Beatha Coaching

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I used to be a dedicated journaller. At one point in my academic career it was the only writing I was doing. I used journaling to get through the pandemic. I spent entire train journeys filling pages. I investigated my anxiety, my family history, my inability to make plans or do nice things for myself, and wtf was wrong with higher education. Writing by hand in blue biro on plain paper in lovely soft-cover notebooks I discovered in an art gallery shop in Brisbane, and then ordered on Amazon for four years, I collected thousands of words. I used journaling to plan seminars and lectures, to think through the consequences of leaving the sector, to support myself in disappointment and exhaustion.

Then, I stopped.

No, not entirely, I sort of drifted to a stop. From an hour or more journaling every day, it became twenty minutes here or there, every other day, once a week… Possibly it had served its purpose. More likely, I was too busy. The decline of the handwritten page happened whilst I was setting up this coaching practice, starting to write this blog, building a membership and delivering workshops. For a few months I barely wrote a word that wasn’t purposeful and designed for readers.

In October I started to investigate what a research based writing practice might look like in my new life, and I worked with Elizabeth Gaubert, the amazing writer and creativity coach, to imagine a new way of working with words. The result was the Substack I now write five or six times a week (you can subscribe to it here), a book plan, and the last two blogs I wrote. It has also rejuvenated the part of myself I think of as the creative writer, or perhaps the exploratory writer is a better term. 

For all those years I felt guilty and ashamed of my writing practice, because it was so exclusively private, tucked away in those lovely notebooks and hidden from anyone else. An academic is not meant to write privately – the purpose of writing in academia is to serve the research, to disseminate and get it out in the world. Instead, I was engaging in a distinctly self-serving practice of self-care through writing, investigating myself rather than my research. Those notebooks did not count for job interviews or the REF. They were unseen. They were uncounted. Therefore I did not count them. I thought of myself as a failed writer

Of course, what I now realise is that the writing I did as a journaler was the most profound writing I could do. For all that it did not serve an academic career, it certainly served me. And it served my current career. In many ways, I think I wrote myself into this space. From articulating on the page what was wrong in HE, I started to articulate what I wanted instead, what my own values and goals were, the principles I wanted to live by. I found my way to Beatha Coaching as it looks today through those journals. 

I was not a good academic writer. But I was always a writer.

I didn’t notice this in November, when I set myself the challenge of writing daily on Substack, but I have in fact only resumed a writing habit I built up over years. I thought I was diving into completely new uncharted waters, doing something terribly brave. But all those words, all those journals, faithfully and enthusiastically turning up again and again day after day, interrogating and investigating every question in my life, playing on the paper and marshalling my unwieldy thoughts – I am writing today in much the same way. Just because it is now mostly on screen, mostly public, and increasingly research focused – it is still the same essential practice.

And I am gently rediscovering journaling and freewriting again in new ways. Through Beth Kempton’s lovely writing prompts in the Winter Writing Sanctuary I have started to find my way back to asking open questions and trying new forms. I am diving into her Way of the Fearless Writer too, and exploring how creative writing can be a part of a therapeutic practice for myself and for my clients. I am noticing how many interesting women have shifted from academic writing into something more playful and exploratory, and the rich vein of wisdom that emerges when we allow these parts of ourselves to appear on the page. The day of the lovely notebooks might be over, I think they have served their purpose, and I need a bit more space to contain my increasingly messy and random handwriting these days. But journaling, both as something familiar and something new, is not a practice I am finished with.

If you would like support with your writing, to revive a stagnant practice, rejuvenate your enthusiasm, or to tackle your inner critic, I am hosting a three day virtual writing retreat 29-31 March 2024. Over the three days we’ll look at what is happening with your writing right now, we’ll experiment and play as a way to bring some freshness and confidence back, and we’ll integrate and plan for how you mean to take your writing forward. If you would like to be notified when booking for the retreat opens, please get in contact with me. The retreat will be online via zoom, and cost £75 or £65 for early bird bookings.