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Courageous Wordsmith

Courageous Wordsmith

Written by: Amy Hallberg
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 How do we listen to our muses and show up for our dreams? Story coach, book writing mentor & author Amy Hallberg (she / her) presents conversations with real-life creatives. Because if you want to be a real-life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you.©Courageous Wordsmith 2019-2022 Art Relationships Social Sciences Spirituality
Episodes
  • Writing for Good

    Writing for Good
    Jan 19 2026
    From Amy:You likely know that Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota two Wednesdays ago. ICE is occupying our state because the Supreme Court said that they could. Specifically, Brett Kavanaugh—who gave me flashbacks to a Third Reich judge* in his confirmation hearings—wrote in September that speaking Spanish was probable cause for detention.*Google the White Rose to see for yourself.And now, here we are.ICE was always going to come to Minnesota. Once again, our home state, specifically Minneapolis extending outward, is the focus of Trump’s White House. But he doesn’t own us. He’s never won here. Our Governor Tim Walz ran against his ticket and called him weird. That’s why Trump is so fixated on us, and what makes him want to control us so badly.When I say we, I mean Minnesota. I mean all of the kinds of people who love our home state and our neighbors. It's incredibly cold and beautiful here in the winter.We're here because we've chosen to be here.Hours after a friend texted me the shocking news of Renee’s death, I recorded a podcast episode with my friend and colleague Terry Newby. Terry’s a Twin Cities novelist, playwright, and lawyer who writes about Black history, which is American history. He'd prepared good questions on a related topic, so we carried on and acknowledged the death without sharing details we didn’t yet know.We wanted to bear witness with the information we did have.Here’s another thing I already knew: Being a white woman (like Renee Nicole Good) in America is not always safe, but it’s not immigrants and people of color and queer folks and native people who endanger our freedoms. For many years, I've driven into Minneapolis several times a week and felt incredibly safe there.Paul Wellstone, our beloved late senator, famously said that we all do better when we all do better. Renee Good’s final words wouldn’t be widely heard until the following day, from the shooter’s own phone: "That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you." In return, after he filmed himself shooting her, the coward in a mask called her a f’ing bitch. Then he ran away, went into hiding, and feigned an injury; meanwhile his ICE buddies prevented medical treatment as Renee died. He's still out there.All of this is fact. You can witness it for yourself.As you can tell, I am still angry, and I am not sorry for being angry. The occupation of Minnesota continues in real time. Meanwhile, I’ve let myself be a witness, making relevant notes to self. Because I know that my books have revealed themselves in good time. Tiny Altars, published in 2023, provides relevant prologue to what's happening right now.Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I walked away from my teaching career, and I’m grateful I walked away when I did. I’ve been present to pay attention to what’s happening in Minnesota and forge connections far beyond her borders.This moment will add up to so much more.My own experience tells me so. Both of my memoirs document everyday intersections with historical moments. In 1987, as an exchange student to West Germany with minimal German fluency, I lived on a street named after two heroes of the German resistance, siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl from the White Rose. They grew up in the Black Forest where my host family lived. I stood on both sides of the notorious Berlin Wall, built in the aftermath of World War II, and I first learned their history further in a West Berlin museum. My comprehensive journal of daily rambling notes to self from those three months helped me to write and publish German Awakening three decades after I returned home from West Germany, a country that no longer exists.Once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and reunified a divided people, my German literature major no longer made logical sense. Yet my path through language education was the most relevant training I can imagine to meet this moment in American history, as ICE comes down on us all.I haven’t been outside much in this cold snap, unlike many brave neighbors in Minneapolis. But I know what it is to live and learn and connect using a non-native-to-me language. That’s worth a lot in this moment. I'll find the work I'm called to do. I call myself a Courageous Wordsmith, along with my collaborators. We're in this together.What’s the work you’re called to do? How are you courageous?I am asking you to not look away from Minneapolis or Greater Minnesota. I wonder, what can you offer to center humanity in this moment? How can you raise awareness so that all of US, everywhere, can do better? You don’t have to know the end at the outset.You don’t have to be a martyr for the cause. But we all need you. Nothing is wasted.We start wherever we are.All the path of a real-life witness requires is that we’re aware: We’re willing to ask questions, listen, keep taking notes, and do something Good. Terrance C. Newby is an attorney, novelist, and playwright based in ...
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    36 mins
  • Women Seeing Our Gifts for the First Time

    Women Seeing Our Gifts for the First Time
    Dec 12 2025
    From Amy:I have so much to say about the richness and challenge of my journey through the life coach world, and someday soon I'll be ready to write about that. But if there's anything I would tell my former self, as she moved through that process, it's this: You aren't doing this wrong, and you don't have to justify this training (at an advanced level, no less) by becoming a FULL-BLOWN LIFE COACH. You can educate yourself (and invest in yourself) just because it's helping you learn who you are, in deeper ways than you have before. So you can trust in the process, and trust in your gifts unfolding, even if you don't know how to apply them yet, especially when—up until now—experts told you how to meet and exceed their expectations. Beloved, I'm proud of how you're taking this time to redefine your own expectations, even if the clarity is taking a while.After all, your life's work is unprecedented. Life coaching tools are expanding your vocabulary. That's more than enough.Most of all, you get to enjoy being exactly where and who you are. No apologies needed for wanting to play with new kinds of knowledge.Here's some added context in retrospect: After I quit my increasingly scripted teaching career, I turned to life coach training to heal and to build my (unnamed, undefined) new career at midlife, because I didn't believe I was finished with my work in the world. But it was never as simple as calling myself a life coach; that's never felt entirely right, even though the training felt necessary. That title missed so many of my core gifts, the ones that had brought in the money before, which is why I stayed too long and got so wounded in the first place. But listen.Just because I no longer wanted to be a teacher in that setting, didn't mean my teaching skills were no longer valid. Those remained part of my curriculum vitae—my life's body of work. Even if I wasn't seeing it anymore.I have gifts like nobody else in this world. So do you. Finding new context for our life's body of work? That's courageous.So maybe also, I'd like to say, Thank you. Thank you for taking this risk even though you were scared. Especially because you were so scared. While you might be tempted to feel ashamed of your very big feelings, you can be proud that you let yourself feel what your body was saying.Your body has been steering you to what matters, and what you don't truly require. Such as that title of "Master Life Coach."Nowadays, I call myself an author, podcaster, book writing mentor, and editor—who has life coach training.Which is another way of saying: I'm a language teacher. I teach embodied narrative craft.All of which brings me to this: There are people on the path with information, all kinds of people you'll engage with, but you get to decide which parts are most useful for you to grow, how you interpret that information, and which parts hold the meaning that you'll carry forward.Since I can't offer this advice to Amy in 2017, I offer guidance along these lines to the writers I work with today. Where it also applies.Finally, I would say this to 2017 Amy: Notice your glimmer of hope when Bev Barnes takes one look at your work, never having met you before, and calls you a teacher. She's truly a Master Life Coach. You're going to want to invite her as a guest on your podcast to talk about this exact topic, after you've proven her right. (Yes, there will be a podcast. Enjoy!) PS—And if you want to play pickleball, play pickleball. Because it's fun. Bev Barnes guides midlife coaches and creatives to stop circling their calling and finally create the work their soul came here to do. A Certified Master Life Coach, Soul Work Midwife, and Life Coach Mentor, Bev has been guiding women at midlife to claim their brilliance and shine their light for decades. Today, she specializes in working with women who are at midlife or beyond, who trained as coaches but never quite got going—or never followed their true calling—helping them finally put the pieces together and bring their soul’s work to life.Bev's Links:You can access Soul's Niche Guide - an AI tool created to help you find your purpose as a coach or soulpreneur Free Master Class coming up - From Wound to Wisdom - Unlocking the Work that Only You Can Do. Sign Up hereFind out more about Bev's services hereInstagramFacebook Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and Audiobooks
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    35 mins
  • How We Are Connected

    How We Are Connected
    Nov 10 2025
    From Amy:At the heart of my work, I draw connections with and for real-life creatives, often from my lived experience of making those kinds of connections in my own work. Not only would a younger Amy have cringed to see me publish the writing I do, but also at the way I reach out to people and say, "Hey, I have a feeling we could work together," or more simply, "Something you shared resonated with me. Please record a conversation for my podcast." But you know what? I'm really good at it, so at this point I own that gift. Because it works out well for me.When I look at Beth Cyr's artwork, I see her doing a similar thing: This is my gift, she says through her pieces, It's something beautiful inside me, and I'm going to do it. And once I've made it, I'll share it. As a result, the rest of us get to enjoy her beautiful imagery. I have a print on my bookshelf from Beth, from this time when she had done all this drawing and I could buy a random print from the collection.That simple yet nuanced landscape inspires me every time I contemplate it. And it's there in the background, quietly keeping beauty in mind. What if your creations could be like that? It comes from knowing who you are and how you feel most like you as you move through the world.Beth made it easy to buy and I was grateful to receive this present-to-me I'd requested that was nonetheless a surprise. She's since taken it to a whole new level in her Gifts from the Universe project, which you can read about in the links below.Beth and I have mutual online friends. So over the summer when she sent an email to her list that especially spoke to me, it wasn't such a stretch to reach out and say, "Hi. We've never spoken before, but let's talk." Unsurprisingly, Beth knew who I was... I was surprised when she replied that she'd seen my name in a congratulatory forum post announcing my certification in Level 4 Quantum Human Design. Ahem.In the space of three weeks, I completed four levels of Quantum Human Design certification, and I was kind of wondering how I was going to talk about that. It makes Younger Amy very uncomfortable to mention. Academic Amy as well. As in, I hadn't mentioned it widely. Because it's an esoteric, well-known field in the life coaching world, certain people expect that from me; my clients know I'm a bit spiritual. I also come from a more prosaic world where such things are looked on as a little (or a lot) out there... a pseudoscience... and also... I find that Human Design is incredibly cool and my chart explains SO MUCH. So I've been quietly exploring for years. I'm only just starting to talk about why that is.So when Beth congratulated me, I recognized the opportunity for what it was: an opportunity to explore this unexpected connection and gather courage to be a bit more "out there." Maybe stop letting the younger, more-easily-mortified Amy decide what I'm talking about. Decondition myself, if you will, and let my gifts shine. Because Human Design is a gift. We talk a bit about deconditioning in the podcast.In essence, it's letting go of what isn't really your energy and your gifts, and embracing what really is. And who decides? YOU.My Human Design chart reveals that following Shiny Objects (I've mentioned several examples above) is a grand and restorative use of my energy. I'm wired to indulge my muses, and to encourage you to as well. And there will be talking. For Beth, it's more body based.I've found the creative process is like this. I let myself respond to a Shiny Object (rather than shrinking away for fear of derision, and potentially being labeled as having "Shiny Object Syndrome..." a known term of derision) and I find out that not only do I have this initial thing in common with the person I contacted to talk, but we have more to talk about, and they help me to see the depth where prior to that I only had worries.That's what this conversation with Beth was like, as well as a primer on Human Design. Beth made Human Design abundantly clear, and as I listen again, I continue to learn more. That's why I think this episode is incredibly cool, and I'm proud to share it. Beth Cyr is an artist, relationship coach, and Quantum Human Design Specialist. To work with clients she has an array of practices from her tool box that include Human Design, somatic work (movement), breathwork, mindfulness and meditation, creativity and art. Through Human Design she's gained a new level of understanding, compassion, and acceptance in all her relationships and wants to share this with others.Beth's Links:WebsiteInstagramBeth's Gifts from the Universe Project starts on Black Friday—but it isn't a typical Black Friday sale. Read more about it. Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative...
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    37 mins
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