Sensemaking in September: my monthly reflections
In these monthly reflections, I share how the 4 qualities that inform my coaching and courses – arts-based, trauma-informed, reflective and meaning-focused – are showing up in my work and life.
September was a funny old month. From a warm and spring-like August we went back to cold weather, occasionally with flurries of snow! These freezing temperatures seem to have paralysed my own creative practice, but I did manage to defrost it by diving head first into inspiration.
Arts-based Coaching: the flywheel of inspiration
In September, I felt oddly uninspired by my altered books and visual journals. This doesn’t happen often and it was a little discombobulating as these books are such a reliable and cherished part of my creative practice.
Fending off the stuckness, I turned to artists’ books for inspiration. I remembered a book I had borrowed from the library in early 2020: Sketchbook Explorations for Mixed Media and Textile Artists by Shelley Rhodes. With COVID entering our lives, the libraries stayed shut, and the upside of the never-ending lockdowns in Melbourne was that I was allowed to keep this book for nearly a year! In September, it was time to treat myself to my own copy of it and it didn’t disappoint in terms of getting me out of my creative rut.
The visual beauty of this book is enough to make me want to create again.
In addition, it had a few chapters which were exactly what I needed:
Making a start: having the heart to start can be a challenge for anyone. Rhodes offers easy and practical strategies, such as working with speed – I know that I sometimes need to outrun my mind. If I create at a pace that’s faster than the overthinking or overcritical part of me, I’m in. But there are other access points, too: your photos on your phone; assembling and curating a small collection of objects or textures; the good old mood board.
Working within constraints: setting constraints and limitations around e.g. time, materials, colour, size/ format is a great way to get or keep going, especially when we get stuck in the early stages of the creative process, when we brainstorm and collect idea seeds. If shifting into the phase of working with and on an initial idea is tricky, setting ourselves constraints can keep us moving.
Getting starting with texts: another chapter around getting started – it’s pretty obvious now what my pattern of stuckness was all about… As I love reading, writing, languages, typeface, this chapter held lots of inspiration and reminded me of things I used to do: writing with my non-dominant hand, taking a sentence from a book or my own journal and writing it in one long movement, pen not leaving the page – that way writing gets transformed into more of a mark making process.
Another book I’m loving right now is called Resilient Stitch by Claire Wellesley-Smith – just in case you’re in need of inspiration, too.
The book Resilient Stitch inspired me to create this small artwork as a reflection on my small group program Sensemaking Studio.
Reflective Coaching: Imagining Sensemaking Studio 2025
This year, I’ve been running my first series of Sensemaking Studio, one year-long group (which is still running) and a shorter 4-month program (which is about to come to a close).
It always delights and moves me to see how seemingly small processes that invite our creative parts into reflection can lead to deeper reflections, new insights, and opportunities to reframe an experience.
For 2025, I’m imagining the studio series to be offered in shorter programs, each around four months long.
In these, 4-month long groups, I also imagine a greater focus on a specific modality, such as reflective writing, using visual and creative processes, and meaning-focused reflections. My sense is that packing too many reflective modalities into four months might allow us to ‘dip a toe into the water’ of reflective practice, but also limit us to stay on the surface.
I’m also embracing the reality that we all need some momentum, especially at the start of shaping new habits or a practice, and these 4-month long group will offer a supportive pace and rhythm.
Right now I’m developing:
Reflecting with Meaning where we’ll be using the Map of Meaning® as a sensemaking tool and reflective framework.
Reflective Writing Studio which will focus on writing processes and techniques and take you beyond stream-of-consciousness journaling which can sometimes take us down the road of rumination.
Creative Reflections comes with a focus on artmaking and visual explorations – an opportunity to invite play, experiments, and lean into the tactility of materials to reflect and access your inner wisdom.
As it can be hard to give our practice the time and space it needs to flourish, there’ll also be a monthly drop-in studio for everyone who has been part of any Sensemaking Studio group.
This is your charging station for accountability, deliberate practice, inspiration and mutual support.
Trauma-informed coaching: When arts-based inquiry goes deep
No matter how long I’ve been using arts-based processes in my coaching and group work, I’m regularly reminded that working in this way can go deep very quickly. This is why I value being trauma-informed as a critical ingredient in my work and I lean on my training as an art therapist and the experience gained in clinical settings before moving into coaching.
It’s tempting to look at creative processes as something playful and fun, something a bit different. And they can be all those things!
Arts-based coaching can also be very vulnerable and tender, and bring up something unexpected, long forgotten or never fully known.
As we circumvent our verbal ways of expressing, we create a space where memories that live only in the body can emerge; we enable younger, often pre-verbal parts to let us know what their side of the story is; and we can express experiences we don’t have words for (yet).
I’m always deeply touched when I witness people going deep and willing to stay with the process.
Learning happens at the edges, and I realise I might be witnessing a shift towards more clarity and also healing as people integrate memories, parts, and experiences in life.
In that context, I also believe strongly in creating a safe enough space for people.
I cannot guarantee perfect safety. And spaces that are too safe aren’t supportive for learning either.
But I give a lot of thought to making an experience safe enough and anchor it in that sweet spot of regulation and activation where learning, personal meaning-making and change can happen.
A page in my meaning journal
Meaning-focused coaching: Is meaning always positive?
This is a question one participant in the Introduction to the Map of Meaning® asked in one of the training courses I led.
My sense is that it isn’t. This might feel slightly at odds with the general conversation around meaning and purpose. Sometimes I feel that the message is: once you find your purpose or understand meaning, you have cracked life, and things will feel easy (at least a lot easier and more upbeat).
Going back to Viktor Frankl’s work about meaning, he sees the attitude that one adopts toward unavoidable suffering as one pathway to meaning. The Map of Meaning grounds meaningful experiences in our Reality of Self and Circumstances – which, without doubt, comes with suffering, painful experiences and difficult challenges.
In my experience, the meaningfulness of tricky moments in life is sometimes only fully felt in retrospect.
While I’m in it, the experience can feel too big to leave me with capacity to notice the meaning of it. I focus my energy on coping, making sense of things, deciding on the best course of action or simply weathering the storm. But further down the line, I can see meaning in the loss of relationships, in the facing of a painful truth or the deeper self-knowledge gained while I seemed to flounder but was in fact growing stronger.