A Birthday Story About Writers' Haven. How I Launched My Memoir Coaching Business During Covid
The origin story of how I launched my business. Thank you, wonderful subscribers and clients! I'm grateful for our incredible, growing, community.
Hard to believe that, four whole years ago, on February 4, 2020, I formally incorporated Writers’ Haven LLC.
Since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients as a writing coach focused primarily on memoir, helping new and established writers bring their stories to the page. It’s been the best job I’ve ever had in my life. I love this work with all my heart, because I get to connect deeply and meaningfully every single day with other writers.
And, on the occasion of this 4th anniversary, I’m taking a quick look back at how it all started.
Where it all began
I launched the first iteration of Writers’ Haven back in 2014 in my family’s vacation home in South Haven, Michigan. Sometimes, I’d rent the home to fellow writers. Other times, I’d use the space to host weekend writing retreats. Groups came to gather for long, restorative writing escapes, and I loved the planning, cooking, and cleaning for my guests. It often seemed too good to be true.
When we sold the house in 2016, my short-lived, little “writing service” seemed like it had been just a fleeting dream. Around that same time, for reasons I won’t go into here, I experienced the worst depression of my life. And so, I focused every ounce of my energy on healing. Turns out that one of the most important things I did during that time was to keep writing — for myself.
In 2017, I was overjoyed to sign my very first book deal. The book, Politics, Partnerships, & Power, would take more than 7 years to complete (it just came out!), but back in 2017, when someone suggested I form my own LLC, I was like, “What?? Who, moi? WHY?” But, in February of 2018, I went ahead and formed my own tiny little publishing company —Tinywolf Productions LLC — and for the very first time, my writing felt like more than a hobby.
While researching and writing Politics, Partnerships, & Power, I was also chipping away at creating an author website. I figured I better have one by the time my book came out, and I assumed that would be sometime in 2018. My God, I had a lot to learn.
I launched my website in September of 2019, and within a couple of months, someone I’d never met contacted me, requesting my writing writing coaching services. I couldn’t believe it. I scrambled to create a coaching contract (to look like I knew what the hell I was doing) and figured out things like pricing, marketing language, my logo, a business plan… and all the things. I’d never even worked with a writing coach before. Was I even qualified to do this?
By this point, I was 51 years old, and grateful to have survived turning the big 5-0. I was also surprised to find that I loved the discipline and creative problem-solving required for writing a book and running a business. Every day brought something new to learn…or someone new to meet…or something novel to figure out. If I wasn’t consumed by researching a subject for my book, I was immersed in turning to others for feedback and guidance about my yet-unnamed coaching service. Looking back, the work of simultaneously building a book and building a business saved me— offering focus and structure at a time when I was, quite literally rebuilding a life after getting through a hellacious period between November 2017 and January 2018. First, my 26-year marriage ended. Then, two months later, my younger sister was found dead.
I debated softening the end of that last sentence, because even now, six years on, I cringe at how blunt and horrific those words sound. But, those words are purely and painfully factual. And, losing my sister WAS the most horrific experience of my life. Her sudden loss is with me always. In the earliest days after my sister’s death, I could barely speak or function. How did I eventually face my complex trauma and begin to move through my compounded grief? I credit three things: Trauma therapy (including EMDR); falling in love again; and the practice of expressive writing, a technique I’ve turned to all my life — and something I now teach to my clients.
The work I was doing in 2019 — building a book and building a business — kept pulling me out of bed every day, kept my eyes looking forward, kept connecting me with amazing people, and kept my broken heart beating.
By October of 2019, I’d figured out a very basic business plan for my coaching service. I also experienced what I can only call a shimmering moment:
I decided to call my coaching service Writers’ Haven, and that I’d design and add a space for clients to gather in person. Thinking back to that little writing service I’d cobbled together in 2014 in Michigan, I reminded myself how happy I’d been, how connected I felt to others, and how secure I felt as a person deep inside. Why, I’d wondered, had I been so at ease, so happy back then? I realized it was because I wasn’t trying to be anyone other than who I was: a big sister and a literary cheerleader.
Still, I was nervous. I didn’t know anyone “working” in a role with those kinds of qualifications. Was I even “doing this right”? Heck if I knew, but I reminded myself that I’ve only ever figured out how to be a mom by starting. I’d learned to write a blog by starting, and then a newspaper column and a book. I’d learned to build a website, by starting, and then a business and a flourishing client roster.
Going forward, I knew I had to follow my instincts. For too long, I’d been so afraid to do that. I’d been a pleaser, externally driven, and too insecure to ever trust my gut. I made a new agreement with myself, to listen to my gut.
My gut, however, wasn’t fully on board with this new plan, and it (quite literally) burst open in December 2019. How’s that for a metaphoric plot twist? After an attack of diverticulitis perforated my colon, I spent 10 days in December of 2019 in the intensive care ward. I returned home just after Christmas to recover, knowing a surgical repair was in my near future.
In January 2020, just home from the hospital, my first client (the one who’d found me through my new website) officially signed my (recently drafted) Client Agreement. Thus, following some of the darkest days I’d ever known, Writers’ Haven was technically “launched”. I’d somehow built a business, and its cornerstone was hope.
In early February 2020, I welcomed the first writing group to my newly designed cooperative workspace. Things were clicking. I had surgery scheduled later that month, but I looked forward to recuperating while working with my new clients. I was so optimistic about my future and my new business that, on February 4, 2020, I launched my second business, Writers’ Haven LLC.
But, one month later, on March 13, 2020, the world, and my business, came to a screeching halt. The pandemic shutdown meant, among many more important things, the end of in-person clients for my brand-new business.
Once again, everything in my life felt upended and uncertain, including my safety, the economy, and any chance of finding toilet paper on the bare grocery shelves. While applying for small business disaster aid, I abandoned my dreams for Writers’ Haven altogether and applied for part-time jobs. Though I was still working on my book, I was certain there’d be no way I could run a writing service when all my clients were locked away. I was so disappointed in myself for spending time and energy on something so fragile, so vulnerable, so susceptible. I kept thinking, what a fool I am. If I needed proof I wasn’t cut out for business, this was it.
After repeated emails about the overwhelming need for 2020 Census Enumerators, I applied and got my badge. I loved getting out of the house and having a reason to connect with people. Around that time, I also heard from a local writer who was looking for a writing coach. I made house calls to her home, where we sat (at a 6-foot distance) on her porch and talked about her life, her ideas for a book, and her desire for accountability. I’d ride my bike to and from her home, feeling like my old self again, doing what came naturally, feeling grateful for the opportunity to help someone.
But then, when then-President Trump shut down Census operations early, I knew I couldn’t survive financially on coaching just a few clients here and there. And so, I worked hard on my book, filed for unemployment for the first time in my life, and registered for certification classes in Covid-19 contact tracing.
In November of 2020, I took a full-time job with the Illinois Department of Public Health as a Covid-19 Case Administrator/Contact Tracer. As a frontline worker, I was part of the first worldwide wave of vaccinations and had an intimate view of both the pandemic’s devastation and heroism. I worked an 8a-4pm shift by day, then edited my book at night.
While working as a contact tracer, I was required to engage in daily video team meetings, where we discussed the details of overflowing caseloads, time management, compassion fatigue, burnout, and fantasies of ANY OTHER JOB BUT THIS. We were overworked, emotionally exhausted, and constantly tested about CDC protocols, patient engagement, and (most disturbingly) making our “numbers”. Having worked retail in my teenage years, I knew what it felt like to have a boss watching my performance, and contact tracing felt very similar. We were expected to contact, support, and “close out” a certain number of patients (“clients”) per day; we weren’t to linger too long with any one client. We were discouraged from getting too “close” to patients for whom we provided aide and assistance. I got it: There were too many people sick and dying and in need of our outreach; there weren’t enough of us to reach out and warn patients and their contacts about symptoms, or to help them all understand things like the difference between quarantine and isolation; there wasn’t enough state money to pay us for overtime; and there wasn’t a script convincing enough to use for some of our patients who mocked us when we called, insisting that Covid didn’t exist, that we were alarmists, and that we were being brainwashed by a government crafted to ruin the world.
As a contact tracer, I loved doing my part to help patients, but after just a few months, I’d become a shell of who I’d been. I was too close to the job then to realize that this brief-but-intense period of educating people-in-need served as ideal training for my work as a memoir coach. As a contact tracer, I honed my listening skills, I learned to listen with intention, and I learned to analyze stories quickly and with compassion.
Answering the call…
While contact tracing, I was ever-so-slowly growing a tiny caseload of new memoir clients — writers who kept finding me through my website, desperate during Covid times to tell their life stories. Whereas contact tracing calls drained my soul, every memoir coaching call breathed life back into me.
I finally resigned as a contact tracer in March 2021 to focus on memoir coaching full-time.
And so, as you now know…
…the 4-year anniversary of Writers’ Haven LLC is officially today, but that’s not the whole story. Writers’ Haven truly began back in Michigan in 2014. And, it fully kicked into gear in March 2021.
Still, no matter the anniversary date, many facts remain. I’ve been doing this Writers’ Haven thing for some now, juggling and figuring things out every day. I’m grateful for my clients’ patience as I’ve continued to grow and expand the business, trying new things like this newsletter and my Write to Heal Retreats and expressive writing workshops (and my forthcoming self-guided memoir course). I’ve been deeply moved by my clients’ excitement and support as I’ve recently released my first book into the world! And, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve identified some wonderful people to join the Writers’ Haven leadership team. More info on that soon.
Thank you for letting me share the origin story of Writers’ Haven. It’s been such an honor, such a rewarding and intentional labor of love. In many ways, these four years have flown by. In other ways, it feels like I’ve been doing this work all my life.
Prompt: Whether by chance or circumstance, have you ever started something, and then abandoned the effort? What caused you to stop or give up? Did you ever go back to it? Did your original vision change? Would you take back that '“change in direction”? What advice would you give to someone whose dreams seem dashed?
Christine Wolf is the co-author of Politics, Partnerships, & Power: The Lives of Ralph E. and Marguerite Stitt Church. She offers memoir coaching and cooperative workspaces for women writers in Evanston, Illinois. Get in touch at www.christinewolf.com.
This is so beautiful. And I love that you didn't soften your sister's death. And I applaud you. It's so hard to write the bunt things and leave them in. But I really appreciate that you just wrote what is. I'm figuring out what I want my writing and branding business to look like next and your story helped me realize two things: A) I just need to start and B) Keep an eye out for shimmers. :) ❤🙏Thank you!