This is my third letter in the Letters of our Lives project. Isabel’s is here.
Two and a half years ago, something momentous happened to me.
I still feel overwhelmed when I remember it.
I wrote about it in June 2018 and shared it with my newsletter subscribers (for various reasons, that newsletter only ever had one issue!) but I felt moved to share it today as part of this Letters of Our Lives instalment.
I hope it’s a reminder to anyone who is feeling stuck and lost that you can always find a way forward - you just might have to be prepared to face some uncomfortable truths. And sometimes some Big Magic gets involved too!
Enjoy.
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To my turning point:
It was May 2018. I had been feeling very lost, and not particularly strong and solid. Life for the last few years had felt like driving on a highway leading somewhere I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, and yet I constantly found excuses not to pull off at the next exit and change direction. Because pulling over to the side and checking the map, maybe even getting some rest and thinking do I want to turn back? Do I want to take the next exit and get off? Do I even know where I’m going? all felt a bit too hard.
And I knew what that sounded like - defeatist and negative, and even a bit self-indulgent. That had been my default way of thinking a long time ago, in my teens and early twenties, but clearly it was creeping back. Like many people, I had thought a better version of myself was waiting in the future once I achieved X, Y and Z. But there was not. I still didn’t feel like I was good enough and my achievements of the past decade suddenly meant very little.
Two years earlier I had written a book about how the “after photo” is just an illusion, and that achieving something and expecting your life to be different on the other side of it is just setting yourself up for a fall. So to be struggling with that very issue was a bit embarrassing, to say the least!
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but all the important lessons in my life have been learned the hard way. This one particularly. There’s a line from the film Cool Runnings which puts it perfectly:
“A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one."
As a result, my writing had stalled at this point in time, even though I had thrown myself into writing my second book in a desperate bid to break the spell. But pressure and inspiration don’t mix – it’s like adding soy sauce to a Victoria sponge. It will not end well.
Despite knowing that things needed to change, and ultimately that responsibility lay with me (another message from my book I was conveniently ignoring), and no matter how many supportive conversations I had with my husband and friends, I felt so stuck.
Enter, you, my turning point, on Saturday 19 May 2018.
Somehow, I found myself at a workshop in the centre of London. The Big Magic workshop, run by one of my heroes, the author Elizabeth Gilbert. I had been told, randomly, about it by one of my Instagram followers who wanted to know if I was going too. Miraculously, there were still tickets available, so I nabbed one as an early birthday present to myself.
A few days out from the event, I received an email from the organisers, asking attendees to submit questions for the Q&A, as there was only a limited time to ask them on the day and this was the most efficient process, given they were expecting a lot of people. I wrote a question, at 7am while sipping coffee, completely uncensored. In a sleepy daze, I just hit send.
I immediately regretted it and got hit with what Brene Brown calls “the vulnerability hangover”. I read the email back and felt a pang of shame – I’d said too much. But it was too late now.
I reassured myself that there would be hundreds of people going and what were the chances my question would be picked and answered by Liz Gilbert herself?
So I arrived at the workshop, alone, as my friend couldn’t make it after all, and was quite taken by the atmosphere inside this giant hall, slowly filling up with excited-looking people who all seemed very friendly. There was such a lovely vibe in the room.
When Liz walked in, the room went wild! I could hardly believe it was her, in the flesh. And so began our wonderful workshop, where we did writing exercises and then Liz walked around in the audience and encouraged people to share what they’d written. Bizarrely, in a room of nearly 1,000 people, it felt so intimate and safe to share. Whenever someone was hesitant to speak, the support in the room was palpable, you could feel it in the air. With encouragement from Liz and the people around us, we discovered our courage and persistence that had long been lying dormant and dared to listen to what our fear and our enchantment had to tell us.
I loved how Liz carried herself too. At that time she was grieving deeply, having only lost her partner Rayya to cancer a few months earlier, and yet she was so open and generous, making space for sadness and joy, and with very clear boundaries. People did, naturally, try and get a book signed or get her attention in various ways throughout the day, and each time she acknowledged them with kindness and explained why she couldn’t give them what they wanted. It was inspiring to see.
By the end of the workshop, I felt I had really turned a corner. The exercises we had done had helped excavate a lot of rubble lying in my heart. I felt like a veil had been lifted and I could see things more clearly than I had before. I felt inspired, reawakened, alive and ready to do whatever it took to start driving down the highway of life with purpose again. And, more importantly, have the guts to take the exit off the smooth road and start exploring the windier ones.
But then came the Q&A. I felt nervous, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand.
The moderator explained that there had been over 100 questions and they only had time for five. We got through the first three, and then the moderator said to the room, with nearly 1,000 people eagerly listening and one of the people I most admire in the world sitting on the stage with a microphone, “is Philippa from London here?”
It was one of the most petrifying moments of my life! But a moment that also managed to be humbling, uplifting and mind-blowing at the same time.
I raised my hand to identify myself, the moderator read out my question and Liz looked right at me. She truly has the presence of a spiritual teacher, where it feels like she is seeing right into your soul, willing you to find the answers that lie in there, that she can see clearly and that you probably know deep down are there but listening to them would mean having to do something. It would mean running out of excuses, which are the easiest things in the world to make.
To begin with, she smiled and said a few kind things to me and then said, “But I’m going to have to be a hard-ass on you. So, you didn’t get what you wanted. Welcome to the world.”
The room was silent. Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “So, what now?” she asked.
She told me (well, the whole room, but it felt like it was just me!) about her journey, that her first book sold 6,000 copies and then Eat Pray Love sold 12 million. But the effort to keep going, after both perceived failure and success, is the same.
“What’s the alternative? Not trying? Giving up? You wouldn’t be here if that was what you wanted.”
She told me, and the room, that our only job is to serve our creativity. And for me, my only task is to let my next book be whatever it needs to be. Finding out what it wants to become – and what the next book wants to become, and the next, and the next - is the whole point of the journey.
She spoke a little about the creative journey, and how dangerous it is to get caught up in “the industry” and “making it”. She then read us the Celtic Prayer of Approach, which I now have pinned up by my desk.
I honor your Gods.
I drink at your well,
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place,
I have no cherished outcomes,
I will not negotiate by withholding, and
I am not subject to disappointment.
“Write your next book,” Liz said, her gaze not leaving my face. “And write the next one, and the next one. Go forth and serve your creativity. You deserve it.”
After the thanks (from me) and applause, we moved on to the last question, but I must admit I was in a bit of a world of my own by then. I wiped the tears that had found their way out of my eyes away and sat there, so overwhelmed and profoundly moved. One of my heroes took the time to address me, stared me and my fear and entitlement down and said “get on with it.” They were words I really needed to hear and she said them with so much respect, love and conviction.
There, in a room full of strangers, confronted by my limiting beliefs and excuses, and Liz Gilbert fixing me in a loving but “come on, you’re better than this” gaze, I knew this was my turning point. I knew the inertia and fear of the last few years was over. I finally felt something shift. I felt light, for the first time in a long time. A line was drawn. I knew I wouldn’t keep giving in to fear.
I felt so vulnerable but I also felt so seen. And feeling seen was worth the pain of feeling vulnerable.
And even though it was a room full of people I didn't know, it felt so safe. So many people shared. People who have seen and known far harder things than I have. I was so moved and so very, very grateful.
The whole experience was such a gift. Not just the gift of having the next best thing to a direct line to Liz Gilbert, but the gift of being in a room of like-minded, friendly and open people who restored my faith that, in a world that seems constantly full of bad news, most of us just want to connect with others, and feel seen and heard. And if Liz Gilbert tells you to write your next book, you’re officially out of excuses!
Afterwards, I walked out into the balmy Saturday sunshine. As the Royal Wedding was on, most of central London was quiet. I walked to my favourite bookshop to keep my promise to Enchantment and bought two poetry books. I don’t write a lot of poetry myself any more [note from 2020: that’s changed!] but reading it feeds my soul like nothing else. Enchantment reminded me of that.
Two and a half years later, my next book isn’t finished yet but it’s being written. I actually don’t know what my next book will be - there are several possibilities - but I’m working, regularly and with a willing spirit, on them. I have no cherished outcomes.
I also now live a life where my creativity and writing are at the centre of it, the focus of every day. I feel fulfilled and happy. In 2018 Tom and I made a lot of changes and while not everything has gone to plan, we haven’t looked back. I know, without a doubt, that everything is unfolding exactly as it should.
In many ways, that was the best outcome from that day that I could have hoped for.
Thank you Liz Gilbert, and the Universe, for that turning point.
Love, Phil xxx