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[00:01:44] to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today and all your tomorrows. Don't Wait For Your Wake Up Call! Welcome back to another episode of the Don't Wait for Your Wake Up Call podcast. I am Melissa Deally, your host. And today I have with me the lovely Cynthia Gregory. Welcome to the show, Cynthia.

[00:02:17] Thanks, Melissa. It's great to be here. I'm very excited to have you here on the show today. And just want to introduce you a little bit to the audience. Cynthia Gregory is an award-winning author and creativity coach and publisher who helps people turn their lived experiences into meaningful, compelling stories. She's known for creating a space where writers can access their true voice, move through self-doubt and shape stories they're proud to share.

[00:02:45] Her work blends deep emotional insight with practical structures so participants don't just reflect on their stories, they actually write them. Her books include Journaling as Sacred Practice from 2016, On Fire from 2023, Love Notes from the Soul 2024, Love Notes 2.0 in 2025, and Love Notes 3.0 2027.

[00:03:09] And you also have the brand new certification of timeline therapy practitioner having recently taken that training with us. Congratulations to you. And I love all that you're doing in the world.

[00:03:24] I want to start out, though. You weren't always in this line of work. I would love you to just go back to where you were before this and what led you into this line of work and helping people connect with their stories and get them into print. Such a great question. I've always been in love with stories, always my whole life. My sister and I shared a bedroom when we were growing up, and at night when I couldn't sleep, she would tell me stories.

[00:03:54] And so I just, I have been activated by stories my whole life. And so before I was doing this work, I was in nonprofit leadership. And I was, and did a lot of philanthropy. I raised a lot of money for hospitals. And all of that, every, every donation, every large and small donation came out of a story. As we, it's like, that is the most compelling thing about what we do, how the, how we engage people emotionally.

[00:04:23] And they give emotionally, and then they justify it with logic. And so I've been immersed in stories forever. And in 2017, I became a certified life coach. And I continued to do that work. But I felt more and more pulled to do what I feel like I'm truly here to do, which is to publish and to share stories.

[00:04:46] And then I realized in 2023, when I edited an anthology for someone else from my local California Writers Club group, I went, I'm a pretty good editor. I really like this. And then I went on a silent retreat in 2023. A friend of mine was turning 80. She said, I'm going to a silent retreat down in Big Sur at a Benedictine monastery. Do you want to come? And I was like, yes, I do.

[00:05:11] And one morning, listening to the monks chanting, I was outside reading Mary Oliver, weeping with the beauty of the moment, literally. And I got cracked open. And I got an assignment. And it was Love Notes from the Soul. And so these books evolved from that. I went out and I started talking to people. And the first book was Love Notes from the Soul, Stories of Transformation. Again, the stories element, right? What was your transformational moment?

[00:05:41] And what did you do with it? And I had 30 authors from seven countries contributing their stories of transformation. I thought, this is great. Let's try it again. So last year, we published Love Notes from the Soul 2.0, Stories of Healing and Compassion. And I asked 30 writers again, what are you doing on a daily basis in the work that you do and the people that you engage with that is creating a more equitable, just, and compassionate?

[00:06:08] And again, the stories just started flowing in. So it's been a really remarkable experience. I'm now right now working on putting to bed Love Notes from the Soul 3.0, the art of conscious leadership. And right? It's a moment in time where it's just the absolute right moment. And that book will be released on February 14, 2027. Oh, beautiful Valentine's Day. I know. That's awesome. Awesome.

[00:06:39] Yeah. And love how, you know, there's that moment where you, you know, got your mission. And then from there, you've stepped forth into this in such a powerful way, still doing your coaching. However, bringing transformation to people through story, as well as giving people the opportunity to heal and transform themselves through story. Absolutely.

[00:07:08] I would love for you to talk about that process. Yes. It's so amazing. And I've used a method of teaching writing where we will do timed writing. And now that I know what I know from having studied with you, I'm understanding where this all comes from. But very often when we do spontaneous writing, we bypass our prefrontal cortex because we don't have time to think about it. We write. We keep the pen moving. And so we access the unconscious mind.

[00:07:38] Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what I have my students and my authors do when we're reading from the book, I tell them, please practice. We're going to be in front of an audience. You must practice reading what you're going to read from your chapter because something really important happens when somebody reads their words out loud that have been silent maybe for many, many years. They wrote them down.

[00:08:04] That was a really big step to get them on paper and then to speak them out loud and hearing their own voice, speaking with the voice of the soul will bring people to tears. And they have this transformative moment. It's really a privilege to be in that position to go, listen, this is a really big experience. I want to prepare you for it. I don't want you to be scared by what happens because very often, both from sadness and joy, the tears will just come. Yes. Yes.

[00:08:33] And inevitably, it's joy because in that moment, they realize how far they've come. And there's a sense of freedom. Yes. There's a sense of compassion for the self as well as it's like confident. They're like, I've had this in me this whole time and I didn't even know it. Yeah, that's beautiful.

[00:08:53] And when I first talked to you about having you on the podcast, we talked about the fact that creativity is a part of the healing process.

[00:09:32] Oh, my gosh. We feel compelled to act. When we act in that moment, we have a direct channel to that information. When we say, oh, I'll do it later. I've also discovered and you may be able to corroborate this, that we say, oh, I'll do it later. You can still tap into that original inspiration, but it's only an echo of the original moment. Mm hmm. It's not quite as alive in you.

[00:09:59] It doesn't quite fire your brain up the same way. And so that's why it's important to act on inspiration. Absolutely. And important to always have that pen and paper with us, right? Absolutely. To carry it with us. And that inspiration comes and just take a moment, stop and take a moment and write down what is coming through you. Yeah. Because that inspiration is being channeled from your higher self through your unconscious mind into conscious thought in that moment for a reason.

[00:10:29] Yes. Yes. And so it's all this divine timing. What I've started doing more recently, I'm a big believer in writing by hand, but I also have an app on my phone that I can quickly record something and put it down and walk away if I'm not at my desk. If I'm in a place, quite frankly, maybe driving, right? Right. Where I can't grab my pen and start writing, I can simply record the message so I can come back to it later. And that's also a device that I use for people who have trouble sitting down.

[00:10:59] They're very kinetic, right? Mm hmm. Action oriented. So sitting down and meditating doesn't work for them. And writing, sitting at a desk isn't very helpful either. So I say get an app for your phone, go for a walk and start talking into your phone. If that's the way that you best process information, work with yourself. Yes, exactly. Do it the way that works for you. Right. Right. Yeah. It's important. All that's important is that in that moment, you capture the information however you need to capture it.

[00:11:30] Right. You capture the essence of it. You understand it. And then you can then you can act on it. Right. And sometimes, interestingly, though, I know with me that you don't always understand it in the moment. However, at least if you've captured it, you have it. And then, you know, days, even weeks later, it might suddenly be like, oh, that's what that meant. Or that's where I was being directed to. Right. The last pin drops.

[00:11:58] And you're like, oh, OK, OK. Now, now it makes sense. So I love all that you're sharing. And it's not just, you know, your experience of growing up loving stories and now helping people heal through being able to share their story. There's science behind it as well.

[00:12:20] And I know that there's MRIs that have proven that listening to stories is beneficial. So I would love for you to talk about that as well. Yes, I love when I take my little show on the road and I talk about it. It's so much fun to talk to, say, a rotary group or a group of people who are completely out of this realm and go, you know, stories actually do light up our brains.

[00:12:45] They increase our capacity for empathy, for language, you know, language skills, for persuasion, for memory. Literally, our brains light up. And again, it feels really good when our brain lights up. We get these these happy hormones flooding our bloodstream. And so it's a it's a it's a lovely reciprocal circle.

[00:13:10] So when you immediately act on those ideas or you continue to read and stimulate your mind in that way, it's a it's like a virtuous circle where you reinforce it over and over and over again. And I recently I had gotten in a bad habit of social media over the last couple of years, you know, for a variety of reasons. And recently I was understanding that it was really impacting me and not the best positive way.

[00:13:38] And I at the moment I put my phone down, I started picking up books and I just like dove right back into the the absolute pleasure of reading the tactile experience of the page. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to read the way that my brain would journey to interesting places that were so much more satisfying than, you know, a game on my phone. I'm with you on that. I need to read every night before I go to sleep.

[00:14:07] It's just what takes me helps me get, you know, out of the alpha brain that has been running my day and in my theta and, you know, delta brainwaves so that I can have a deeper restorative sleep. And I love the stories. I love where my brain goes.

[00:14:26] And I also have found that I need to write my gratitude journal after reading and not before because because if I don't, my brain will work on the story all night long. And I'll be I'll wake up, you know, and be in the middle of my brain's continuation of where the story is going. And I don't always like it. I don't want that to happen. I didn't want to program that.

[00:14:56] Exactly. And so I found that I sleep better, like a more restful sleep without my brain having to work on finishing the story. If I read, write my gratitude journal and then turn out the light. It's a nice three phase process. Exactly. Exactly. So I love what you were saying, though, about how stories are lighting up parts of our brain and helping, you know, with empathy and persuasion, imagination and language.

[00:15:25] And so much of that is housed in the unconscious mind. Right. And the unconscious mind loves stories because, as you know, from taking our training, it's like a toddler and what toddler doesn't want to have a story read to them because it is the home of our imagination. It does let us go and explore. And, you know, you and I can both read the same story and our imaginations are visualizing it in completely different. Textually. Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:54] Based on all of our experiences in our life. And I, which is why, you know, in our trainings that we start with metaphors. And when we answer people's questions with a metaphor versus just telling them the answer, that is also leading their unconscious mind to find the answer itself versus being told the answer.

[00:16:23] And really, how many of us would prefer to discover the answer versus being told? Our unconscious mind loves a puzzle. Exactly.

[00:16:36] Yes, I've been discovering recently the power of when I'm teaching writing to a group of people that that metaphor is such it's such a powerful tool to use because it's a picture that we can store in our brain and we have an immediate understanding of it. But my understanding of, say, an anchor, you know, I get a picture in my mind of an anchor. It's not the same picture that you get of an anchor.

[00:17:03] But we're both relating to it in a way that is, if I dare say this, is beyond language. Because in many ways, language is limiting. The symbol, however, is not specific to a particular set of letters or one context of meaning. Exactly. Exactly. It's so cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just like planting metaphors is planting a picture in somebody's brain and they can immediately access it.

[00:17:33] And I don't know about everybody else. For me, my retention of that, because there's an image that goes with it, is far greater than if I just had to remember a couple of words. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Again, it's beyond language or pre-language. I'm not sure which. I have to research that.

[00:17:59] Well, and we go back to, you know, the early days where they didn't have written language. And all of the language and communication was through, you know, pictograms and art, for want of another term. Images, right? That have been driven out on this cave, you know, drawn out on cave walls. Right. And those pictograms created stories that were then told and retold for generations. Yes.

[00:18:29] As their educational system. That's right. Did you see the movie Hamnet? I did not. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Well, for a Shakespeare geek like me, it was beautifully done. And there is a scene in the movie when he is off in London and Anne Hathaway, his wife, is out in the country raising their family. And the children have gotten sick. She's an herbalist. That's what she was the family doctor.

[00:18:57] And so she started making these concoctions with her daughters. And the recipes were songs. Because she was a little bit. So she's reciting these songs while they're making these potions out of the herbs that they harvest in order to heal their bodies when they needed to. That was the technology that she used. Yeah. I love that. And then that song gets passed along versus being written down.

[00:19:26] And I was just thinking that as I asked you that question, too. Because I remember the words of songs so well. You know, the music just starts playing and the words come back to me. And even when I was in high school, I used to jokingly say, if they sang the lessons to me, I would retain the information so much more. Oh, yeah. Well, isn't that what nursery rhymes are? Because they rhyme.

[00:19:52] And so it's easy to remember because the words have a certain pattern and a cadence to them. Exactly. Right. Which is also kind of like music. Because music, you can measure music in terms of sound waves. Yes. So it's so remarkable the way it all comes together with these giant human brains that we have. That are so powerful.

[00:20:16] And then, yes, that the sound waves are healing in and of themselves, bringing it all back to healing here. And so I would just love to ask you, now that you've done the timeline therapy training and have more tools in your belt to be able to work with your clients. And as you help, you know, draw out their story and guide them through that healing process. I don't even know if you have the answer to this yet.

[00:20:45] However, I just want to ask, how do you see helping your clients differently or bringing these tools into your business? So excited. I've given it a great deal of thought. I continue to think about it because I'm so excited about these teachings. And I have encountered so many people that start a book and they peter out and they don't. They lose their confidence or their enthusiasm. Something happens.

[00:21:13] And that's the reason that, you know, eight out of ten people believe they have a book in them, but only two actually finish it. Oh, wow. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And there's so many reasons. There's three main reasons people won't publish a book. They don't want to be judged. They may reveal information that might hurt someone. And I can't remember the third one. There's three, but it'll come to me. But, I mean, those are big motivators for people to just like go, nope, nope, nope. Don't want to do that. Don't want to go there.

[00:21:43] And it is a self-sabotage. And I think this is a way to just completely go, you know, writer's block. Getting stuck in writing is something that happens to every writer. Every writer. Even Elizabeth Gilbert has a story about how she got stalled out in the middle of writing a book. Jodi Picoult, one of her friends, wrote that book. Oh. It's the same. It's almost the same exact storyline.

[00:22:08] And they laugh about it now because, you know, it's like the universe can give you an idea. And if you're not ready to pluck it and run with it, they'll give it to somebody else. Right. So, yeah. So I definitely. Or if you're afraid to pluck it and run with it. And I wonder if the third reason, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. However, I've heard people don't want to write their story because while their story, you know, they've overcome whatever they went through.

[00:22:36] They haven't fully healed from it. And they don't want to go back there. That's a big, big reason. I'm working with a woman right now. She's been working on her memoir for going on three years now. And she's down to two final stories. And after I took the training, I said, we have to talk. We have to talk. Because I think I can help you get over this. Because they're the two most emotionally complex stories of this particular book. And I understand it.

[00:23:05] You know, I understand how hard that can be. And that is a lot of the reason people don't want to go back and revisit. It can be painful. It can be surprising. They can learn things about themselves that they hadn't expected to learn. So it's a lot of unpacking that occurs when you, you know, you look at yourself that closely. So I definitely think that this is a way to help people, to bring people into a sense of equilibrium

[00:23:30] when it comes to sharing their stories and exploring their own story. Because, I mean, I've done it long enough now. And it doesn't bother me too much. But I understand that that's one of my ways of operating in the world. That's the reason I started writing in the first place. I found that when I wrote my feelings down on paper as a 17-year-old, I discovered that those emotions were easier to deal with on paper.

[00:23:55] Then I could look at them and I could see them and I could figure out what to do. But as long as it's spinning around up in your head, it doesn't really go anywhere but continue to haunt you. Yeah, you just tell the same old victim story over and over again in your head. And you stay over there on Victim Island, as we like to say, in the repetition of it, right? Right, yeah. Whereas writing it out on paper can bring some clarity of, oh, wow, I'm making this into something that it doesn't have to be.

[00:24:25] I'm making it so much bigger than it ever should have been because I won't stop thinking about it, right? Right, right. And so, yeah, giving people the tools to be able to work through whatever they're going through. And then with timeline therapy, helping people release what's been stuffed down, all that stuffed down negative emotion. And take away the learning from it and let the pain go. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:51] So I see this as a very, very powerful tool for helping writers. Yeah, beautiful. I love that you're combining the two and just then people can write their story from a place of healed and gratitude for the fact that it happened because they learned what they learned from it. And now they're over here. And while the emotion they experienced at the time is valid, the charge from it is gone. That's right.

[00:25:20] Revisiting the story doesn't get them stuck again. Right. They're not re-traumatizing themselves. Exactly. Therapy can do. Absolutely. So they can look at it. They can dive into that memory because it doesn't have the emotional charge. They're more capable of doing what I like to call being a camera when you're writing about it. Be a camera. Just record what's going on without an opinion, without any judgment about it.

[00:25:47] Just look at it and represent it as you see it, without any subtext. Yeah, I love that approach. It's going to be so powerful. I can just see how many people you can help because their stories need to be heard because someone else is going through what they went through. And when their story is read by that person, it helps that person realize, oh my God, I don't have to stay stuck here on Victim Island forever. Yeah.

[00:26:14] If they got out, if they got through this, I can too. And so sharing the story is giving hope and inspiration to others. It totally is. I heard a quote that I repeat as often as I can, which is, your story could be somebody else's survival guide. So be generous with your story. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, beautiful. And yeah, now even more tools to help more people get their stories out there.

[00:26:39] So I'm so excited for how you are going to move forward with helping people heal through storytelling and the ripple effect that has. Because you will never know, and neither will the author ever know, who picks up that book and reads it. And because they picked it up and read it, it changed their life. Absolutely.

[00:27:02] I had an experience when I published, one of my COVID projects was compiling all of the stories that I won awards for, and some of them that I had not yet published. And I put them into a collection of short stories. And after that book came out, I had a friend say, oh, that story made me cry. Hearing her say that made me cry to know that. But I, and it was a beautiful story. It was somebody else's story that I retold.

[00:27:32] But it was such a, it just reinforced why I do what I do, because it connected her to something very deeply meaningful for her. And again, it was, it's that symbolic story in the middle. I didn't necessarily do it. We both came to the story, and she took away with what she came, you know, for. That's beautiful. And as we said earlier, the more we read, the less we're on social media. So there's that healing benefit as well, because. There's a bonus.

[00:28:00] The connection to social media, there's also research that's been done in a direct connect to the amount of time spent on social media and depression. Well, I was going to say, one drains you and one feeds you. Exactly. Which one do you choose, you know? Exactly. It's a choice. It's a choice. So, Cynthia, I love the work that you do in the world.

[00:28:21] I would love for you just to share maybe one or two of your stories from your Love Notes from the Soul, those inspirational stories. Just share one or two of them for just a kind of brief overview. Yes. There's one that comes to mind just immediately. A woman that I met, very dynamic woman. She's on the board of a nonprofit. And she shared her story. This was Love Notes 2.0, stories of healing and compassion.

[00:28:51] As a child, she had trouble learning how to do simple math and how to read. She had this beautiful soul. And she always, as a result, she had a real conflict. She felt like she wasn't very smart, that she was the poorest student in class. And it wasn't until she got to junior college where she walked in and she had to admit in real time to a person she didn't know that she had trouble learning.

[00:29:21] And this, fortunately, was at a time when programs started coming out to help with learning disabilities. And they said, hey, we have a program you might be interested in. And it changed her life. So that was part of her story. And then last Thanksgiving, when the extended family got together, she shared, she read her chapter from the book. It was her first publishing encounter. And she was very proudly sharing this story.

[00:29:48] And one of her nieces, she had two young nieces, eight and nine-year-old nieces in the room. And when she was sharing her story about the difficulty she had learning, one of the little, her nieces looked at her dad and said, Daddy, that's just like me. And it was a generational healing that occurred in that moment. And I just get teary thinking about it because that's the power of a story. She didn't know. Nobody knew about these young girls' difficulties.

[00:30:18] But she was vulnerable enough to share her story. And it had this beautiful repercussion. And then her niece was able to use that story to explain to her dad where she was at. And so she could get help that she needed sooner. And for that young girl to know, I'm not stupid. Look at what my aunt has been able to accomplish in her life. Yes. Clearly I can too.

[00:30:48] Right. It's seeing yourself in somebody else who has walked a path similar to you. It changes everything. The trajectory of that young girl's development is going to be forever changed because of that one story that her auntie shared in the moment of wanting to connect with the people that meant the most to her. So I'm like, what a beautiful little love story. That is such a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. So I love this conversation, Cynthia.

[00:31:18] And I have a question that I ask every single guest that comes on my show. And that is, what does don't wait for your wake-up call mean to you? Ah, I love that question so much. Huh. I would say that that means to me that when that little voice keeps tapping you on the shoulder saying, you really got to do this or you really got to stop doing that. And you go, yeah, yeah, I know. And you just keep putting it off, putting it off.

[00:31:47] I think that is when you're asking for the wake-up call. Nobody wants the big wake-up call because if you pay attention, we're constantly being fed that information. When we choose to act on it, we'll never know because that thing didn't happen, right? But we know for sure when we ignore it and we get the wake-up call, we're like, yeah, this sounds really familiar. I probably should have done this before when it was easier. So, yeah. Exactly.

[00:32:17] So true. Thank you for that. And if people are listening to this episode and they know they have a story inside of them and they would like to work with you, what is the best way for people to get hold of you? And I know you've also very generously offered a free gift as well if you would like to share about that. Yeah. I offer a free conversation about your book idea. I'm always happy to talk to people about, you know, the book that they have within them.

[00:32:47] They're, you know, do I have this? Is this valid? Do I? And I'm like, yes, every story is valid. So, yes, I can be reached at hello at CoachCynthiaGregory.com. Spelled all usual ways. It's pretty easy. Hello at CoachCynthiaGregory.com. And I love to hear from people and I love to talk about stories.

[00:33:08] And even if we don't work together and they end up working with someone else or they take a class or they just start journaling, start a journaling practice, I feel like the world has become a better place for it. And that's part of my mission. I love that. Truly love that. Thank you for all the incredible work that you do in the world, Cynthia, and the healing to come and the ripple effect that will happen that you nor I nor your authors will ever know about.

[00:33:37] However, we all know that it's happening. So as we wrap this episode, do you have any last words of wisdom you would like to share with the audience? Share your stories while you can, because when you're gone, nobody else will be able to share the life experiences that you had that can impact somebody in a really, really important way. That's so true. So true.

[00:34:03] Thank you for sharing that and that reminder that our stories truly need to be told in the now while we're here. Absolutely. Right now. Absolutely. Beautiful. And if you need help doing it, there's people who can help you do it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time, Cynthia. I really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your wisdom and the joy and the passion that you have for this work is clearly evident.

[00:34:28] And so to the listeners, I invite you to connect with Cynthia, share your story. And thank you for tuning in each and every week with an interest in how you can improve your health. And if you know someone else that needs to hear this episode, please share it with them. Absolutely. Thank you for investing this time with me on the Don't Wait for Your Wake Up Call podcast. I'm so glad you joined in.

[00:34:57] If you can take two minutes to share this episode with someone you think can benefit and have a positive impact on their life, that would be wonderful. Please leave a review by going to your favorite podcast listening app and let me know what you enjoy or would like to hear more of. It will support me in my effort to bring the possibility of natural healing to a wider audience and help disrupt the sick care system we have today and make human health a global priority.

[00:35:26] Health is your true wealth.