoy it”! Yet it can’t stop the ink flow onto paper, the fingers dancing on a keyboard, and the characters appearing on the screen, revealing the contours of God.

It is wonderfully fulfilling to write the Morning Pages. Thank heavens for them. They are therapy. Like the perfect friend, they listen without criticism. If a judgment arises, they gently remind me it is my own. And now that it no longer hides, it cannot rule my life from underground. It can be seen for what it is: just another thought. Just another stone on the trail. One I can now pick up and skip across the still ocean, or prance across to reach the other side of the raging river. Either way, it no longer blocks the path and the beauty of my mind.

I am a writer — yes, I am!

My hand my Heart doth steer

universes beyond these words

my journey to write here.

Key books along my journey to write here

Be Still and Know I AM God by Anonymous

The Wisdom of Balsekar by Ramesh Balsekar

The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi (Foreword by C.J. Jung)

The Book of Secrets by OSHO

OSHO Zen Tarot: The Transcended Game of Zen

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Hsin-Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind by Seng-t’san

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The Supreme Yoga: Yoga Vasishta by Swami Venkatesananda

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism by Alice Walker

My Life as My Self: An Intimate Conversation with Alice Walker (by Sounds True)

and…

“Four Questions to Help You Find Your Calling,” Steven Pressfield’s interview with Oprah Winfrey on SuperSoul Sunday, September 29, 2013

About Penelope Love

Penelope Love, MA, is the author of the spiritual memoir Wake Up in Love and the founder of Citrine Publishing. She also co-facilitates conscious relationship workshops and hosts meditation programs in the United States and internationally. An advocate for true love, she enjoys connecting with readers from around the world. Come say hello at www.PenelopeLove.com or connect via Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter.

Photographs by Penelope Love and Arlington Smith used with permission and thanks.

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

You might also enjoy my free 94-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive the ebook straight away! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes newsletters with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

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Penelope Love

Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of interview with Penelope Love

Links to explore:

My books and book club:

Free resources:

My coaching:

Connect on social media

About Penelope Love

Share this:

Like this:

Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch chat

Links to explore:

Free resources:

My books and book club:

My coaching:

Connect on social media

About Penelope Love

About Kerstin Pilz

Natasha Piccolo

Share this:

Like this:

Beginning my journey to write here

Write about what?

Writer in hiding

Falling back in love with writing

The proper care and feeding of writers

Morning Pages and the journey to write

Patterns emerging in the journey to write here

Write here in my Morning Pages

Key books along my journey to write here

About Penelope Love

Read more Wholehearted Stories

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

Share this:

Like this:

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