May 3, 2024 • 58 mins
Meredith Heller invites us to write as a path toward self-understanding and as a lifelong refuge of unwavering friendship with yourself. Meredith used the power of writing to heal and save her own life and in her latest book Writing By Heart she encourages us to do the same. I can’t imagine how anyone reading her book or listening to this episode would not feel moved to pick up a pen and start writing. Her no frills, rule breaking and creative approach to writing makes a process that’s typically daunting super accessible.
Meredith is a poet, author, singer/songwriter, nature lover, and educator. Her passion is empowering women to believe in themselves, trust their creative instincts, cultivate their curiosity, tap their wild wisdom, speak their truth, and ignite their hearts.
In this episode, Meredith discusses:
- How writing became a lifeline in her early life
- Writing poetry as a way to heal and express yourself
- Her use of the word “poetry” as an umbrella term
- How to make writing a practice to learn, discover, and access authenticity
- How her book is an invitation to explore
- The way her relationship with her emotions developed and evolved because of writing
- Living a “synchromystic” life
- Getting to know your body through writing
- The influence of shamanic practice
- Experimenting with different means for getting the words out of you
Meredith’s website
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Wendy (00:01):
You're listening to Lucid Cafe. I'm your host, Wendy
Halley. Hello, and welcome toanother episode of Lucid Cafe, a
(00:35):
podcast exploring healing,consciousness, and the
complexities of being human.Well, it turns out I'm in the
midst of a period of unplannedupgrades. It's actually great,
but a wee bit jarring.
10 months ago mother naturecreated an opportunity for me to
upgrade my wellness centerincluding getting a new energy
(00:58):
therapy pod called the HarmonicEgg Ellipse. And now that I've
had it for a couple of months,witnessing how it's impacting
people's lives and health iskinda blowing my mind. So
definitely an amazing upgrade.Thank you, mother nature. And if
you listened to the lastepisode, I announced that I'm
preparing to release anintroductory online course
(01:21):
called Become Your Own Shaman,which is really exciting.
And turns out I have to do amajor upgrade to my website to
make it possible to add anonline course to it, which I'm
in the process of doing. Andguess how smoothly the
transition went? Not reallysmoothly. But I was able to
(01:42):
rebuild enough of the pertinentpage on my site over this last
weekend to have a functioningsite again. But sadly, the
library of podcast episodes Ihad created that were listed by
topic didn't make thetransition.
So I'll be chipping away atrecreating those pages in the
coming weeks, in case you'relooking for them. My hope is to
(02:04):
still get the become your ownshaman online course up and
running sometime this summer. Soplease sign up for my newsletter
if you'd like to get updates,which you can do either on the
podcast website at the bottom ofthe page or on the contact page
on my websitelucidpathwellness.com. Or you
(02:24):
can always subscribe to LucidCafe so you never miss an
episode, and I'll also continuegiving quick updates on the
podcast. Alright.
I'm hoping today's episode willinspire you to wanna do some
writing. My guest, MeredithHeller, has lived quite a life.
Creating music and writing werethe things that saved her from a
(02:47):
very difficult and traumaticchildhood. Now she's helping
others to find their innerwriters. In this episode,
Meredith talks about how her newbook, Writing by Heart, A Poetry
Path to Healing and SelfDiscovery, is inspiring women to
find and express their authenticvoices.
I can't imagine how anyonereading this book would not feel
(03:10):
moved to pick up a pen and startwriting. Her easy, rule
breaking, and creative approachto writing makes a process
that's typically daunting superaccessible. So please enjoy my
really fun conversation withMeredith Heller. Oh, Meredith,
thank you so much for joiningme.
Meredith (03:31):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you. What
a treat.
Wendy (03:35):
Well, I'm looking forward to to chatting with you about
your new book, Writing by Heart,A Poetry Path to Healing and
Self Discovery. But before wedive into your book, I'd love to
learn a little bit about yourwriting journey, what that's
been like.
Meredith (03:50):
Absolutely. Thank you. So poetry found me. I left home
young. I left home at 12, 13years old and raised myself
living in domes I built in thewoods along the Potomac River in
Maryland, about 20 minutesoutside of Washington DC.
I lived in domes I built. Ilived in abandoned houses and
(04:15):
old barns, and I was very alone.I had a lot of trauma. I I had
horrible depressions, and all ofmy friends were dying of suicide
and drug overdose, and I wasn'tfar behind them. Oh, man.
And poetry found me. I wouldget-- I'm also a singer
(04:37):
songwriter. I would get thefirst line of poetry or song in
my left ear like a lifeline anda work permit that said, stay
here and find a way to name theoverwhelming feelings of loss
and longing and find a way toname it and shape it into
(05:04):
something that brings me togreater clarity, deeper
understanding, and possiblybeauty. So that's how it began,
And it was always my muse andwhatever I was making, whether
it was a poem or a song thatkept me engaged in life. And I
(05:28):
didn't share any of my work fora very long time, probably 20
years.
It was my refuge. It was how Iprayed. And I didn't want
anybody near it. I don'tremember what first started me
sharing, but but as I began toshare my poetry and my music,
and I saw how it lit somethingin other people that helped them
(05:56):
to know themselves, then Irealized it's not mine. It's
mine.
I shape it. It comes through me,but it's bigger than me. Right.
Yeah. And so, that's when lifestarted getting more exciting,
and I realized I was in deeprelationship with my creativity.
(06:19):
So then I had dropped out ofschool as a teenager, I went
back to school. I got anundergraduate degree. I got 2
graduate degrees in writing andeducation and started teaching
in the schools as a poet in theschools. So I was a poet in the
schools for 30 years, and thatwas an amazing experience.
Wendy (06:40):
What ages did you teach?
Meredith (06:42):
Yeah. 1st through 12th grade, but I specialized with
teen girls for empowerment andself expression, of course,
because that's where my brokenopen happened.
Wendy (06:56):
That makes perfect sense. Especially after reading your
book, you don't talk about yourhistory in this particular book,
but now it makes a whole lot ofsense. The voice has such
authority in it, and it's such awelcome invitation to anyone who
would like to try writingpoetry. So now hearing your
story, it makes perfect sense.You're coming from direct
(07:18):
experience of how it helped you.
It transformed you.
Meredith (07:22):
Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. And even yes. And I I'm
always coming from that personalexperience of knowing.
So my first book, Write A Poem,Save Your Life, is my story of
how it saved me. Like, and I andI do tell about, oh, tip of the
iceberg of some of the stuffthat happened as a teen, how I
(07:46):
lost my voice through trauma,how I found my voice and started
reconnecting the abandoned partsof myself and calling myself
back home and being able to holda space for all of me, like the
(08:08):
the sorrow and the depressionand the doubt and the mess and
the all of the broken down andcollapsed parts and the bravery
and the courage and the beautyand the brilliance and the all
of it. And that's when I reallymy healing path really started.
(08:30):
And I I realized that there'swholeness in this making room
for all of it. And I thinkthat's my main message.
So I work with adult women nowall over the US and a few around
the world. I think that's mymain message is through the
writing that we're doing thispersonal self reflective and
(08:54):
expressive, making room for allof the parts of ourselves. This
is how we become whole. This ishow we heal. And opening this
line, like you were saying aboutthe voice, love that you brought
that in, opening this line ofknowing what I feel and being
(09:17):
able to voice it.
I think for everybody, butespecially for women, It is
really our anchor and ourempowerment.
Wendy (09:28):
I think I know what you mean, but I would love for you
to explain why you think it'simportant for women to reach
inside and identify theirfeelings and, I guess, process
them, you're suggesting throughpoetry. Why do you think it's
extra important for women to dothat?
Meredith (09:47):
Yeah. It's such a great question. Thank you. I
think that as women, we tend totake care of others.
Wendy (09:57):
You think!?
Meredith (10:00):
Just a little. Do you think?
Wendy (10:03):
It's like genetic.
Meredith (10:04):
That's what I'm saying. I was trying to find
that line.
That's exactly what I wanted tosay. It is in our DNA to care
for the babies. And so we learnto push our own needs and wants
and intuition and desire asidefor others. And there's a beauty
(10:33):
in that as caretakers, but Ibelieve our true power comes
when we attend to what's here inus, what's bubbling up in our
bellies, in our hearts, and giveit our attention, tend to it
(10:55):
with curiosity and kindness andcourage.
Wendy (11:02):
Yes. Absolutely. And as you're talking, I was just
thinking about a little talk Idid last night and talking about
the nature of these times andhow challenging they are. And I
was referencing a a visionaryexperience I had back in 2008,
which talked about these comingtimes and how it sort of tied
(11:22):
into this chaos we'reexperiencing and trying to
explain that. And what Idiscovered during that whole
process is that a lot ofprophecy, a lot of indigenous
prophecy was revealed around thetime of the Mayan long count
calendar ending.
I don't know if you remember all
Meredith (11:40):
that in 2012. I do. I totally remember that.
Wendy (11:43):
Yeah. It was very dramatic. Lots of films and is
the world gonna end kind oftalk. But what I discovered is
that and I don't know if this isaccurate or not, is that it's
the end of a world age and thebeginning of a new world age,
and these world ages are, like,5000 plus years long. And the
(12:03):
world age that's ending rightnow is dominated by the
masculine, and we're about tomove into the world age that's
Meredith (12:15):
I wish you guys could see Hallelujah. I wish you could
see Hallelujah.
Wendy (12:18):
The body language Meredith is throwing
Meredith (12:21):
at me right now. So The vomit and the and the draw
in the new.
Wendy (12:27):
So we're moving into a period, which I'd like to
believe is true, where there'sbalance between the masculine
and the feminine. So I I wonderabout this tendency for women to
quiet our voices is a byproduct.I wonder if it's always been
that way throughout humanhistory or if it's more of a
byproduct of this latest worldage where the masculine has been
(12:51):
dominant. And so we had to kindof step back and swallow our
voices. Just a thought.
Any thoughts?
Meredith (12:58):
I totally agree. And it's not my area of research,
but I know that there werematriarchal cultures and
societies. And so I think whatyou're saying is, is that it
does cycle. But what I loveabout what you're saying is you
said the balance. And I thinkthat is what we're really
(13:19):
talking feminine has beensuppressed and repressed.
And I would even argue it'sbecause it is we are, the
feminine is so powerful, sopotent. And just like the way,
(13:43):
this might be controversial, butjust in the way that the church
and so many religions squelchedand made the body bad, We are
embodied in this lifetime. Thisbody is our instrument. Let's
come through it, not rise aboveit, not bury it
Wendy (14:03):
Or ignore it. Yeah.
Meredith (14:05):
Ignore it. Thank you. Not make it bad and wrong, but
live through it. This is ourhuman experience. Let's
experience everything we can.
And the sensuality is thefeminine, so bring her.
Wendy (14:22):
I'll drink to that. I am. So so poetry in particular has a
sensuality to it, wouldn't yousay?
Meredith (14:31):
Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. That's a beautiful
thing to say. Thank you.Absolutely.
There's there's yeah. She's usedthat was that was poetry. There
there's Check me out. Yeah.Check look at you.
There's music. There's rhythm inpoetry, and this is sensual. You
(14:52):
know? I mean, a lot of timeswhen I'm writing, I will take
the skeleton of a of a poem withme on my walks. My walking is my
meditation.
I will take that skeleton ofthat poem on the walk and flesh
it out to my heartbeat, mybreath, my stride. And so this
(15:13):
is another way to make ourwriting unique to our own
rhythm. I do wanna say one thingabout poetry. I am using poetry
these days as an umbrella termbecause sometimes poetry
intimidates people, and and Iwanna do the opposite. I really
wanna invite people in to thispoetry practice as a way of
(15:39):
presencing and expressing what'sreal and what's really going on
down deep.
And, and, so these days I'musing poetry as an umbrella term
for this personal selfreflective expressive writing,
(16:01):
and all forms of writing arewelcome if you work along with
the book, if you come to myworkshops. You can write in any
form you want, Poetry, prose,story, mind spill, heart spill,
song lyrics, make up your ownform. Just write. That's where
I'm coming from.
Wendy (16:19):
And that feels so freeing, right, for someone
especially who really wants towrite and they've never have
before. And I think a lot ofpeople hear about all of the the
rules they have to follow. Iknow I certainly have in my in
my history of writing.Absolutely. And it it is
intimidating, and it feels likethere's a right and a wrong way
(16:41):
to write, which is sad.
Don't you think? It's terrible.You're suggesting the opposite.
There is no right or wrong way.It's just, like, just get the
shit out of you, whateverwhatever way you have to.
Meredith (16:52):
I'm suggesting there is a right way
Wendy (16:54):
Yeah?
Meredith (16:55):
And that's your way. Okay. Okay. Yeah. However you do
it
Wendy (16:58):
Mhmm.
Meredith (16:59):
However it comes naturally for you or in whatever
ways you wanna experiment andexplore, that's your way. That
is the right way because thistunes us back into listening,
trusting our creative instinctand our intuition. And this is
(17:19):
what creativity is. I mean, weare, all of us, innately
creative because we'reexpressions of life force. Life
force is creative.
How could we be anythingdifferent? Right? And so any
form of of any open door ofcreativity is about deep play.
Wendy (17:38):
As long as you don't use adjectives or adverbs.
Meredith (17:43):
Exactly. Right. But just throw away all the rules.
Yeah, throw away the rules andwrite to commune with your deep
self, write to touch what'sreally here and give it
expression, and then have whatyou wrote be a mirror so you can
(18:07):
even have that feedback loop ofwhere you are and what's going
on. And when you start doingthis kind of writing and you're
tuning into, like, deep psychewhere the metaphors live and the
subterranean world that weusually push away and don't talk
about, you know, like the deep,dark, fertile, this is where it
becomes alive.
(18:29):
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And thething you're writing, you start
to write things that you didn'tknow you knew, but you do
because you're tapping what Icall wild wisdom. And when you
get to this place in yourwriting where you're willing to
(18:49):
not know, and then you writesomething that's like, boom, how
did I write that? Where did thatcome from?
That image, that metaphor is soholds the space for me to
understand what I'm goingthrough. And that's what keeps
you coming back to your writingbecause it's a place of learning
(19:11):
and discovering and becomingmore of who you are. It's rich.
It's so rich. Yeah.
And alive.
Wendy (19:24):
And you think about it. It's our birthright. Right? I
mean, that's how we've learnedthroughout our history is
through telling story, and Idon't think it matters what form
it takes. Right?
Absolutely. But finding ways totell your own story or even
someone else's story, that's areally cool healing thing.
Meredith (19:44):
Yeah. I love that you bring that up about story. One
of the things I notice inworkshop in the workshops that I
teach that's so beautiful is 2really important things happen
in workshop. 1, we're sharingour pieces so we're being
witnessed, And there's so muchhealing in being witnessed,
(20:04):
especially when we take thingsout of hiding and air them. And
then we're hearing everyoneelse's story, and so we have
this sense of commonality.
We're not alone. For the mostpart as human beings, we have
the same needs and wants andfears and dreams and longings
and desires. We're human beings.This is what we're doing. And
(20:28):
yet And yet.
Wendy (20:30):
And yet we feel so alone Right. Especially with our
wounds. We might feel like we'rethe only one who feels this way.
Exactly. You keep it veryprivate.
Right. But you're saying, no.Bring it out and share it, and
you find that it's universal.
Meredith (20:47):
Exactly. It's universal. So as we begin
sharing these things thatexactly what you said that have
made us feel alone and insularand that we've kept private.
When we start to share these andhear other people sharing them,
we see the universality of ourhuman experience. On the one
(21:11):
hand, paradoxically, we findthat our story and everything
we've been through is unique,and it matters.
Our voice, our story, and how weengage and participate in the
whether it's a workshop or thefamily or the community or the
(21:33):
whole living community of lifematters. So we hold both of
these at the same time. Oh mygod. I'm not so different, and
I'm totally unique, and itmatters simultaneously woven
together.
Wendy (21:48):
Love it. Your book, Writing by Heart, is really an
invitation.
Meredith (21:53):
Absolutely. And all and and I don't I don't never
use the word writing prompt. Idon't ever wanna be prompted
into anything. I wanna beinvited. So they're all called
invitation.
So I love that you saidinvitation. It's an invitation
for your muse to find you, foryour poetry and your musicality
of language to find you, and foryou to find your voice.
Wendy (22:18):
How do you think writing poetry or whatever form it takes
can be like medicine?
Meredith (22:25):
Yeah. What happens when we come to writing, as I
say, as a practice rather thanas a perfect. This is writing as
a practice. It begins to nourishus and nurture us, and we begin
(22:47):
to weave the lost and abandonedand exiled, wounded, painful
parts of ourselves back intobeing on board in the wholeness
of who we are, And this is wherethe medicine lives, in this
(23:10):
remembering and making room forall of it without judging it,
without saying my depression isbad. My depression has really
important juju for me if I'mwilling to dig in and find the
treasure.
And you can do that in yourwriting because you can be
(23:31):
totally honest. Who who's whoare you writing for? In this
kind of writing, nobody outhere. You are writing for
yourself. And if you don't wantanybody to ever find it, burn it
or rip it up.
But you've been there withyourself doing the dig into the
down and dirty and coming upmuddy with with dirt on your
(23:53):
fingernails and a grin on yourface because you've tasted
what's real.
Wendy (23:59):
You speak in poem.
Meredith (24:02):
I like that. Why not? If I have a choice, why not?
Wendy (24:06):
No. No. It's beautiful. Very musical, very lyrical, the
way you talk. I was gonna saythat, I I've always kind of
looked at symptoms as, like, anysymptom that anyone has as,
important.
Right? And it's trying to getyour attention because it has a
story to tell. And so whatyou're suggesting is tell
whatever you're feeling, tellthe story of that feeling or the
(24:28):
symptom, depression being asymptom, or or anxiety or
whatever. That's incrediblypowerful. It's a an
acknowledgment.
Meredith (24:38):
Yeah. It's a being with. It's an opening the
doorway for whatever ispresenting itself also to have a
voice. Because we want to learnits wisdom. We wanna learn what
it needs.
If we give the symptom or theparts of the body. There's a big
(25:03):
chapter in the book on bodylanguage. I was a bodyworker for
27 years. I specialized in doingrehab of spinal cord injury
patients. What I I mean, Iworked with 100 of thousands of
bodies, and what I learned isthat if we give it the
invitation, the body will tellus its medicine, how to heal it,
(25:29):
what it needs, what it longsfor.
We open that conversation justlike the writing is opening this
conversation, this communingwith deep self. And from here,
anything is possible.
Wendy (25:49):
Alright. Let's start writing, folks.
Meredith (25:50):
Okay. Let's do it. Here we go.
Wendy (25:52):
That's how I felt when I was reading your book. I was
like, oh, I
Meredith (25:56):
Time to write. It's time to write.
Wendy (25:58):
Yeah, exactly. Because it's it's really probably is
akin to taking one of yourworkshops is what I'm guessing.
Yeah. But you get to do it inthe privacy of your own home if
they can't meet with you inperson or however. Do you do
workshops online too?
Meredith (26:14):
So right now, I'm teaching online mainly. Oh,
okay. I do in person retreats,but you have to you have to come
to a couple of workshops, onlineworkshops before you can come to
the retreat because we theretreat starts deep and goes
deeper.
Wendy (26:30):
Gotcha. Yeah. No. That makes sense.
Meredith (26:32):
Yeah.
Wendy (26:32):
So your book is, like, there's so many creative ways to
engage yourself in a writingprocess, and you make it, again,
like I was saying before, soaccessible. Yeah. It's not
intimidating at all. So foranyone who might feel like, oh,
I'm not a writer, hell, yeah,you are. You can do it,
especially with with this book.
Meredith (26:55):
Yeah. Just open any I say the pages every page is a
doorway. Open any doorway andwalk through to your where to
yourself? It's a doorway to you.You're making more room to know
yourself, to explore yourself,to express yourself.
What could be better? And thenthe way you show up, it echoes
(27:18):
into your life. Women who cometo my workshop say, we walk the
workshop into our life.
Wendy (27:27):
I like that.
Meredith (27:29):
Yeah. Right? We stand taller. We have more support in
who we are, in in what we knowabout ourselves, being able to
have a feeling and know how toarticulate it more easily, to
ask for what we want, to knowwhat we need. Like, they walk
(27:51):
that into their life, and I'mlike, whoo wee.
It's just like a
Wendy (27:56):
big boost of power, personal power and and
confidence. That's one of thequestions I was gonna ask you,
and you just kind of answeredit, I think, unless you wanna
embellish or add. Can you speakto how writing transformed you?
Like, how it healed you?
Meredith (28:13):
Yeah. Absolutely. Having left home so young, 12,
13 years old, with absolutely nosupport and no stability and
everything that I knewconstantly changing and
constantly falling away, myfriends all dying. I was pretty
(28:36):
shut down, and I did not haveconfidence or self esteem. I was
pretty, like, in survival mode.
And as I began writing more andmore, it gave me the capacity to
(29:00):
I have very deep feelings. I'vealways felt
Wendy (29:05):
everything. You know? Like I I suspect you're not
alone with that. Yeah.
Meredith (29:10):
Right. Exactly. Like, if most people just have 7
colors, I have 64. I feel everysingle one of those colors, and
each of those colors is amusical note. You know, like
that.
So I often operated in anoverwhelm of this amoebic
overwhelm of feeling. And themore that I wrote, I learned how
(29:35):
to take the feelings and namethem, know how to call them by
name. And when I did that, itgave me it gave the feelings a
shape, and it gave me one degreeof separation so that I could
actually look at it instead ofsitting or it sitting in the
(29:58):
middle of me or me sitting inthe middle of it, which is
probably simultaneous both. Sothen I could actually look at
it. And then once I could lookat it and name it, well, then I
could move it around andreorganize it just the way we do
words on page.
Right? Oh, well, what do Iactually wanna feel? What do I
(30:20):
wanna create in my life? Whatwhat do I need in my orbit to
support me, what I call livingin a a state of You know? Yeah.
Right? How do I support the thatis when I'm in flow? It could be
(30:44):
creative flow. It could just beflow when I'm walking down the
street going through my life andboom, there's that person I
needed to talk to and they justshowed up, what I like to call
synchro mystic.
Wendy (30:56):
Synchro mystic? What describe that.
Meredith (31:00):
It's that mystical flow when we are in tune with
the universe, that which isbigger than us. And we are part
of it and things line upsynchronistically. Oh, I was
just thinking of that person,and there they are. And, Oh, you
(31:20):
know, I had an idea about thisthing. And oh, my god, there it
says that word right there.
And I'm at the right place atthe right time. And those
moments of synchronicity that,for me, always feel like, back
to what we were talking aboutbefore, I'm not alone. I am
(31:43):
connected to something biggerand larger than me. For me,
that's the life force. I'm ahuge nature person.
That's where I source thatconnection. That's what I like.
That's what I believe in isnature, and I learn how to be
(32:03):
human from how nature operates.It goes dormant at times. It has
a fallow time, making room forfallow.
There's a chapter in the bookcalled fertile darkness, and and
then the sprouting and plantingseeds and then leafing and
budding and blooming andfruiting and ripening and
(32:26):
rotting and dropping away. Allof this is part of what life
does. How do I make room forthis instead of just becoming a
cog in the machine, which neverworked for me. And my cog didn't
fit anywhere. So I
Wendy (32:46):
I can't imagine what that would be like. To feel like,
yeah, your cog doesn't fit.Right? Machine. Yeah.
Meredith (32:54):
My cog doesn't fit.
Wendy (32:55):
It doesn't fit. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I can certainly
relate to that.
Do you remember what started itall for you? Like, do you
remember that moment you put pento paper or however it worked
for you that first time. Like,I'm trying to imagine what you
described as a young woman or anadolescent
Meredith (33:21):
A kid.
Wendy (33:21):
Struggling yeah. Struggle kid. Uh-huh. Struggling, on your
own. And, like, how old were youwhen you started writing?
Meredith (33:31):
Well, there's yeah. It's a great question. I really
appreciate it, and then there'sa couple of branched roots to
that. So I started writingyoung, like 5 years old. I
started writing short stories.
And, I would sit in the basementof the house I grew up in all by
myself for hours and hours andhours after school and write
(33:52):
stories. I I have a sister who's2 years older, but we were never
close. We're very different. AndI had imaginary brothers and
sisters, and I would writestories all about them. I knew
every single one of them.
I mean, not like a lot ofbrothers and sisters like a
whole tribe. Why not when if youcook. Right? Exactly. The more
(34:13):
the merrier.
And so And
Wendy (34:14):
they were all really nice. Or were they?
Meredith (34:17):
Well, they were all really interesting and unique.
Okay. Right. Very specificpersonalities. So I would write
the stories about them.
So that was probably my youngestexperience with writing. Music
was my first doorway intocreative expression. And so I
(34:39):
would write my own songs withlyrics, And I think that was
when I really started. Andthere's something for me about
music and melody, married tolyrics that allowed me to
capture the emotion in themelody paired with the words,
(35:05):
metaphors, visual, sensualimagery that could express what
I was feeling that for me freedme. It freed me and gave me that
pathway of expression, which forme is really important.
(35:26):
Expressing myself is like,that's how I know myself.
Through expression. Yeah. Idon't think I've ever ever even
said that before, but it's it'strue.
Wendy (35:38):
Okay. Well, it makes perfect sense. Right? I mean, it
seems like of course. Right.
But maybe we don't think of itthat way just naturally. Yeah.
Meredith (35:51):
I know that for me, when I articulate something, I
feed it back to myself in a way,and then I know it twice.
Wendy (36:01):
Yeah. I think I understand that. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like you're in a dialoguewith yourself, sort of.
Meredith (36:07):
Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy (36:08):
Alright. So then I feel like I'm going back and forth
between your
Meredith (36:12):
Yeah. That's great. Yeah.
Wendy (36:13):
Autobiographical material and your latest book. Let's go
back to your latest book. So Iwanted to just touch on some of
these. You're not calling themprompts. You're calling them
invitations.
Let's look at the body and howyou use that as a tool to help
people.
Meredith (36:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. So body
language is the longest chapterin the book, and it goes through
it starts with the hands becausethey are so complex but not as
vulnerable as other parts thatwe get to in the book.
And then we work our way throughthe body, giving the body an
(36:56):
opportunity to tell its story,different body parts. What's the
story here? Like, let's workwith hips. That could be really
vulnerable for some people andalso empowering. Asking, going
into dialogue, intocommunication with our hips.
How and where have you been shutdown? Where did you learn to
(37:17):
hold so tightly when you walk orwhen you dance or or the
direction that your pelvis tiltsforward or backward. And is that
natural for your body, or isthat a trauma response? Is that
something you learned inprotection? When do your hips
feel free?
What does it feel like when yourhips feel like they can move in
(37:42):
any way they want? And so inevery section of the book,
especially so I think for this,for body language, there's a
section called body mindfulnesswhere it's a guided journey
meditation to help you to accesswhat's happening in your body or
(38:04):
a felt experience or deep psycheor imagination or your senses
that's gonna give you theinformation for your writing so
that you're not thinking yourway there. You're having an
experiential journey that getsyou to the information that's
(38:26):
gonna populate your writing. Soit becomes, like, very right
here and right now and alive.And I even have chills as I'm
saying this because it's sotrue.
I'm always telling people. Andwhen I'm teaching workshops
online, I can see when peoplestart thinking their way to
something. I say, don't thinkyour way there because Please
Wendy (38:45):
don't. Yeah.
Meredith (38:47):
Please don't think your way there. Don't do that to
yourself.
Wendy (38:50):
Habitual though for most of us in the western world.
Meredith (38:52):
It is.
Wendy (38:53):
We're pretty top heavy.
Meredith (38:55):
We really are. And we rob ourselves of the discovery
that's going to be so much moreinteresting and juicy when we
come from somethingexperiential, a felt experience
or a bodily sensation or oursenses or something that
populates in the imagination orsomething that bubbles up from
(39:17):
deep psyche. It's going to be somuch more interesting and juicy
than anything we can think ourway to. And once you taste that,
then you learn to stop thinkingyour way there. So in the body
language section, we do ajourney for each body part, and
that's very tangible.
(39:38):
And that's a great way to start,for people because it is so
tangible, and the information isright here in the body. You
know? And I yeah. Yeah. Put yourhands on that part of the body.
Yeah.
Wendy (39:52):
I was just gonna say, like, as you were describing
just like examining yourrelationship with your hips,
when do we ever do that? Never?Right. Never? Never.
I mean Exactly. So it's likeNever.
Meredith (40:05):
Never. Right. As you
Wendy (40:06):
were kind of asking the questions, I'm thinking, I don't
think I know my hips in thatway. I mean, I don't just as an
example. I mean, unless I'm ananomaly, but I suspect, none of
us really think of ourselves inthat way.
Meredith (40:22):
Right. Right. And I think that's I I think that
there are so many of us whohaven't given ourselves and our
bodies the invitation to tellthe story. And it's the wounding
stories and the gloriousstories, especially when you
come to hips. Like I mean, myown journey, like when I started
(40:47):
listening to my hips, I realizedI'm a big walker.
I walk like 5 miles a day.That's how I meditate. And at
one point, I was aware that Iheld my hips very straight and
with no movement, and I calledthat my soldier. Protection, not
(41:12):
letting anything in because itwasn't safe, and not letting
anything out. And that waspainful to feel that and to
become aware of it.
But once I became aware of itand I started writing this that
story of the soldier
Wendy (41:28):
Right.
Meredith (41:29):
I thanked the soldier for protecting me. I needed
protection. And then it began toshift because I became curious.
How do my hips wanna move? Howhow are they capable of moving?
I also grew up dancing, so I dohave a lot of fluidity in my
(41:50):
body and my hips, but my dancingis, like I might even do it in a
group, but I dance by myselfwith myself. And so then and
walking is out in the world. SoI needed to protect myself in
the walking. But, like, thecuriosity, well, how do hips
move, and what are they capableof? And what happens like, what
(42:12):
do I feel when I allow my hipsto start moving?
Woah. There's feeling there.What happens when I allow myself
to feeling? And then it's likethis amazing doorway, and we
become more Like you weresaying, we become more rich. We
become richer as we melt thepatterns of conditioning that we
(42:38):
learned before we had a choicethat's that are so much out of
protection and trauma andwounding and needing being
expected to be a cog that fitsin the machine.
So when we start melting all ofthat stuff down, and there are
(42:59):
many, many ways to melt it down,Writing is a path home. There
are many paths home. We beginmelting that conditioning and
that armoring and those survivalpatterns. We begin to soften
those, and then the life forcethat moves through us in its own
(43:28):
rhythms and serpentine motions,talking of hips, it feeds us. It
feeds our life, and and we beginto be nourished on a deep soul
level as part of nature, I wouldsay.
We really are part of nature. Wecome back into our We
Wendy (43:51):
are nature.
Meredith (43:53):
We are nature. Thank you.
Wendy (43:56):
Yes. Thank you. Yeah. That that's I mean, I don't
wanna digress too much. It'sjust that is something that I
think is also deeply embedded inour cultural psyche is that we
are separate from nature.
And it's it's like you could sayit's the lie that started many
other lies and the the way weconduct ourselves. I won't get
(44:21):
on that soapbox right now. Ijust I just
Meredith (44:24):
Yeah. We we we would you and I would rage on that on
that topic. So I just keeppointing my compass back to what
you just said, which I love isthat we are nature. And as we
melt down all the stuff thatisn't who we truly are, then we
(44:46):
get to be our natural selves.And this is really, I feel, when
we begin to be nourished by lifeand we have something to offer.
Wendy (45:01):
That just sounds lovely. Yeah. And we're talking about
the body, but you haveinvitations to connect with in
the natural world, theelementals.
Meredith (45:11):
Yeah.
Wendy (45:12):
Also, your sensory experiences. So how you are
engaged in the world and how theworld engages with you, the
world around you, and and more.Right? There's so many different
ways to explore yourself throughyour book, which is, I mean,
it's it's really cool.
Meredith (45:30):
Great. Thank you. I'm so glad you love it.
Wendy (45:35):
So one of the things I wanted to because you mentioned
shamanic journeying in yourbook, so, of course, I have to
explore that a little bit withyou. I'm curious about how a
shamanic practice influencedyour writing and maybe even how
you got pulled into learning howto connect to the dreaming in
(45:56):
that way.
Meredith (45:58):
Yeah. Thank you. So glad I wanted to go there with
you too. I think in my twentiesstarted working with a couple
shamanic practitioners, and Ilearned to journey to a
drumbeat, which as soon as I didit, I was like, oh, I've been
doing this my whole life. Youknow?
(46:19):
It's like,
Wendy (46:21):
Which
Meredith (46:21):
makes sense given your trauma background. Right? Right.
Right. Trauma and really, richinner life and imagination.
Wendy (46:32):
I find the 2 usually go hand in hand
Meredith (46:34):
Yes.
Wendy (46:35):
With people who've had tremendous trauma. They retreat
inward and sometimes outward.
Meredith (46:41):
Yes. And sometimes both at the same
Wendy (46:43):
time. Exactly. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Please.
Meredith (46:46):
No. It's fine. I love riffing. So learned to journey,
was completely at home there,had wild, amazing experiences
that completely changed my life.I was part of a shamanic
(47:06):
drumming circle for a while thatI loved, and I wish I still had
this one.
It was on my 50th birthday. Idid a journey to drumbeat where
I'll just say they. Theycompletely dismembered my heart
(47:27):
until there was nothing thereexcept a matrix of space. And I
was shown how every hurt andresentment that I attached to
was like a knot tied into thematrix of threads that crossed
(47:51):
that then became part of myheart vibration. And so it was
my task to catch any hurt orwound or resentment before it
became a knot that was embeddedin the new heart field I was
given.
(48:11):
And then slowly over time, thecrossed fibers of the field
became musical tones that sangnotes and harmonized with other
notes and became I basically gota new heart. I was given a new
(48:36):
heart, and the dismembering waspretty intense.
Wendy (48:39):
Yeah. And they usually are, aren't they?
Meredith (48:42):
And gnarly and weird and, like What the oh my god.
Wendy (48:50):
Were you gonna say what the fuck?
Meredith (48:52):
Yeah. I was. I was gonna say what the fuck. Thank
you. I wasn't I didn't know ifwe're allowed to
Wendy (48:57):
stop. Allowed.
Meredith (48:59):
Yeah.
Wendy (48:59):
It's totally allowed. Right.
Meredith (49:01):
Oh, it's so great. Good. Good. Otherwise, I'd have
to repress myself, which we knowI can't stand doing. I don't
want you to do that.
I say fuck a lot when I teach myworkshops. The other day,
somebody I do too. Yeah.Somebody said fuck a lot. I'm
sorry.
And I made everybody unmute, andwe all said fuck 3 times really
in a fulfilling way. It was justenlightening. Yeah.
Wendy (49:21):
It's a great You just go with whatever's in app.
Meredith (49:23):
It's It is it's so versatile.
Wendy (49:25):
Fucking great word. Yeah.
Meredith (49:26):
And you can put it wherever you need it. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah. You have afabulous buck.
Let's start a new podcast.
Wendy (49:31):
All right. Let's do it.
Meredith (49:33):
Okay. So so that was my experience with Shamanic
Journeying. Like, oh my god.This. Fucking yeah.
Right? And it definitelyinformed a lot of the body
mindfulness sections in the bookand the journeying to find
(49:53):
animal allies, which is myfavorite kind of journey to do,
my absolute fucking favoritekind of journey to do, for
healing and to help navigatechanges and challenges. Right?
Because then you call on thisanimal who has this instinctual
nature and skills and sensorycapacity, and they don't doubt
(50:19):
themselves. They know what theyneed, and they search it out,
and they find it.
And to have that kind ofinstinct in your toolbox to
navigate whatever it is or to dohealing work, physical, psychic,
emotional, every realm ishappening simultaneously. I just
(50:40):
it's my very favorite thing todo. We did a really interesting
workshop, which is the lastchapter, chapter 14 in the book,
Metamorphosis, where we wentthrough the metamorphosis that a
butterfly goes through from pupato caterpillar to chrysalis to
winged 1 to adult butterfly, andwe inhabited each stage of the
(51:06):
process to map and track our owncycles of change and
transformation and becoming. Andit's one of my absolute favorite
workshop.
Wendy (51:20):
It's very cool. That's very cool.
Meredith (51:22):
Yeah. And the poems that came out of that workshop.
I mean, the the women who cometo workshop shop who have
example poems in this book, Imean, I just call them the
warrior women poets, brave andbeautiful and vulnerable and
genuine, and and show up everyweek and dig deep for the
(51:46):
treasure that feeds them. Revitalize.
Wendy (51:49):
It shows in the examples.
Meredith (51:51):
Yeah. I mean, potent. Like like mind blowing
heartbreaking open poetry. Andyeah, I'm just deep bow to the
women poets. I'm so proud withthem with, and I celebrate them.
(52:12):
And I just feel so honored andjoyous that I get to share with
them what I love, what I'mpassionate about, what, my
healing journey has been thispoetry path, and then to watch
them open and blossom as theywork with the writing path as a
(52:35):
pathway home to love. I tell youyeah. There it is. I, my first
book, write a poem, save yourlife, I I realized recently, it
felt like I wrote it in blood.And this book, writing by heart,
feels like I wrote it in honey.
And it's the journey fromsurvival That's beautiful. To
(52:57):
love. And I think so many of usare on this journey, and writing
is a path home to love.
Wendy (53:06):
Yeah. I mean, that's just what you described speaks to
your direct experience of whatwriting has done for you. You
had to go into the trenches andwrite with your blood before you
could write with your honey.
Meredith (53:20):
Yeah.
Wendy (53:21):
So you work with people in these workshops, And if
someone wanted to learn more,how would they do that?
Mereditheller.com. Okay. That'spretty straightforward.
Meredith (53:35):
Yep. That's the that I must have gotten that one.
That's just it's me. You willfind me there. You can write to
me.
I will write you back. All ofthe information about the
workshops, the books,everything's there. I am on
Facebook also, a little bit onInstagram, I and get a copy for
(54:02):
yourself. And for anybody whofeels the call to write these
pages or doorways open.
Wendy (54:09):
They really are. I mean,
Meredith (54:11):
It's not home.
Wendy (54:12):
As a long time writer, I had never seen invitations in
this way. That's just like,Jesus, where was this book 30
years ago, 40 years ago?
Meredith (54:23):
Well yeah. And that's the other piece of it. Thanks
for saying that. Because myjourney was so was one that of
such aloneness and having tofind my own way because 30, 40
years ago, 45 years ago, Ididn't know anybody who was
(54:44):
doing this, and I didn't wantanybody really to have to go
through what I went through bythemselves. I wanted to say,
here's a way.
Follow me to yourself. Follow meto find yourself. Here's a way.
Get bring your paper and pen.Come on.
(55:08):
You know? And
Wendy (55:10):
And all your invisible friends.
Meredith (55:12):
Bring all your invisible friends and your magic
wand, otherwise known as yourpen. And I really suggest invite
people to write with pen andpaper because there is an
organic process that happensthat I think involves and
engages body, nervous system,arms coming from chest, coming
(55:36):
from heart into hands, deeppsyche that's different than
tapping on keys.
Wendy (55:43):
I could see that. Yeah.
Meredith (55:45):
Yeah. And it's it's nice to play in in each way, to
do some writing with pen andpaper and see what it pulls from
you. Even the the pressure ittakes to push pen across texture
of paper engages us physicallyand sensually. I have an old
push typewriter. I think it'sfrom the forties.
(56:06):
Uh-huh. Cool. And it's so cool.A little blue royal. I call him
baby blue.
And, a lot of mornings I'll sitand type at the typewriter
because I'm not as attached towhat comes out and all the keys
jam and I don't care.
Wendy (56:21):
Right. You
Meredith (56:22):
know? And so it's like it gets a different part of my
perception, a different part ofmy awareness. So it's also fun
to experiment. What writingvoice comes through when I'm
tapping on keys? What writingvoice comes through when I'm
dragging a pen across paper?
What writing voice comes throughwhen I'm even talking it? Some
people are like, I don't havethe patience to write it out. I
(56:44):
said, grab your phone and openyour voice memos and talk your
piece. Speak
Wendy (56:48):
it. Yeah.
Meredith (56:48):
Speak it. So it's like anything is welcome. What I'm
talking about is a practice ofpresencing.
Wendy (56:56):
Alright, Meredith.
Meredith (56:58):
Oh, so great to talk to you, Wendy. Thank you so
much. Thank you. Loved it.
Wendy (57:05):
So do you feel inspired to write? If you'd like to learn
more about Meredith, take one ofher workshops, or get a copy of
her latest book, please visitmeredithheller.com. The link is
in the show notes. Thank you forlistening. If you enjoyed this
episode, I hope you'll considersharing it with someone who's
feeling creatively stuck or justplain stuck.
(57:28):
Writing is such a powerful tool.Well, I'll look forward to
reconnecting with you in a fewweeks with another episode of
Lucid Cafe. Until next time.
You're listening to Lucid Cafe. I'm your host, Wendy
Halley. Hello, and welcome toanother episode of Lucid Cafe, a
(00:35):
podcast exploring healing,consciousness, and the
complexities of being human.Well, it turns out I'm in the
midst of a period of unplannedupgrades. It's actually great,
but a wee bit jarring.
10 months ago mother naturecreated an opportunity for me to
upgrade my wellness centerincluding getting a new energy
(00:58):
therapy pod called the HarmonicEgg Ellipse. And now that I've
had it for a couple of months,witnessing how it's impacting
people's lives and health iskinda blowing my mind. So
definitely an amazing upgrade.Thank you, mother nature. And if
you listened to the lastepisode, I announced that I'm
preparing to release anintroductory online course
(01:21):
called Become Your Own Shaman,which is really exciting.
And turns out I have to do amajor upgrade to my website to
make it possible to add anonline course to it, which I'm
in the process of doing. Andguess how smoothly the
transition went? Not reallysmoothly. But I was able to
(01:42):
rebuild enough of the pertinentpage on my site over this last
weekend to have a functioningsite again. But sadly, the
library of podcast episodes Ihad created that were listed by
topic didn't make thetransition.
So I'll be chipping away atrecreating those pages in the
coming weeks, in case you'relooking for them. My hope is to
(02:04):
still get the become your ownshaman online course up and
running sometime this summer. Soplease sign up for my newsletter
if you'd like to get updates,which you can do either on the
podcast website at the bottom ofthe page or on the contact page
on my websitelucidpathwellness.com. Or you
(02:24):
can always subscribe to LucidCafe so you never miss an
episode, and I'll also continuegiving quick updates on the
podcast. Alright.
I'm hoping today's episode willinspire you to wanna do some
writing. My guest, MeredithHeller, has lived quite a life.
Creating music and writing werethe things that saved her from a
(02:47):
very difficult and traumaticchildhood. Now she's helping
others to find their innerwriters. In this episode,
Meredith talks about how her newbook, Writing by Heart, A Poetry
Path to Healing and SelfDiscovery, is inspiring women to
find and express their authenticvoices.
I can't imagine how anyonereading this book would not feel
(03:10):
moved to pick up a pen and startwriting. Her easy, rule
breaking, and creative approachto writing makes a process
that's typically daunting superaccessible. So please enjoy my
really fun conversation withMeredith Heller. Oh, Meredith,
thank you so much for joiningme.
Meredith (03:31):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you. What
a treat.
Wendy (03:35):
Well, I'm looking forward to to chatting with you about
your new book, Writing by Heart,A Poetry Path to Healing and
Self Discovery. But before wedive into your book, I'd love to
learn a little bit about yourwriting journey, what that's
been like.
Meredith (03:50):
Absolutely. Thank you. So poetry found me. I left home
young. I left home at 12, 13years old and raised myself
living in domes I built in thewoods along the Potomac River in
Maryland, about 20 minutesoutside of Washington DC.
I lived in domes I built. Ilived in abandoned houses and
(04:15):
old barns, and I was very alone.I had a lot of trauma. I I had
horrible depressions, and all ofmy friends were dying of suicide
and drug overdose, and I wasn'tfar behind them. Oh, man.
And poetry found me. I wouldget-- I'm also a singer
(04:37):
songwriter. I would get thefirst line of poetry or song in
my left ear like a lifeline anda work permit that said, stay
here and find a way to name theoverwhelming feelings of loss
and longing and find a way toname it and shape it into
(05:04):
something that brings me togreater clarity, deeper
understanding, and possiblybeauty. So that's how it began,
And it was always my muse andwhatever I was making, whether
it was a poem or a song thatkept me engaged in life. And I
(05:28):
didn't share any of my work fora very long time, probably 20
years.
It was my refuge. It was how Iprayed. And I didn't want
anybody near it. I don'tremember what first started me
sharing, but but as I began toshare my poetry and my music,
and I saw how it lit somethingin other people that helped them
(05:56):
to know themselves, then Irealized it's not mine. It's
mine.
I shape it. It comes through me,but it's bigger than me. Right.
Yeah. And so, that's when lifestarted getting more exciting,
and I realized I was in deeprelationship with my creativity.
(06:19):
So then I had dropped out ofschool as a teenager, I went
back to school. I got anundergraduate degree. I got 2
graduate degrees in writing andeducation and started teaching
in the schools as a poet in theschools. So I was a poet in the
schools for 30 years, and thatwas an amazing experience.
Wendy (06:40):
What ages did you teach?
Meredith (06:42):
Yeah. 1st through 12th grade, but I specialized with
teen girls for empowerment andself expression, of course,
because that's where my brokenopen happened.
Wendy (06:56):
That makes perfect sense. Especially after reading your
book, you don't talk about yourhistory in this particular book,
but now it makes a whole lot ofsense. The voice has such
authority in it, and it's such awelcome invitation to anyone who
would like to try writingpoetry. So now hearing your
story, it makes perfect sense.You're coming from direct
(07:18):
experience of how it helped you.
It transformed you.
Meredith (07:22):
Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. And even yes. And I I'm
always coming from that personalexperience of knowing.
So my first book, Write A Poem,Save Your Life, is my story of
how it saved me. Like, and I andI do tell about, oh, tip of the
iceberg of some of the stuffthat happened as a teen, how I
(07:46):
lost my voice through trauma,how I found my voice and started
reconnecting the abandoned partsof myself and calling myself
back home and being able to holda space for all of me, like the
(08:08):
the sorrow and the depressionand the doubt and the mess and
the all of the broken down andcollapsed parts and the bravery
and the courage and the beautyand the brilliance and the all
of it. And that's when I reallymy healing path really started.
(08:30):
And I I realized that there'swholeness in this making room
for all of it. And I thinkthat's my main message.
So I work with adult women nowall over the US and a few around
the world. I think that's mymain message is through the
writing that we're doing thispersonal self reflective and
(08:54):
expressive, making room for allof the parts of ourselves. This
is how we become whole. This ishow we heal. And opening this
line, like you were saying aboutthe voice, love that you brought
that in, opening this line ofknowing what I feel and being
(09:17):
able to voice it.
I think for everybody, butespecially for women, It is
really our anchor and ourempowerment.
Wendy (09:28):
I think I know what you mean, but I would love for you
to explain why you think it'simportant for women to reach
inside and identify theirfeelings and, I guess, process
them, you're suggesting throughpoetry. Why do you think it's
extra important for women to dothat?
Meredith (09:47):
Yeah. It's such a great question. Thank you. I
think that as women, we tend totake care of others.
Wendy (09:57):
You think!?
Meredith (10:00):
Just a little. Do you think?
Wendy (10:03):
It's like genetic.
Meredith (10:04):
That's what I'm saying. I was trying to find
that line.
That's exactly what I wanted tosay. It is in our DNA to care
for the babies. And so we learnto push our own needs and wants
and intuition and desire asidefor others. And there's a beauty
(10:33):
in that as caretakers, but Ibelieve our true power comes
when we attend to what's here inus, what's bubbling up in our
bellies, in our hearts, and giveit our attention, tend to it
(10:55):
with curiosity and kindness andcourage.
Wendy (11:02):
Yes. Absolutely. And as you're talking, I was just
thinking about a little talk Idid last night and talking about
the nature of these times andhow challenging they are. And I
was referencing a a visionaryexperience I had back in 2008,
which talked about these comingtimes and how it sort of tied
(11:22):
into this chaos we'reexperiencing and trying to
explain that. And what Idiscovered during that whole
process is that a lot ofprophecy, a lot of indigenous
prophecy was revealed around thetime of the Mayan long count
calendar ending.
I don't know if you remember all
Meredith (11:40):
that in 2012. I do. I totally remember that.
Wendy (11:43):
Yeah. It was very dramatic. Lots of films and is
the world gonna end kind oftalk. But what I discovered is
that and I don't know if this isaccurate or not, is that it's
the end of a world age and thebeginning of a new world age,
and these world ages are, like,5000 plus years long. And the
(12:03):
world age that's ending rightnow is dominated by the
masculine, and we're about tomove into the world age that's
Meredith (12:15):
I wish you guys could see Hallelujah. I wish you could
see Hallelujah.
Wendy (12:18):
The body language Meredith is throwing
Meredith (12:21):
at me right now. So The vomit and the and the draw
in the new.
Wendy (12:27):
So we're moving into a period, which I'd like to
believe is true, where there'sbalance between the masculine
and the feminine. So I I wonderabout this tendency for women to
quiet our voices is a byproduct.I wonder if it's always been
that way throughout humanhistory or if it's more of a
byproduct of this latest worldage where the masculine has been
(12:51):
dominant. And so we had to kindof step back and swallow our
voices. Just a thought.
Any thoughts?
Meredith (12:58):
I totally agree. And it's not my area of research,
but I know that there werematriarchal cultures and
societies. And so I think whatyou're saying is, is that it
does cycle. But what I loveabout what you're saying is you
said the balance. And I thinkthat is what we're really
(13:19):
talking feminine has beensuppressed and repressed.
And I would even argue it'sbecause it is we are, the
feminine is so powerful, sopotent. And just like the way,
(13:43):
this might be controversial, butjust in the way that the church
and so many religions squelchedand made the body bad, We are
embodied in this lifetime. Thisbody is our instrument. Let's
come through it, not rise aboveit, not bury it
Wendy (14:03):
Or ignore it. Yeah.
Meredith (14:05):
Ignore it. Thank you. Not make it bad and wrong, but
live through it. This is ourhuman experience. Let's
experience everything we can.
And the sensuality is thefeminine, so bring her.
Wendy (14:22):
I'll drink to that. I am. So so poetry in particular has a
sensuality to it, wouldn't yousay?
Meredith (14:31):
Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. That's a beautiful
thing to say. Thank you.Absolutely.
There's there's yeah. She's usedthat was that was poetry. There
there's Check me out. Yeah.Check look at you.
There's music. There's rhythm inpoetry, and this is sensual. You
(14:52):
know? I mean, a lot of timeswhen I'm writing, I will take
the skeleton of a of a poem withme on my walks. My walking is my
meditation.
I will take that skeleton ofthat poem on the walk and flesh
it out to my heartbeat, mybreath, my stride. And so this
(15:13):
is another way to make ourwriting unique to our own
rhythm. I do wanna say one thingabout poetry. I am using poetry
these days as an umbrella termbecause sometimes poetry
intimidates people, and and Iwanna do the opposite. I really
wanna invite people in to thispoetry practice as a way of
(15:39):
presencing and expressing what'sreal and what's really going on
down deep.
And, and, so these days I'musing poetry as an umbrella term
for this personal selfreflective expressive writing,
(16:01):
and all forms of writing arewelcome if you work along with
the book, if you come to myworkshops. You can write in any
form you want, Poetry, prose,story, mind spill, heart spill,
song lyrics, make up your ownform. Just write. That's where
I'm coming from.
Wendy (16:19):
And that feels so freeing, right, for someone
especially who really wants towrite and they've never have
before. And I think a lot ofpeople hear about all of the the
rules they have to follow. Iknow I certainly have in my in
my history of writing.Absolutely. And it it is
intimidating, and it feels likethere's a right and a wrong way
(16:41):
to write, which is sad.
Don't you think? It's terrible.You're suggesting the opposite.
There is no right or wrong way.It's just, like, just get the
shit out of you, whateverwhatever way you have to.
Meredith (16:52):
I'm suggesting there is a right way
Wendy (16:54):
Yeah?
Meredith (16:55):
And that's your way. Okay. Okay. Yeah. However you do
it
Wendy (16:58):
Mhmm.
Meredith (16:59):
However it comes naturally for you or in whatever
ways you wanna experiment andexplore, that's your way. That
is the right way because thistunes us back into listening,
trusting our creative instinctand our intuition. And this is
(17:19):
what creativity is. I mean, weare, all of us, innately
creative because we'reexpressions of life force. Life
force is creative.
How could we be anythingdifferent? Right? And so any
form of of any open door ofcreativity is about deep play.
Wendy (17:38):
As long as you don't use adjectives or adverbs.
Meredith (17:43):
Exactly. Right. But just throw away all the rules.
Yeah, throw away the rules andwrite to commune with your deep
self, write to touch what'sreally here and give it
expression, and then have whatyou wrote be a mirror so you can
(18:07):
even have that feedback loop ofwhere you are and what's going
on. And when you start doingthis kind of writing and you're
tuning into, like, deep psychewhere the metaphors live and the
subterranean world that weusually push away and don't talk
about, you know, like the deep,dark, fertile, this is where it
becomes alive.
(18:29):
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And thething you're writing, you start
to write things that you didn'tknow you knew, but you do
because you're tapping what Icall wild wisdom. And when you
get to this place in yourwriting where you're willing to
(18:49):
not know, and then you writesomething that's like, boom, how
did I write that? Where did thatcome from?
That image, that metaphor is soholds the space for me to
understand what I'm goingthrough. And that's what keeps
you coming back to your writingbecause it's a place of learning
(19:11):
and discovering and becomingmore of who you are. It's rich.
It's so rich. Yeah.
And alive.
Wendy (19:24):
And you think about it. It's our birthright. Right? I
mean, that's how we've learnedthroughout our history is
through telling story, and Idon't think it matters what form
it takes. Right?
Absolutely. But finding ways totell your own story or even
someone else's story, that's areally cool healing thing.
Meredith (19:44):
Yeah. I love that you bring that up about story. One
of the things I notice inworkshop in the workshops that I
teach that's so beautiful is 2really important things happen
in workshop. 1, we're sharingour pieces so we're being
witnessed, And there's so muchhealing in being witnessed,
(20:04):
especially when we take thingsout of hiding and air them. And
then we're hearing everyoneelse's story, and so we have
this sense of commonality.
We're not alone. For the mostpart as human beings, we have
the same needs and wants andfears and dreams and longings
and desires. We're human beings.This is what we're doing. And
(20:28):
yet And yet.
Wendy (20:30):
And yet we feel so alone Right. Especially with our
wounds. We might feel like we'rethe only one who feels this way.
Exactly. You keep it veryprivate.
Right. But you're saying, no.Bring it out and share it, and
you find that it's universal.
Meredith (20:47):
Exactly. It's universal. So as we begin
sharing these things thatexactly what you said that have
made us feel alone and insularand that we've kept private.
When we start to share these andhear other people sharing them,
we see the universality of ourhuman experience. On the one
(21:11):
hand, paradoxically, we findthat our story and everything
we've been through is unique,and it matters.
Our voice, our story, and how weengage and participate in the
whether it's a workshop or thefamily or the community or the
(21:33):
whole living community of lifematters. So we hold both of
these at the same time. Oh mygod. I'm not so different, and
I'm totally unique, and itmatters simultaneously woven
together.
Wendy (21:48):
Love it. Your book, Writing by Heart, is really an
invitation.
Meredith (21:53):
Absolutely. And all and and I don't I don't never
use the word writing prompt. Idon't ever wanna be prompted
into anything. I wanna beinvited. So they're all called
invitation.
So I love that you saidinvitation. It's an invitation
for your muse to find you, foryour poetry and your musicality
of language to find you, and foryou to find your voice.
Wendy (22:18):
How do you think writing poetry or whatever form it takes
can be like medicine?
Meredith (22:25):
Yeah. What happens when we come to writing, as I
say, as a practice rather thanas a perfect. This is writing as
a practice. It begins to nourishus and nurture us, and we begin
(22:47):
to weave the lost and abandonedand exiled, wounded, painful
parts of ourselves back intobeing on board in the wholeness
of who we are, And this is wherethe medicine lives, in this
(23:10):
remembering and making room forall of it without judging it,
without saying my depression isbad. My depression has really
important juju for me if I'mwilling to dig in and find the
treasure.
And you can do that in yourwriting because you can be
(23:31):
totally honest. Who who's whoare you writing for? In this
kind of writing, nobody outhere. You are writing for
yourself. And if you don't wantanybody to ever find it, burn it
or rip it up.
But you've been there withyourself doing the dig into the
down and dirty and coming upmuddy with with dirt on your
(23:53):
fingernails and a grin on yourface because you've tasted
what's real.
Wendy (23:59):
You speak in poem.
Meredith (24:02):
I like that. Why not? If I have a choice, why not?
Wendy (24:06):
No. No. It's beautiful. Very musical, very lyrical, the
way you talk. I was gonna saythat, I I've always kind of
looked at symptoms as, like, anysymptom that anyone has as,
important.
Right? And it's trying to getyour attention because it has a
story to tell. And so whatyou're suggesting is tell
whatever you're feeling, tellthe story of that feeling or the
(24:28):
symptom, depression being asymptom, or or anxiety or
whatever. That's incrediblypowerful. It's a an
acknowledgment.
Meredith (24:38):
Yeah. It's a being with. It's an opening the
doorway for whatever ispresenting itself also to have a
voice. Because we want to learnits wisdom. We wanna learn what
it needs.
If we give the symptom or theparts of the body. There's a big
(25:03):
chapter in the book on bodylanguage. I was a bodyworker for
27 years. I specialized in doingrehab of spinal cord injury
patients. What I I mean, Iworked with 100 of thousands of
bodies, and what I learned isthat if we give it the
invitation, the body will tellus its medicine, how to heal it,
(25:29):
what it needs, what it longsfor.
We open that conversation justlike the writing is opening this
conversation, this communingwith deep self. And from here,
anything is possible.
Wendy (25:49):
Alright. Let's start writing, folks.
Meredith (25:50):
Okay. Let's do it. Here we go.
Wendy (25:52):
That's how I felt when I was reading your book. I was
like, oh, I
Meredith (25:56):
Time to write. It's time to write.
Wendy (25:58):
Yeah, exactly. Because it's it's really probably is
akin to taking one of yourworkshops is what I'm guessing.
Yeah. But you get to do it inthe privacy of your own home if
they can't meet with you inperson or however. Do you do
workshops online too?
Meredith (26:14):
So right now, I'm teaching online mainly. Oh,
okay. I do in person retreats,but you have to you have to come
to a couple of workshops, onlineworkshops before you can come to
the retreat because we theretreat starts deep and goes
deeper.
Wendy (26:30):
Gotcha. Yeah. No. That makes sense.
Meredith (26:32):
Yeah.
Wendy (26:32):
So your book is, like, there's so many creative ways to
engage yourself in a writingprocess, and you make it, again,
like I was saying before, soaccessible. Yeah. It's not
intimidating at all. So foranyone who might feel like, oh,
I'm not a writer, hell, yeah,you are. You can do it,
especially with with this book.
Meredith (26:55):
Yeah. Just open any I say the pages every page is a
doorway. Open any doorway andwalk through to your where to
yourself? It's a doorway to you.You're making more room to know
yourself, to explore yourself,to express yourself.
What could be better? And thenthe way you show up, it echoes
(27:18):
into your life. Women who cometo my workshop say, we walk the
workshop into our life.
Wendy (27:27):
I like that.
Meredith (27:29):
Yeah. Right? We stand taller. We have more support in
who we are, in in what we knowabout ourselves, being able to
have a feeling and know how toarticulate it more easily, to
ask for what we want, to knowwhat we need. Like, they walk
(27:51):
that into their life, and I'mlike, whoo wee.
It's just like a
Wendy (27:56):
big boost of power, personal power and and
confidence. That's one of thequestions I was gonna ask you,
and you just kind of answeredit, I think, unless you wanna
embellish or add. Can you speakto how writing transformed you?
Like, how it healed you?
Meredith (28:13):
Yeah. Absolutely. Having left home so young, 12,
13 years old, with absolutely nosupport and no stability and
everything that I knewconstantly changing and
constantly falling away, myfriends all dying. I was pretty
(28:36):
shut down, and I did not haveconfidence or self esteem. I was
pretty, like, in survival mode.
And as I began writing more andmore, it gave me the capacity to
(29:00):
I have very deep feelings. I'vealways felt
Wendy (29:05):
everything. You know? Like I I suspect you're not
alone with that. Yeah.
Meredith (29:10):
Right. Exactly. Like, if most people just have 7
colors, I have 64. I feel everysingle one of those colors, and
each of those colors is amusical note. You know, like
that.
So I often operated in anoverwhelm of this amoebic
overwhelm of feeling. And themore that I wrote, I learned how
(29:35):
to take the feelings and namethem, know how to call them by
name. And when I did that, itgave me it gave the feelings a
shape, and it gave me one degreeof separation so that I could
actually look at it instead ofsitting or it sitting in the
(29:58):
middle of me or me sitting inthe middle of it, which is
probably simultaneous both. Sothen I could actually look at
it. And then once I could lookat it and name it, well, then I
could move it around andreorganize it just the way we do
words on page.
Right? Oh, well, what do Iactually wanna feel? What do I
(30:20):
wanna create in my life? Whatwhat do I need in my orbit to
support me, what I call livingin a a state of You know? Yeah.
Right? How do I support the thatis when I'm in flow? It could be
(30:44):
creative flow. It could just beflow when I'm walking down the
street going through my life andboom, there's that person I
needed to talk to and they justshowed up, what I like to call
synchro mystic.
Wendy (30:56):
Synchro mystic? What describe that.
Meredith (31:00):
It's that mystical flow when we are in tune with
the universe, that which isbigger than us. And we are part
of it and things line upsynchronistically. Oh, I was
just thinking of that person,and there they are. And, Oh, you
(31:20):
know, I had an idea about thisthing. And oh, my god, there it
says that word right there.
And I'm at the right place atthe right time. And those
moments of synchronicity that,for me, always feel like, back
to what we were talking aboutbefore, I'm not alone. I am
(31:43):
connected to something biggerand larger than me. For me,
that's the life force. I'm ahuge nature person.
That's where I source thatconnection. That's what I like.
That's what I believe in isnature, and I learn how to be
(32:03):
human from how nature operates.It goes dormant at times. It has
a fallow time, making room forfallow.
There's a chapter in the bookcalled fertile darkness, and and
then the sprouting and plantingseeds and then leafing and
budding and blooming andfruiting and ripening and
(32:26):
rotting and dropping away. Allof this is part of what life
does. How do I make room forthis instead of just becoming a
cog in the machine, which neverworked for me. And my cog didn't
fit anywhere. So I
Wendy (32:46):
I can't imagine what that would be like. To feel like,
yeah, your cog doesn't fit.Right? Machine. Yeah.
Meredith (32:54):
My cog doesn't fit.
Wendy (32:55):
It doesn't fit. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I can certainly
relate to that.
Do you remember what started itall for you? Like, do you
remember that moment you put pento paper or however it worked
for you that first time. Like,I'm trying to imagine what you
described as a young woman or anadolescent
Meredith (33:21):
A kid.
Wendy (33:21):
Struggling yeah. Struggle kid. Uh-huh. Struggling, on your
own. And, like, how old were youwhen you started writing?
Meredith (33:31):
Well, there's yeah. It's a great question. I really
appreciate it, and then there'sa couple of branched roots to
that. So I started writingyoung, like 5 years old. I
started writing short stories.
And, I would sit in the basementof the house I grew up in all by
myself for hours and hours andhours after school and write
(33:52):
stories. I I have a sister who's2 years older, but we were never
close. We're very different. AndI had imaginary brothers and
sisters, and I would writestories all about them. I knew
every single one of them.
I mean, not like a lot ofbrothers and sisters like a
whole tribe. Why not when if youcook. Right? Exactly. The more
(34:13):
the merrier.
And so And
Wendy (34:14):
they were all really nice. Or were they?
Meredith (34:17):
Well, they were all really interesting and unique.
Okay. Right. Very specificpersonalities. So I would write
the stories about them.
So that was probably my youngestexperience with writing. Music
was my first doorway intocreative expression. And so I
(34:39):
would write my own songs withlyrics, And I think that was
when I really started. Andthere's something for me about
music and melody, married tolyrics that allowed me to
capture the emotion in themelody paired with the words,
(35:05):
metaphors, visual, sensualimagery that could express what
I was feeling that for me freedme. It freed me and gave me that
pathway of expression, which forme is really important.
(35:26):
Expressing myself is like,that's how I know myself.
Through expression. Yeah. Idon't think I've ever ever even
said that before, but it's it'strue.
Wendy (35:38):
Okay. Well, it makes perfect sense. Right? I mean, it
seems like of course. Right.
But maybe we don't think of itthat way just naturally. Yeah.
Meredith (35:51):
I know that for me, when I articulate something, I
feed it back to myself in a way,and then I know it twice.
Wendy (36:01):
Yeah. I think I understand that. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like you're in a dialoguewith yourself, sort of.
Meredith (36:07):
Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy (36:08):
Alright. So then I feel like I'm going back and forth
between your
Meredith (36:12):
Yeah. That's great. Yeah.
Wendy (36:13):
Autobiographical material and your latest book. Let's go
back to your latest book. So Iwanted to just touch on some of
these. You're not calling themprompts. You're calling them
invitations.
Let's look at the body and howyou use that as a tool to help
people.
Meredith (36:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. So body
language is the longest chapterin the book, and it goes through
it starts with the hands becausethey are so complex but not as
vulnerable as other parts thatwe get to in the book.
And then we work our way throughthe body, giving the body an
(36:56):
opportunity to tell its story,different body parts. What's the
story here? Like, let's workwith hips. That could be really
vulnerable for some people andalso empowering. Asking, going
into dialogue, intocommunication with our hips.
How and where have you been shutdown? Where did you learn to
(37:17):
hold so tightly when you walk orwhen you dance or or the
direction that your pelvis tiltsforward or backward. And is that
natural for your body, or isthat a trauma response? Is that
something you learned inprotection? When do your hips
feel free?
What does it feel like when yourhips feel like they can move in
(37:42):
any way they want? And so inevery section of the book,
especially so I think for this,for body language, there's a
section called body mindfulnesswhere it's a guided journey
meditation to help you to accesswhat's happening in your body or
(38:04):
a felt experience or deep psycheor imagination or your senses
that's gonna give you theinformation for your writing so
that you're not thinking yourway there. You're having an
experiential journey that getsyou to the information that's
(38:26):
gonna populate your writing. Soit becomes, like, very right
here and right now and alive.And I even have chills as I'm
saying this because it's sotrue.
I'm always telling people. Andwhen I'm teaching workshops
online, I can see when peoplestart thinking their way to
something. I say, don't thinkyour way there because Please
Wendy (38:45):
don't. Yeah.
Meredith (38:47):
Please don't think your way there. Don't do that to
yourself.
Wendy (38:50):
Habitual though for most of us in the western world.
Meredith (38:52):
It is.
Wendy (38:53):
We're pretty top heavy.
Meredith (38:55):
We really are. And we rob ourselves of the discovery
that's going to be so much moreinteresting and juicy when we
come from somethingexperiential, a felt experience
or a bodily sensation or oursenses or something that
populates in the imagination orsomething that bubbles up from
(39:17):
deep psyche. It's going to be somuch more interesting and juicy
than anything we can think ourway to. And once you taste that,
then you learn to stop thinkingyour way there. So in the body
language section, we do ajourney for each body part, and
that's very tangible.
(39:38):
And that's a great way to start,for people because it is so
tangible, and the information isright here in the body. You
know? And I yeah. Yeah. Put yourhands on that part of the body.
Yeah.
Wendy (39:52):
I was just gonna say, like, as you were describing
just like examining yourrelationship with your hips,
when do we ever do that? Never?Right. Never? Never.
I mean Exactly. So it's likeNever.
Meredith (40:05):
Never. Right. As you
Wendy (40:06):
were kind of asking the questions, I'm thinking, I don't
think I know my hips in thatway. I mean, I don't just as an
example. I mean, unless I'm ananomaly, but I suspect, none of
us really think of ourselves inthat way.
Meredith (40:22):
Right. Right. And I think that's I I think that
there are so many of us whohaven't given ourselves and our
bodies the invitation to tellthe story. And it's the wounding
stories and the gloriousstories, especially when you
come to hips. Like I mean, myown journey, like when I started
(40:47):
listening to my hips, I realizedI'm a big walker.
I walk like 5 miles a day.That's how I meditate. And at
one point, I was aware that Iheld my hips very straight and
with no movement, and I calledthat my soldier. Protection, not
(41:12):
letting anything in because itwasn't safe, and not letting
anything out. And that waspainful to feel that and to
become aware of it.
But once I became aware of itand I started writing this that
story of the soldier
Wendy (41:28):
Right.
Meredith (41:29):
I thanked the soldier for protecting me. I needed
protection. And then it began toshift because I became curious.
How do my hips wanna move? Howhow are they capable of moving?
I also grew up dancing, so I dohave a lot of fluidity in my
(41:50):
body and my hips, but my dancingis, like I might even do it in a
group, but I dance by myselfwith myself. And so then and
walking is out in the world. SoI needed to protect myself in
the walking. But, like, thecuriosity, well, how do hips
move, and what are they capableof? And what happens like, what
(42:12):
do I feel when I allow my hipsto start moving?
Woah. There's feeling there.What happens when I allow myself
to feeling? And then it's likethis amazing doorway, and we
become more Like you weresaying, we become more rich. We
become richer as we melt thepatterns of conditioning that we
(42:38):
learned before we had a choicethat's that are so much out of
protection and trauma andwounding and needing being
expected to be a cog that fitsin the machine.
So when we start melting all ofthat stuff down, and there are
(42:59):
many, many ways to melt it down,Writing is a path home. There
are many paths home. We beginmelting that conditioning and
that armoring and those survivalpatterns. We begin to soften
those, and then the life forcethat moves through us in its own
(43:28):
rhythms and serpentine motions,talking of hips, it feeds us. It
feeds our life, and and we beginto be nourished on a deep soul
level as part of nature, I wouldsay.
We really are part of nature. Wecome back into our We
Wendy (43:51):
are nature.
Meredith (43:53):
We are nature. Thank you.
Wendy (43:56):
Yes. Thank you. Yeah. That that's I mean, I don't
wanna digress too much. It'sjust that is something that I
think is also deeply embedded inour cultural psyche is that we
are separate from nature.
And it's it's like you could sayit's the lie that started many
other lies and the the way weconduct ourselves. I won't get
(44:21):
on that soapbox right now. Ijust I just
Meredith (44:24):
Yeah. We we we would you and I would rage on that on
that topic. So I just keeppointing my compass back to what
you just said, which I love isthat we are nature. And as we
melt down all the stuff thatisn't who we truly are, then we
(44:46):
get to be our natural selves.And this is really, I feel, when
we begin to be nourished by lifeand we have something to offer.
Wendy (45:01):
That just sounds lovely. Yeah. And we're talking about
the body, but you haveinvitations to connect with in
the natural world, theelementals.
Meredith (45:11):
Yeah.
Wendy (45:12):
Also, your sensory experiences. So how you are
engaged in the world and how theworld engages with you, the
world around you, and and more.Right? There's so many different
ways to explore yourself throughyour book, which is, I mean,
it's it's really cool.
Meredith (45:30):
Great. Thank you. I'm so glad you love it.
Wendy (45:35):
So one of the things I wanted to because you mentioned
shamanic journeying in yourbook, so, of course, I have to
explore that a little bit withyou. I'm curious about how a
shamanic practice influencedyour writing and maybe even how
you got pulled into learning howto connect to the dreaming in
(45:56):
that way.
Meredith (45:58):
Yeah. Thank you. So glad I wanted to go there with
you too. I think in my twentiesstarted working with a couple
shamanic practitioners, and Ilearned to journey to a
drumbeat, which as soon as I didit, I was like, oh, I've been
doing this my whole life. Youknow?
(46:19):
It's like,
Wendy (46:21):
Which
Meredith (46:21):
makes sense given your trauma background. Right? Right.
Right. Trauma and really, richinner life and imagination.
Wendy (46:32):
I find the 2 usually go hand in hand
Meredith (46:34):
Yes.
Wendy (46:35):
With people who've had tremendous trauma. They retreat
inward and sometimes outward.
Meredith (46:41):
Yes. And sometimes both at the same
Wendy (46:43):
time. Exactly. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Please.
Meredith (46:46):
No. It's fine. I love riffing. So learned to journey,
was completely at home there,had wild, amazing experiences
that completely changed my life.I was part of a shamanic
(47:06):
drumming circle for a while thatI loved, and I wish I still had
this one.
It was on my 50th birthday. Idid a journey to drumbeat where
I'll just say they. Theycompletely dismembered my heart
(47:27):
until there was nothing thereexcept a matrix of space. And I
was shown how every hurt andresentment that I attached to
was like a knot tied into thematrix of threads that crossed
(47:51):
that then became part of myheart vibration. And so it was
my task to catch any hurt orwound or resentment before it
became a knot that was embeddedin the new heart field I was
given.
(48:11):
And then slowly over time, thecrossed fibers of the field
became musical tones that sangnotes and harmonized with other
notes and became I basically gota new heart. I was given a new
(48:36):
heart, and the dismembering waspretty intense.
Wendy (48:39):
Yeah. And they usually are, aren't they?
Meredith (48:42):
And gnarly and weird and, like What the oh my god.
Wendy (48:50):
Were you gonna say what the fuck?
Meredith (48:52):
Yeah. I was. I was gonna say what the fuck. Thank
you. I wasn't I didn't know ifwe're allowed to
Wendy (48:57):
stop. Allowed.
Meredith (48:59):
Yeah.
Wendy (48:59):
It's totally allowed. Right.
Meredith (49:01):
Oh, it's so great. Good. Good. Otherwise, I'd have
to repress myself, which we knowI can't stand doing. I don't
want you to do that.
I say fuck a lot when I teach myworkshops. The other day,
somebody I do too. Yeah.Somebody said fuck a lot. I'm
sorry.
And I made everybody unmute, andwe all said fuck 3 times really
in a fulfilling way. It was justenlightening. Yeah.
Wendy (49:21):
It's a great You just go with whatever's in app.
Meredith (49:23):
It's It is it's so versatile.
Wendy (49:25):
Fucking great word. Yeah.
Meredith (49:26):
And you can put it wherever you need it. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah. You have afabulous buck.
Let's start a new podcast.
Wendy (49:31):
All right. Let's do it.
Meredith (49:33):
Okay. So so that was my experience with Shamanic
Journeying. Like, oh my god.This. Fucking yeah.
Right? And it definitelyinformed a lot of the body
mindfulness sections in the bookand the journeying to find
(49:53):
animal allies, which is myfavorite kind of journey to do,
my absolute fucking favoritekind of journey to do, for
healing and to help navigatechanges and challenges. Right?
Because then you call on thisanimal who has this instinctual
nature and skills and sensorycapacity, and they don't doubt
(50:19):
themselves. They know what theyneed, and they search it out,
and they find it.
And to have that kind ofinstinct in your toolbox to
navigate whatever it is or to dohealing work, physical, psychic,
emotional, every realm ishappening simultaneously. I just
(50:40):
it's my very favorite thing todo. We did a really interesting
workshop, which is the lastchapter, chapter 14 in the book,
Metamorphosis, where we wentthrough the metamorphosis that a
butterfly goes through from pupato caterpillar to chrysalis to
winged 1 to adult butterfly, andwe inhabited each stage of the
(51:06):
process to map and track our owncycles of change and
transformation and becoming. Andit's one of my absolute favorite
workshop.
Wendy (51:20):
It's very cool. That's very cool.
Meredith (51:22):
Yeah. And the poems that came out of that workshop.
I mean, the the women who cometo workshop shop who have
example poems in this book, Imean, I just call them the
warrior women poets, brave andbeautiful and vulnerable and
genuine, and and show up everyweek and dig deep for the
(51:46):
treasure that feeds them. Revitalize.
Wendy (51:49):
It shows in the examples.
Meredith (51:51):
Yeah. I mean, potent. Like like mind blowing
heartbreaking open poetry. Andyeah, I'm just deep bow to the
women poets. I'm so proud withthem with, and I celebrate them.
(52:12):
And I just feel so honored andjoyous that I get to share with
them what I love, what I'mpassionate about, what, my
healing journey has been thispoetry path, and then to watch
them open and blossom as theywork with the writing path as a
(52:35):
pathway home to love. I tell youyeah. There it is. I, my first
book, write a poem, save yourlife, I I realized recently, it
felt like I wrote it in blood.And this book, writing by heart,
feels like I wrote it in honey.
And it's the journey fromsurvival That's beautiful. To
(52:57):
love. And I think so many of usare on this journey, and writing
is a path home to love.
Wendy (53:06):
Yeah. I mean, that's just what you described speaks to
your direct experience of whatwriting has done for you. You
had to go into the trenches andwrite with your blood before you
could write with your honey.
Meredith (53:20):
Yeah.
Wendy (53:21):
So you work with people in these workshops, And if
someone wanted to learn more,how would they do that?
Mereditheller.com. Okay. That'spretty straightforward.
Meredith (53:35):
Yep. That's the that I must have gotten that one.
That's just it's me. You willfind me there. You can write to
me.
I will write you back. All ofthe information about the
workshops, the books,everything's there. I am on
Facebook also, a little bit onInstagram, I and get a copy for
(54:02):
yourself. And for anybody whofeels the call to write these
pages or doorways open.
Wendy (54:09):
They really are. I mean,
Meredith (54:11):
It's not home.
Wendy (54:12):
As a long time writer, I had never seen invitations in
this way. That's just like,Jesus, where was this book 30
years ago, 40 years ago?
Meredith (54:23):
Well yeah. And that's the other piece of it. Thanks
for saying that. Because myjourney was so was one that of
such aloneness and having tofind my own way because 30, 40
years ago, 45 years ago, Ididn't know anybody who was
(54:44):
doing this, and I didn't wantanybody really to have to go
through what I went through bythemselves. I wanted to say,
here's a way.
Follow me to yourself. Follow meto find yourself. Here's a way.
Get bring your paper and pen.Come on.
(55:08):
You know? And
Wendy (55:10):
And all your invisible friends.
Meredith (55:12):
Bring all your invisible friends and your magic
wand, otherwise known as yourpen. And I really suggest invite
people to write with pen andpaper because there is an
organic process that happensthat I think involves and
engages body, nervous system,arms coming from chest, coming
(55:36):
from heart into hands, deeppsyche that's different than
tapping on keys.
Wendy (55:43):
I could see that. Yeah.
Meredith (55:45):
Yeah. And it's it's nice to play in in each way, to
do some writing with pen andpaper and see what it pulls from
you. Even the the pressure ittakes to push pen across texture
of paper engages us physicallyand sensually. I have an old
push typewriter. I think it'sfrom the forties.
(56:06):
Uh-huh. Cool. And it's so cool.A little blue royal. I call him
baby blue.
And, a lot of mornings I'll sitand type at the typewriter
because I'm not as attached towhat comes out and all the keys
jam and I don't care.
Wendy (56:21):
Right. You
Meredith (56:22):
know? And so it's like it gets a different part of my
perception, a different part ofmy awareness. So it's also fun
to experiment. What writingvoice comes through when I'm
tapping on keys? What writingvoice comes through when I'm
dragging a pen across paper?
What writing voice comes throughwhen I'm even talking it? Some
people are like, I don't havethe patience to write it out. I
(56:44):
said, grab your phone and openyour voice memos and talk your
piece. Speak
Wendy (56:48):
it. Yeah.
Meredith (56:48):
Speak it. So it's like anything is welcome. What I'm
talking about is a practice ofpresencing.
Wendy (56:56):
Alright, Meredith.
Meredith (56:58):
Oh, so great to talk to you, Wendy. Thank you so
much. Thank you. Loved it.
Wendy (57:05):
So do you feel inspired to write? If you'd like to learn
more about Meredith, take one ofher workshops, or get a copy of
her latest book, please visitmeredithheller.com. The link is
in the show notes. Thank you forlistening. If you enjoyed this
episode, I hope you'll considersharing it with someone who's
feeling creatively stuck or justplain stuck.
(57:28):
Writing is such a powerful tool.Well, I'll look forward to
reconnecting with you in a fewweeks with another episode of
Lucid Cafe. Until next time.
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