Katie Sanders talks about new ways to approach writing when writing feels like a challenge.
Katie Sanders is a sensory designer and HSP (highly sensitive person) coach who supports those with anxiety, sensitivities, adhd, autism, and chronic illnesses through their surroundings, senses and personalized systems. She helps them work with their natural gifts to create studio spaces they not only love, but where they can thrive.
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Amy Hallberg 0:01
My friend Katie Sanders has a really unique voice that I love. So I found it fascinating when I heard her talk about writing as both something that was very healing for her, but also something that she didn't think she was good at. And this, like, bells started going off when I heard her say this because this is so common. We think that we're not good writers. And maybe that's true. And maybe it isn't. You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith, Episode 54. This podcast presents conversation with and for real life creatives on how we find and keep walking our unique paths. I'm your host, Amy Hallberg, welcome to my world. Today, I'm talking with my good friend, Katie Sanders. So welcome, Katie.
Katie Sanders 1:07
Thank you. I'm, like, so thrilled to be back. I mean, just, it's an honor. Thank you.
Amy Hallberg 1:13
So you posted this thing on Facebook, that just caught my attention, because it was about how writing is really healing for you that that's a space you go into that really has brought you a lot of comfort, and helped you to work through and really look at life closely. And yet, it was a challenge for you to start having any kind of a writing practice. So I'm wondering if you would just talk about that a little bit.
Katie Sanders 1:40
Yes, from a very early age, I would say I'm not a good writer, I would say that in my head over and over that i'm not a good writer, because that's what I felt, I have dyslexia and so it's very hard to write really well for me. And my brain goes faster at times, too. So it can get caught up and, and miss words and things and it was until I got a copywriter probably about five years ago. And when I started seeing what she was doing, I would send her like a draft of like, this is what I'm trying to get across. But I don't feel like I'm a good communicator, a writer. But working with her, she's like, see how this can become almost like a melody, or like a song if you write it and use these words, because she could see what I wanted to say. And it was almost like I finally had an interpreter of like, what was going on in my head, and that my ideas were valuable. I didn't feel very hurt as a kid, I guess. Because I would overreact and have too many emotions and have too much, I would be labeled as too much
Amy Hallberg 2:55
I can so relate to that. People don't know what to do with big emotions in children. And as a parent, I have to say it's frustrating to be the parent of a child with big emotions. It's also frustrating to be the child with big emotions. And I think we do sort of shut down our writing our expression, because it doesn't feel safe sometimes.
Katie Sanders 3:19
Yeah, exactly. And the kid doesn't understand that. A kid just goes, "Oh, something's wrong with me" or "I am just this, I'm not great at writing. This is just not something I do." And I see that in my son too. He had this journey of like, I just I can't write. And so he would say that over and over. So during my process of learning to write, when I saw these words being crafted and seeing that, I think part of it was slowing down. I think part of it was seeing these words that kept coming up over and over again that I could use that felt like my voice. And I take themes and I run with them. I love themes like any that has like patterns or themes, I can run with it and kind of copy it or use it as a template and keep going. So when I stopped working with my copywriter, and I shifted things, that was in my prior web design days, she was doing a lot of blogging for me helping with my blogging and when I shifted to write for myself, then I was like, "Okay, I'm going to write for me." I use those same techniques and suddenly people were like going, "I love this. I so relate to this." And it was so validating to hear that people were receiving my message clearly. Because also part of being highly sensitive and not being heard and being too much, I always felt like I had to repeat myself and I would see that in my writing. I would see here's the beginning, looking through that whole piece, I would see like I'm seeing the same thing three times, because of that trauma growing up and going. No one is listening to me.
Amy Hallberg 5:12
I think one of the beautiful things about writing is you can get it all out onto the page this way, the way you say it, right? That you can get it all out onto the page, and you can edit later.
Katie Sanders 5:21
Yes
Amy Hallberg 5:22
And the way that writing is taught in school, in my humble opinion, it must work for somebody because they keep teaching it. But this idea that you have to have the outline, right, and it's this many points, and it's, you know, like, there's the numbers and the sort of the formula around what it's supposed to look like. And sometimes, I mean, so you're describing basically the opposite way of doing it, which is finding the themes riffing on the themes, finding your style, your words, your themes, and bounding upon that, and then later going back and seeing what's there and sorting it out. It's the opposite of the way it's taught at school. And it's also not on a timeline, the way that it is, like it's, you know, here's the due date. It's, yes, there are due dates, but there's a lot of expanse of time in between, where you just incubate and get it on the page and see what wants to come forward. It just is a very different way of writing than how it's taught at school.
Katie Sanders 6:24
And there are many different types of writing and I feel like I've morphed over the years too, and recently helping my son be able to write and also connecting with other parents online. one parent was saying, like, here's my son's writing, she was like, "Is this okay?" Like, there's a lot of like, online in the support groups of "is my child, okay? Am I okay? You know, being highly sensitive or being neurodiverse? Am I okay?" is a lot of what people are asking. And so she was asking about her child, and she was noticing that not all the words were getting out on the page or something. So I chimed in, because my journey with my son recently has been, I sit down and write with him quite a bit, because that's one of his challenges. That's one of the things he would tell himself, I can't do. And when I sit down with him, now, we have formed this kind of process of he is an amazing writer, once we unlocked, that his brain was going so fast, and forming really, almost perfected sentences, but they just needed to be captured.
Amy Hallberg 7:43
You know, that's so powerful. And I think that that's probably more common. I can think of, if I look at the writers that I admire and writers that have been successful, and writers that capture the imagination of people, I bet there's a very high percentage of neurodiverse people in that population. And with that comes this perfectionism of you see it perfectly in your brain and how do you get it onto the page? Yeah. So do you have techniques that have worked around that?
Katie Sanders 8:17
Yes. So in part of that also is adding in working memory and working memory can be really stunted and really impossible to work around when you have that perfect sentence, and then it's gone. Like you just can't hold on to it. It's like, yeah, I had it. And it was right there. And I don't remember what it was, what my son and I do is he gave me his laptop, and I type it all out for him. So and I'm repeating back, you know what it is, and he can just like stare off into space and just kind of you know, and just recites to me the sentence that he'll put in the comments he'll put in all the punctuation and it is like almost perfectly formed working with them now is going back and editing it because he's like, no, it's done. He's not there yet. He's in fourth grade.
Amy Hallberg 9:08
I love the validation around his process, though, I mean, that what you have to say is valuable and the process by which it gets onto the page. That's negotiable. Yeah, but that what you're saying, you know, like, it comes through like a song, like a melody, that's, you know, the best stuff comes through that way for me, like, it's a sound of a thing. And so I love that, that you're making space to do that. I'm going to share that a mutual friend of ours, someone that we both admire, and you'll know who I'm talking about, because you'll know, so she told me that she used to write these papers and in school, you know, you're supposed to have a rough draft and you're supposed to draft and she wrote them in their entirety, complete. And then because she was supposed to have the drafts, she learned how to back up and create the former iterations and looking at what she does. Now, which has a lot of quality control, things like that, right? Yeah, she actually started with a finished product. And then she did the required steps and move backwards. And so it was a training for her. I mean, like it explains, you know who I'm talking about, right?
Katie Sanders 10:15
I think so
Amy Hallberg 10:16
yeah, I'm sure you do. And it, you know, like it built a gift, but it's a different way of coming at the material, you know, it's fully formed there. And there are actually tools like you can record your writing, and I've been using Otter a lot lately. Because sometimes I just like to talk and just put it into Otter and audibley transcribe it for me even, you know...
Katie Sanders 10:41
Beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah, like, right now, what's on his laptop is just, it's a Chromebook. So Chrome is having difficulties understanding some of his words. And it's super frustrating, which is why we turn to this, you know, it's a pandemic, I can do this for him right now, but I'm not gonna homeschool him. That's not my, I don't feel qualified. And it was never my purpose. So right now, this is working, but we're trying to come up with a plan of how does this work when he's back in the building? How does, right? As a fifth grader, and a sixth grader, and all that, what does that look like?
Amy Hallberg 11:19
And I think, you know, as parents of neurodiverse kids, it would be lovely to assume that that's going to be taken care of, you know, or you have a 504 or an IEP, and it's gonna be taken care of. But the fact of the matter is that even with those, you have to advocate with the school and preferably find an advocate within the school. And so knowing what that is, takes it away from the shame based thing to, hey, we have some things that work, and how can we make this part of the process, which just changes everything about how school feels? For a kid
Katie Sanders 11:39
Yeah. And access. I know, one thing between last year and this year, was like, it was almost shamed, in a way amongst the classroom because I would go in and I would help in the classroom last year as a third grader, and all the laptops were put away on the side, you can't, this is not time to touch your laptop. But yet he really needed all that dictation throughout the day. And so how uncomfortable is that to say, "No, I really need this" when you're nine, you just go "Wait, the teacher said I can't." But now it's like, he always has access to it, it's freeing. He feels no shame around it. He's like, I need that tool. I'm doing it. You know
Amy Hallberg 12:48
As a teacher, as a former teacher, there is this place in my heart where I mean, I'm okay with where I am. But there is this little bit of pain in there, knowing that sometimes I was just trying to follow the system. And then I was trying to navigate the system. And then I was breaking the system. And I will never forget the kid who came in and said, "I'm taking my extra time here." And I'm like, "nope, time's up." And he's like, "No, I'm taking my extra time here." And I was like, "no, really time's up." And because, like, "look at my 504." And I was like, Oh, my God, you know, like, from my place of being stressed, putting that onto a kid. And you know, and what I ended up coming down to was, why shouldn't this kid have extra space? And not only that, but I'm going to create different systems so that students who need extra space can have it, whether it's documented in a label or not, how can I make it so that students can advocate for what they need so that they can find the processes they need? Not that I was successful at that all the time? Yeah, but it is this mind shift of we must find a policy versus the policy serves the brilliance of the kid, how do we get that brilliance onto the page? So this brings me to a question I have, you know, talking about neuro diversity. But there are other things that get in the way of the writing, there is resistance in our head. And there is resistance in our space. And I think this talks to what you do professionally working with not just you know, your son, but also grown up clients that people come and hire you. And you help them to make space. So can you talk about some of that resistance?
Katie Sanders 14:37
Yeah, and sometimes people don't even see that the resistance is happening. So I work under a broad umbrella of saying I help highly sensitive people with their spaces, especially workspaces, because I think that's kind of the sacred area that you create in. You can have a sacred sleeping space. You can have others, sacred, you know, cooking spaces, but there's something really special about working within a workspace that just supports you in all the ways possible. And I think growing up and hearing you know, you're too much, you're too this or that, you just look, start looking around and like, well, it just is what it is, or I don't need that. It's just a want or a nice to have. And what I'm helping people with is saying, "No, you need this, you need to feel comfortable." You may not realize that lamp right next to you is too bright, and it actually is hindering you. And you're saying to yourself, "I'm a bad writer, I just can't write today." Maybe it's the lamp. I mean, maybe it's that simple. Or maybe it's that pile of papers that you're just constantly looking at and going, "Oh, you know, I need to do something about that." And that just clogs your your brain with things that you need to do instead of like, here's my space, I can tend to that later. Here's my space I can fully create in.
Amy Hallberg 16:08
And I think, you know, sometimes the stuff that's in our head, and the stuff that's in our environment, are echoes of the same thing like, the clutter in our environment is actually a manifestation of a physical representation of the resistance inside of us.
Katie Sanders 16:26
Yes, what I've heard, it's, I did not coin this, but I love this from another creator, she talks about inside out congruency with clothing. And it's this beautiful thing of going "you know what? this is what I feel on the inside" happy, joy, you know, inquisitive or whatever it is for that day, and "I want to wear it. So it reminds me about who I am." And you get momentum from that. And in that same kind of concept of having this inside out, congruency with your space of like going, I need calm. So how can I make my surroundings calm, I need energy. When I sit down and write this book that may take months to write I need that constant reminder when I sit down, have "Why? Why am I sitting right here and doing this?" And to have that reflected back to you as you take in your surroundings if you pause, you know, between paragraphs and you're like looking over here, like oh, yeah, that object is reminding me of why I'm sitting right here. And it can be a temporary space because maybe just for that project, maybe it's you're writing about family and you need to have that photo of your family and you're going "this is my why. this is why I'm doing all of this." And then maybe that temporary bubble that you create that temporary space shifts for your next project.
Amy Hallberg 17:57
And those things too, they have a way of filtering into, the things that are just in our ambient space, have a way of filtering into the writing itself too. it's really cool, it creates this, this beautiful symbiosis where it allows you to write about it and like it, you know, it's this beautiful thing where it starts to just flow and you don't have to work so hard at it. You talked about why it mattered. And I'd love to talk about for you because I know you well enough to know that you don't do anything for no reason. You try very hard not to do something for no reason, you try to be very purposeful and that writing has served a real purpose for you. So what has writing made possible for you? writing for yourself not writing copy, but writing for yourself? How does it serve you?
Katie Sanders 18:48
Everything that comes to my mind, and then I see it on a page is that reverberation or just that reconciliation as well of what I feel is valid. If I'm feeling like everything's really tough right now, it can be very easy for moms right now to go "Yeah, we are in survival mode, and we're just doing what we're doing." And sometimes we don't even acknowledge how hard we're working. But when I start writing about it, and then seeing the words reflecting back to me, like I'll go to a post where it could be two paragraphs, but I'll go back and go "Oh, wow. You know, yeah, I did write that. And yeah, that is my voice. And yeah, that is really important. And that is really hard to be going through right now."
Amy Hallberg 19:37
And I think you know, there's some sort of thought that maybe writing is a frivolous thing, you know, like, oh, that yeah, self indulgent or whatever. And I would say, what you just spoke to is that it's not extraneous or frivolous because it's validating for ourselves, what we're going through which just makes it it easier for us to contribute to be okay in this world, to not become more of the pain, to not contribute more to the hardness that is out there
Katie Sanders 20:13
I found several different modalities of writing, I've been journaling every day very short, so that I know that can be easily accomplished. I do it at the end of the day, so I can reflect upon the good and the bad. It doesn't matter that I tried to form it more of a neutral. This is just what happened. And this is the hard things that I did. I also think writing during the pandemic, to some of your best friends about what you're going through in text messages can be so therapeutic. I've heard this from many moms of like, "if I didn't have my little text group of moms, it would be so overwhelming." But you also need courage to kind of deep down talk about things that you may not talk about face to face. And when you actually release those words out to some close friends, it can be very freeing, very freeing, it's harder for me to talk about those things in person. But we have talked about some of the deepest things and form some of the most deepest bonds just through text messages.
Amy Hallberg 21:20
I think the funny thing is that when you write these things, sometimes they're so vulnerable and you think "nobody else feels the way I do this is so so private and personal. I can't possibly share it. It's so tender." And yet when you put it out there you find out how many people say yes, yes I feel that and I'm so grateful to know that you shared it so that I know that I'm not alone. Yeah, so we talked about the neurological things that can get in our way trying to fit ourselves into a certain neurological pathway that just doesn't work for us. Yeah, and we talked about sort of the mental stuff when you work with people you certainly work around those things but you are also very much dealing with the physical space around them you know, like if I were going to hire you and you know you were going to come in and help me to stage this office. What would that look like when you work with people? What does that look like?
Katie Sanders 22:22
So there is a lot of grief work involved first, it's, you know, talking through things, talking about what your values are, talking about what you've gone through and I try to make sure that I tell people I do not judge anything about where things are, it doesn't matter, they just are there right now. I want to talk about what's working and what's not working. But there is a lot of kind of release of shame. At the beginning of us working together I tried to bridge between saying that stuff doesn't really matter. And stuff matters like there's things are equally true. Like I don't want you to go out and buy the most expensive file organizer because that may not solve your problem. But I also want to say that if you have an organizer that works for you, it could unlock so much that you're doing and it's a very private space that I work with people. I don't share before and afters. I don't share pictures of their space that's just something that I work with them personally with and so that they can just show everything and just say this is the state of my brain and this is data my space and it's overwhelming. So yeah, going through grief work talking about what's working and not and then we start going into "Okay, here's my values here" and I go through and make a sensory needs profile. So it's like going through and stating and sometimes their sensory needs that they've never even thought of or that their body is doing like putting pressure "This is one thing I do I sit on my foot because my body is wanting to have some pressure on my skin" and that's part of your senses of having pressure on your skin and "my body is craving that and automatically it sits on my foot." Now it's caused some hip problems but my body was doing it but if you actually see it like in your your profile going "wait, this is something my body needs to tend to and kind of nourish itself with while I'm working or before and after I'm working" you can see that "oh if I get nourishment of that not only nourishment of food and water but like nourishment of my senses through my space, then I can actually be more relaxed while I'm working or have more ideas flowing" and and that kind of stuff.
Amy Hallberg 24:55
You know as you say that I'm thinking about this and so people can't see it but like I have always needed to touch my fingers together. You know, like, I remember sitting in the car, like, you know, working my fingers back and forth against each other. You can see what I'm doing. And as you're saying that I'm like, yeah, you know, like, yes, there was this need to feel that physical pressure of my fingers against each other. Yes. Isn't that crazy? I mean, like, well, it's not crazy, but right. Like, I'm like, it's crazy that I'm this age, and I'm suddenly going, "Oh, that's what that was about."
Katie Sanders 25:31
Mm hmm. And a lot of it, yeah, a lot of people are finally either, through seeing their kids diagnosed with things they're figuring out, "oh, wait, I may have ADHD" like, there's people in my group and people I'm connected with who are like, "you know, your words kind of helped me get diagnosed, and now I'm on medication, and I'm seeing the world totally differently." And that like, that gets to my heart every time. Because that's what happened to me too, going, "Oh, I'm that, that explains so much. And, oh, that means I need to advocate for myself."
Amy Hallberg 26:09
you know, you talk about this neuro diversity and how people, we put these labels onto ourselves, like, I'm smart, or not smart. I'm a good writer, or not a good writer, or all these things. And the truth is that, you know, it's like, there's this intersectionality what I learned this great definition of intersectionality that I've never heard before, and it was talking about in terms of race and gender and things like that, yeah, but that it's not I am ADHD, and that's one thing, and I am smart, or I write or any of these things, it's the combination of how they come together in your unique profile. So you could be labeled gifted, or dyslexic, or ADHD and all those things are not mutually exclusive now and so to find ways to set up your space, so that it not only accommodates but amplifies your unique profile for how you express yourself in the world. It's no small thing it's a really big deal.
Katie Sanders 27:22
Yes, and knowing that knowing I think when we first suspect that we're either highly sensitive or just neurodiverse in some way when we're kind of getting hints of that we can be like well what does that mean? So we're looking at definitions of it but what could it possibly be? What senses am I sensitive to? Is it sight, sound, smell or is it just people in the room or is it you know crowds or is it watching violence on TV or seeing feeling other people's emotions and the list can go on and on but it's also going well but these are the ones that I hesitate saying struggle because it can feel like a struggle but you can also learn to work with them. So having an environment that tends to those but then also having direction and moving into colors speaks so much to people they can express emotions, and thoughts and so many things. So you know, I've been in web design and branding for so long and you can say that the color yellow means one thing to the industry. But it's another thing to say but the color yellow has a special meaning because it was the same color as wallpaper in your room growing up and it had a special meaning because that's where you would run when you felt misunderstood. And so having yellow in your office space may be good or bad. It just depends what your attachment are to those colors. So I love working with colors with people because it also in a sense also when you start saying like these are the colors I want to surround me it's almost like a manifestation of like you'll start seeing those colors within the world or start seeing that you already have items that you can put out. That are those colors that can support you. It's like saying okay, I really want to buy a certain kind of car and all of a sudden you're seeing that car everywhere. Your brain is picking up of like that's what I want. So when we work with like colors and we do kind of a vision board and on Pinterest and stuff and like pin all these ideas that not only are they like inspirational but I also try to pin things that are this is like the almost exact item in your space. We need to have some solutions in front of us that aren't just like magazine worthy, right? We need something of like, "Well, yeah, I do have that kind of bookshelf already, I'm not going to go out and buy a whole new system right now. I'm going to use what I have." But here's a whole new way of looking at using it. And that's what I love. Oh, you have this thing. You could use it differently. That's to me, I just love that.
Amy Hallberg 30:23
I love that so much. And you know, you mentioned the thing about yellow. And it brought up this whole story in my head that was unfolding, as you were saying that about what yellow means to me. Oh, yeah, a woman who lived in my house for a while it was not a fun story. I probably won't ever write about that in a book. But um, but she, she bought me these towels for the kitchen that were supposedly a gift for me. But really, they were what she wanted. And there were these yellow towels in there. And I was so angry at like an immediate visceral level that she bought me, yellow towels. And then as you say that I'm thinking, gee, in my childhood bedroom, I had this beautiful yellow carpet, but it always got dirty. And I'm like, look at the stories that you can thread. Guess with that one color, like and then that goes to my yellow cat like, I'm following this whole little rabbit trail? Yeah, and I probably won't even bother with her. Like I said, because I don't know what I would do with that story. So tuck that one away. But what does it bring up here? What does it bring up there and you get to decide then it unfolds a whole string of associations. And you can decide later how to unpack it
Katie Sanders 31:34
And do you have that color close by that your brain is subconsciously like bringing up that story in the background? Sometimes you don't even realize it, like, your eyes will glance upon something and sometimes I'll look at an object and like, I'm feeling happy looking at that. I don't know why I'm feeling a little uneasy. Looking at that one. I don't know why.
Amy Hallberg 31:57
Right. And when you're writing a book, there is so much that you can't write all at once. Like you just have to leave yourself a little breadcrumbs. Once you make that association with the color yellow. I'm going to see the color yellow. And I'm not going to forget about the carpet. Because every time I go back to my childhood bedroom, I'll remember that there was a carpet. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, once the story is there. It may fall out of your brain, but it comes back and it stays there. So that's another way of working with that fact that our brains work so much faster than we can get things onto the page. So I am so excited to share this conversation. It's been a lovely time talking with you as it always has. And as I said, so much more to talk about. But I want to thank you for joining me today and people who want to work with you. We'll drop that in the show notes so people can find that link because it's an amazing service and and people would be lucky to to have you guiding them through it. So thank you so much, Katie.
Katie Sanders 33:00
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Amy Hallberg 33:05
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured Katie Sanders. You can read about her and check out her links in the show notes. Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith, my editor is the talented Will Queen and my social media manager is the fabulous Maddy Kelley. If you enjoy this podcast, you too can help it thrive and grow. Please subscribe right on this page, share it with friends you think would like it. And if you're feeling called to write, sign up for true lines, my letter for real life creative writers so that you can stay current on podcast episodes, along with all our offers to support you along your narrative journey. You'll find that link in the show notes or read more at CourageousWordsmith.com. I'm Amy Hallberg and until we meet again, travel safely