Navigating Transitions

Creative writing can be a helpful support through big life changes, including new parenthood, relationship breakdown, career change, retirement, bereavement and loss

Navigating Transitions

Big life changes are hard. They may also be joyful, exciting, scary or sad. Whether by choice or not, change can bring conflicting feelings. It may seem to dominate everything, as if you can’t move past it, or make sense of it.  

These big life changes include becoming a parent, losing someone you love, changing career, being made redundant, retirement, children leaving home, being diagnosed with a serious illness. Some of these are chosen, others happen to us.

There is value in taking time to process and make some sense of these big life changes, yet very often we try to carry on as if we were unaffected, trying to minimise the impact or pretend we are fine. Writing can help at such times, especially writing with a group who share a common experience. 

Open notebook with a pen resting on it, placed on a tree stump in a field of grass and wildflowers during sunset.

“How deep they drove themselves into me, the things it was impossible to say aloud.”

Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

Writing About It Can Help

Writing can help to externalise pain and confusion, discover how you feel, consider an experience from different perspectives, and change your relationship to it, perhaps to one that feels more in control. Writing with others who share the experience can be a powerful source of support.

Writing and sharing our writing can help make sense of different thoughts and feelings. It can be a way to understand what is happening and find new ways of coping with it. Sharing it in a supportive group helps us feel less alone. 

I can support you to write individually and work through the changes you are facing. I also run themed groups.  

If you have a group who have a transition-in-common – like a group of new parents, or a group who meet through bereavement, or who come together because of a cancer diagnosis – I can offer a one-off or series of writing sessions that may be of help.  

Participants absolutely do not need to be experienced or talented writers. Workshops are very accessible and non-intimidating. It is a way to share experience, articulate feelings, and make friends.

Experiences and transitions that I’ve worked with include:

  • Bereavement

  • Loss

  • Children growing up

  • Older age

  • Life-altering illness

  • Becoming a parent

A person writing in a notebook with a black pen, sitting down with their legs crossed, near a large window with a wooden frame.

Client Testimonials

  • "‘Enjoyed the thought provoking tasks and the group discussions."

    Participant

  • "Could not ask for a lovelier, more welcoming group. I was made to feel so welcome."

    Participant

  • "The course has encouraged me to reconsider writing my own interesting story at some point."

    Participant

To discuss your requirements or find out more about upcoming therapeutic writing courses, please get in touch.