Looking Back to Move Ahead
Photo by EBB
This time last year, I inventoried what went well in 2023. I urged readers to consider doing the same as I’m big on looking back.
The list making was valuable but I now know that the idea bubbled up from concerns about what was to come. I wasn’t sure what was in store for me, professionally. At the time, I had a few private writing clients, a book in mind and several workshops under construction, but I felt suspended somewhere between a desire to slow down or rev up. I was approaching an age that traditionally signals gradual deceleration, but I wasn’t ready for that. Yet I wasn’t sure about how best to proceed.
A confluence of events - a perfect storm of things - turned this all around.
At my lowest point, I remembered the page. It had been a long time since I journaled or wrote in a private way. I returned with a new twist: I wrote letters to God.
I wrote and then listened. I recognized that I had fallen into a sort of existential angst, pondering my purpose and what it all meant. What those letters showed was a yearning to reconnect with my soul’s desires, my heart’s knowing, with what I was called to do with the time I have left.
The letters led me to find a spiritual director – a wise and gifted facilitator with whom I now meet monthly. The combination of the letter writing and spiritual direction cleared space and helped me rediscover the core interests of my life - the psychological, the literary and the spiritual - and how I could integrate them into my professional life.
That’s when I recognized that the book I was writing was a coaching approach that already integrated psychology, language and spirituality. I organized it into parts that would translate for people in varying stages of their writing journey.
By summer, the angst was transforming into action. I had developed two new coaching programs (now three) and by fall the work I was doing with writers had not just increased, but deepened. A different kind of writer was finding me; one interested in the psycholiteraryspiritual elements of the writing process.
Looking back reminds us that we don’t stay in challenging spaces for long. In Judaism, we call these places mitzrayim, the Hebrew word meaning the narrow place. It refers to the time Jews were limited emotionally, physically and spiritually by enslavement, followed by difficult exodus from Egypt which ultimately led to freedom. We can feel stilled - squeezed - for a time but it slows us down as if to prepare for a new chapter.
You may be feeling like you’ve been on a long journey this year. So many people I know do. If this finds you in a narrow place right now, may you see an opening in the wood, a path in the not-so-far-off distance, whether it’s a return to the page or simply a light shining in another direction.
To a healthy and meaningful holiday season.
You can now find me in three new formats: I just hopped onto Substack, Bluesky and Threads in the hope of widening the reach of these conversations. Feel free to chat or share.
Photo by EBB.
Grateful for the editors who resonated with my work this year and for the privilege of publication. 🙏🏽
Five Minute Lit * Chicago Story Press * Ritualwell * Yellow Arrow Publishing
Click here for a look at my three new coaching offerings:
The Reach (three months), The Dive (six months) and The Dig (twelve months)
Schedule a free 30-minute consult with me here.