* Rough Transcript *

Understanding Emotional Maturity

Nneka: Emotional maturity is a range and there’s not an age range where all of a sudden, oh, we’re all emotionally mature. We got this now. We’re constantly evolving and learning and grief is not, I don’t care who’s written the book.

Whether it’s seven stages, 12 stages, you check all the boxes and you’re done, that mess comes right back around and will slap you right back into the moment that grief onset occurred.

Introduction to Embracing Intensity

Aurora: Welcome to the Embracing Intensity podcast. I’ll be sharing interviews and tips for gifted, creative, twice exceptional, and outside the box thinkers who use their fire in a positive way. My name is Aurora Remember Holtzman. After years of feeling too much, I finally realized that intensity is the source of my greatest power.

Now, instead of beating myself up about not measuring up to my own self imposed standards.

Mission of Embracing Intensity

Aurora: I’m on a mission to help people embrace their own intensity and befriend their brains so they can share their gifts with the world through the Embracing Intensity community, coaching, educational assessment, and other tools to help you use your fire without getting burned.

You can join us at embracingintensity. com.

 Hello. This week, I am thrilled to share the Q and a portion of our talk with the incredible Nneka Denise diving into the science of writing to heal.

This conversation comes at the perfect time as we reflect on what we’re ready to let go of with the years close and step towards a brighter, more positive new year.

Exciting Updates and Announcements

Aurora: Before we dive in, I wanted to share some exciting updates. I’ve recently transitioned my planner club into the neurodivergent toolkit, offering expanded tools to support your journey, including a brand new stress processing journal and an upcoming vision book journal launching in the new year.

Additionally, I’m wrapping up final edits on my physical and Kindle

workbook on energy balance, which is set to be published this Friday, December 20th. You can even, pre-order the Kindle version now.

As I prepare for 2025, I’d like to include more interviews, aiming to return to two episodes a month, once it’s sustainable. If you’d like to support this work and access, amazing resources, consider joining one of the embracing intensity memberships, the guests call library, neurodivergent toolkit or the all access membership. As a part of the all access membership I’ll be running my ignite your power course live in 2025. Along with an expanded group mastermind for deeper community and accountability.

The full video discussion recording includes further exploration on processing grief, not only from physical loss, but also life transitions and self evolution, interactive healing practices like pairing gratitude, journaling with brain dumps and affirmations, how fiction and personal narratives help reimagine futures and process experiences, and ceremonial writing practices such as burning or shredding emotional writings for catharsis and closure.

Nneka’s insights are invaluable, and I can’t wait for you to hear her thoughtful and practical approaches to emotional healing through writing. If you’d like to watch the full recording, you’ll find it in the guest call library. Enjoy.

Introducing Nneka Denise

Aurora: Welcome, everybody. I’m so glad to see some awesome folks joining us here today and great to have Nneka coming back who is an amazing friend of mine and every experience we’ve done with her has been fantastic.Well I’m going to introduce Nneka and then. We can circle back in the discussion portion. Nneka is somebody that I know in real life. We met at some networking events.

I remember the first time we connected, we talked for hours and totally lost track of time. And we only see each other infrequently right now, but every time we kind of lose track of time and it’s awesome. And I think her first call on writing to heal was probably my most attended call of all times.

Even with people with millions of followers and stuff Nneka’s first call was one of my biggest. So, she draws an amazing group of people and she just started a local Healing community and does all sorts of stuff in the community. So I’m so thrilled to have you here Nneka Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Nneka: Thank you for having me Aurora again, and Hello everyone.

Nneka’s Background and Work

Nneka: Thank you for being on the call this morning Like Aurora said my name is Nneka Denise I am the founder of the write to heal project based out of Portland, Oregon. I typically work with Oregon and Southwest Washington. I technically live in Vancouver just over the river, but with the write to heal project, I help people navigate their grief.

The Write to Heal Project

Nneka: Caused by death, tragedy and trauma, as well as transitions, because not all grief comes about due to loss, like getting a new job or transitioning up, evolving in life that can also cause some heavy emotional feelings.

I use transformative prompts for journaling, meditation, visualization, somatic practices and intuitive guidance to help people get the heavy emotions off of their body, and out.

Emotions and stress, as we all know, cause illness and all kind of detriment to our body.

Holistic Healing Practices

Nneka: In addition to the Write to Heal project, like Aurora said, I did just open um, It’s called the New Wellness Center in downtown Portland, with a collective of holistic healing practitioners, where together we offer holistic healing from vibrational sound baths, to Reiki energy, massage, touch emotional guidance, but also spiritual guidance.

What else? I am a trained end of life doula and bereavement doula. So grief, loss, emotional wellness is my jam.

Nneka’s Personal Journey

Nneka: And I’ve been writing since I could pick up a crayon. It has been my biggest healing tool. And we’ll get more into that later. But if we want to circle around or pause, maybe this is a good time.

Aurora: Awesome.

Interactive Healing Practices

Aurora: So if you guys have any specific questions for Nneka when it comes to writing to HEAL, like her approach any questions about the science around it, she’s been doing this for many years. You could also circle back to some of my past episodes with Nneka.

The last one we did was actually kind of an interactive experience. So that one didn’t go on the podcast. She’s a wealth of knowledge.

Research and Recommendations

Aurora: Would you recommend some research books, articles that under your work? I have a stack and I’m always looking for more. If you have specific recommendations.

Nneka: I was just looking at the American psychological association. They’ve shared some studies on writing to heal and how it has improved those with terminal illnesses.

So physically, it has shown some great improvement in health.

Writing to Heal: Tools and Benefits

Nneka: What I had prepared for you all, is to share my background with Writing to Heal.

And Some tools and benefits and how I integrate it into my wellness practice and teach folks how to integrate different transformative writing prompts and stuff with their clients and then dialogue so we can talk a little bit more because as much as I’ve been doing it, I love research, but I don’t quote. I like to speak through personal experiences and give examples like that, I’m not one that’s huge on research in the sense that I can just pull out of my brain and just quote I’m hoping to get a good dialogue with you all, because as much as I’ve been using writing as a tool, I know you all use it too.

Engaging in Dialogue

Nneka: So I’d love to kind of engage a little bit in conversation, and just see where it flows.

Aurora: Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to read a couple questions here. I’ll let you go into the part that you had prepared, and then we’ll let people have some more questions.

But the second half will definitely open for broad discussion as well and reflection.

Addressing Dyslexia and ADHD in Writing

Aurora: So just a couple of things in the chat how to get into writing when you have dyslexia and ADHD. I do write, but also use voice dictation as I find physical writing can slow the process down. Any thoughts on facilitating that process?

Nneka: Yeah, I love that second part of that.

Creating a Safe Space for Emotions

Nneka: So every write to heal circle that I do, I always have one or two individuals that are like, okay, I came because I knew I was supposed to be here, but I am not a writer. And it’s like during the headlights, I have apprehension around it. I am a creative writer, right?

And I have a background in publishing, but when I show up in healing spaces, it’s to hold space for the emotions and all the things that come up. No judgment. I’m not an English teacher. I don’t have a red pen. I’m not going to mark up your work. It’s for you, but it’s really just to kind of guide you along for you to sit with the emotions that are coming up and provide you with an outlet.

That gets you to start building that relationship with those emotions and allowing yourself to let them go.

The Power of Voice Recording

Nneka: So the fact that you record your voice to get out of your own way, that’s huge. When I’m doing specific prompts and for those people that find that writing Just causes extra layers to getting it out to process.

Dealing with Negative Emotions

Nneka: I tell them to doodle. Literally, it’s literally the motion of writing is just getting you out of your own way and getting you out of your head and to the to the process of just processing the prompt at hand. So the fact that you know that and you’re aware of other tools so that you can get your voice out there. I commend you for that.

Aurora: Awesome. I’m going to read a couple of the chat things and I’ll let you dive into the other stuff. I love the coincidences in the neurodivergent world and how often at least two ND peeps are doing and thinking the same thing. Totally. And then hot tip of the various zeitgeist collective consciousness for the win.

Yeah, I would love to hear more about your personal experience. I know you’ve shared some, but most of the people here are new to your work. I would love to hear, what you have to share on that.

Nneka: Yeah, so as a child, I was the inquisitive being and in my household being raised by a very, I mean, I love my daddy to death, but he was dominant and very much an alpha male.

And if you ask questions that was above his head He didn’t know what to do with it, so it was more of a shushing. Children are to be seen and not heard, so to speak. So I learned at a young age, especially being biracial, growing up in the Pacific Northwest, where do you fit in, where do I belong? And being inquisitive with lots of questions and gifted.

I found solace in my journals. So, when I had heavy questions, I noticed that if I couldn’t get the answers from my community, my support system, I would get lost in my journals, and eventually, miraculously, and I didn’t know why, as a kid, the answers would come, and I would be guided. I created this alter ego, or not alter ego, but this ulterior universe where I could just pour my heart, all my pain, all my emotions, all my questions into the pages of my journals and the end.

Create my own community, so to speak, because I could be myself there. I knew who I was there. And even if I didn’t know the reasons why or the answers, I felt comfort and comforted there. Throughout life my whole adulthood has been filled with heavy loss. So 22 years ago, I lost my son at five and a half weeks.

11, nine years after that lost my boys as father, I’ve lost a parent and throughout all those heavy grief ridden time periods in my life again, I found myself either running as my tool or writing in my journal and I didn’t know it then, but my son Khalil who passed away he gave me the greatest gift of all.

He gave me purpose. And in hindsight, as hard and as harsh as that was, being a sheltered kid who had never experienced loss and to have to, you know, say goodbye to your offspring, it was devastating. But again, he gave me purpose. So everything that I do is from a different look on death and loss and emotions and.

Emotional maturity is a range and there’s not an age range where all of a sudden, oh, we’re all emotionally mature. We got this now. We’re constantly evolving and learning and grief is not, I don’t care who’s written the book.

Whether it’s seven stages, 12 stages, you check all the boxes and you’re done, that mess comes right back around and will slap you right back into the moment that grief onset occurred. And it can happen time and time again, right?

There’s triggers. But anyway, throughout my whole journey throughout the last, whatever, I just turned 44 last month. So, I’ve always found solace. in writing. I’ve always gotten lost in it. I just released a poetry album a year ago, and throughout each one of those pieces, it’s my pain to purpose journey.

It’s looking at life, all aspects of life, and what can I learn from it? How do I feel? How can I create art as an outlet and not only heal myself, but pour into others? Throughout my wellness work, I use prompts for healing in a way that it gets people to sit with the heaviness, to write about it, get it off of their person.

Again. I always do this prompt. I like to call dump it out or take out the trash. And when they come in and they have that moment, whatever is plaguing them or whatever, They couldn’t leave at the door before entering the sacred space. I just have them write it out. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be even positive things like they could be up and vibing high, but yet they’re trying to settle their space so that they can fall into this writing circle, right? So whatever it is that’s hindering the process, I tell them to just put it on paper. And getting it out, because sometimes where we may not have voice, we have pen and imagination we have communication, and writing just allows you to still get that voice out there, but maybe not verbally.

Aurora: If there’s specific questions that you guys have for Nneka, I will read those out loud, okay. Oh, this is a good one. So, what do you do with a paper when you’ve taken the trash out?

Nneka: Ah, good question.

Ceremonial Writing Practices

Nneka: Okay, so when I’m in my healing space a writing to heal, sacred ceremony like space all that negativity that we write out, I like to burn.

I like to go outside and burn it. So literally, metaphorically, it’s gone. It’s in the ethers. It is away. When I am doing like a, a non spiritual or non ceremonial writing class and we do that, I’ll encourage them to either shred that page in their journal or loose paper and because even shredding it physically, I mean, when we rip stuff, when we throw stuff, when we scream and we get those emotions out, it again, it helps us.

So I encourage them to not leave that negativity in their books. Because then it’s just sitting there. Then you can go back to it. But I like the physical aspect of letting it go and removing it completely. Did that answer your question?

Aurora: Awesome.

Supporting Men in Healing

Aurora: You know, one question that I have, because I think both of us similarly have, started With mostly women in our community and have grown to include more men in our community as we realize that there’s things that, you know, are universal, right?

But I noticed that too, with your healing community, the live community as well. I’d be curious to see, if you have seen any specific things that are helpful for the men that you’ve worked with versus the women.

Nneka: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So when I popped on and I saw the men in this circle, I was really excited because men need healing spaces too.

And our society. Well, especially in America I say. Men aren’t encouraged to seek out support women. We lean on each other. We find our tribe. We find our soul sisters. We find what we need. And we’re resourceful. Men are taught to go to work, provide, do all these things, but y’all carry some heavy stress.

And if you don’t find your outlets, Where does that leave our men? Right. So I always, I do my one on one grief work, small group work, even family work with men as well. And every first Wednesday I hold a grief circle at the new wellness center. And I’ve been seeing more and more men coming.

I’m on 10th and Morrison. If you’re in Portland, come see me on the first Wednesday. I also find that men, if we create and hold that space, they will pour out with their words and their emotions, just like women do. And I find it, and it could be in mixed, male, female spaces as well.

But I think it’s about providing the opportunity. And inviting those to lean into their emotions and men need healing. Just as much as we do. So I will never limit my practice to just serving women ever again. I’m a boy, mom. Well, I have a daughter now, but I have three little men that I’m raising.

If I don’t teach them how to lean into their emotions and heal themselves so that they can pour into and uplift their community as well. What am I doing as a mother?

Back to real quick. Burn those pages, baby. But before you do that, if I encourage you, if you would like to journey with yourself, flip back to those pages.

And before you get to burning, Maybe do some redirection or turn those negative sentiments into a positive affirmation. And then, so you can collect that and start working through those emotions in positive light. But once you do that, then burn it and let it go and have a whole ceremony.

Because that no longer serves you anymore. And you can let that be. So I just wanted to share that.

Aurora: Nice. I have a couple more questions I’ll circle back to, but one of the reasons that came to my mind was like I said, I started out mostly with women in my community, but then I found when I was at the ADHD conferences last week, I spent most of my time with the men’s support group, the ADHD men’s support group created by Mark Almodovar, who’s spoke on leadership earlier this year, because he’s just created such an amazing supportive environment.

 And so I just thought it was interesting that the people I connected with the most were. The ones that were there from the men’s group, which was great. And someone asked what if burning what you wrote isn’t an option or not allowed?

Nneka: Yep. That’s where the shredding comes in. So you can physically hand shred.

I used to do that all the time with my journals. You can get a paper shredder if you want. I just like the physical touch aspect of actually tearing but you can always shred them it’s paper, so it’s biodegradable, you could bury it what else have I done in the past? I think that’s pretty much it, but I would just encourage you, again, like I just said, to look back, see if there’s anything maybe you need to work with still, And reframe it, put a positive spin on it, rewrite it because we get to rewrite the trajectory of our lives.

So all those negative narratives and whatnot we can change it up because the future hasn’t come yet and we get to set that. So if you can’t burn it, shred it or bury

it

 I don’t know if you guys have seen The Secret Life of Bees. In that movie, one of the things that I really loved about it is one of the characters, she would get really grief ridden and emotional, and every time she would, she would write a prayer or write whatever it was that was plaguing her, and she must have been some sort of empath or something, because she could feel it really heavy on her person, but she would write it out, and then she had this place out in the garden or whatever, and she would stick it there.

So yeah, if you got beautiful roses, give it to the roses. Roses are there to protect and be, they’re there for beauty. So if, if, you know, anyway, maybe they can turn those things into beautiful blooming aromas of roses.

Aurora: I want to open up for open discussion shortly, but before we do that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the affirmation part of it.

I know you talked about that last time on the one that we did share. I’d love to hear you. Share a little bit more about the affirmation aspect.

Affirmations and Positive Reinforcement

Nneka: I love affirmations because when you can create a sentence, a positive sentence, and share it about yourself and you repeat that, so, let me, let me step back a minute.

So, back to the dump it out, take out your trash. With that, another prompt that I use is having guests write down all the negative titles, roles, things that people have said about them or that they’ve internally said about themselves, right? I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m stupid, or whatever the case may be. So they write it all out.

And then I asked them, were there any of those traits or whatever commentary that you had reservations writing, right? Whatever ones that made you feel like, Oh, I still have work to do. Take out two or three of those. And then with those. Negatives or even positive things.

Like when people say, Oh my God, you’re so gorgeous or whatever the case, but yet you’re like, Oh, you brush off the compliment. You know what I mean? Cause you’re not owning it yourself. So again, it could be a positive, but anything that has you like there being reservation or some work that you need to do, then I’ll have them take that statement and then we’ll work with creating it into your affirmation statement with that.

I like doing that. Because once you have a clear, concise affirmation, I’m smart, intelligent, and I can move mountains, or whatever it may be, you create that statement, then you can start practicing repetitive writing. And then you start putting those affirmations into practice. Visually on your mirrors or on even like little stickers on your computer because the more you state claim to those statements, the more you will be kind of like the old saying, fake it till you make it there’s some truth behind that.

And when it comes to, manifestation, it’s not just, oh, I want this. Can I have that? You have to be in that energy and like, attract, like. So when you write that affirmation statement, it takes a while, but you can learn to own it. And the more you see it, the more you read it, even using your voice recorder and recording your voice, stating it and repeating it and listening to it.

The more you interact with that statement, the more you be and become.

Aurora: So oftentimes with affirmations, sometimes if we jump to something that we really don’t believe, they’re not as effective.

So I know there’s, taking small steps towards saying something that you could believe. I’m wondering if you have some thoughts and strategies around creating affirmations that you can get behind and actually believe, rather than jumping to something that’s so far out of your comfort zone that you reject it.

Nneka: Right.

Manifestation and Goal Setting

Nneka: So with manifestation, you can dream big, right? You can dream out of this world, right? And you can create that big affirmation statement. But if it causes you pause when you share that with others, let’s say. I’m a trillionaire. Before you can be a trillionaire, you got to be a millionaire, right?

So you can backtrack and make smaller statements that lead up to, so like I said, okay I want to say i’m a trillionaire. That’s not one of my affirmations, by the way but Before that, I have to claim that I’m a millionaire before that. Maybe I need to be a thousand or a hundred thousand-ere, right?

But you can backtrack it and create smaller it’s like goal setting, you create smaller goals that lead you to the bigger goal. And you can definitely do that with affirmation. Cause like I touched on manifestation is about being in that energy. And if you truly today. Can’t own it in all aspects of you and it just doesn’t feel real.

I mean, again, you could fake it till you make it, but faking it doesn’t get you far. I like that Aurora. I like the idea of taking a smaller affirmation that maybe you can own tomorrow instead of next month or whatever it may be.

Aurora: Yeah, and I think sometimes just even entertaining the possibility that this could be true.

 That’s even a step towards that direction. If you aren’t even sure it could be true, you know. I’m noticing we’re getting close to the halfway mark. So I would love to start opening up for discussion. Before we do that, did you have any final thoughts on the tools and stuff that you’ve shared so far?

Science Behind Writing to Heal

Nneka: Yeah, I did want to share as far as the science behind writing to heal, we do know, and there is studies that speak to writing, like journaling, daily journaling, it lowers stress and can calm your nervous system it also can, there’s studies that speak to boosting your immune system cause it raises your vibration It can also remove, like we’ve been talking about, the stuck emotions.

And it can help you gain clarity. So I just wanted to point out those five things, relieving stress, calming anxiety and resetting the nervous system, boosting the immune system, removing stuck emotions from the body and helping you to gain clarity.

Aurora: Awesome.

Exploring Deeper Healing Workshops

Aurora: I think that would be great to explore how we could take this a little bit deeper in some, maybe some sort of paid workshop. We always have rich conversations. And the one that we didn’t record because it was more personal, was like an interactive experience, and I have to thank you. Nneka is just amazing because I had someone back out who had suggested a two part writer’s workshop.

 So I had to skip that first one and then Nneka circled back for the second one and, and offered this and it was a lifesaver, but it was such a great interactive experience.

Because we wanted to keep it a more intimate circle, we didn’t record it. But it was more where you actually would bring your journal and work through some of these things together. So, I think we just need to figure out the logistics.

Nneka: We can do, like I said, a two part, three, some kind of series, because I’d love to do that at one again.

Virtual Healing Circles

Nneka: So basically, virtually, and that was my very first time holding a write to heal circle, virtually. So I walked the guests through what I would do in person. And it was beautiful.

It was still interactive. It sold me on this whole virtual thing that we’re all in, cause it was beautiful and people still got amazing things out of it.

So, Aurora, we’ll talk because I think doing something like that as a one off would be great. And then having some sort of two or three part write to heal series, I think would be really beneficial for the community.

Aurora: Yeah, absolutely. And we created a subgroup in the Embracing Intensity community for the write to heal stuff.

So that would be a great place to maybe have discussions about what would work for that community in terms of exploring time, place, length, all those details to see what would be worthwhile

Nneka: thank you. I was just gonna add that for the interactive one, the healing circle, because that was last minute, somebody dropped off, but this one, if we do it again, I’d focus the prompts on, you know, some themes and stuff around neurodivergence and things that come up and really cater it to the community.

I think that would be really lovely.

Aurora: Absolutely. Awesome. Well, looking at our time, it’s about wrap up time. So Nneka, do you have any last minute thoughts, reflections that you’d like to share?

Nneka: Yeah, so I just want to thank Aurora and this amazing community for having me here again. And I just encourage you all to give yourself grace use some of the tools that we talked about, write it out.

Write it out, stomp it out, just do whatever you can to show yourself that love and care that we all need, especially in these heavy times right now.

Setting Intentions for the New Year

Nneka: The end of the year can be stressful with holidays, but also it’s a beautiful time to set your intentions and really start stepping into the year that you want.

2025 to become it starts now. So anything heavy on you work through it, sit with those emotions and for everything that no longer serves you, let it go. You got to move it out, out with the old so that you can bring in the new right. It’s been a pleasure.

Connecting with Nneka Denise

Nneka: You can find me on social media at Nneka Denise.

I believe it’s Nneka underscore Denise. And my first name is spelled N N E K A, and Denise is D E N I S E. That’s also my email address, Nneka. denise at gmail dot com.

Local Healing Community

Nneka: For those of you that are local to Portland, or if you are going to be traveling in the Portland area. The new wellness center is at 10th and Morrison downtown.

It’s a beautiful space. It’s like walking through the doors, like walking into a healing hug, like seriously, mama G Graciela tail field who founded the new wellness center. She created this lovely, divine, energetic space. for our collective, the ladies within the collective space. We are part of ladies of the light, which you can find us on social as ladies of the light as well.

And the holistic healing experience and journey is beautiful. And we just welcome you all for those that you are not local reach out, let’s continue to build community and grow and connect. So it’s just been a pleasure. And I thank you all for sharing space with me today.

Aurora: Awesome. And I will add that the local community, I went to their grand opening and it was definitely the most diverse healing community I’ve ever been in, in the Portland area, in the Northwest area.

So that was another real healing. I think having that environment was really amazing.

Launching Seraphim Rising

Nneka: In 2025, I’m also launching my doula practice. My doula brand is Seraphim Rising. It’s doula care and grief spa. That’s my baby right now, and I’m really excited about it. You’ll all be hearing more about that. But again, it’s been a pleasure this morning.

Final Reflections and Gratitude

Nneka: I just wish you all a spectacular Saturday and continue to give yourself grace and love on you.

Aurora: Thank you so much.

Join the Embracing Intensity Community

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