Discover Your Strength as a Writer

On October 29th, 2025, I hosted my first international creative writing workshop in Bali. People often think, you’re the one teaching, why’re you nervous?

But I was. The weather had been fine the entire week, and then suddenly, rainy season made its debut on the day of my event in monsoon fashion.

My friend, who tripled, as my assistant, photographer, and therapist, reminded me  of that one simple truth — the right people will come.

And, as she’d said, the perfect intimate group filled the space. People from all corners of life connected through the shared experience of exactly what I had felt earlier. Fear.

During the Discover Your Strength as a Writer workshop, I utilized the concept of CBT therapy, a practice that has changed my own life and given me a compassion-based lens.

What we think and what we do directly influences how we feel, and that includes how we feel about our writing.

For example, if you think the limiting belief, I’m not a good enough writer, that internalized thought can quickly affect your behavior.

You might start avoiding your craft, doubting every word, or comparing yourself to others. Over time, that great big wall of avoidance feeds the belief even more, creating a vicious cycle of self-doubt.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, helps us become aware of that cycle.

It teaches us that our thoughts aren’t always facts; they’re often just habits of thinking. Once we notice them, we can start to challenge and reframe them.

We would never say, Oh look, it’s raining, I guess I’ll never go outside again!

So why are we so quick to say, I have no inspiration today, I guess I’m a bad writer?

What we think matters because our creative process is tethered to our emotions.

When we shift the way we talk to ourselves — when we move from I can’t do this to stop. Wait a minute. Actually, I’m learning and improving — our energy changes. We write more freely, with less fear and more self-trust.

And that is exactly what we did that night.

As the rain stormed down, drowning out our voices, we shuffled our mats closer together in the circle until the rain became part of the scenery.

We shared our inner worlds in the comfort of strangers, understanding that we cannot hide and separate living from art, in the hopes that when life’s storms pass we can peek out from beneath an umbrella and get writing again.

Instead, we did what we do best as humans, adapted, and changed the narrative in our minds.

So, I write this blog to remind you to be gentle with yourself despite the unexpected, and uncertainty.

Like it did for us, underneath the bamboo shala, the storm will clear.

It always does.