As a writing guide, I am honored to help women experience the beautiful, powerful and transformative practice of contemplative writing. Our journals can be so much more than a place to vent and record the events of our lives. I have had more epiphanies and ah-ha moments in the pages of my journals than I could ever express, but it was when I began sharing writing with other women that I fully realized its power. These shared writing experiences offered the opportunity to explore an assortment of techniques which has evolved into what I call guided contemplative writing.
Contemplative writing has the power to surprise, reveal and liberate. It provides brilliant clarity and allows you to discover your voice and your true self, and amazingly, to come to accept, embrace and love who you really are, just as you are and honor YOUR authentic path.
There is freedom in clarity!
Contemplative writing is writing that comes from your True Self, the self you were before life’s stories and beliefs and opinions piled up on top of you and you kind of stopped remembering who you actually were anymore. I want you to get really familiar and good at NOTICING how you feel and seeing your thoughts, stories and beliefs. I see contemplative writing as an attention practice. When you know who you are and where you are, you can release what holds you back and move forward.
Contemplative writing is like
holding a mirror up to your True Self.
I call it “The Great Revealer.”
Women are surprised when they first experience the power of contemplative writing – it can be astonishing to see what is written on the page, things you never would have expected. When you embrace this practice, you will learn things about yourself that you never realized. You will begin to develop a solid sense of who you are and a comfort with yourself that you didn’t know was possible.
What is guided contemplative writing?Decades of journal writing and sharing writing experiences with women has evolved into what I now call guided contemplative writing. It’s designed to trip up our thinking brain, allowing us to write completely new things and make new discoveries. We approach from a place of curiosity, wonder, non-judgment, allowing; this is the contemplative stance.
Using timed writings, visualizations, surprising prompts and an assortment of writing styles allows us to bypass thinking brain, getting us out of our own way, out from under a lifetime of stories we have been carrying around with us, that we didn’t even know were there.
I want to empower and encourage women to truly KNOW themselves, to have an opportunity to accept themselves as they are, to know how they want to be in this world, to be the most content versions of themselves and to nourish and care for themselves. Contemplative writing helps to do all of these things in a beautiful, healing and transformative way. As with most practices, you’ll know its power once you experience it. 
During circles, I sometimes just sit back and watch, amazed, as the writing takes on a life of its own, watching as women come to giant, beautiful realizations about themselves and their lives. One participant put it perfectly when she looked so surprised after she had finished writing; she looked up and exclaimed,
“I had no idea that was in there!” She was able to access, because of the techniques, something that had been buried deep within. And if we don’t know it’s in there, how can we work with it, either by allowing it to teach us something about ourselves or by beginning to let it go?
Opportunities for exploring guided contemplative writing:
