letters of our lives: to my turning point

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

letters of our lives: to the book that changed me

This is my second letter in the Letters of our Lives project. Isabel’s is here.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." - Renaissance author Sir Francis Bacon

In a situation where you have a million and one choices, the standard advice is to go with the first one that comes to mind.

I am a writer, PhD student, historian, lover of words and speed reader so it follows that books are a necessary and joyful part of my life. Enter my home and you will see piles of them, everywhere. In every city I have lived, I have been a dedicated library user and patron of bookstores.

I can be fairly minimalist in other areas of life - happy to pare back to necessities in the kitchen, in my wardrobe - but with books? Never.

I honestly cannot remember a time when I could not read, and my activity of choice was not sitting somewhere with a book, or going to the library for more books, or writing my own books. Some books are like old friends, like houses I've lived in, like conversations I've had. There are memories and happiness associated with them. They are a wonderful way of showing you how you've changed, or how you haven't.

But to the book that changed me? That was a question. The answer came to me immediately, but I dismissed it at first. Surely there was another choice? Less….earnest? Something that hadn’t sold millions and millions of copies?

Every book I’ve read has changed me, made me a better writer, a more informed and curious human being. But when I really thought about it, I know that had I not read this book at the time that I did, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to keep going, to listen to my heart and to have learned that you have to make sacrifices to make your dreams come true.

Who knows where I might be right now, had anything been different.

So, this is the book that changed me.

See if you can spot the tile we had to Photoshop in because there are only two of them in a Scrabble set!

To The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho,

You came into my life, as I imagine you do with many others, in the midst of pain and bewilderment. It was a dark, cold winter, the darkest I had ever known.

I don’t recall how I came across you - perhaps a blog reader recommended you? Or perhaps I came across you in the bargain bin at Borders Melbourne Central, where I would go most days after work, prolonging my return home for as long as possible. My first marriage was over but it was early days and we were still living together, which was excruciating. Everything was so raw. I felt like I didn’t have any skin.

Or perhaps I saw you mentioned on a message board that I’d started trawling late at night, where other confused and heartbroken people holding pieces of their marriages in their hands gathered to vent and console. I never posted anything, I just read.

Wherever I found you, you ended up with me.

By the time I started reading you, however, things had changed a little. I had finally moved out and was getting used to a new home and identity. Everything was still in boxes. I had a different train, to the other side of Melbourne, to catch every evening after work. One particular evening, a freezing wet July night, I collapsed into a seat on the train and pulled you out of my bag.

It had been a long, low day. The feelings of grief and brokenness over my marriage ending had not dissipated, much to my confusion and disappointment. And they wouldn’t for some time. I was beginning to wonder whether ending things had been the right thing to do, given how much pain I was in. Should I have tried harder to work things out? Was he right, had it all been my fault? Had I been incredibly selfish, wanting to follow my heart and my dreams after so many years of putting them aside…for him?

As the train left the underground and out into the dark night, these lines pounced up from the page:

“Love never keeps you from pursuing your destiny. If it does, it isn’t true love.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. My mouth fell open, my eyes filled with tears, and everything around me froze in time, I didn’t notice anyone else on the train, I just stared into space in relief, tears rolling down my face. At that moment I realised that I had done the right thing. I was free. The life I had always wanted could finally begin. I had abandoned my dreams during my marriage and now it was over there were no more excuses.

Of course, things weren’t that simple - as you warned me they wouldn’t be.

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight.”

Other relationships I fell into were over as soon as I mentioned I had plans to travel and live overseas. I couldn’t seem to find anyone to just have a bit of fun with! I fought my habitual urges to suppress my own longings and needs to make other people happy - a pattern that had flourished in my marriage until its last few months (which was of course why it ended). Soon it became clear that I was never going to find what I was looking for where I was. I needed to pack my bags and go.

Life in Melbourne grew strange and lonely as I packed up my life and prepared to leave for my big adventure. Previously supportive friends turned nasty and distant. It was a strange cocktail of excitement, guilt and fear - that I was giving up everything in pursuit of the life I felt I was destined for, and it would all turn out to be a terrible mistake.

“The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself… no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

You were right about that.

I was put to the test so much during that time - my safety net was gone, any predictability and security my life had previously had were over, and I headed out into the unknown.

“It is the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

It’s been 13 years and I think about my solo travels across the USA, Canada, Europe and Asia nearly every day. Everything pursuing my destiny had cost me was worth every exhilarating second of that trip. I stayed with friends and blog readers everywhere I went, who welcomed me with open arms and became my family for however long I was in their city, be it two days or two weeks. I saw amazing things and did things I could never have even dreamed of. Every day was a new adventure. It was the happiest time of my life (up to that point at least!).

I must admit, I haven’t read you from start to finish for a while but maybe now, after finding a love that hasn’t made me compromise my dreams and returning home to Australia, is the perfect time for a reread.

I’m on a different kind of quest now but the lessons and wisdom I gleaned from you all those years ago remain the same.

That I must remain courageous, persistent and assertive in pursuit of my dreams, especially when I am tested. Being tested is part of the journey.

If I back down out of fear, I’ll be back where I started.

That my heart is alive and I must always listen to what it has to say.

But most importantly:

“Never stop dreaming.”

Thank you for the consolation and the wisdom, old friend. I don’t know where I might be now without you.

Love, Phil xx

What is the book that changed you?

letters of our lives: to a lost friend

This is my first letter in the Letters of our Lives project. Isabel’s first letter is here.

My dear Nischa,

Thirteen years ago, we spent a glorious day gallivanting around Manhattan, sipping Cosmopolitans, flirting with handsome bartenders, lining up for Magnolia Bakery goodies, sitting on Carrie Bradshaw’s stoop together and then later on a bench in Central Park, swapping life stories, eating cupcakes and banana pudding. You had been reading my blog for years and your kind heart and warmth had oozed through every comment and, later, emails, where you shared your own stories with me. It turned out we were very similar. You too wanted to write, see the world and have adventures. You too were wanting to embrace life, find your confidence and shine.

That June day in 2007 was the first time we met in person, after a year or so of getting to know each other online (which was considered a dodgy thing back then!). Though I know I was technically a stranger, it never felt that way. It was as if we had known each other for a very long time.

The idea that 10 years later you would be gone would have struck both of us as ridiculous. Laughable. Unthinkable.

We would only see each other one more time in person after that day, though we of course kept in touch and it was a joy to witness your life take off from afar. Your gorgeous wedding pictures where your face shone with happiness. Your move out of NYC and back to Texas. Your career soaring, literally! In every photo, every message, you were so vibrant, gorgeous and happy.

I still can’t believe you’re gone.

As I started writing this, I logged into Facebook for the first time in months, just to quickly check your page. Just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. I so hoped I had. Perhaps it had all been a horrible mistake and you were actually still alive and well in Texas with your husband, living your vibrant beautiful life as you so deserved to.

But no, I hadn’t imagined it and yet it still doesn’t feel real. It’s been nearly four years now.

I felt a bit of resistance when the theme was chosen for this letter - because I didn’t want to write a letter full of darkness to one of the friends I’ve lost in other ways (though they feel equally as final). So then I considered the friends (mercifully only a few) I have lost, as Virginia Woolf put it, to death rather than an inability to cross the street. Someone I truly have lost forever. And that too was something I resisted.

But you deserve to be remembered and celebrated. Not just because your time on this earth was so cruelly cut short but because you were a beautiful, brave woman with everything to live for, who inspires me still.

These are lovely pictures, aren’t they? Both of us so full of joyful energy and wide-eyed wonder, promise and excitement about our futures.

It was one of those days where I really had to pinch myself because everything felt like something out of a movie, or an episode of Sex and the City (which was appropriate because we did The Sex and The City Tour!)

I remember how we giggled like schoolgirls on that gold bus that was crammed full as it purred past landmarks and iconic locations that we recognised from the show. We suddenly had the intimacy of a decades-long friendship when the bus made one of its first stops and we found ourselves inside The Pleasure Chest looking at vibrators! I remember how much you laughed.

I remember how after the tour was over we sat in the summer sunshine on a bench in Central Park, spooning up that divinely decadent banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery that we’d queued for, so fudgy and creamy, barely speaking while we ate it with the reverence it deserved.

I remember how we had coupons for free drinks in “some obscure bar in Little Italy” (according to my journal) where we had bitter but perfectly drinkable espresso martinis. Over dinner, we talked about our lives, our secret fears, our big dreams, our future plans.

From what I could gather of your life after that day, you went from strength to strength.

You worked hard. You loved hard. You embraced life. You saw the world. It was hard to believe you were ever, even for a moment, afraid of anything.

The last time I heard from you was in 2016 when The Latte Years came out and you posted a lovely photo of you reading it, with a coffee. That meant the world to me. I’m so happy you got to read it.

I didn’t know you were ill. At that point, I don’t think you did either. I didn’t hear from you again. I would have reached out, had I known. I’m so very sorry.

The next time I saw your face in my Facebook feed, some time later, it was a tribute from a pilot you had flown with. The way it was worded, it sounded like maybe you had just left your job and moved on to something else. Curious, I went to your profile. And there was the news, that you were gone. Colon cancer. Age 37.

What a strange, cruel world this can be.

Your passing was a devastating reminder that all our lives are so fragile, able to be snatched away very quickly. However much we are loved. However much potential we have.

Thank you Nischa, for being a light in my life, and one of my true friends and supporters. I miss you. I hope you knew how much you meant to me.

Because of you, to cherish your memory, I try not to take anything for granted. I soak up, embrace and enjoy all the little things in life. I try to live as joyfully as I dare. I dance when I water my vegetable garden. I take every chance I can to do something that scares me. I try to tell the truth. I try to be as gracious and compassionate with others as you were. To always welcome strangers, as you welcomed me.

Grammarly is telling me my tone of this letter is joyful. How interesting. That’s exactly the word I’d use to describe you, my beautiful friend.

I hope I get to eat banana pudding in NYC again one day…. but it will never be the same without you.

All my love,

Phil xxx

Nischa Janssen
1979-2017

letters of our lives

I have some exciting news! For the rest of 2020, my friend and fellow writer Isabel Robinson and I will be collaborating on a project called Letters of our Lives.

Our Story

Phil and Iz met through the blogging community in 2015. Back then, Iz was studying in China and Phil was living and working in London. Both are writers – Phil published her memoir The Latte Years in 2016, the year after Iz began her first blog, Nanjing Nian chronicling her adventures in China. Internet tag followed; a blog comment here, an email there, and in 2017 Phil and Iz became proper penpals, writing long letters about their lives to one another from opposite ends of the world. Phil moved home to Hobart in 2018, and though only Bass Strait now divides them, the correspondence has continued.

They have met twice in person – that’s it!

Letters of our Lives is Phil and Iz’s first creative collaboration.

Our Project – Letters of our Lives

Inspired by the Women of Letters project begun by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire in 2010 to ‘revive the lost art of correspondence’ and ‘showcase brilliant female minds’, Iz (here) and Phil (here) will write a letter each month on a shared theme for the rest of 2020.

Letters of our Lives is also the title of a novel Phil wrote when she was 14. The story followed the lives of two teenage girls, one living in country Tasmania and the other in chic, cosmopolitan Sydney. While that’s not their exact situation (and the story had a tragic ending!), they love the reference to childhood and the value of a carefully composed letter in a world of texts and tweets.

[sidenote from Phil: I found the original Letters of our LIves the other day! Here’s the hand-drawn title!]

These letters are a response to our lives, inner and outer, past, present and future.

We hope you enjoy our project.

If you’re a writer and would like to join in, we’d be open to it. Please contact either one of us via the contact forms on our blogs.

Yours in correspondence,

Iz and Phil x