Meet Meredith Walters

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Meredith Walters. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Meredith below.

Meredith, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

My story is like many people’s in that I knew my purpose at an early age but didn’t recognize it until I was much older.

As a kid, the only thing I loved more than wandering the woods and meeting the local animals was going home to write stories about them. Starting at the age of eight, I filled notebook after notebook with single-minded tales like the one about Oscar the opossum, who was very happy with his family in his great big forest until he found out that his forest was going to be turned into condominiums.

When I was twelve, I completed my first novel, Spirals in Time. Immensely excited, I entered it into my school’s book contest, sure that everyone would love it as much as I did. Instead, it earned the second-lowest score possible. I was devastated. After penning a few short stories in high school, I gave up writing completely after college.

At the same time, as I got more focused on academics, athletics, and all the things I thought I should be accomplishing, I lost track of what I loved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I also got depressed and felt like I was drowning in a churning sea of self-loathing, misery, and despair.

To make a long and painful story short, I spent my first decade out of college trying on ten different roles as I attempted to figure out what to do with my life. At one point, my depression got so bad that I finally became willing to do whatever it took to feel better. I began therapy, joined a 12-step program for families and friends of alcoholics, did group work, and learned everything I could about depression and anxiety.

In the process, I realized how disconnected I’d become from myself, my feelings, and even my own body. With help from others, I learned how to surrender to the emotions I’d avoided for so many years, allowing myself to feel them fully no matter how embarrassing I judged them to be. In doing so, I realized that it’s possible to welcome even the messy, ugly, and awkward parts of myself.

As I reconnected with my feelings and body, the lost loves of my childhood resurfaced. I began to walk regularly in the forests near my home, and the wild beings I saw on my walks first became neighbors, then friends, and eventually, family.

This newly remembered family helped me dare to write again. I started with blog posts and short stories but soon began work on another novel—something that had felt impossible but a couple, short years before.

Coming home to myself, my passions, and the wider, living world, my experience of life was transformed. Not only did I find greater peace with depression and anxiety, but I also felt more whole, purposeful, and fulfilled. Much of what I learned wasn’t commonly available in conventional wisdom and advice, and I wanted to share it with others but wasn’t sure how. Finally, a little over fourteen years ago, I learned about coaching, and it seemed a perfect fit, so I became certified as an Integral Coach.

I now help other people remember who they are and what they have to give the world by reconnecting with their bodies and rediscovering their lost passions, purpose, and powers.

That’s a big part of my purpose. The other part is once again writing stories about the magic I find on my wanders through the woods with my wild animal family.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

This has been an exciting year for me as my childhood dream came true—my debut novel, This Animal Body, was published by SparkPress in April and is now being distributed by Simon & Schuster. It recently won a gold medal in the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards (in the Animal Fiction category), and it was an American Fiction Award winner in the Coming-of-Age category. Most meaningful, however, has been the feedback I’ve gotten from people who struggle with depression about how it’s changed the way they see themselves for the better.

On the coaching front, I love helping people find their calling and fulfill their purpose in practical ways that acknowledge their desires and their need for an income. I believe that everyone comes into this world with needed gifts, but we learn to doubt our abilities and repress our true nature, until eventually we forget what’s ours to give. It’s thrilling to help people remember how much they have to offer and witness them heal both themselves and the world with their unique and amazing talents.

I’m also excited for a workshop I plan to offer in the spring to help people uncover their strengths and purpose by telling the story of their life as a Hero’s Journey.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

One of the most helpful traits I’ve cultivated is curiosity, which doesn’t come easily. In our culture, we’re taught we should always know everything—the answer, the problem, and how to fix it. But if we already know everything all the time, we’re not taking in any new information. I’ve found that being curious has a lot of advantages—it keeps me more open, optimistic, and able to learn and grow.

Curiosity asked me to pay attention in new ways, which helped me realize that all the negative beliefs I had about myself and my future were not only unhelpful, but wildly inaccurate. It helped me be willing to take risks, because what is failure, if not great information about what doesn’t work? I stopped trying to figure out if things I did would succeed or fail and instead got curious what good might come from them. And curiosity helps me get along better with others and go deeper with clients because I don’t assume I know where they’re coming from or why they did what they did. Being more curious has been a game-changer for me, and yet I still have to work at it at times because it can be so uncomfortable to sit in the space of not knowing.

Another critical quality I’ve had to cultivate is patience. I say “had to” because it wasn’t high on my list of priorities, but given that change always happens far more slowly than I think it should, I’ve had no choice but to learn to be patient. It took me years and years to find peace with depression, and the change was so slow that I couldn’t see it from day-to-day or even month-to-month while it was happening. Only when looking back over a long period of time could I grasp how much I’d transformed.

The changes in my life have been similar—it took me eight years to write a book, and everything else I’ve done, from finding my calling to starting a business, took a similarly torturously long amount of time. I’ve learned that my expectations for how long things should take are not even remotely realistic, but that’s okay because the results have so exceeded my expectations in terms of joy and satisfaction that it’s all worth the wait.

The final ability I’ve come to count on is embracing paradox. It’s taken a lifetime to accept that I’m both amazingly gifted and quite seriously flawed. That the world as we know it is breaking down, and yet at the same time, beautiful elements are emerging. That during the times in my life when I’ve been overwhelmed by my struggles, I wasn’t okay, and that was okay. In fact, this whole embracing paradox thing could just be called “it’s all okay.” Eventually, after enough bumps, I started to realize that though everything is always falling apart, it’s also always coming together in new ways. We are powerless and powerful, cut off and connected, limited and infinite. All are true. All are necessary. It’s all okay (even when it’s not).

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

I have a sensitive nervous system that tends to get overstimulated and overwhelmed easily. I used to judge myself harshly for this fact until I realized that sensitivity allows me to do some pretty awesome things, and the overwhelm is inseparable from that gift. So the first thing I do when overwhelmed is remind myself that it’s okay—it’s temporary, it’s not bad, and there’s nothing wrong.

I’ve found that there are two ways people tend to respond to overwhelm, and it helps to know which is yours. Some people withdraw and distract themselves when things feel like too much, while others move toward the source of the stress and jump into action. Either way, the thing to remember is that your habitual response is probably only going to leave you feeling more overwhelmed. If you avoid an issue, it will only get worse, and on some level, you’ll know that. If you jump into doing something—anything!—to resolve the situation, you’re probably following fear rather than inner wisdom, which can often exacerbate whatever was off-balance to begin with.

I tend to jump into action, so when I’m overwhelmed, I do my best to get still and quiet—inside and out. I meditate or go outside and focus on what I’m seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling to get a little more space between my thoughts. If possible, I lie down so my body can relax completely. It’s often uncomfortable at first, as the worries and anxiety urge me to get up and take action, so I wait for that to pass so I can relax into it a bit.

Finally, I connect with my body and tune into its sensations so I can listen for clues about what’s overwhelming me and what might help. Am I overstimulated? What is there too much of–noise, sensations, emotions, tasks, activities, commitments, expectations, perfectionism, or something else? What would feel good to my system, soothe it, or help it calm down? What can I take off my list? Do less of? Put off? Let myself do imperfectly?

My body will tell me when I’ve hit the right idea by releasing some of its tension. It’s like a breadcrumb trail I can follow back to feeling grounded, at peace, and ready for whatever comes my way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://meredithwalters.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meredith.walters.author
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-walters-1767451/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/meredith-walters-decatur-2

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