The Two Piers Podcast

Reclaiming Your Narrative: A Conversation with GG Renee Hill

• Two Piers Consulting • Season 7 • Episode 4

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 28:33

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Two Piers Podcast, Erica D’Eramo welcomes back author, creative coach, and facilitator GG Renee Hill for a conversation about writing, creativity, identity, and the stories we carry.

GG’s latest book, Story Work: Field Notes on Self Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative, explores how inherited beliefs and limiting stories shape the way we see ourselves, make decisions, and move through the world. Together, Erica and GG discuss how writing can help us uncover those stories, examine whether they still serve us, and reconnect with our own voice and values.

In this episode, they explore:

  • How writing can support healing, self-understanding, and personal clarity
  • The stories we inherit from family, culture, and earlier experiences
  • How limiting beliefs become embedded in our behavior
  • The three sections of Story Work: Roots and Origins, Truth and Lies, and Voice and Vision
  • Creativity as something much broader than traditional artistic expression
  • How perfectionism and the inner critic can interfere with journaling and creative work
  • The value of practicing imperfection and allowing work to remain messy or unfinished
  • Why the process of creating can matter more than the final result

GG also shares her own path from corporate America into writing, coaching, and facilitation. She reflects on how therapy and journaling helped her discover “the story beneath the story” and eventually led her toward work centered on creative expression, self-discovery, and community.

One of the central takeaways from the episode is that writing does not need to be polished, impressive, or intended for anyone else. It can simply be a place to witness yourself more honestly.

As Erica puts it: don’t deprive the world of your imperfect mess.

About GG Renee Hill

GG Renee Hill is an author, creative coach, and facilitator whose work explores writing as a pathway to wellness, personal clarity, creativity, and collective growth.

She is the author of:

GG also facilitates writing workshops, creative writing cohorts, monthly writing prompts, and free public writing sessions designed to help people reconnect with their voices in a supportive, low-pressure environment.

Connect with GG Renee Hill

Through All the Many Layers, you can also learn more about GG’s monthly writing prompts, First Friday free-writing sessions, workshops, creative writing cohorts, and other resources for writers and anyone interested in reflective creative practice.

More from Two Piers


Affiliate disclosure: Some book links in this post are Bookshop.org affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, Two Piers may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. These commissions help support the work we do at Two Piers.

Erica D'Eramo:

Erica, hello and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo, and today we've got a repeat guest joining us, and one of our one of our favorite alumni of the Two Piers podcast, GG Renee Hill. GG is an author, creative coach and facilitator whose workshops and coaching programs break down barriers to creative expression and explore writing as a pathway to wellness, personal clarity and collective growth. She is the author of the recently published story work field notes on self discovery and reclaiming your narrative. In addition to working with individuals through one on one coaching and group coaching. She also facilitates transformative workshops for a diverse list of organizations, including corporate and nonprofits as well as literary groups. We are so excited to have GG back on the podcast to talk about the work of story work. GG, welcome back. So glad to have you back. I think it's been like over a year since we've had you on the podcast.

GG Renee Hill:

Yes, well, I'm so excited to be back. Of course, I love chatting with you. I love what your work is about, and what a great way to kick off the year is to start with my you're my first interview of the year, so I think it's really appropriate.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, what an honor. I mean, this has been, I'm like, I'm genuinely honored to have been able to witness the process of you, you know, preparing for this book, the creative endeavor of bringing this book into the world and now kind of watching it be shared. I've bought so many copies of it to hand out to friends. There's two copies on the bookshelf and right behind me, one a little bit more well worn than the other. I'm keeping one pristine, so this so I'm I'm just so happy to have you on to kind of share some of the some of the lessons from the book itself, but also some of the lessons from the creation of the book and how that might apply to our listeners.

GG Renee Hill:

So yes, yeah, there's a story behind. There's always the story beyond the story, right? Like I realized that so much now as a long time reader and always loving books. Now that I'm an author, it's like, wow. Like, we just think that before you really become an author, you just think like, maybe it's just youth, right? Because as an adult, you realize that there's a process behind every thing, but as a kid, it's just like, oh, this book just magically came together. You know, they wave a wand and they create this, this awesome thing, but there is a whole story behind birthing that. So, yeah, I think that that definitely connects to the conversation we're having about, you know, storytelling.

Erica D'Eramo:

So I know we've, we've had you on to talk about the power of journaling and how folks can incorporate that. We also had you on for a discussion around creating community and how that can really build resilience, like resilience being rooted in community, and what that looks like to build community and embrace community. So for folks who have not caught either of those episodes, though, and are maybe new to the power that is GG, what? What's your what's your kind of origin story? Who are you as a human just to introduce, introduce listeners, yeah,

GG Renee Hill:

I am a writer and author, and I didn't start out life really thinking that that would be the career that I would end up in. I started off working in corporate America, and I was very much molded to go in that direction. I was raised by two blue collar parents. Well, I guess my mother was, she was a secretary, right? So neither of them got their degree. So I was very much conditioned at an early age, that I would go to college and and that success looked like working in an office, wearing suits to work, and you just sort of this whole idea. And I bought right into it, because I liked the, you know, I liked the idea of pleasing my parents and being successful, and I wasn't really connecting my hobby or my joy that I got from the arts to something I could actually do with my life, until I got into the corporate, you know, the rat race. I guess we'll just simplify that. And felt really unfulfilled. And I think in your 20s is your time to really learn where the gaps are in what you thought you wanted to do and what you actually you know are motivated and fulfilled by doing, and it really lined up as well with my emotional personal journey, because I was struggling with this image and. This, these expectations from family, as I mentioned, from my peers, from just society, and I wanted to appear successful. I wanted to make good on the 1000s of dollars I went, I spent to go to school. And there was just these things, these expectations and demands that I was, that I felt, that I needed to line up with. But mentally and emotionally, there was a lot going on beneath the surface, not only just with that career journey and trying realizing there was a gap there and how I really wanted to live and what really felt like sustainable to me, but also things from my childhood that I had never dealt with, identity issues and pain and sadness and anxiety things I didn't really have words for, but it was sort of like this shadow following me that was unprocessed trauma, right? And just unprocessed dynamics in my family of origin and growing up that I'd never dealt with, and we're just kind of lurking there, but I'd never really been given the tools of how to deal with that, other than to sort of hide it and avoid it. And if you're strong, if you're resilient, then you can that's just part of being an adult. I thought, right like you have this baggage, and the more respect and success you'll have is dependent on if you're able to sort of hide this, this baggage. So it all kind of came to a head, and I started, you know, I finally went to therapy in my late 20s for the very first time, and that's when I started writing. And writing opened the doors to that self understanding that I didn't have, that there was this story beneath the story, there was the image that I had for people and the story I was living, but then beneath that, there were all these layers that I just didn't feel like I had the permission to explore, and pretty quickly, I felt the calling to share what I was discovering just by picking up a pen and paper. I mean, I had journaled earlier in my life, here and there, sometimes more than others, but it was never a tool for healing. For me, it was as a child, it was a place where I would explore my imagination. And then even in my young adulthood, it was a place for venting. I would vent in a journal occasionally, but I didn't see it as a tool for healing until my late 20s, and once that door opened, it wasn't like a crack for me Erica. It was like they banged open and I was like, This is what I'm supposed to be doing, and I didn't know what that would look like long term, there's a lot of discovery and learning curves and all of that, but that's where it all started. I started writing for myself, discovering that it was definitely something I was meant to do, and it just carried on from there. I started blogging. I started sharing my words. I started trying to find ways to be of service with this work as I was growing myself, and then eventually that led to books and workshops and all the things that I do now.

Erica D'Eramo:

So, yeah, I mean, we I talk about, like, this book coming into being. This is not your first book, like you've you've written. This is the one that I was like along the journey for I got to witness and kind of participate in some of the the workshops and whatnot that that were along the way, but yeah, shadow for GG's other books. We'll definitely talk a little bit more about that as we talk about how to connect with GG. But I, I think that this, this work, is so relevant to so much of the work that we do, and even the professional coaching realm, because we're constantly bumping up against these concepts and beliefs around identity and what we should be doing, and the danger of like exploring some of our Stories, or maybe taking ownership of those stories and rewriting them. Or even I think about your work a lot when I encounter kind of fixed versus growth mindset and people saying, like, oh, but what if i What if I do it and it's bad? What if I do it and people don't like it? And I just think, like so much of this work that you've been doing and have captured and shared really resonates with a lot of those themes.

GG Renee Hill:

definitely, definitely, that's what I love about this work, and I think it is just going to be a core, foundational aspect no matter where my career goes. Is this applies to everything, how we relate to ourselves, show up at work, show up in our relationships, how we take care of ourselves, it's everything is stories, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories that we've inherited, the stories that we evaluate and reimagine, is really what the book focuses on, and it being by choice and. By our values and not by default, right? And we really look at those stories that come from that fixed mindset of any story that disempowers you, that says you're not enough, that says you can't recover, that says you won't be loved, you won't be accepted. You won't be you know, any story at all that disempowers you is a great story to hold under the microscope and to ask yourself, well, what else could be true? How else could I look at this? Does this line up with what I truly, I truly believe about myself and about life, and a metaphor that I use a lot in my work. As you know, Erica's layers. There's always these layers. And any belief, limiting belief that we have is is something that we can peel back the layers to get to the root of to kind of try to trace back in our lives. Where did I get this belief? Yeah, like, where did this start? And that can be a great, great, great place for us to just very gently, very gently, you're right. We can't force it. We don't want to, because sometimes you know the answers can be to lead us back to traumatic times in our lives or painful things, and we want to be gentle about it, but I think that's where it starts. A lot is tracing back those limiting beliefs to, well, where did I get this from? And then thinking to yourself, based on the life I've lived, the wisdom that I have now, the perspective that I have now, the hope and need and desire that I have now, does this line up with who I want to be? And a lot of times we can see those gaps really clearly, if we're just honest with ourselves,

Erica D'Eramo:

yeah, I don't know how many times in a in a coaching conversation, we'll, like, unearth some kind of lingering belief that when we get to the bottom of like, why are we doing this? And when folks hold it up to the light, they're like, I don't actually even believe that. You know that I don't know honor is related to wealth or something like that, that like, and when they hold that up, they're like, but I don't even actually that doesn't feel that feels ick to me, right? Yeah, now we get to be intentional and operate in alignment and really hold it, but until we do that, until we actually like, investigate what that story is and then rewrite it ourselves that we're just at the mercy of what we've inherited, or what we've what we've picked up along the way. Yeah, I if you were, I know this is like so much to ask of an author, because, you know, it was probably countless hours, countless months, like, years in the making, really, if there were some key tenets of the book that you would say, to give folks, like, a little taste or a sample of what would what would you say those are, like, the key, I don't know, moral of the story.

GG Renee Hill:

yeah, yeah. I think that the way I broke the book down kind of answers this question. There's three sections. The first one is roots and origins. So the first section is just asking you, sort of like we were just talking about to look at to identify any belief or story you're carrying that is disempowering you in some way. It's causing a pattern that you don't want. So I'll just use myself as example, as I did in the book. I knew I was carrying a few different beliefs that, like you said, when I wrote them down, I externalized them out of my head onto paper. I didn't really believe that, but it was so ingrained in my patterns of behavior, things like, you know, I'm not good enough, or I'm not tough enough. I'm not, you know, strong enough. I am unreliable. If people saw me for who I really am, if I showed up as my full self, people wouldn't like me. If I'm not pleasing and making people happy, then I'm not, you know, other ones were like, around worth, right? My worth was connected to my productivity and my career, or how much money I made, my worth was connected to these things. And so we all have these beliefs and stories we're carrying around. So the first section, roots and origin, kind of asks us to identify what some of those things are. And I use my personal story because I find that that's helpful. I want it to feel like the readers in conversation with me. And I'm not just like, ask ourselves these questions. I'm like, here's some perspective on my life and how I started peeling back the layer to identify mine, and then I kind of turn it over, like, what does this bring up for you to help, you know, make it feel more like a conversation, or like almost like a workshop environment, or like sitting around the fireside, like having a sharing circle, right? Because it makes it more gentle to be honest with ourselves, because that can be heavy work, depending on like, what you're used to, but we can often trace it back. Back to experiences that we had coming of age that planted these seeds. And as children, we're very black and white. We're very much come to conclusions, and we stick with them, and it becomes such a core belief that we don't even question it, especially when it seems affirmed by people that we trust, people that we look up to, or society where we want to be accepted. So it starts there with just sort of identifying some of those things. The second section is truth and lies. And the reason why I called it that is because this is a section where I'm guiding the reader to think about, what are my actual truths, though? What are my values? What do I really believe? And what have I been what have I inherited or what have I been living? It's not true. What are the false narratives right to just identify with curiosity, not with judgment, not with pointing fingers, and all throughout, there's a thread of getting back to our creative selves as a pathway to these truths and to peeling back these layers, because I feel that, I firmly believe that our creative instincts and our creative spirit like that we're born with that, you know, as children, that we access so comfortably, we lose that a little bit moving through life, because we turn that over to like well, instead of me being creative And and feeling out what feels right for me, expressing myself in a way that feels authentic for me, let me fit into this mold right here, because I see that this mold might get me where I want to go. So we lose some of our trust and our creative instincts. But by getting back to that, and I give examples of different ways we can use writing through storytelling to access what our truth actually are, where it deviates from some of the ways we've been showing up. Sometimes lies can show up in just I really wanted to say yes, but I said no, or I really wanted to say no, but I said yes, our actions are not true according to what we really feel. How can we access that part of ourselves that's really true and aligned in a way that doesn't feel threatening at first, and Creative Writing is such a great way to do that, because first, it's just you and the page. And so much of my journey has been that is like I discover these truths about myself on the page, and it gives me the courage to practice that in real in real life. So that's truth and lies. And then the final section is voice and vision. Once you've done this work, you've done this with these roots and origins, you've discovered what your actual truths are. You're you're starting that conversation with yourself anyway, some of the false narratives you've been carrying with that understanding, what do you want to say with your life? Right? How do you want to use your voice in a way that's more aligned with who you really are and your vision? What is your vision for your life? With the with this understanding, because things are going to shift, and the way you see the world will shift, the way you show up in the world, the value that you trust, that you're bringing to the world, all of those things shift. So it's guiding you through some of the ways that you can discover and also actionable things you can do to practice living more in alignment with your true voice and vision that you know doesn't have all those fears and doubts and limiting beliefs in the way.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I can picture some folks in my world being like, well, but I'm just not creative. This doesn't apply to me, because I'm just not creative. And if you're listening folks who think you're just not creative, I assure you that you are. And that might be like, you've really creatively figured out how to set up the shelving in your garage. You've really creatively figured out the most elegant code you've really creatively figured out how to get all the kids to all the places somehow, despite, like the laws of physics, creativity can show up in a lot of different ways, and it's not just in writing, but I think like, writing is An interesting one, because and it can be tough for people too, because of it being, like, physical and on the page, because, especially if we have fears around fixed mindset, like even just journaling in a way that no one's going to read it, sometimes that voice comes in and is like, well, what if your grammar is terrible? What if it doesn't make sense? What if I What if I just, like, don't have anything to say, right? Like, what if I struggle to put something down on the page? And that's part, like, that's part of the work.

GG Renee Hill:

It's part of the work. I'm so glad you named that Erica, because somebody's thinking that. Some, a few, a lot of somebodys are thinking that right now listening to this because it's so true, and both of us have experienced that ourselves. We talk about it. So even if you do think of yourself as a writer, that still happens and that judgment still comes in. It's part of the work. And I would say to that person who's thinking that to like Erica said, remember that. Your life is creative just the way you've chosen to design your life. You've made creative choices. Meaning creativity is not just drawing and singing and designing. Creativity is just making authentic choices and that express who, who you are, your needs, your preferences, you know, your values. That's That's what creativity is, how you speak, how you naturally just communicate, is an is a creative expression. So when you sit down the journal and that, that judgment comes in and says, This is going to be no good, and all of that, the first thing I would do is recognize your inner critic. Just recognize your inner critic. People coming in the tone they use, you know and recognize, that's just my inner critic. And this is for my eyes. Are critic.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yes, thank you for your input, and you can go, take a seat for now.

GG Renee Hill:

I don't need you right now, and that let that just be the very first practice. It's just allowing yourself to write the way you talk or the way you think, and just being brave enough to witness that and to be your own witness, because really, and when it really comes down to any type of journaling writing, it's just an act of of practicing self acceptance, and it's not for anyone else's eyes not to impress and in so many of us achievers, everything is to impress everything

Erica D'Eramo:

you know, to I'm not gold star, and if

GG Renee Hill:

we're not going to do it perfectly, then we don't want to do it so that right there is a limiting belief to be looked at and to be worked With. And journaling can be a great way to soften that and to ease that, and just allow yourself that space, to be messy, to be inarticulate, and it's okay, right? So that's a great place to start.

Erica D'Eramo:

i love, like, flipping this a little bit, especially when I've got, like, those real achievement oriented folks who are like, I love a challenge. I love excelling. Like, I want to be amazing at everything I do and like. So the goal today, the challenge today, the like stoic, you know, like mindset, is to be excellent at being messy, being excellent at being sloppy, being excellent at imperfection, like that is actually the challenge. Here it is, embracing that discomfort like a champ, like

GG Renee Hill:

love that framing. I absolutely love that, because that's the language that they'll under. Someone who has that mindset will understand like, oh, okay, i can do that.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, right. Like, we, I think I've never done, like, well, I shouldn't do that. Like I've done Muay Thai, but, you know, in yoga, we talk about handstands sometimes, and I used to be so afraid of handstands, because, you you know, it's like you're either upright and balanced or you're not, and it's felt very binary and it was scary, and what if I get hurt, and what if it's not good, until somebody actually reframed it from like, the goal of a handstand practice is not actually the hand being vertical and being perfect. It is to learn how to like fall and have fun with it and fall out of it in a way that, like, you can still laugh about it and do it safely, and to be, like, curious about it. And once I realized, like, oh, that's the practice, that it's not the output. It is actually the exercise itself. It's like the embracing of the imbalance, the embracing of the fall, it really changed it for me. So I think how we how we frame the goal, is important in these endeavors,

GG Renee Hill:

very important. And just that, that lesson right there, that the process, who you become, what you allow yourself to experience, is, I believe, more important than the result in any scenario, right? Because when we get a result, we get an accomplishment. It lasts, you know, we feel that that hit and we feel that goodness for a moment. But who what we had to dig deep for in order to do that, we get to take that with us forever. That's like, that's wisdom we've gained. We've a beautiful most moment, a part of yourself that you've accessed to do that you seem to take that with you forever. So I love the idea of reframing it like the goal is just to be able to let go and be excellent at letting go and giving yourself those experiences.

Erica D'Eramo:

And like, don't deprive the world of your imperfect mess, because we're here for it, right?

GG Renee Hill:

Like it's magnetic. We can't take our eyes off of people who embrace their full selves, their quirks, their gifts, like it's it's so suppressed in so many cases that when we see it, it's like a light shines. It shines so, you know, there's so many examples, I'm sure that each person listening speaker or even just somebody in your family who just draws everybody in with the way they tell jokes or tell a story, just letting that authentic part of you that's not polished and perfect shine through is really what it's all about. And so, yeah, yeah. I think that this the I hope that the book helps readers to access that part of themselves and recognize that the things that make them feel and like we talked about limiting beliefs, the things that make them feel like they need to hide and they need to suppress, that's that's really where their magic lies, and so much work and wisdom lies there. Yeah. So the book is available on all platforms, story, work, field notes on self discovering, reclaiming your narrative, as well as two guided journals, which might be great for someone who's just starting to journal, just starting to do that self reflection work and connect with their voice. One is the self care check in, and the other one is called a year of self reflection, and they're both available. Just look up GG Renee Hill on Amazon or bookshop.org. Wherever you get your books, you can find my my work. Mostly talk about my workshops on my website, all the many layers.com. I do writing workshops for every no matter where you are in your writing journey, you can find something that will be appropriate for you there. I also have a sub stack called writing the layers and, well, these, these things will be linked up.

Erica D'Eramo:

I even linked your book in the newsletter. So anyone that gets the Two Piers monthly newsletter will also have gotten a link to your book to book shop.

GG Renee Hill:

Thank you, I appreciate that. So yeah, those are the places you can find me on Instagram, at GG Renee writes, yeah, that's that's kind of a little bit of everywhere.

Erica D'Eramo:

So Well, I know GG does like a monthly, a great like monthly workshop where folks come and write to writing prompts. It's very low pressure, but it's really a great way to kind of dust off some of the rust, perhaps, and just witness people embracing their like messy selves and their like imperfect, unfinished work. You know what they got done in like five minutes of writing? So highly recommend popping into one of those workshops, if it calls to you. But thank you so much, GG, really, really great to have you back on the podcast.

GG Renee Hill:

Thank you for having me, and I will look forward to next time, because I need to visit at least once a year.

Erica D'Eramo:

Sounds like a great plan. And dear listeners, you can find a recap of this on our website, along with all the links that we just mentioned, to connect with GG and her work so And we look forward to seeing you next episode. You you.

Head Shot

Erica D'Eramo

Host