Web Write Your Way Through Grief – Sitting with Death and Choosing Life

Write Your Way Through Grief - and Let Creative Wisdom Be Your Guide

Join me to grow a writing practice which will connect you with all levels of your being – and beyond!

You’re on a conscious healing path? Or you identify as a cultural creative? You are passionate about doing everything you can to help yourself, people and planet through this very difficult transition we’re all in, so that together we can create a brighter future?

Perhaps you are deep in personal grief – a loved one has died; a relationship has become estranged; your health is compromised; you have lost your sense of self?

Or, your heart is breaking in response to all our national and global losses?

I’m sure at times you feel overwhelmed and despairing. You doubt your own contribution and feel you are not doing enough. Or you feel burned out and long for more time and space to regenerate yourself.

Or perhaps, the continuing crisis of the pandemic and the loss of freedoms have left you feeling diminished, dull and trapped?

I’m Rose Diamond and I have spent much of my life working as a change agent and on a spiritual-creative path. I’ve been highly motivated from within to transform myself and to bring tools for empowerment into community. This has been challenging and often lonely work. I’m not sure I would have survived the hardest times without my love and passion for writing which I have found to be an unfailing source of solace, illumination and regeneration.

Writing has been my life line, a way to make sense of my experience, a source of soul wisdom and a powerful motivator. When I’m writing I move into a timeless space where the demands of the world fade into the background. I connect with inspiration and with a creative power much bigger than my personality. Writing becomes a vehicle for this bigger wisdom to come through me and be shared. My task has been to learn how to co-operate with these bigger sources of wisdom and to develop my craft, so that I can serve the emerging story.

Through the practice of Writing Your Way Through Grief, I am inviting you to say YES to grief, YES to creativity and YES to life.

Say YES to grief

Grief is not a state most of us rush to embrace. Grieving can be hard, painful, and so intense and overwhelming it takes all your courage to stay with it. But your heart knows that times of grief can be special opportunities and, when you are willing to give space to grief, it delivers many surprising gifts. I’m sure you are also aware that when you don’t make space to be with your grief, and allow its emotional energy to move through you, it becomes a heavy burden which sits in you and limits your forward movement and possibilities. The only way to the other side of grief is to move through it. In grief we tend to self-isolate, to draw inwards and wrap ourselves, as best we can, around the core of our pain. Solitude is a beautiful state but this withdrawal from life can become self-defeating and lonely if we stay too long alone. Your energy can become stuck in depression or tied up in old stories of blame, abandonment or unworthiness.

Say YES to creativity

The benefits of a regular writing practice are abundant. This practice will uplift your emotional, mental and spiritual health in the following ways:

– The act of focusing on writing brings you into a receptive state of presence which, when nurtured, becomes a beautiful sanctuary from the distractions of an over-worked mind;

– By choosing to write regularly – preferably a little every day – you grow your muscles of intention and commitment and this in turn builds confidence;

– Writing regularly helps you to move through the top layer of thought and emotion and find the creative seeds beneath. As you nurture your seeds, they grow into ideas and projects that can feed and nourish you and others;

– When you face into your difficult experiences and write from there you will feel the pain of loss and regret. But that pain will open up new choices, new directions and the courage to turn towards what is most meaningful to you;

– As your confidence and pleasure in writing grow, you can move through fear, anxiety and avoidance; step into curiosity and beginner’s mind; and build a forward momentum to carry you into your adventure of discovery and revelation;

– Writing from a state of focused presence connects you to all your resources, and especially to your authentic voice. The joy of revealing, and daring to speak your own truth – even if only to yourself and the page – is a precious relief;

– Through writing you can access your deepest wisdom and shine a light onto past experiences so that what was painful and fragmented becomes coherent and bright with meaning;

– Writing can open you to the unlimited world of your imagination and to sources of inspiration that may otherwise go unnoticed;

– Writing can also bring you into the ordinary dailiness of life so that you appreciate more of the gifts you already have and live in gratitude, more simply.

The movement of your hand across the page, as you follow your thoughts and emotions, brings the power of the creative process into the heart of your life. The arts of both writing and grieving well require an intention to step out of busy-ness and distraction and to make space where you can open to the inner, very private world within you. They require a willingness to be still and silent and to listen. And to be brave enough to meet and welcome whatever arises.

Say YES to Life

At this time of planetary upheaval and danger it is essential that those of us who can, say YES to life. We can practice consciously embracing all aspects of our humanity – not only our bright, shiny, successful, loving selves but also all those parts that we have tried to shove under the carpet and disassociate from – our rage, our meanness, our resistance to life, our failures, the raw agony of loss.

When you are brave enough to enter the shadows and take a look, you can welcome back those parts of you that have become split off, fragmented or numbed into inertia. As you bring yourself into alignment with, and service to, the creative life force in this way, you become rounder, more whole, more alive, more empowered, and ultimately more forgiving and compassionate. It is compassion for the human condition that knits us all up into one humanity, One Life.

“Oh, how much I want to communicate to you the endless possibility and joy within this simple act of writing, and to invite you into these secrets of alchemy. Because with writing there is always a “you”, an imagined audience. Even journal writing, which seems to be for oneself alone, could be seen as a conversation between the personality, who wants to know and Soul, the one who knows. Writing is an act that invites the individual personality beyond the known and into the unknown, into an identification with the interconnected world. ” From “Gathering Wisdom at the Edges of Uncertainty”

My invitation to you

I am an advocate for growing a writing practice as a vehicle for accessing creative wisdom and grieving consciously. It is now my great pleasure to offer you the gifts I have gathered from my own writing life to support you in the following ways:

• Stimulus materials
I have created the Write Your Way Through Grief Guidebooks to give you structure, containment and companionship as you develop your writing practice. In the spirit of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Programme, collections of my own writing are a way of reaching out a hand to let you know you are not alone. These are stimulus materials which I hope will stir your memories and encourage you to dive deeper into your own experiences.

• Tools and skills
The guidebooks contain guidance, tools, questions for inquiry and a variety of practices to get you started on a regular writing practice, and then to keep going.

• Community
Membership of our Write Your Way Through Grief Membership Circle will provide you with companionship and the optimum support and encouragement to develop the craft of writing and to better know and move through your grief.

You will be part of a cohort of 8-12 fellow travellers and meet together with me every month, over nine months, on zoom, to share your writing and your creative process. You will also have access to a growing online community where you can meet and share.

The more frequently you write, the more fulfilment you will receive. It is the regular repetition of skills that builds transformational muscles. And it is the consistent choice to nourish and regenerate yourself through immersion in creative sanctuary space that grows you into the fullness and fulfilment of your true being.

JOIN THE WRITE YOUR WAY THROUGH GRIEF MEMBERSHIP CIRCLE NOW

For £33 each month, over nine months, you will receive:

• Three guidebooks, one every 3 months:
Saying Goodbye to a Loved One<br Finding the Gifts in Loss
Write Your Soul Journey Story
These provide guidance, inspiration and companionship as you develop your writing practice.

• A two hour circle on zoom each month in a small group with whom you can build trust, depth and kinship.

• An online community where you can connect between group sessions.

The date of the next Circle will be posted soon. To register your interest please contact me on the form below. Please dont make a payment yet.

Make one payment of £297 here.

Make one payment of £33 per month over nine months.

Or buy the Guidebook only: Write Your Way Through Grief, Part One – Saying Goodbye to a Loved One:
£33

Testimonials

Writing is making me feel more whole and more able to be present to myself. These practices are part of an organic and ever changing process, they can be done again and again. Rose’s guidebook, “Saying Goodbye to a Loved One” is a jewel of a tool kit.”

The Saying Goodbye to a Loved One guidebook is powerful, inspiring and supportive because it’s about Rose’s personal experience and this is fuel bringing the possibility of writing very close and clear. She tells her story and then provides a variety of different approaches and exercises inviting me to join in and experiment. Writing gives me that little bit of space, so that I can feel my experience but also see it more objectively. As I bring context to where I am now more choices open up.”

I realised that, in truth, I’ve hated writing because I’ve struggled with dyslexia all my life. But I’ve found that the more I work on myself using writing as a tool, I’m able to let go of many limiting beliefs, perceptions and judgements I have. And as a consequence my writing has improved. It helps me to hone in and see what might be troubling me or capture that ‘gem’ of an idea. It’s a means to express myself and my feelings in the moment. I have a richer understanding of myself and what makes me tick. It’s fundamental to my personal and spiritual growth, as we’re such multi-layered and complex beings. The best thing I find is looking back and seeing how much I’ve changed and grown. It’s there in black and white, no escaping! It’s all so valuable, free-ing and affirming. Rose’s writing is so beautiful and compelling, it inspires me to want to write that way too.”

Rose’s writing brought me more insights into my own grief process with the loss of my son, and in realizing more fully that I am still in a continuing and ever-changing landscape of grief that begs to be expressed. Added to this was the desperate need to record and review the cumulative grief of both myself and the collective in a covid ravaged world. Rose’s writing style, together with her writing course “Saying Goodbye to a Loved One” gave me wings to soar and view with great clarity, the depths of healing to be gifted through creative writing. Her skilled and captivating weaving together of external situations, relationships, feelings, realizations and insights in her own story provide inspiration and gentle guidance as we write our own stories. For me, Rose’s course has affirmed that our creative process in writing from our heart and soul contributes to the evolution of consciousness – even if nobody reads it! What better reason to write than that!

These practices are a great gift in more ways than I can express; they are so multi-layered. Rose’s guidebook has given me a sense of hope and possibility. I feel very affirmed by her writing about grief and she has reminded me how much courage it takes, and how much courage I have. Rose made so many profound invitations in a guidebook that is beautifully contained and poetically written. This is something to keep coming back to; emotional, practical and all-embracing. I am very grateful.”