writing – Grow Mindfulness

Writing “In Community” for Healing

During the recent Healing Through Writing Festival, Grace Quantock presented on the topic, Living Well with Chronic Illness. Grace maintained that people with chronic illness often have to deal with missed symptoms, explaining away illness, and social exclusion. She stated that it is often harder to gain belief from others than to deal with the symptoms themselves.

Grace identified an experience that I have had with diagnosis of chronic illness. She indicated that people with chronic illness can produce “exhaustive documentation” only to be ignored by medical professionals. In my case, I spent three hours documenting the major events and symptoms in my medical history over 10 years only to have an Allergist refuse to read the document or add it to my medical file.

The barriers to writing for healing

In a previous post, I explored the idea of memoir-writing for healing as proposed by Janelle Hardy. Grace argued that there are often barriers to our attempts to write as people with chronic illness. She suggested that isolation, both emotional and practical (in terms of access to information), creates a personal barrier.

The writing community itself can also establish barriers by promoting “a productivity culture” that is translated into words-per-hour or words-per-day (e.g. setting a goal of writing 2,000 words per day). The assumption, as Grace points out, is that writing is a linear process. However, people with chronic illness have a different relationship to writing time in that they can be intermittently or chronically disabled in terms of capacity to write. They may have impediments like brain fog, arthritic limbs, chronic fatigue and/or nausea.

Grace maintained that there is an assumption in the writing community, and especially amongst publishers, that writing has to “be a certain way”. There is a tendency to favour universal experience over individual stories – personal experience and coping strategies are often discounted. Writers with chronic illness can be blocked by literary gatekeepers who argue that their stories are “too niche” or “not literary enough”.

Grace suggested that we can too easily succumb to the expectations and standards of others by thinking that we “do not have the credentials” to write or “lack the recognition or prestige” required to publish. This mental barrier makes it harder for us to envisage our “own writer’s journey” (which will be unlike that of anyone else). Often relevant credentials are difficult to acquire because of lack of access to training and/or the availability of empathetic mentors.

She argued that the real or core questions relate to “what we hope for in the writing” and what will have the most positive impact for us.

Strategies for overcoming the literary barriers to writing with chronic illness

According to Grace, a starting point is to change our expectations of ourself in terms of written output but also in terms of healing outcomes. She warned that writing with the mindset “that writing has to fix us” (it must be “reparative”) can actually harm us. An “extractive mentality” can do us violence. She suggests that instead of trying to “write to heal”, that we view writing as “a way that is healing”. The process itself is healing; the healing outcomes are beyond our control. We have to move from an outcomes-focus to a process focus and write the best way we can, given our physical, mental and emotional states.

Contribution to a literary lineage

Grace suggested that we reframe the writing process by acknowledging that we are contributing to a “literary lineage” – writers with chronic illness – and, in the process, creating our own legacy. There are writers with chronic illness who have considerable literary achievements such as Alice Wong (with Lupus); Flannery O’ Connor (with Spinal Muscular Atrophy); and Virginia Woolf (serious mental health conditions). Over recent months, I have been inspired by Jennifer Crystal, author of One Tick Stopped the Clock: A Memoir, who contracted Lyme Disease from a tick bite. Jennifer is a weekly columnist for the Global Lyme Alliance, creator of the Writing to Heal Immersive Program, and story coach/facilitator for the Health Story Collaborative.

Grace argued that by writing with chronic illness we are creating documentation that can lead to personal and system change. By navigating the process of writing about difficult or challenging health situations, we are creating “words that will outlive us” and offering possible solutions or strategies for someone else experiencing chronic illness. She stated categorically that “the poem we write today might be a lifeline somebody else finds after our lifetime”.

Grace contends that our writing – whether as a novel, memoir, blog, poem or journal – can be a “springboard for the next person” as we can be offering alternatives and providing evidence of their efficacy. We can reframe our solitary writing as “part of a larger network” and a contribution to our “collective experience, collective tapestry and collective legacy”.

Cultivating our literary community

A strong theme throughout Grace’s presentation is her emphasis on networking within our writing community. She proposes three core strategies to take advantage of the mutual support and resources that can be available through such a network:

Name three people who are part of your literary community. In thinking about this, I was able to name Annie Brewster, Jennifer Crystal, and Jennifer Harris. Annie is the creator of The Health Story Collaborative (HSC), designed to “harness the healing power of stories”. She is the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.
Identify an element of their work that resonates with you. I have networked with each of the authors mentioned above when they have been facilitators for the monthly, online Creative Meetups, hosted by HSC. The Meetups are a network activity for writers with a chronic illness. Each of the facilitators have a profound knowledge of narrative therapy and a very strong commitment to helping people to heal through shared personal narratives.
Exchange literary support with other members of your literary community, e.g. re-tweet, write supportive blog posts and create book reviews for members of your literary community. I have had correspondence with each of the previously mentioned Creative Meetup facilitators, and they have read my blog posts and poems and offered support and encouragement. I have also mentioned their work and promoted their writing in my blog posts, e.g. articles about Annie Brewster and Jennifer Crystal. The Creative Meetups themselves involve a community of writers who willingly share their stories and their writing. The participants offer supportive challenge and the constant encouragement to move towards healing.

Reflection

Grace has made me more aware that I am not writing alone as a writer with chronic illness and that I am not just writing for myself and my own health. As I become more aware of my participation in a literary community, I can become more conscious of how I can support, and be supported by, others in my literary community,

This newfound appreciation enhances my gratitude for my ongoing access to an understanding literary community where I don’t have to explain myself, defend my position or pretend to be someone other than who I am.

As we collaboratively grow in mindfulness through our reflections and writing, we can increase our connectedness, build our mutual support and deepen our insights.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Write with a Chronic Illness

At the recent Write Your Own Way Summit, Sandra Postma spoke eloquently about how to write with a chronic illness. Sandra is a book coach for writers with chronic illness. She is especially well-qualified for this role having studied journalism and literature at university and undertaken a Book Coach Certification with Author Accelerator. Sandra is able to draw on her own lived experience as a writer with several debilitating illnesses over many years.

She stated that the book coaching role helped to save her life and motivated her to create her own coaching business, Your Story Mentor. Sandra acknowledged the technical aspects of her prior training as a writer but stated that the book coaching course helped her to learn “how to coach a writer both on a craft and on an emotional level.”

Challenges for writers with chronic illness

In her Summit presentation and an interview with Savannah Gilbo for the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast, Sandra outlined the many challenges facing writers with chronic illness that exist over and above those experienced by other writers:

Symptoms – writers with chronic illness have to deal with fluctuating energy, brain fog, and times when they are mentally or emotionally not feeling well. Other symptoms may include constant pain, itching and/or swelling of joints (e.g. ankles, fingers, hands, arms) and debilitating symptoms such as migraines or breathing difficulties. Sometimes, it may be impossible for the writer to sit or even to get out of bed.
Low self-esteem – Sandra points out that there is a social stigma associated with having a chronic illness. There may be emotional baggage arising from a lack of social status (lacking a job or having to constantly isolate to manage disabling symptoms). Like many other writers, those with chronic illness feel that their voice is not worth hearing but for the chronic sufferers this self- story is amplified by the sense of not being an active contributor to family or society, but rather being a burden.
Momentum – a key element in writing is momentum, the ongoing impetus to pursue writing whether in the form of a blog, a short story, a novel, non-fiction work or a memoir. Momentum provides energy and motivation but for the writer with chronic illness this is continually punctuated by disability, so there is a loss of momentum as a result of the fluctuation of symptoms.

Feelings experienced by writers with chronic illness

What is not often appreciated is that such writers can experience genuine grief – from loss of identity, family, friends, social activity and work (with its attendant loss of both a meaningful role and income). This, in turn, impacts the sense of self-worth of writers with chronic illness.

There can be anger and ongoing frustration from not being able to do what you used to do with relative ease. Sandra points out that the anger can arise from the knowledge that you “have to surrender to this thing [chronic illness] that you didn’t choose and is with you for the rest of your life”. With this awareness, you can “lose trust in your own life”.

Sandra highlights the fact that you can lose a sense of agency, your underlying capacity to control your body, your thoughts, your responses to stimuli and your actions. This can lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness – the loss of a meaningful existence and the capacity to change your debilitating situation.

Strategies to use while writing with a chronic illness

In her Summit presentation and interviews, Sandra proposed a number of practical ways to deal with the emotions, blockages and challenges of writing with a chronic illness:

Break free – a starting point is to break free from expectations, your own as well as that of others. In an earlier post, I wrote about the tyranny of expectations – how they hold us back and lock us into ways of doing things.
Set your own pace – it is important to overcome rule-bound advice such as writing every day for a set time in a set place. You have to determine your own writing pattern based on your capacity at the time. It will be frustrating at times that you can’t write as much as you want, as often as you want or as fast as you want. You have to get to the stage where your are “at peace with your own pace”.
Write where you are comfortable – you don’t have to sit at a desk to write, sometimes “sitting” itself may not be possible (as in Sandra’s experience). You can lie down and use a mobile phone to write or use a dictation device. You will have to overcome the self-talk about what “proper writers” do.
Practice self-compassion – avoid “beating up” on yourself for failing to achieve what you set out to achieve or for not meeting others’ expectations. Self-compassion, kindness to yourself, can enable you to overcome the disabling effects of negative self-talk.
Write what you know – Sandra points out that people with a chronic illness have a “superpower” as writers. Because of their experience of pain and loss, they know about “deep emotions and feelings and the hardship of life”. These are the challenges that everyone meets in daily life, being part of the human condition. This gives writers experiencing chronic illness a distinct advantage. Savannah, in her interview with Sandra, maintained that such writers have “a rare edge that empowers them to connect with readers on a much deeper level”. As Sandra herself pointed out, “books are conduits of uncomfortable emotions and explorations of how to deal with them”.
Start small – if you start small, you can start “right now”. At the outset of her writing endeavours, Sandra found that she could not write a lengthy story such as a novel, so she started small by writing poems and short stories. She acknowledged in her podcast interview that it took “a long time to be right with that” and live with the belief that it is worth the effort. She found, however, by writing short stories across multiple genres, she improved her writing craft and gradually built the capacity to begin writing a novel. She recognised that this novel-writing would take at least three years. Sandra is adopting the “start small” principle with her novel writing by treating each chapter as a short story.
Write a reflective poem – sometimes it is helpful to write a reflective poem to get your feelings out into the open and to help you identify “next steps”. This process can also unearth hidden emotions that are acting as a blockage to your writing.
Join a support community – Sandra indicated that one of the things that helped her immensely was joining a support community. In an interview for CanvasRebel, she expressed her strong belief in “the power of the online community of other people with chronic illness sharing their stories and beliefs”. Her online community reinforced her strength in managing her illness and associated pain, made her feel as though she was “seen” and confirmed that her voice was unique and “deserves to be used and heard”. These personal outcomes have been my experience with the Creative Meetups, hosted by the Health Story Collaborative created by Annie Brewster, author of The Healing Power of Storytelling.

Sandra provides a free guide on How to Be a Writer When You Have a Chronic Illness on her website. She has also started an online support community for writers with chronic illness – The Mighty Spoonies Club. The name of the community is based on the “spoon theory metaphor” of chronic illness.

Reflection

I joined the online Creative Meetup group nearly two years ago and found that the supportive environment and writing exercises helped me “to access and release emotions” and to stimulate my creative expression in the form of poetry. An added benefit is that I am sub-consciously working on my memoir as I explore and share my life story.

Reflecting and connecting with others who are experiencing their own chronic illness has been very supportive. Their shared stories and insightful writing provides me with encouragement and practical strategies to deal with the challenges inherent in my chronic illness.

At our February 2025 Meetup, Jennifer Crystal, our facilitator, introduced a poem by Mary Oliver as a stimulus for our reflection and writing. The poem, The Uses of Sorrow, speaks of receiving “a box full of darkness” but being able to understand over time that “this, too, was a gift”. In our writing segment, we explored the “gift of illness”.

Illness provides a personal growth experience. I’ve had to revisit my assumptions, self-image and goals. Illness helped me to appreciate the small things in life that I often take for granted – that I can see, walk, run, play tennis, reflect, research and write.

It helped me to realise that my identity is not tied to an image of myself as a very fit, competent tennis player. Illness helped me to understand and accept the nature of the human condition – it’s vulnerabilities and frailties and undulating character.

I have been able to share with other people who are experiencing a healing journey. I’ve met some wonderful people who are wise, resourceful and resilient as a result of their experience of managing pain and losses.

Illness has helped me to become more compassionate towards others – to appreciate the pain, sorrow and distress that others are experiencing. It has helped me to keep things in perspective and to savour the present moment. It has forced me to be proactive, resourceful and engaged.

There are times when chronic illness has felt more like an unwanted gift – not desired or returnable. Despite these setbacks, there have been hidden possibilities that have helped me to flourish and enrich my life and my writing. As I grow in mindfulness through reflection, writing and storytelling, I am able to progressively develop agency, resilience and creativity.

I wrote the following poem after reflecting on the positive aspects of my illness and what it has contributed to my quality of life:

The Gift of Illness

Illness is a hidden gift,
with a rich lode of rewards,
that need to be mined,
in the fire of pain and loss.

Challenging assumptions,
reshaping identity,
acknowledging the human condition,
growing in awareness of self.

Opening to others,
appreciating life,
learning compassion,
disclosing feelings.

Discovering poetic expression,
rekindling creativity,
energising writing,
grounding in the present moment.

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Image by Leandro De Carvalho from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

The Healing Power of Social Support

Social support can take the form of having friends, family or other people who can be a source of support in difficult times, such as chronic illness, death of a loved one or ongoing disability. They can provide emotional, companionship or resource support and enhance our self-image while offering different perspectives on what we are encountering.

Social support can be provided through a formal social network where people with common interests come together to achieve specific outcomes such as fitness, charitable work or a hobby (as with the Australian Men’s Shed). Alternatively, they can be informal where a number of people come together on a regular basis to share a coffee and have a chat.

The benefits of social support

Julia Baird, author of Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything, highlights the mental health benefits of social support and points to the research that shows the “poor mental health” that results from isolation and loneliness. She refers to a homeless support group organised by St. Vincent de Paul Society that she joined and noted that there was “no pretence”, people “just being who they are”. The healing power of this transparency and normality was evident in the homeless participants developing a positive self-image and contributing from their perspective and reality.

Social support is one of the three components for sustainable recovery from trauma, along with appreciating the complex nature of trauma and its impacts and adopting a holistic approach. Research and clinical practice have demonstrated that social support builds resilience in trauma sufferers – they realise they are not alone, are encouraged to pursue their healing process, are reinforced in their healing efforts and learn vicariously from others who are experiencing difficult emotions and challenging situations. The resultant sense of connectedness contributes to positive mental health.

The GROW organisation over many years has demonstrated that mutual social support has contributed to recovery from many forms of mental illness for hundreds of people (as documented in testimonial stories by participants). The peer-to-peer support process facilitated by a nominated leader within the “lived experience” group, promotes personal development and ongoing recovery – a process that may take a number of years.

Reflection

Social support helps participants to develop a sense of being cared for as well as feeling that they can seek assistance from others in understanding and managing their challenging situation. People gain a strong sense of belonging and connectedness through sharing their personal challenges, their success strategies and their progress towards healing. They grow in mindfulness as they share their stories and write about their insights, gaining increased self-awareness and heightened self-esteem.

Creative Meetups, provided by the Health Story Collaborative, is a powerful social support system in that it combines the healing power of social support with the healing power of storytelling. Participants feel fully supported by others engaged in compassionate listening or sharing their stories of challenging situations resulting from chronic illness, disability or their carer role. The following poem expresses the sense of social support that can be gained through the Creative Meetups:

Social Support

When we share our stories of personal challenges, we realise that we are not alone.
We draw strength from others experiencing and managing more difficult circumstances.
We sense that we belong and feel connected to something outside of ourselves and our pain.
We can be ourselves, free of pretence, unencumbered by the need to be “better than”.
We build trust, savour our relationships and look forward to the next encounter.
There is something magical and disarming about the process that leads to changing perspectives and healing.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Creative Meetups: Action Learning for Health and Healing

Creative Meetups are provided by the Health Story Collaborative (HSC) to enable participants to reflect, connect and gain support from other people who are also living with chronic illness or disability or are carers. The free Meetups, currently facilitated by Jennifer Harris on the Zoom platform, provide a stimulus for writing “to access and release emotions, personal stories and creative spirits”. They form an avenue for healing through the mechanism of narrative therapy.

Alice Morgan, author of What Is Narrative Therapy?, maintains that narrative therapy can take many forms. For instance, she suggests that it can involve “particular ways of talking with people about their lives and the problems they are experiencing”. In essence, it involves people sharing their stories orally and/or in writing to gain insight into the meanings they ascribe to events, experiences and current situations (such as a physical or mental health condition). Jodi Clarke points out that we carry multiple self-stories including those related to “self-esteem, abilities, relationships and work.” She maintains that the process of “putting your narrative together” (however, this is created) enables an individual “to find their voice” as they explore their life experiences and the meanings they attribute to them.

What is action learning?

Action learning can be described in simple terms as a cycle – planning, taking action and reflecting on the outcomes (intended and unintended). It is used worldwide in public, private and not-for profit organisations and communities to create positive change and empower people to be the best they can be. It can be undertaken by an individual by themselves (as I have done with my tennis playing over the years) or, more often, as part of a group or “action learning set”.

Creative Meetups and Action Learning

Creative Meetups and action learning have a core assumption in common. Alice Morgan expressed this well when she maintained that narrative therapy assumes that “people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities” to resolve their own challenging situations – an assumption that underpins the process of Creative Meetups. This is also a fundamental assumption of action learning (AL).

Reg Revans, the “Father of Action Learning”, charged with improving the mining industry in the UK, got mining managers together to solve their “here and now problems” in the mines. He also got nurses in Intensive Care Units together to work on their challenging situations. In an action learning context, participants are often described as “personal scientists”. Some academics in universities, tied to the concept of universities as the sole repository of “expert knowledge”, had great difficulty accepting this core assumption and would actively oppose the uptake of action learning – it challenged their firmly held beliefs about knowledge creation and dissemination.

Creative Meetups and action learning have a number of other elements in common and, in the final analysis, both seek to create positive change in a situation (either individual or collective). Some of the shared elements are as follows:

Peer support – a fundamental principle is to treat each other as peers – with no acknowledged hierarchical difference. There is a recognition that we are “all in the same boat” – each facing challenging situations. Reg described this element as “comrades in adversity”; more recently, people have termed it “comrades in opportunity”. In essence, it involves providing mutual support irrespective of our work role, status, social position or experience level.
Collaboration – participants work together towards a common goal (e.g. health and healing or team improvement) and willingly share stores, resources, and insights for mutual benefit. People are unstinting in their sharing – often recommending or loaning books, highlighting helpful websites or identifying relevant expert people.
Don’t know mind – participants adopt a “don’t know mind”, not presuming to know and understand another person’s situation. Reg suggests that if you think you understand something fully, you are not only going to get yourself into trouble but other people as well. Adopting a don’t know mind – not jumping to conclusions or interrupting another’s story with your own (erroneously assuming they are same or similar) – enables a person to tell their story in an unfettered way, opening up the path to healing and recovery.
Honesty – the conscious exploration of what it means to be honest with oneself (owning up) and with others. This opens the way for improvement and change. The process of writing in Creative Meetups helps participants to identify false self-stories and unearth truer and richer stories that open up new avenues for their lives and their relationships. Action learning, too, enables the development of honesty. Reg, for example, recounts an action learning program involving industrial executives in Belgium who, after 18 months of action learning, identified “What is an honest man and what do I need to become one?” (they were all men) as the most significant question they wished they had asked at the start of the program. He maintained that the pathway to learning and change involves “admitting what you do not know”. Reg also maintained that if you are going to do “something significant about something imperative”, you will come up against how you define yourself and your role.
Reflection – reflection is assisted by writing and sharing. The more we reflect, the more it becomes a way of life. Frequent reflection-on-action can result in the ability to reflect-in-action. Reg suggests that reflection is best done in a group because when we reflect alone we can tend to reinforce our existing assumptions and maintain our blindspots. He argues for diversity in the reflective group – diversity of culture, nationality, profession and orientation (business/not-for-profit/community). The Creative Meetups provide a rich diversity in terms of location (participants are from different countries and cultures) and health/caring situation. Participants can gain insight gratuitously when others share their reflections from their different perspectives.
Questioning – the willingness and ability to ask “fresh question” to open upinsight into a challenging situation. Reg describes this as “questioning insight”. This approach involves “supportive challenge” – challenging assumptions to enable a person to be the best they can be. Alice Morgan highlights the role of questioning in narrative therapy because we can often develop negative self-stories. Both action learning and Creative Meetups (narrative therapy) cultivate curiosity.
Action taking – action learning involves learning through action undertaken with others where possible. Creative Meetups promote writing as taking action to become open to the healing power of storytelling. The writing can take any form, e.g. prose, poetry, dot points. Action is also reflected in the changes in behaviour undertaken by participants as a result of insights gained through writing and sharing.
Facilitation – to design and manage the process of sharing. In Creative Meetups, the facilitator provides stimulus material (e.g., a story, music or poem) to enable participants to write and share. In action learning, the facilitator guides the process of planning, acting, reflecting and sharing. In both situations, the facilitator is not a teacher. Their role is to create an environment that promotes safety, trust, openness and sharing – their metaprocess goal is to develop a learning community.

Creative Meetups, in promoting writing and reflection, are helping participants to grow in mindfulness which is described by MARC (UCLA) as “paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity and a willingness to be with what is”. Both action learning and mindfulness contribute to positive mental health because they increase self-awareness and heighten a sense of agency (belief in the capacity to have some control over our inner and outer environment). In cultivating mindfulness, both approaches help people to develop resilience, compassion and creativity.

Reflection

I initially joined the Meetups with a view to writing my stories in prose but have found that the stimulus provided by the discussions and my recent reading of Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, has led me to write several poems about my health story and the process of the Meetups. Kim’s identification of the transformative elements of a poem continues to provide a pathway for my poetic expression. I used her elements to analyse a poem I had written called For the Love of Tennis that enabled me to express my gratitude for being able to continue to play tennis despite a diagnosis of “multiple-level spinal degeneration”.

Following a recent Meetup, I unearthed my feelings about my chronic condition of food sensitivity/allergy resulting from Long Covid-induced Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. I was surprised about the intensity of my feelings of frustration and alienation that I had not previously given voice to. The poem, The Inflammatory Thread in My Life, provided a creative outlet and release for emotions I had kept “under wraps” and not expressed to anyone, including myself.

In a previous post, I shared a poem, Compassionate Listening, that I wrote following a Creative Meetup where the stimulus input included an excerpt from Joni Mitchell’s performance of Both Sides Now at the 2024 Grammy Awards. To me the poem reflects the stance of participants of the Creative Meetup in being able to engage in deep listening, provide active support of the storyteller and reflect back not only the feelings expressed but also the intensity of those feelings.

Compassionate listening strongly reflects the ethos of HSC where Healing Story Principals (such as Micheal Bischoff) sought to support people “to tell and listen to stories in ways that are healing, connected and empowering”. The support and connection underpinning Creative Meetups and action learning promote health and healing.

Reflecting on the process of Creative Meetups and my long-standing experience with action learning in multiple contexts, I was inspired to write the following poem:

Where is “There”?

When you share your innermost secrets

and I say, “I’ve been there!”,

where is “there”?

It’s not where you have been

with your unique experience and perception.

I’m not inside you looking out,

I’m outside you looking in.

It’s like the glimpse of the Bay

that I get from my back deck.

It’s not the Bay!

It’s only a tiny window

on a complex ecosystem.

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Image by Xavier Lavin Pino from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

A Reflection on Writing the Grow Mindfulness Blog

This reflection was stimulated by Haruki Murakami’s book, Novelist As A Vocation, in which he shares his origins as a writer, his approach to writing and some of the challenges he has had to deal with along the way. The ideas he shares resonate strongly with my own experience of writing this blog, even though this is not a novel but a very different writing genre. The fact that the blog involves creativity and the art of writing provides the common ground to explore Murakami’s experience and ideas.

The creative stimulus

Murakami begins a novel with a basic story that evolves as he introduces his characters – he explains, “In most cases, the characters who appear in my novels naturally emerge from the flow of my story”. The stimulus for his story is something he has observed happening, specific behaviours of an individual or an incident in his own life. Like Charles Dickens, he is a keen observer of behaviour – he maintains that the stimulus for a story comes from glancing at a person’s appearance, “how they talk and act, their special characteristics”. He notes, too, that it is not enough just to notice people that you like – you also need to notice those you dislike and try to understand why you feel this way about them.

Like Murakami, my stimulus for a blog post is typically an interaction that I have had, a behaviour I have observed in my organisational consulting/manager development work, a current experience that I am having or something I have read or heard. I often draw inspiration for a blog post from listening to a podcast, reading an article, or participating in a Summit or Conference. I typically focus on current issues such as Long Covid, trauma, mental health and working from home – all the time exploring the linkages with mindfulness and mindfulness practices.

The role of characters/ stimulators

Interestingly, Murakami maintains that he does not start out with a highly developed character or group of characters. He contends that characters emerge as he begins to write and becomes captured by the creative process that he enjoys immensely. He goes so far as to say that “characters take on a life of their own”, even leading the novelist to an “unexpected destination”.

I can relate to these comments about characters by substituting the concept of the “stimulator” – the author, podcaster, interviewee or presenter who stimulates my creative endeavour to write a blog post about their ideas, actions or perspectives. As the blog post emerges through my writing, the line of discussion or argument can take an unexpected turn as I often start out without a firm idea of where a blog post will end up. For example, in my latest blog post I wrote about nurture by nature and stewardship of nature in our immediate environment and ended up where I least expected.

When I started out writing, these two aspects (nurture and stewardship) were discrete elements in my mind and that of the “stimulator”. However, as I progressed with writing the post, I decided to add the ideas of Costa Georgiadis from his book, Costa’s World, as a way of reinforcing the message of the reciprocal relationship with nature – nurture and stewardship. However, through Costa’s influence, I ended up changing my perspective and began to understand that by stewarding nature we are simultaneously opening ourselves up to nurturing by nature (e.g. restoration of peace and calm, stimulation of wonder and awe). I came to understand that nurture and stewardship are not necessarily discrete activities (although they may be in certain circumstances). Costa’s World is the bible for my current composting and gardening activities.

Drawing on stored memories

Murakami states that the characters he employs in his novel are not real people (and definitely not himself) but represent an amalgam of characters drawn from stored memories of people, experiences and places. He weaves elements of different people into any one character to give them life and meaning in the context of what he is writing about. He may draw directly on his own experience relevant to the topic but it is often well disguised.

When I write a blog post, I draw on my stored memory of what I have written previously (not just my current blog) and books/novels/memoirs I have read that reinforce some aspect of what I am writing about (or, alternatively that put forward a contrary view). The blog post then tends to take on a life of its own and can arrive at a different place to what I intended at the outset. Sometimes I will even incorporate poetry or songs (especially mantra meditations) if they add to, or reinforce, the overall message – there are many occasions, synchronistically, where a song I am listening to reinforces where I am up to in writing a blog post (I typically listen to mantra meditations as I write). Examples of this are Alexa Chellun’s Healing Song and Metamorphosis by Lulu & Mischka.

Criticism and compliments

Murakami discusses one lesson that he has learnt as a professional writer – no matter what he writes or how long it is, someone will criticise his work. He concluded that it was best to ignore these adverse comments and just “write what I want to write, in the way I want to write it”. I can concur in this view because there is no way that you can please everyone. This approach creates a unique sense of freedom (unlike the constrictions of academic writing!).

Murakami also noted that “people of different age groups” seem to be reading his novels – e.g. parents encourage children to read his books (or vice versa). Compliments from people acknowledge the difference that his writing has made in their lives and hearing these comments “really cheers him up”. I too really appreciate the compliment when people comment positively on my blog posts and/or seek a link to what they are working on that is relevant to the topic of my post.

Gestation and the creative process

Murakami adopts the discipline of daily writing because this enables creativity to flow. He also employs a daily fitness routine which includes running (and sometimes marathons) – he maintains that you have to be fit to write for extended periods and physical activity stimulates the brain.

Gestation for my blog posts begins with reading (e.g. Tina Turner’s book), listening to a podcast (e.g. Life Through Transitions by Jon DeWaal) or watching a video (e.g. the video interview with Susan Bolt). I usually take notes and record any connections with something else I have written or remember – this enables me to expand my thinking beyond the original stimulus (and the stimulator’s perspective). Typically, I will let my subconscious mind work on the topic overnight and begin afresh the next morning (being a “morning person”, I write best in the early mornings). I find that this gestation process usually leads to the emergence of a structure for my blog post and unearthing of connections that I had not previously thought of – these connections become “top-of-mind” rather than staying submerged. I also try to keep fit through walking, Tai Chi and physical exercises designed to redress my spinal degeneration.

Reflection

Murakami maintains that each person has to find their own style of writing, whether they are writing a novel, an essay or a short story. The same is true of writing a blog – the writer’s life experience and perspectives, as well as the focus of the blog, influence the nature and structure of the writing process.

As I reflect on my life and my reading/listening/viewing, I am able to grow in mindfulness. Like Murakami, I can attain a deeper level of self-awareness and new perspectives while enhancing my capacity to think and write. Examples of my growing sense of self-awareness include my discussion of resentment and blind spots.

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Image by Cindy Lever from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Writing for Authenticity

Jeff Brown, author and self-transformation expert, places considerable emphasis on authenticity in his writing, his public speaking and his personal life. He regularly identifies ways to develop authenticity and, in particular, explains why he values writing as a pathway to authenticity. He notes that through writing, he came to identify his life’s purpose and realise his goal of using writing for authentic expression of who he is and how he is evolving.

Jeff suggests that one of the greatest challenges to authenticity is to be able to savour the wins of others, especially in a competitive environment. I still find this challenging when playing social tennis although I attempt to approach the game in an authentic way – being conscious of my intent in playing, managing my emotional response to expectations (my own and that of others), exploring my blindspots and managing my mistakes and related responses.

Authenticity can impact every aspect of our lives including our work effectiveness, our relationships and our mental wellbeing. Jeff strongly advocates writing as a way to achieve authentic self-expression and provides his Writing Your Way Home Course as a means to assist people to find their authentic selves. He suggests that not only does writing develop our own wellbeing but impacts the reader in a positive way. By being open to who we really are and expressing that honestly in writing we can enable others to achieve personal insight and growth.

Writing authentically

Jeff’s online writing course is very much about how to write authentically. He argues, for example, that we cannot find our authentic voice by slavishly following a formula for writing that entails only rules and related structure. He suggests that to write from the heart and access the heart’s intelligence, we need to go beyond our thinking and rational design processes to access our deeper selves. In particular, he argues for bringing our bodies into the writing process.

Jeff maintains that “our emotions, feelings, memories” live within our body – a point that is reinforced recently by research on trauma, its bodily impacts and effective healing processes. He argues that if we are “disconnected from our body”, our writing will be “stagnant” and “fragmented”, reflecting our lack of integration with our bodies – our storehouse of emotions.

Embodiment in writing, for Jeff, involves among other things movement (walking, riding, jogging) and modalities that release stored tension in our body such as yoga, Tai Chi and massage. He suggests that trying different massage modalities can help us to identify what works for us and gives us the greatest, unimpeded access to our creativity and authentic self-expression. He found that yoga classes helped his writing, especially where he was free to write notes as ideas, memories and emotions surfaced.

I have found that singing in a group is a great way to release stored emotions and I have often observed participants in Chris James’ workshops on Discover Your Natural Voice spontaneously outpouring their repressed emotions. Chris, like Jeff, is a strong advocate for authenticity in expression and works to help people find their natural speaking and singing voice that is a “unique and true expression of themselves”.

Reflection

I enrolled in Jeff’s writing course following his presentation on The Power of Authenticity at the 2022 Surrender Summit. My goal is to write a memoir as a means of self-exploration and to acknowledge the contribution of many people in my life who have helped shape who I am and what I have been able to achieve. In line with Jeff’s recommendations, I have been using walking, tennis, meditation and Tai Chi as ways to release tension and stimulate creativity and authenticity. I’m finding that memories are flooding in and I have adopted another practice that Jeff recommends – have a notebook handy to capture recollections. I have also been engaging in some “brain dumps” to organise my thoughts and recollections. I can relate to Maggie’s comments in Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down, “It’s all very telescoped in my memory”, even though at the time it seemed “interminable”. For example, I can recall that I lived in five houses in Taringa, Brisbane (all within four blocks of each other) and yet I can only bring three into visual focus at this time.

Stephanie Domet, creator of the Mindful Writing Course, suggests that if you become too focused on the outcome of writing (e.g. a novel or memoir), you can experience writer’s block and be unable to unleash your creativity, develop deep insight or be in-the-flow when writing. She places a lot of emphasis on the process of writing and the related experience of joy and “calm presence”. For her, the real outcome is the change in the writer themselves as a result of “showing up for your writing”. Stephanie maintains that focused writing can be a pathway to mindfulness and offers a series of exercises to get in touch with your body through your senses.

Another source of writer’s block is the expectation of producing something very special in the eyes of others. To address this issue, Jeff quotes a poem by Susan Frybort, Empathy, which is part of a collection of poems called, Hope is a Traveler. In the poem, Susan emphasises her “ordinariness” and stresses that “truthful writing” enables others to get in touch with “shared human experience” – the experience of pain and hurt. She maintains that what is good enough for her in terms of outcomes of her writing is that she can “extend and touch another soul with all that is in me now”.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindful writing, reflection and other mindfulness practices, we can gain increased self-awareness, insight, creativity and the courage to be truthful in our writing.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Life Shaping Events and People: Finding Our Way Home

In an earlier post, I explored the concept of authenticity and ways to develop it – after listening to a presentation by Jeff Brown at the Surrender Summit. This exposure to Jeff and his thinking stimulated my reading of his early book, Soulshaping, A Journey of Self-Creation – a revealing memoir that tracks his outer and inner journey. As a result of the heartfelt responses to this book, Jeff came to understand that he was not alone in experiencing life’s challenges and exploring the inner journey to seek out peace, happiness and fulfillment. He comments that he came to realise that “so many of us have walked the same trauma trails and endured hardships”.

Jeff contends that his disenchantment with his early adult life was a result of following the “false-path”, instead of the “true-path” – alignment with his unique, profound life purpose. He points out that the world we live in values external achievements not inner progress and constantly distracts us from our life purpose with false rewards and endless enticements designed to capture our attention and cultivate our obsessions.

His personal story captured in Soulshaping describes how he started on his journey to authenticity by listening to his “inner voice” (which he calls “Little Missy”) and exploring his true-path with its multiple challenges and turning points. He argues that the inner voice is “the little voice that knows”, is persistent and unrelenting and contains what he describes as “the karmic blueprint for our destiny”. The challenge is to allow this inner voice to reach our consciousness and influence our words and actions and, ultimately, shape our life choices.

However, the journey to authenticity – alignment with our life purpose – requires what Jeff describes as “gut wrenching, self-admission” because it is only when we expose what is really inside of us that we are able to “liberate our own voice”. Admitting “who we are”, and not persisting with our social disguises (the face we present to the world), is essential for our liberation to a life of joy, profound realisation of our connectedness and experience of the well of ease with its inherent peace and tranquility – a stark contrast to the hurly-burly world we normally inhabit with its unceasing expectations.

Writing our way to our inner home

Jeff suggests that one way to access our true-path and the attendant inner sense of contentment and aliveness, is to begin writing to remove our “emotional debris” and uncover our inner voice. To this end, I have enrolled in his online writing course, Writing Your Way Home, and I have set out on my own writing journey while concurrently exploring Jeff’s journey through reading Soulshaping and his latter book, Grounded Spirituality. My core writing project will be a reflective memoir focused on acknowledging the people who have shaped, or are shaping, my life.

In a moment of synchronicity, I recently listened to an interview with Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, as he was discussing the fact that his life at the time involved parallel endeavours – his writings on emotional and social intelligence and his exploration of meditation through research and long-standing meditation practice. He disclosed that he was pursuing these endeavours on two fronts simultaneously by writing another book about emotional intelligence and writing what he called a “spiritual memoir”. He indicated that this latter inner journey was about the people who influenced him over his life and enabled him to be the person he is (and the person he is becoming). Daniel indicated that he was thoroughly enjoying his memoir endeavour and that he was initially writing it for himself, not necessarily for publication.

Jeff indicated that we each have events and interactions with people in our life that shape us and our way of life. Sometimes these events are traumatic and/or the people we encounter seek to turn us from our path through belittlement, envy or active discouragement. Others seek to support us to be the best we can be and assist us to explore, and stay on, our true path. As we are often reminded, “it is not what we experience in life (including traumas) that matters, but how we respond to life shaping events and people”. In reading about Jeff’s “journey into self-creation”, I came to see some parallels in my life with events and people that were life shaping for him.

Life shaping events and people

Jeff describes a number of key events and people who influenced the direction of his life and his pursuit of a writing path as a manifestation of his profound life purpose. As I read about his life, I experienced flashbacks to my own life as well as an intense motivation to begin writing my reflective memoir. I am strongly convinced that the simultaneous pursuit of his writing course and his life story will provide the fuel to energise my memoir writing and help to sustain me in this endeavour. Already, I have found the following parallels in life shaping events and people:

Adverse childhood experiences

In common with Jeff (and many other people), I had a number of adverse childhood experiences. Jeff describes having a father who wished Jeff had not been born (he wanted a girl, not a boy) and who was violent and abusive towards him, always seeking to diminish him and his achievements. He also had a mother who lived a life of “poverty trauma” and resorted to a world of fantasy as a way to cope with life’s harshness. She “closed her heart” to protect herself. Jeff experienced a life that was tumultuous and destructive as a result of the overflow of his parents’ challenging emotions and the constant state of conflict between them.

I had a similar upbringing with an alcoholic father who was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his imprisonment for three years in the Changi Prisoner of War Camp. He sought to drown his pain through alcohol and, while not physically abusive towards me, he would physically attack my mother and, on at least one occasion, put her in hospital with broken ribs. I can relate strongly to what Jeff describes as the verbal assaults of his mother which drove his father “deeper into darkness”. I can hear my mother berating my father about his drinking and wasting our family income, and the resultant shouting and escalating conflict. None of us, including my father who had no psychological or government support (apart from a miserly pension), had any idea of the impact of PTSD on a person’s life and family.

In contrast to Jeff’s mother, my mother lived in the real world but experienced a life punctuated by illness and grief (her four month old son died of a brain tumour when I was 4 years old). She found her life purpose in raising her other five children, including me, and continually sacrificed herself for our physical, emotional and intellectual welfare (professional support for our emotional welfare was unachievable). She worked endlessly at the local Woolworths to sustain us and provide for our private school education. She had high hopes for each of us and encouraged us in whatever we wanted to pursue in our sport, study or work. Unlike Jeff’s mother, she opened her heart to anyone in need and, in turn, accepted food packages from Vinnies to enable us to live from week to week.

Career misfit

Jeff describes his very successful entry into a high-powered career as a defence lawyer. it was only as his Bar Admission Exams approached that he began to have doubts about whether this was a false path or a true path for him even though it involved defence of innocent people who had been subjected to a miscarriage of justice. His inner voice (Little Missy) created some cognitive dissonance for him by suggesting that he was only pursuing the external accoutrements of being a lawyer – fame, visibility, high income and social standing. Ironically, it was when he was trying on a new suit for Court appearances (a clothing accoutrement) that he heard that persistent inner voice yet again, “Who are you really?”

Immediately after I finished high school, I entered a novitiate in Sydney (about 1,000 kilometres from my home in Brisbane) and became an inductee into the life of Catholic priesthood as a contemplative monk. After completing my first year and confirmation in the religious Order, I moved to Whitefriars Seminary in Melbourne (a further 800 kilometres from home) to complete my studies and training before ordination. However, after four years there, I decided that this was not the career for me and returned home with $100 and the suit on my back. I had previously committed to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as part of my confirmation. The decision to leave required formal approval from Rome to release me from my vows.

He arrived at a crossroads when he was due to sign a lease for a legal office to share with potential law partners. At the time, he was pulled by the Warrior in him and his survival instinct to sign up to an externally rewarding life as a defence lawyer in partnership with supportive colleagues. He described this period of sleeplessness, agitation and hellish indecision as being caught “between direction and exploration”, where he was unable to surrender to the joy of the unknown nor to experience the relief and certainty that came from “knowing where I am headed”. It was when he was in Santorini in Greece that he began to write a journal which led ultimately to his “calling” and true path of being a writer. He refused to sign the lease because his life as a defence lawyer seemed to him to be “living in disguise”, not living his real, unique self.

While I was studying in Melbourne, I consistently scored 90% in the annual oral exams for my various studies in philosophy and theology. It was suggested that I was earmarked to complete a doctorate in theology in Rome because of my academic ability and “model” behaviour as a monk dedicated to daily silence, meditation and study. However, I suffered from severe migraines and constant anxiety about my home situation where the conflict and domestic violence was relentless. I came to think that I had undertaken the vocation as a priest as an escape from my distressful home situation and to win the approval of my mother who was very religious. In some sense I was living my mother’s desire for my career – which filled a deep-seated need on her part. Like Jeff, I was torn between “direction and exploration”.

I had all the accoutrements of success – a sense of doing something worthwhile, high standing in the community and amongst my tutors and colleagues, a very balanced lifestyle and enjoyment of the journey. However, my inner voice caused me to be dissatisfied and I left the Order as I approached ordination as a priest. I had experienced an overwhelming sense of responsibility to the community generally and to my parents in particular. As it turned out, sometime after I returned home, I took my mother away from my father for her own safety (but this is another story). Both my parents blossomed when they were separated and I went on to pursue marriage and a career in the public service.

Reflection

Jeff recalls that as he set out to write a book that “talked about spirituality through the vehicle of my own journey”, he became caught up in self-deprecation. He was “riddled with shame and doubt”, questioning whether anyone would want to read about his “miserable journey”. While he recognised that the process of exploring his historical inner landscape through writing was therapeutic for himself, he doubted whether anyone else would benefit from it. His experience after publishing his book certainly put paid to these doubts about the beneficial effects of his writing for others who read his Soulshaping book.

Jeff encourages each of us to explore our life story and share it with others. His writing course provides the psychological support and technical knowhow, including insights into how to get published. He offers Soulshaping as a flexible template to assist us on our writing journey. His hope is that some of the themes he has written about will resonate with the reader/writer and provide the encouragement to follow our own true path.

Like Jeff, I have had considerable self-doubts about the benefit of writing my own memoir. However, I am encouraged by his experience and support and the resonance I have already experienced with some of the themes in his recorded journey. I am continuously flooded with recollections, insights and ideas now that I have chosen my reflective memoir as my core writing project. I am excited by the prospect of researching aspects of my life and recording my growing self-awareness. I am also flooded with feelings of gratitude towards the people who have helped shape and enrich my life. I can already envision my memoir as an e-book, illustrated with historical images from significant events in my life.

As I continue to grow in mindfulness through my regular practice of meditation, Tai Chi and reflection (including writing this blog), I look forward to exploring further my inner landscape, gaining in self-awareness and emotional regulation and experiencing the joy of creative writing grounded in lived experience.

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Image by Robert C from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

How to Develop Authenticity

Jeff Brown spoke recently at the Surrender Summit on the topic, The Power of Authenticity. Jeff is an author, expert in personal transformation and a lifetime seeker of his own authenticity. He does not only talk about authenticity; he pursues it relentlessly and tirelessly in his own life and work. Jeff experienced adverse childhood experiences but has explored his inner landscape mainly through writing to enable him to take his place in the world and to pursue his unfolding life purpose. He maintains that writing is therapeutic and a tool for developing authenticity.

To this end, Jeff has created his online writing course to make his personal lessons and insights available to anyone. The course, Writing Your Way Home: Answering the Soul’s Call, is available as a six-week audio course that incorporates inspiration and encouragement along with practical writing and publishing tips. Jeff describes this course and its intent to help the participant find their “deepest and truest expression” in his short video where he encourages others to undertake the “transformative journey” of writing.

In his book, Love it Forward, he recounts how he had a turning point in his life when he stopped to give some money to a homeless person in the street. He realised that this was a token action so he found out the contact details of the homeless person involved and arranged to send payments to him each week. This felt more authentic and heartfelt

In an earlier book, Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation, he explored the traumas and successes of his life in search of his inner authenticity – what he describes as alignment with his “soul purpose”. He was able to set aside external achievements such as becoming a criminal lawyer and move towards his life calling as a writer. He established the Soulshaping Institute: A Center for Authentic Transformation to assist others to make this personal journey to authenticity – to identify and pursue their life purpose.

Ways to develop authenticity

In Love it Forward, Jeff provides a series of quotes and insights into what authenticity means in daily life. His book is a call to authenticity through overcoming any “emotional debris” and setting out on the path to our “soul purpose”. His written words identify ways to be authentic in our actions and interactions:

Learn to live in the present moment – not the future or the past
Have the courage to break the hold of our “comfort zone” which prevents us from realising our true potential – we tend to avoid new beginnings for fear of the pain of endings
Avoid connecting with people who diminish us, distract us from our path, or try to dissuade us from realizing our potential
Savour life, love, breathing, being-in-relationship, and the ability to see, talk, walk and run
Acknowledge that giving in service to others is reciprocal – they are giving in return by accepting our generosity and enabling us to honour our life purpose (it is not a one-way street)
Accept that chaos precedes clarity and that without confusion there is no movement forward beyond the present understanding
Recognize that when we actualize our gifts to serve others in need, we are paying-it-forward and backward (to the people before us who have not had the skills or opportunity to serve others or those who come behind who can walk in our footsteps).
Don’t take things personally – create a mental boundary between ourselves and the behaviour of others (it is not about us)
Let love blossom as we age – open our heart to everything and everyone (we will no longer have time for avoidance or envy).
Express gratitude for our mentors and elders who have helped us realize our potential and our calling
Acknowledge that sometimes people have to experience and express victimhood to be able to move to well-being
Develop a self-care plan that acknowledges our intrinsic value and worth
Measure our success not in terms of externalities but inner victories over unresolved traumas and our “inner critic”
Treat negative self-talk as a culturally-induced, false story
Maintain a vision of our purpose and its realisation so that we actualize it “when the time is right”
Value the success of others (avoid envy of other’s achievements).

Reflection

Jeff reinforces the fact that personal transformation cannot be rushed and that the journey to authenticity is paved with setbacks (lows), as well as joy (highs). There is excitement and exhilaration in the journey of unfolding and realizing our uniqueness and potential.

Meditation and other practices can enable us to grow in mindfulness, be fully present and have the courage and resilience to embark on our own journey to authenticity.

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Image by Ke Hugo from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Finding Your Life Purpose

In his book, The Human Quest for Meaning, Paul Wong maintains that finding a unique purpose that transcends yourself and realises your full potential as one of the pillars of a meaningful life. Identifying and pursuing your life purpose is a key ingredient to experiencing happiness in your life. People often experience dissatisfaction and unhappiness if they are not able to use their core skills, knowledge, and experience in the pursuit of something that is meaningful and transcends themselves. Each of us is attempting to create a meaningful story for our life that is not constrained by limiting, negative self-talk.

There are many pathways to identifying and pursuing your life purpose and each of us has to find our own path. For some, the catalyst for finding their life purpose is a life crisis experienced by themselves, e.g., a life-threatening illness or major job loss; for others, the catalyst can be observing others experiencing extreme or destitute conditions. Some people consciously pursue their life purpose through meditation and mindfulness practices and find the strength and sensitivity to pursue their life purpose.

Discovering and pursuing life purpose through nature

Ruth Allen, author of Grounded: How Connection with Nature can Improve Our Mental and Physical Wellbeing, tells the story of how she was totally absorbed by nature as a child and loved being amongst trees and wildlife. Motivated by this love of nature, she decided to complete a degree in geology and undertake related PhD research. However, she found that she ended up further and further away from nature as she pursued her research and work in a laboratory studying tiny samples through a microscope.

Ruth lost the sense of the expansiveness and the interconnectedness of nature and her own connection with it. She decided that to identify her true purpose in life, she had to get back into nature which she did over a number of years in forests and the wild. She had lost her way and sought to rebalance her life through her immersion in nature. She eventually discovered her life purpose as a counsellor and eco-psychotherapist helping other people to regain balance in their life through connection with nature. She is able to use eco-therapies in her outdoor practice and to motivate others to connect to nature through her speaking, writing and adventure modelling.

Discovering and pursuing life purpose through meditation and chanting

Tina Turner tells the story of how she overcame the various traumas in her life through meditation and chanting. She felt totally disillusioned with life and distressed by her abusive relationship. By persistent, daily practice of Buddhist meditation and chanting, she was able to find the energy, insight, and courage to pursue her life purpose as a singer who moved people and a social activist through her work as co-founder and contributor to the Beyond Music Project which seeks to develop connectedness and unity through the celebration of cultural diversity. Despite her adversity, she was able to develop resilience and happiness in pursuit of a meaningful and rewarding life.

Motivated to a life of compassionate action after observing the desperate plight of other people

There are numerous instances where people have discovered their life purpose by observing the destitution, desperation, or debilitating life of others. Here are some examples:

Nicolle Edwards and husband Gareth set up the domestic violence support service RizeUp Australia when they observed the plight of women fleeing domestic violence with their children. Their focus is on providing the set-up requirements for emergency housing and they have established the charity to gather donations (money and furniture) to support their work in helping domestic violence victims transition into a different housing environment. They have been surprised by the level of support that they have been able to muster through unified action in pursuit of what has become their life purpose.
Isabel Allende, in her recent book The Soul of a Woman, recounts how through her research of violence against women (including a visit to a small community of women in Kenya whose lives had been devastated by war and AIDS), she was moved to establish the Isabelle Allende Foundation whose mission is to empower women to “to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence”. Isabel’s poignant and soul-searching memoir, Paula, written during her daughter’s fatal, porphyria-induced coma was an outstanding success and generated the income which Isabel used to create the Foundation. She sees her life purpose as enabling women to be safe, valued and loved and to have empowerment through control over their own bodies and personal resources. Isabel pursues her life purpose through her Foundation and her writing – she has written 26 books selling over 74 million copies.
Olga Murray, a highly successful and widely respected lawyer, was moved by the impoverishment of children in Nepal when she visited Kathmandu and observed their destitute conditions, including young girls being sold into slavery and prostitution during a Festival. She established the Nepal Youth Foundation in 1990 to provide children who were the most impoverished with “education, housing, medical care and human rights.” She has continued to work to support the Foundation in her 90’s and the Foundation continues to save girls from slavery through their “indentured daughters” program.
Goldie Hawn, through her own experience of panic attacks as a child, developed a very strong empathy for children suffering unhappiness and depression through mental illness. She had used meditation throughout her own life to develop self-awareness and manage her own emotional stress and she became acutely aware of how mindfulness enables children to manage the stresses of their lives. This led her to establish the Goldie Hawn Foundation which developed the MindUP program which employs educational programs to facilitate the well-being of children. The programs for both children and teachers are soundly based on “neuroscience, mindfulness awareness, positive psychology and social-emotional learning (SEL)”.

Reflection

Many things can be a catalyst for discovering our life purpose and providing the energy and motivation to pursue it with courage and focused action. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection on our life experiences, we can develop the insight to identify our unique purpose and the resilience to pursue it through compassionate action.

Hugh Van Cuylenburg developed the GEM pathway to happiness and resilience – gratitude, empathy, mindfulness – after a visit to a poor village in India. He now pursues his life purpose as a motivational speaker and writer working with multiple organisations, including elite sport’s teams.

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Image by Vikramjit Kakati from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Silence and Connection: Finding Peace in a Turbulent World

Last night I had the privilege of accompanying my wife to a fund-raising event at Stepping Stone Clubhouse in Brisbane – an organisation dedicated to enabling people with mental illness to rebuild and enrich their lives. The speaker for the night’s event was Trent Dalton, author of two recent books that were the focus of his discussion. Trent has become a best-selling author as a result of the first of the two books, The Boy Who Swallowed the Universe which features two boys who experience the darkness of adverse childhood experiences. The second book he spoke energetically about is his recently released novel, All Our Shimmering Skies – two girls experiencing trauma feature prominently in this book which is also an expression of hope, of wonder and life’s endless mysteries and miracles.

Life beyond trauma

Trent had many adverse childhood experiences and related trauma – including an alcoholic father, heroin-addicted mother, heroin dealer stepfather and a criminal baby sitter. His two novels then are part autobiographical, part fiction and part fantasy (“gifts dropping from the sky”). His two daughters had questioned him as to why he wrote the first of the two books with boys as the focal characters when he in fact had two daughters. So, two girls featured in the Shimmering Skies novel.

Trent mentioned that even though the books begin with darkness in the characters’ lives, they end with hope and wonder. He wanted to inspire his daughters to be strong and resilient despite what life brings in the way of obstacles and adversity. He also wanted them to believe in hope and a life beyond trauma as reflected in his own life – now as a multiple award-winning author who is internationally recognised for his writing craft and storytelling.

Finding peace in silence and connection

Trent spoke of his close connection to place and nature. His home suburb, Brisbane’s western suburb of Darra, features strongly in his writing as does Darwin which he visited a number of times, mainly on assignment as a journalist. He described with a sense of awe the natural beauty experienced during a guided walk through Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. His closeness to nature is reflected in his wonder at even the smallest living creatures.

His connection to family and friends provided a very real grounding and enabled him to rest in the strength of these relationships. Of particular note is his comment about how one of his daughters brought him very much “back to earth” after a whirlwind tour following his highly successful book, The Boy Who Swallowed the Universe. At one stage when he was at home and dropping naturally into his effervescent storytelling mode, his 11 year daughter said something to the effect, “You don’t have to impress us now – you just have to be Dad to us.”

Trent’s Shimmering Skies novel captures something of the stillness and reflection he experienced observing the night sky through his window in Darwin or from his writer’s den in Brisbane. His valuing of silence and stillness is reflected in his comment on Christine Jackman’s novel, Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World:

…a deeply personal assignment: treading bravely, beautifully into the wonder of silence.

Christine reminds us that life is full of noise, distraction and setbacks and yet there exists the wonder of stillness and silence – the unnameable space in which one was free to think and breathe and simply be. We just have to learn ways to access the silence in our lives – something I experienced at 5 am this morning when I walked along the Manly Esplanade in Brisbane as the sun rose and reflected on the shimmering water of the marina.

Reflection

Trent was able to inhabit the wounds of his trauma by revisiting his adverse childhood experiences through the key characters in his two books. In discussing his books and his life, he was able to be completely transparent and honest about his background, his challenges, and his small triumphs. This openness and curiosity about life are hallmarks of mindful living. By growing in mindfulness through reflection, writing and wonder, he could appreciate his connection to everything and his close relationships which are so central to his life and work.

I find it humbling and a source of gratitude that I personally was able to live a life of silence and contemplation for five years after leaving home and traumatic circumstances. I have lived through many adverse childhood experiences in my early childhood and traumatic events later in life. I found solace and peace in stillness and silence.

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Image by Ron Passfield – Sunrise at Manly Esplanade

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

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