Send us Fan Mail

About this episode: This week, I’m joined by Jeannine Ouellette, author of The Part that Burns and a writing instructor whose deepest passion is using writing to connect us with our humanity. She sees the craft of writing as so much more than the words on the page, and I couldn’t agree more. We talk about how writing is a practice that helps you show up more fully in your own life, and how you can do this by finding your writing voice, writing close to the lived experience, and exploring from a place of discomfort. And you won’t want to miss our conversation about our shared obsession with a particular punctuation mark that we are absolutely claiming regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Resources for this Episode:

• Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber
• Acetylene Torch Songs by Sue William Silverman
• Innocence & Experience: Voice in Creative Nonfiction by Sue William Silverman
• Finding Your Voice and Crafting Stories that Ignite the Soul with Sue William Silverman
• Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma
• “The Fourth State of Matter” by Jo Ann Beard
• Get Your Free Human Design Report
• Register for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc
• Ditch Your Inner Critic Now

Episode Highlights

• 00:00 The Question That Opens Everything
• 04:33 On Voice (and Finding Yours)
• 15:27 Writing as a Living Practice
• 29:33 The Quiet Work of Finding Joy Again
• 32:57 Craft as a Way of Being

Jeannine’s Bio: Jeannine Ouellette’s lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women’s Literature. Her other books include Mama Moon and The Good Caregiver with Robert Kane, M.D. Her essays and short fiction have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Masters Review and more. Her bestselling Substack, Writing in the Dark, explores writing as a metaphor for life and attention as a pathway to becoming. She teaches writing at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the University of Minnesota and her craft book, One Word at a Time: A Creative Practice for Transforming Your Writing and Your Life, is forthcoming from Penguin.

Connect with Jeannine:

• Website: https://www.creativelyvisible.com/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@creativelyvisible

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get You

Sign up for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc: https://bit.ly/4aK5wQI

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn

Produced by Espresso Podcast Production

Send us Fan Mail

In this Ask Me Anything session, writer and advocate Meagan Justus brings two questions that so many writers are quietly wrestling with. 1st: when you keep circling the core of your story without being able to reach it, do you shape what you have or keep writing until you get there? And 2nd: when your story involves people or institutions with power, how do you protect yourself while still telling the truth?

Together, we dig into why writers circle their stories, how changing names doesn't protect you legally, what the vetting process actually looks like, and what the unfolding controversy around Amy Griffin's memoir The Tell can teach us about the publishing process.

Resources:

• The "but/therefore" principle
• The Queen’s Path
• The Beat Sheet
• Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
• Some Ether by Nick Flynn
• The Ticking Is the Bomb by Nick Flynn
• The Liar's Club by Mary Karr
• Cherry by Mary Karr
• Lit by Mary Karr
• https://authorsguild.org/
• How Can I Avoid Lawsuits When Writing Memoir?
• Legal Vetting for Manuscripts to Manage Risk
• The Billionaire, The Psychedelics, and the Bestselling Memoir by Katherine Rosman & Elisabeth Egan
• Lawsuit Accuses Writer of Using Classmate’s Story in Best-Selling Memoir by Katherine Rosman & Elisabeth Egan
• Examples of Hermit Crab Essays
• Get Your Free Human Design Report
• Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc
• Ditch Your Inner Critic Now

Connect with Meagan:

• https://www.creativelyvisible.com/
• https://substack.com/@creativelyvisible

Meagan Justus is a writer and advocate exploring the messy middle of chronic illness, disability, and trauma. Through essays and storytelling, she works to make invisible struggles visible and a little less lonely. Her writing blends honesty, humor, and the occasional chocolate metaphor to explore resilience, self-advocacy, and the stories we discover while living through life’s hardest chapters.

Sign up for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc: https://bit.ly/4aK5wQI

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn

Produced by Espresso Podcast Production

Send us Fan Mail

What if the stories we tell about ourselves aren't really ours, and what if we could finally trace them back to where they began? This is something I’ve been asking myself for years, and today I’m excited to share a few ways you can answer those questions for yourself through Family Constellations work. This week’s guest, Tania Gonzalez-Ortega, is a Family Constellations practitioner with twenty-five years of experience in energy work. During our conversation, we explore the benefits and challenges of the dark night of the soul, how some of what we experience during the dark night isn’t ours, and how we can work with those connections in ways that allow us to live our fullest, most empowered lives.

Episode Highlights

• 07:31 The Lessons Inside the Dark Night
• 11:37 The Trauma That Was Never Yours
• 17:16 What Happens in a Constellation Session
• 22:43 When Writing Becomes Healing
• 28:25 The Ripple Effect of Healing Your Lineage

Resources from this Episode:

• Story Alchemy with Lisa Cooper Ellison on the New Earth Consciousness Podcast
• Waldorf Education Model
• What is Family Constellations Therapy
• The Dark Night of the Soul, poem by St. John of the Cross
• Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
• Get Your Free Human Design Report
• Sign up for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc
• Ditch Your Inner Critic Now

Tania’s Bio: Tania Gonzalez-Ortega has been practicing energy work for over 25 years. Her background spans ancestral healing, nervous system regulation, and deep emotional integration. She’s studied in India and the United States and guided hundreds of clients through profound personal transformation. Tania is also a financial educator who helps women and families build real wealth in a balanced, ethical way. Her work bridges two worlds most people keep separate: Inner transformation and financial structure. Yet true sovereignty requires both. She lives in the mountains of Washington State with her husband and son on 64 acres of land that constantly reminds her that stability and growth can coexist.

Connect with Tania:

• Facebook: facebook.com/taniamama
• Instagram: instagram.com/@newearthconsciousness
• YouTube: youtube.com/@newearthconsciousness

Sign up for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc: https://bit.ly/4aK5wQI

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn

Produced by Espresso Podcast Production