The Alchemy of Story: Write to Heal Yourself and Your Reader

I don’t teach writing. I teach alchemy.

I don’t coach writers. I coach transformation professionals ready to make magic with their words.

Part of me rolls my eyes at what sounds like a bit of hubris and exaggeration from a writer who has taken the thesaurus too far.  

But there’s a wiser part of me that waves her wand and smiles. It’s ok to make such wild claims when they’re true. The Word Witch in me remembers that I have seen this alchemical transformation happen more often than I can count. 

What if Alchemy Isn’t Just for Fantasy Novels?

The ancient alchemists were devoted to changing base metals into gold. 

Those magician-philosopher-scientists were also interested in the transformation of the self. They were on a quest to liberate the human ego and open themselves to the limitless potential of the enlightened soul.

Since a well-written book or article that speaks to the dreams and fears of a reader can translate into new business, writing can surely be considered an alchemical act that turns passion into livelihood. Good work becomes gold. 

And, since the people I work with are in the business of healing the mind, body, and spirit, that sacred spiritual alchemy is always part of the mix, too. Words are medicine for the soul.

Creative Alchemy & the Magic of the Self-Focused First Draft

When we work on a piece of writing, we’re also performing an act of creative alchemy. 

In its simplest form, “creative alchemy” describes the movement from inspiration to manifestation. You turn a jumbled collection of ideas into a flowing, finished story. This is what you might think of when you move from what Anne Lamott calls the “shitty first draft” to a piece that you’re proud enough to publish.

I frame it differently for my Sovereign Writers. Rather than using a term that speaks to the quality of the writing, we think about the kind of feelings that get poured onto the page. We talk about the “self-focused first draft.”

The self-focused first draft describes that welter of words the writer puts on paper for herself. This draft includes your personal details, digressions, backstory, and burdens. You’d never want to publish the majority of it, but it needs to be put on the page. Think of this like the buried foundations of a house: they’ll never see the light of day, but they are utterly essential to the strength and endurance of the structure.

It’s not to say that quality isn’t important - the writing coach in me always wants to help writers make their way to clear, elegant prose. But I always want my clients to remember: when you’re in the business of transformation, “good copy” is useless if it lacks your own signature transformative magic. You might write a series of perfectly crafted sentences, but if they don’t come from the heart and soul, it’s just noise.

The Self-Focused First Draft Is More Than Just a Journal Entry

Wait, first take the “just” away. Journaling is an art unto itself and it’s vital to our becoming. We’re talking about a slightly different practice here, however.

When you’re sitting down to produce a self-focused first draft, you’re not there to unload your brain or make a written confession.

When you sit down to pen a self-focused first draft, you come with clear intention.

You’re devoted to that alchemical work of transformation. You’re on a mission to take the raw materials of your experience, including the frustration and the pain, and make some sort of lasting change. Once these raw sentences do their work—the transformative magic that heals you, the writer—then it just might be time to polish things up and press publish.

In fact, for the Sovereign writer who also happens to be a transformation professional—a healer, a therapist, a teacher, a coach—that next step into using your words becomes almost inevitable. 

You write to heal yourself and you write to heal your reader. These two goals weave round one another and inspire you to go deeper for yourself and for the people you serve.

In the midst of all the extraneous details and detours of your private story, you’ll find a whole lot of universal truth. The lessons you’ve learned. The strength you’ve gathered. The reasons you do the work that you do.

If you’re doing any public writing at all as an entrepreneur or private practice owner, this is what you want to express to your readers. This is part of the gold.

The Self-Focused First Draft Is the Foundation of Your Sovereign Story

Amidst the tangle of “small s” stories that catalog our hurts and fears and failures, there are the Sovereign Stories, the stories you must tell. 

Your Sovereign Story emerges when your own preoccupations and passions intersect with the needs and interests of your readers. And every Sovereign Story begins with a self-focused first draft.

Not every Sovereign Story is a magnum opus. You have countless stories like this within you. Your Sovereign Story does its job when it brings a smile to someone’s lips, helps them see they are not alone, or casts new light on a problem so they understand that there is a solution on the other side. 

What is a Sovereign Story?

A Sovereign Story is your truth and you share it to reveal the truth within your readers.

A Sovereign Story conveys a truth and makes a connection with a narrative that only you could weave.

A Sovereign Story is the core narrative that integrates the essential parts of who you really are. 

A Sovereign Story communicates your mission and message to people who want to work with you and grow with you. 

A Sovereign Story is a declaration of what matters to you. To tell one is a brave and beautiful act.

You Never Know What Form a Sovereign Story Might Take

I teach the structure of story and help people uncover and craft their stories in my class, Stand In Your Sovereign Story. There, we talk about website copy, blog posts, and how to be authentic (or, you might say, “how to stay gold”) on social media.

This Sovereign Storytelling work is about so much more than smart, well-constructed marketing copy though.

These days, Sovereign Stories are emerging as poems, too.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to do a 1:1 coaching session with a member of my Sovereign Writers Circle named Dawn. Each Wednesday, our online community gathers for writing practice. We do the kind of “alchemical” writing that is intended to support the work of transformation.

One writing prompt asked the circle to really examine and answer the question “how are you?” Dawn’s response came out in the form of a poem. Her self-focused first draft was from the heart and spoke to what it meant to watch her life and livelihood change due to Covid. She was fine and not fine.

The poem was honest, but that first version only kissed the surface of all Dawn had to explore and say. Shortly afterwards she brought the poem to one of our group coaching calls where we reflected what we heard and offered the sort of gentle, conscious workshopping that makes our community so special. Then, two of us revisited it in our session together. A few weeks later, she brought the piece back to the group during another SWC coaching call.

I think there was a part of Dawn that simply couldn’t believe she was still working on that collection of stanzas. The wiser part of her—the Word Witch within—who had grown accustomed to the alchemy (and the time) that’s involved in telling a Sovereign Story was there for the ride, showing up to question, to wonder, to craft and re-craft.

Dawn has been learning from herself and from her own process, seeing the depths that were held inside the common words, choosing new images that got her closer to the story she needed to unfurl, the Sovereign Story she longed to tell.

It has been an honor to hold this process and have a front row seat for the entire transformation.

Dawn is still working on her poem, asking what more it has to reveal and who most needs to hear it. She’s making choices about which elements to emphasize and all of this is helping her decide where she’ll submit this labor of love. I do hope it will be published someplace. People need to read it. I trust that she’s already experienced the alchemy, however, and her healer-poet’s pockets are already lined in gold.

 You understand that transformation professionals are writing because we want to heal ourselves first and then we want to share our stories to support others in their healing.  We want to touch the heart and soul to make a difference in the world.  It is about the process/journey,  not about performance or notoriety.  The magic and medicine you offer is the encouragement, support and challenge to venture into  new areas with our writing so we can confidently and skillfully express and communicate our work out in the world.

• Dawn Goforth-Kelly, Writer & Reiki Master

What about you? Are you an alchemist seeking the space and the support to uncover and develop your own Sovereign Stories? If you want to learn the art and practice of storytelling in order to build your world-renewing business, consider joining us for the Stand In Your Sovereign Story Program that starts on September 30.

Are you trying to build a writing practice in support of your professional practice or to get a big project into the world? We’re welcoming new members to the Sovereign Writers Circle through September 1.

Rest, Heal, Rearrange

My well - of energy, of words, of vision - has been running dry for weeks. I've tried to fake it, and from time to time, I pulled it off. Inside, I have been feeling parched, barren, and exhausted.⁣

This week, I started over.⁣⁣

I've been living in the in-between place that comes after a great big project is completed and before the next push really begins. It's a hard place to be, all full of self-recrimination about how I "should" be planning more, earning more, speaking more. ⁣⁣

Ultimately, I knew I needed this trough after the huge wave of energy and creativity that was the final sprint to finish my book, but it was hard to settle into that truth. I'm too well programmed to equate the push with success. I'm too accustomed to beating myself up for being lazy and playing small.⁣

I finally got the physical and spiritual support I needed to figure out why I've been feeling so drained and depressed. (Thank you, Eleanora Amendolara of the Sacred Center Mystery School for your healing wisdom! Thank you for seeing that the problem was my thyroid and my adrenals as well as a struggle to step through the portal into a new phase of spiritual expansion.)⁣

With that wisdom (and some powerful herbs and nutritional supplements), I gave myself permission to stay quiet for a few more days. I watched those phenomenally impressive Americans speak truth to Congress. I read ⁣Meggan Watterson’s book about Mary Magdalene and reconnected with one of the most powerful spiritual foremothers. ⁣

And then, I started moving all the furniture around.⁣

I needed my space to reflect that my spiritual furniture has been completely rearranged by the writing of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman's Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic. I needed this room where I do my work to look like an author's study rather than a mompreneur's cluttered office. ⁣

It's still in process, but there's a new flow to this space. This room feels like it wants to hold the mystery, the growth, and the new connections I'll be making in this next phase of personal, professional, creative, spiritual becoming.⁣⁣

Where are you right now?

Are you riding the wave, doing the work, and making it happen?
Are you sliding down into the doldrums because you need to give into gravity for a little while?
Are you struggling, thinking you should be riding or resting in a different way?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture on the inside and do the healing work?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture in the office because you're ready for a new phase?⁣

Wherever you are, I invite you to pause, to look around, and to take some notes. Capture this moment on the page so you know what it's like to feel wildly free or in gentle recovery or in the dark place in between.⁣

And if you need help along the way as you try to sort out just where you are and what to do next, call on me. ⁣

Book a Tarot & Intuitive Healing Session or join The Sovereign Writers Circle.

⁣

On Book Writing, Tarot Reading, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Ten years ago, I gave birth to a daughter. Now, on another gold-blue October day a decade later, I am in the midst of another long labor. This time, I am birthing a book. 

The book isn’t here yet - the release date for The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic is set for February, 2020 - but today is the day I must say, “It’s done.” I’m going over the proofreader’s changes and, in just a few hours, I will declare an end to years of writing, rewriting, editing, and polishing. No more additions or subtractions. These two hundred pages of prose must tell the entire story. (Until the next book!)

I feel both empty and full. All emptied by exhaustion and filled by hope. Such a combination of love and depletion has a way of making you feel so heavy and so flimsy at the same time - especially when you realize you have so much more to give.

There is still much to do (both as a mom and writer!), but now that the latest big project is complete, I am left to wonder: where my mind is meant to wander?

This is my moment to breathe before I dive into the book promotion and marketing, which will be its own tremendous emotional and creative undertaking. This is also my moment to contemplate motherhood before I need to prep the gifts, the cupcakes, and the candles.

And so, I give myself permission to do exactly what I invite my Sovereign Writers to do when I see myself at a creative and emotional crossroads.

I sit down to write.

The Writing Coach Gets Writer’s Block, Too

But where do I begin now that the project that has occupied my attention for so long is finally finished? What requires or deserves my attention?

Should I try to recapture the emotions of the day I birthed my first growing girl? Is it important to review the decade that stretches back to that stunning moment of her arrival? Should I fill a page with tales of my daughter’s power and potential, weaving prayers that her courage will blaze more brightly than her fear and that her sense of Sovereignty with outmatch the bastards who will inevitably try to get her down?

Or, can I just watch the falling leaves litter the page and savor the sweetness as a ladybug alights on my moving pen? Can I just let the day mother me as I trust that my creations, both human and literary, can make their way through this day without my worry nor intervention? 

Can I just be in this moment, tired and proud, overflowing with gratitude and apprehension? Can I put aside my worries for just a little while and meet myself on the page during this perfect October afternoon? 

The Medicine I Take When the Words Won’t Flow

And this is when I realize that, even though I know writing is the best medicine, sometimes it requires a big old spoonful of sugar first.

You need to get centered and refocus your inner vision before you can just dive in and meet yourself on a blank page.

When this happens to me, I do something that I’ve been doing since long before I became a mother or an author… I look to the cards. 

This might be my first child’s tenth birthday, but it’s almost my tarot deck’s twentieth. In 1999, I was an American college student living in Galway, Ireland. On Samhain - that’s probably “Halloween” to you - I bought Caitlin Matthew’s Celtic Wisdom Tarot at the Hawkins House Bookshop. I’ve called on these cards for guidance and assurance ever since.

I never cease to be surprised and gratified by the messages that come through when I take the time to consult the cards. (And I never stop saying, “You can’t make this shit up!”) As I saw the cards arrayed before me on this particular autumn afternoon, part of me sighed “of course” and part of me gasped “thank you.”

The cards that come up for my daughter and my book offered layers of blessings and hope. The card that represents me showed me how much I am struggling to accept all the goodness and all the possibility being lavished upon us right now.

Inside My “What Needs My Attention Now?” Tarot Reading

I came to the cards knowing that I both my daughter’s milestone birthday and the birthing of my book were competing for my attention. I also knew that I was confused about how to hold myself in the midst of all this creative magic.

Though I didn’t know what to write about in my journal, I knew just what to do with the cards. Intuitively, I laid two cards for my daughter, and two cards for my book. I placed one card for myself at the center.

Of course, the first card to represent my daughter is a 10. The 10 of Art (the suit of Cups in a more traditional deck) is a sign of joy, harmony with the earth, and lasting happiness. The other card is the 1 of Knowledge (the Ace of Pentacles), which indicates Sovereignty and “the touchstone of self-realization.” It’s a perfect way to describe her own next decade, the one in which she will begin to make her own choices and learn how to work with the princess within so she can crown herself queen of her own life.

As for my book, the first card is The Fool. In the Celtic Wisdom deck, it’s called The Soul. The wide-open wanderer is just starting out on the great quest. This card is followed by the 1 of Skill (or the Ace of Wands) and is another potent symbol of beginnings, enterprise, and creative initiatives. I know I am meant to understand that the publication of this book is just the start of the adventure.

Finally, there is the card that represents me at the center of my two most vivid concerns, motherhood and authorship.

The 6 of Art (again, that’s the suit of Cups) is the only card that is out of sync with all these 10s, 1s, and 0s. It depicts a student poet in one of Ireland’s ancient bardic academies lying with eyes closed in “the house of memory.” This is where the storytellers would go to compose poetry and commit to memory the great sagas that preserved and connected the culture.

I smile because I am a storyteller and I love this card. It is the only card in the spread that is reversed, however. When a card is upside down, I understand that to mean that its energy is available to me, but it’s blocked or impeded in some way. I want to be the bard, but I’ve been so caught up in wanting it that I couldn’t see that I already am.

Finding a Way to the Page

Seeing my own story re-told before me through a series of symbols and myths loosened my grip on “can I? and “should I?” and released me from all that self-imposed stress. I was able to soak up the sunlight and simply be with the big moments that are ten years of motherhood and the birthing of a book.

Thanks to the cards, I was able to get to the page to tell this story, a story that matters to me as a mom and an author who wants to recall this important moment of becoming. I was able to perform what I call the Alchemy of Story and take my own wonder, worry, and experience and use it to tell a story that just might help a reader like you.

There are so many ways to access the stories within you. I have a feeling that the cards can help you as they’ve helped me.

Whether you’re a writer hoping to get clarity on your next creative project of your simply someone who finds herself asking “what needs my attention now?” I would love to share the cards with you.

Learn more about how a Tarot and Intuitive Healing Session can help you live and tell a more powerful story. (Book a session by October 31 and save $50!)

As I Remember It by Guest Storyteller Ginny Taylor

As I remember it, three of us physician assistant students sat around a table, a group project before us, “What is Child Abuse?” It was 1979. Child abuse was just emerging then - even though it has been in the world for thousands of years - as something criminal. Definitions appeared in texts with photos of cigarette burns on young arms, of babies’ bottoms blistered from hot water.

As PA students, we needed to recognize these signs to treat them as burns and referrals to social workers. This was physical abuse.

But then there was also this other term, sexual abuse. Old men flashing children. Rape. Molestation.

And suddenly, for the first time in ten years, a memory resurfaced. A man old enough to be my grandfather. A trusted camp counselor, a man we called Uncle Jim.  Positioning me, my back to him so I couldn’t see his face. His hand between my thighs. Groping the crotch of my bathing suit. Fondling.

Then, on the heels of this memory, a realization hits me.

I had been molested. In 1969 while at a summer church camp, I had been sexually abused.

And I say to my group, “This happened to me.”

At least, I think I say this aloud, for it’s always at this point my memory blurs. I know I say it to myself. And I know there is silence afterwards.

Perhaps it’s silence from the group. But even if they had spoken, what would they have said? We were only being trained on treating the physical signs. We were years away from inserting PTSD into our lexicon. We are still are years away from de-stigmatizing mental illness.

I don’t blame my group of peers for not speaking up in my watery memory, just as I now no longer blame myself for the decades of silence that followed. All of us were only coping the best we could with the tools we had.

Just like that molested girl… Just like that 10-year-old girl who, when Uncle Jim let her go, ran down the path to the swimming pool and dove deep… Just like that girl who resurfaced still holding her breath.

Women of Wonder founder Ginny Taylor teaches holistic practices like those in the WONDER COMPASS Story Art Pages, that can help women become the heroine of their own healing journey.

In recognition of National Sexual Assault Awareness month, special pricing on the WONDER COMPASS Story Art Pages is available.

Writing prompt: Defend what you hold sacred

I came across this cartoon in The New Yorker. Though I don't have much experience with reflexology, I think there's something to the acupuncture points that correspond to the overall health of the body. I felt the usual "there they go, judging the healers, the ancient wisdom keepers, and the 'airy fairy' contingent" and just kept reading the Annie Proulx short story that had my interest.

This is something I'm used to. And I bet you are too. If you're a vaguely interesting human you hold opinions that will be ridiculed by the mainstream press, the intelligentsia, macho culture, you name it.

Today, I invite you to write into a time you had to defend something you hold sacred. Perhaps it's a story about a time you didn't speak up and you still regret it. 

Tell me about the writing process in the comments, share your story and tag me, or submit you quick piece for publication in a future #365StrongStories guest storyteller post.