Changing Your Life by Rewriting Your Story

The power of narrative with GG Renee Hill

“Writing is a way to see what is going on in your mind. There is so much power in that.”
—GG Renee Hill, author of Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative

Preview: Emerging Form Episode 160 with GG Renee Hill

“My narrative was a victim narrative,” says GG Renee Hill. “Everything was happening to me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I wanted to change that. I wanted to imagine, What if I looked at life differently?” In this week’s episode of Emerging Form (out Thursday 3/12), we speak with author, creative coach and facilitator GG Renee Hill about the power of seeing through the stories about ourselves we’ve inherited from others and what happens when we find the vulnerability, authenticity and courage to re-see our lives using writing as a tool. GG offers practical ideas for writing, when to share and how to discern with whom you might share, the relationship between hope and creativity, and the importance of breaking the silence around mental health.

GG Renee Hill is an author, creative coach, and workshop facilitator whose work centers writing as a tool for healing, self-discovery, and creative expression. Her mission is to help others enrich their lives and communities through the transformative power of the written word. She is the author of Self-Care Check-In: A Guided Journal to Build Healthy Habits and Devote Time to You (2020) and A Year of Self-Reflection Journal: 365 Days of Guided Prompts to Slow Down, Tune In, and Grow (2021). Her most recent book, Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative was published by Broadleaf Books in November 2025. When she’s not writing, GG facilitates writing workshops for a diverse list of corporate and non-profit clients and literary organizations.

Books: allthemanylayers.com/books
Instagram: @ggreneewrites
Substack: thelayers.substack.com

---

What We’re Reading and Listening to:

Rosemerry:

• With the present war in Iran, I was grateful a friend helped me return to this song I first heard about a year ago sung by women in Farsi, Arabic and Hebrews. The Rana choir is an Arab-Jewish women's choir from Jaffa that operates from the belief in the power of shared creation and song to foster dialogue and create an intercultural and human bridge even in the most challenging of contexts, and this song was recorded as a gesture of solidarity with the courageous Iranian women in their struggle against oppression.

• And for a good laugh and thrill at the human spirit, here’s a non-Olympic event that has me grateful for, well, the intersection of silliness and sportsmanship … it’s the Balloon World Cup. I have no idea if this is still happening, but it is some serious fun.

Christie:

• Jeneen Interlandi’s account of the far-reaching damage Trump’s attack on science and scientists has caused will break your heart. “Nobody outside the scientific community seemed to realize what was happening. Friends and family had all tried to reassure her that everything would be fine in the long run, that she just needed to hang in there until the midterms or the next presidential election. She found it exhausting to explain how irreversible the damage was. They had lost years of research in a matter of weeks. Whole labs had been closed, and successful, decades-long careers ended — and none of it appeared to have anything to do with the quality or import of the research itself. The decisions were political and ideological. They were also arbitrary and needlessly cruel.”

• Our episode 117 guest, Tim Kreider, on what it feels like to watch our Dear Leader throw us into an idiotic and poorly thought out war that involves bombing civilians and massacring schoolgirls. “Jesus Christ It’s This Shit Again.”

---

What the Self Really Wants

When the story of self
slips off like a mask, the sky
is more sky and an apple
more apple and the self
less self and more
what a wind is. How easy
to love then when I’m naked.
And how is it that always
some new story arrives,
solidifies less like a cast,
more like a strait jacket?
I notice because life
starts to fit too tight.
I notice because
I start to think I’m right.
But it’s no failure when a story
appears. Just an invitation
to notice how it feels
to be dressed in a story.
An invitation to pray
to the mystery, please,
once again undress me.
An invitation to be grateful
for the hands (whose hands?)
that loosen the story
and free me. An invitation
to let the self remember this:
how it longs to be spacious,
to be as infinite as what is.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

---

A Note About Paid Subscriptions:

First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Only our paid subscribers receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support. This week we talk with GG about the importance of aligning our daily habits with what we’re discovering in our writing, the role of compassion and self-compassion in exploring our narratives, how trauma lives in the body, how we can be unreliable narrators and undermine our own narratives, and the struggle to find time for creative exploration.

---

Two Questions:

(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)

1. What is the role of self-compassion in your creative practice?

2. What artwork, movie, song, poem, or book do you want to share with the world right now?