It’s episode #144 and I’m chatting with Celia McBride, a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist originally from the Yukon, now living in Port Hope.

As a playwright, Celia’s work was developed by numerous theatre companies in Canada (infinitheatre, Nightwood, Factory), and produced internationally by Red Kettle Theatre (Ireland) and Looking Glass Theatre (New York).

She was commissioned by the Stratford Festival of Canada for the Studio Theatre’s inaugural season, and Walk Right Up premiered there in 2002.

From 2005-2011, Celia was the Co-Artistic Director of Sour Brides Theatre, touring her play So Many Doors (Playwrights Canada Press) across Canada.

In 2015, she released a feature film, Last Stop for Miles, adapted from one of her first plays.

Since 2014, Celia has been working as a spiritual director and providing spiritual care in long-term care homes.

She published O My God: An Un-Becoming Journey, a memoir, in 2022.

It was so lovely to connect with Celia, and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy listening in.

Website: celiamcbride.com

It’s episode #143 and I’m chatting with Victoria Albina, Nurse Practitioner with a Master’s Degree in Public Health.

This was such a great conversation! Victoria is intelligent, deep, knowledgeable and wise. 

We talked about how to identify when you’re defaulting to perfectionism and people-pleasing, what the term ‘somatics’ means to her, what tipping points are like (the shift from thinking your feelings to feeling your feelings) and got into the fun stuff - all the ‘nerditry and all the woo’.

More about Victoria: she coaches codependent folks socialized as women to stop feeling anxious, exhausted and overwhelmed, so they can have better relationships with their partners, parents, and themselves.

She does this because she knows this - she spent the first 30 years of her life stuck in codependent and perfectionist thinking.

Being mean to herself, often without even realizing it.

Demanding "perfection" from herself, not knowing that she was already perfect and worthy of love (just like you).
Victoria is also a Master Certified Life Coach, and trained with The Life Coach School, the best boutique program in the country.

She’s a certified Breathwork Journey Meditation Facilitator, and she’s experienced, having worked in health and wellness internationally as well as in the US, for 20 years.

It was so lovely to connect with Victoria, and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy listening in.

Website:  Victoria Albina

Take in the exploration, then set a timer and flow write for somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes. See what arises. Enjoy! 

And, for more offerings like this, including my transformational, body-centric memoir-writing course, The Art of Personal Mythmaking, go to my website, janellehardy.com.

If this story resonates with you, I really encourage you to read and listen to a few different versions, and make the story your own.

Then stick around after the story for some guidance on working with tales like this, and your personal stories, and then, to start your own personal mythmaking get started with my free on-demand workshop, Outline Your Memoir Using Fairy Tale and Myth as Your Guide.

It’s episode #140 and I’m chatting with Nicole Breit, a writer and the founder of Spark Your Story, an online writing school.

I met Nicole online when she reached out to connect over our shared love of writing, teaching writing, and the challenges and delights of marketing and teaching writing courses online, from Canada.

So, here’s some more about Nicole. She’s an award-winning essayist, poet, and writing instructor based on the traditional, unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people in Gibsons, BC.

She holds a B.A. in English Literature (UVIC), graduating with distinction in 1996; a B.Ed. in 1999 (UBC); and a Certificate in Foundations of Narrative Therapy (2020).

Nicole’s writing explores themes of grief and healing in lyric narratives about her identity as a queer femme, as well as varied experiences of personal loss.

Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies including Brevity, Pithead Chapel, Event, Hippocampus, Room, The Fiddlehead, The Puritan, After the Art, The Sounds of Silence: Journeys Through Miscarriage,  and Swelling with Pride: Queer Conception and Adoption Stories.

In 2016 Nicole was the winner of the CNFC/carte blanche creative nonfiction award – the same year she won Room magazine’s CNF prize for her essay, “An Atmospheric Pressure” (selected as a Notable by the editors of Best American Essays 2017).

Her online programs center on empowerment, helping authors develop tools to move past blocks and get their difficult stories on the page as they experiment with non-traditional and hybrid storytelling structures.

When she isn’t coaching memoir writers in the Spark Your Story Lab, testing chocolate or watching This Is Us, she loves spending time at home with her wife and two kids.

It was so lovely to connect with Nicole, and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy listening in.

Website:  Spark Your Story

Take in the exploration, then set a timer and flow write for somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes. See what arises. Enjoy! 

And, for more offerings like this, including my transformational, body-centric memoir-writing course, The Art of Personal Mythmaking, go to my website, janellehardy.com.

Sit back and enjoy having a story told to you.

Let your body and your soul soak up the essence of the story magic and medicine.

Stick around after the story for some guidance on working with tales like this, and your personal stories, and then, to start your own personal mythmaking get started with my free on-demand workshop, Outline Your Memoir Using Fairy Tale and Myth as Your Guide.

I met Michelle through a personal introduction via Tara McMullin’s small business What Works Network. Someone there thought I’d like Michelle and her work, and they were completely right.

Michelle is a kindred spirit and does wonderful work in the world. I’m so delighted to share a conversation that traverses (and helps me heal) the world of academia and academic writing, making the switch to entrepreneurship and supporting aspiring writers. Michelle also shared a bit about her affirming experience at an HBCU (historically black university), which, for me as a white Canadian, was a new learning. So, before I give too much more of our conversation away, I’ll share more about Michelle and her accomplishments, and then jump into our conversation.

Michelle is an award-winning writer, a former tenured faculty member, and the founder of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats, where she specializes in helping stuck, scared scholars free themselves from fear and build a satisfying, sustainable writing practice.

She has been leading scholarly writing retreats since she was a faculty member in 2012, when she co-founded and coached a dissertation writing retreat for graduate students studying race and ethnicity. Three years later, Michelle left academia and founded InkWell, and has since helped hundreds of scholars—from all ranks and a wide range of institutions and inter/disciplines—move past their anxieties, reconnect with their writing, and develop a calmer, more confident, more productive writing practice.

Michelle has received many honors for her scholarly, nonfiction, and audio work. Her book Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville was a Finalist for the 2006 SSHA President’s Book Award and winner of the 2008 Race, Ethnicity and Politics Section Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. 

Her essay Backpack was a Finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal Writing Contest. And along with co-producer Erica Meiners, she won the 2013 Lux/Lumina Multimedia Audio Essay Contest for their audio essay Reconstructions.

In addition, ​Michelle is a self-described struggling writer whose success as a writer and scholar belies the challenges she faces throughout her career as an academic. Michelle knows what it's like to have no time to write, to procrastinate when there is time, and to struggle when the writing is going nowhere. 

Better yet, she knows—from experience and research—that successful scholars write from the inside out: they turn inward to discover their own writing process. So they can find the calm and courage they need to stay connected to their writing. 

Her book Becoming the Writer You Already Are is forthcoming with SAGE in 2022.

It was so lovely to connect with Michelle, and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy listening in.

• Website:  InkWell Academic Writing Retreats
• Book: Becoming the Writer You Already Are