I couldn’t do this with just anyone: The Power of the Private Writing Retreat
You cannot take people to places you have not gone.
This article is for anyone who’s ever wanted to write a book about difficult experiences. I received a powerful and unexpected message this morning as I prepared to go into the studio to record the audiobook for my second book, The Last Ceremony: One Woman’s Journey of Creativity and Healing with Plant Medicine.
Whenever I go into the recording studio, whether it’s for a podcast or an audiobook, I feel a bit anxious. I may present as someone who’s always confident, but there are things that make me nervous — like spending six hours in a studio. This morning, I received a message from someone who is coming to a writing retreat with me next week. Her story is as difficult, if not more difficult, than mine — probably more. She’s experienced significant trauma throughout her life. She wrote, “I couldn’t do this with just anyone. Having you guide me through this process is incredibly meaningful to me. I’ve long admired your spirit and energy, and I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
Receiving a message like that fills me with a profound sense of purpose, especially as I prepare to host a writing retreat. I know I’m about to embark on a journey with someone, and together, we’ll transmute the emotional power, the story, and the experiences they’ve been holding inside into something incredible, beautiful, and meaningful. This process requires a level of resilience and capacity that many people don’t have. So the first thing I want to tell you is that if you have survived something incredibly difficult, you are a very powerful person.
You may not see it that way — I didn’t for almost 50 years. I used to think these things happened to me because I was helpless, that I made mistakes, that I could have done better. But if you have survived terrible things, you are an incredibly powerful person. You have a capacity to hold pain, confusion, negative emotions, and difficult experiences. Writing, especially through memoirs or life stories, allows us to move that energy through us so it’s not stuck in our bodies anymore. Without expression, these things stay in a perpetual loop inside our minds and bodies.
Typically, therapeutic expression is encouraged through tears, emoting, or even pounding pillows. I’ve done all of those, and they can be critical for breaking through the resistance that protects you from overwhelming feelings. But it’s not enough until there is a complete transmutation of this energy — until it goes all the way through, until you are no longer intimidated by your own story, until you are no longer the victim but the hero of your story. True healing, which comes from the word “holos,” meaning wholeness, happens when you embrace all parts of yourself and the full experience of your life.
Not everyone has to embrace and accept the same things, and some of the things you have to embrace may be more evil, ugly, painful, or scary than what others face. But that’s why you have more power than others. It’s in the alchemy of that power, in creating your life story, even if you never show it to anyone, that you find healing. When I first started writing, I didn’t intend to share my story widely. But in expressing it, I received gifts — like the message I shared with you — where someone says, “I see how you stand in your story, and I want to own my story too.”
If I had been writing this 10 years ago, it would have been different. I’ve been writing my whole career — I published a doctoral dissertation in 2005, wrote for The Huffington Post, MindBodyGreen, and published an ebook in 2015. It’s not like I wasn’t writing, emoting, or healing. But the things I wasn’t saying, the secrets I wasn’t sharing, were holding me back. They prevented me from doing my best work and blocked me from having the connection I now have with others who have gone where I’ve gone.
You can’t take people to places you haven’t been. You can pretend, but you won’t truly help them achieve the results they want if you haven’t traveled that path yourself. I’ve traveled that path. I’ve taken a dozen people down that path, and I’ll take two more this month. On the other side, they’ll hold their stories in an entirely new way.
Last year, I wrote All This Healing is Killing Me. Beyond changing my career and allowing me to support others, the greatest gift of writing it is that I no longer have to replay those painful experiences in my mind or body. I’ve found the lessons in my experiences, the wisdom in my journey, and I’ve expressed them in a way that is authentically true to myself. I’ve given this to the world, and in doing so, others have received it and thanked me for my honesty.
When you’re honest, whether in a conversation or in your writing, you connect with yourself and others. It’s challenging to be honest about the things we’ve been told to keep secret, especially when those secrets involve others’ bad behavior. Most people writing memoirs are not the perpetrators of their own stories. Yes, we may have made bad choices because dealing with trauma is hard. I drank too much, smoked too many cigarettes, and dated the wrong people. But eventually, I pulled myself together, found resources, accepted blessings and support, and leaned into the uncomfortable.
The second book I’m recording today is about how plant medicine has helped me on my journey. In the past five years, I’ve leaned into mushrooms, herbal medicines, ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro, and other plant medicines that have been on this planet far longer than we have. These plants are part of my story, the story I’m recording today.
I read three pages of this story to my crew when we were in New Mexico for my birthday trip to the Modern Elder Academy and I was weeping. I’m actually concerned that I won’t be able to get through two hours of reading my story in the studio without crying. But it’s not grief — it’s the overwhelming gratitude I feel for these teachers who have come into my life, impacted me positively, and helped me become stronger and healthier. The divine intervention, magic, synchronicity, and blessings I’ve experienced in the last few years are hard to believe, even for me.
When you write a memoir, especially about trauma, the first draft often focuses on the terrible things. But as you write, you need to go back and recognize the angels, the therapists, teachers, friends, family members, or even animals and plants that helped you survive. When you express that, you start to see the bigger picture and the larger purpose.
Writing my two memoirs has made my purpose clearer. How could all these things have unfolded as they did if I wasn’t supposed to be here at this moment, doing exactly what I’m doing now? The same is true for you. If you want to do more, have more impact, live a more meaningful life, you need to go deeper. You need to get to the deepest layers of honesty — where you need to take accountability, forgive yourself, and forgive others. When you reach those layers, the freedom, satisfaction, spaciousness, and serenity you’ll feel are unparalleled. For me, there was no other way to get there.
So I’m taking all of this and I’m going into the studio today to record another book for you that you will hopefully have by the end of the year. And I hope it inspires you honestly. If you are someone that has ever wanted to write a book, just start. I can support you, but even if you don’t work with me, just start — one page at a time.
If you want to journey with me: Book here.
If you want to read my book: All This Healing is Killing Me.
