I believe writing is a gift. It’s the opportunity to understand what makes us up and how we want to relate, what we believe and what our biggest questions are. It’s the chance to reimagine limiting beliefs and old stories that block us creatively, in work, life, and relationships. Good process builds the wisdom of deep trust in the self and the world. Craft brings us confidence in voice and skill that spills into rest-of-life. When engaged as an embodied practice, writing allows us to slow down, calm down–to fall more deeply in love with life, others, the earth, our work, ourselves.

I worked in magazines, at tech companies and publishing companies, in classrooms, and as a freelance editor for ten years before starting my business as a writing coach. I’ve coached writers—from ‘first book’ contenders to NYT-bestselling authors, emerging bloggers to successful founders building their brand on the page—for a while now. I’ve taken a lot of notes. I’ve listened to their struggles from outlining to identity, story concepts to self-conception, the ‘cold-start’ problem to ‘never finished’ agony, and guided them to identify and move toward their goals.

In my coaching work, those goals include improving at different areas of writing (of course), as well as answering some big questions—we use writing to understand the self in deeper ways and express the self authentically, to find direction, and to put down burdens. In many cases, I’ve celebrated alongside my writers as they exceeded their goals along both tracks.

For me, the way writing can be a place for personal growth and the fact that we can improve at writing are inextricable. We don’t just tackle difficult questions in our writing, we tackle them through it. Even on the level of the line, investigating the word choices in a single sentence can often reveal unexpected surprises about how we see the world—when we have someone to show us where to look, who is also there to remind you that it is worth looking.

I hope to show you that it is worth it to look—to look farther for the perspectives that will make you a better writer, and to look deeper, to discover more about who you are and how you want to be. The writing problems you have can absolutely be addressed and worked through, and your process can get easier. I never say that writing doesn’t have to be hard—but it doesn’t have to be painful or that lonely.

For a bit more about how I got here, read “what makes an editor?” from my weekly newsletter, You Are a Writer. And of course, reach out. What questions do you have about writing and how you want to live?