I wrote that sentence in my journal almost without thinking. It came fast, the way the truest things do—no draft, no second-guessing. Just: I am a missionary setting writers free.
I sat with the phrase.
| TL;DR Deanne Welsh is a writing coach and spiritual director who believes slow writers and stuck writers aren’t broken, just under-accompanied. Her work is part craft, part calling: helping writers finish what they started, one snail’s-pace step at a time. You don’t have to have it together to start. You just have to be willing to take your next small step. |
God Wrote the Story: I Didn’t Choose This Calling
I grew up as a missionary kid—moving between cultures, watching my parents give their lives to something bigger than comfort.
I know what it costs to leave the familiar for someone else’s freedom.
I know what it looks like to show up in a place that isn’t home,
and stay anyway, because something sacred is happening there.
I never stopped being a missionary; I changed fields.
Now the unreached place is the blank page. The people I’m sent to are writers. The ones convinced their story doesn’t matter or who have been told, somewhere along the way, that real writers don’t write like them.
I disagree.
Slow Is Not Broken. Slow is Sacred.
“My snail steps are enough.” I wrote that to myself on a day I felt like I was moving too slowly to ever finish anything. The snail is unimpressive, and yet it leaves a shimmering trail that catches the light wherever it goes.
Slow and sacred are not opposites. I had to believe that for myself before I could ever say it to a client and mean it.
What a Book Doula Actually Does
One of my Momentum mastermind members called me her “book doula” recently. I haven’t stopped thinking about that word.
- A doula doesn’t do the labor for you.
- She stays in the room.
- She breathes with you through the parts that hurt.
- She holds the vision of what’s coming when all you can feel is the pain of contraction.
The Ministry-Work is More Than Craft,
It’s Companionship
In sickness and in health. In the seasons your writing flows, and the seasons it stops completely because life just rewrote everything. I’ve sat with clients through breast cancer diagnoses, through grandchildren coming home for the summer (who you are raising), through the quiet discouragement that makes a writer wonder if any of it matters.
It matters.
Every Ordinary Moment Becomes Material
God meets us in the most ordinary moments and turns them into a story.
That’s not a metaphor for me. It’s how I’ve watched my own life unfold: the hot tub with my son, sun on both sides of my face, laughter erupting from my belly. The slow, hard mornings of writing. The words I sense God writing back to me when I can’t hear past my own noise.
Every one of those moments is a miraculous gift and has become material for this writing, coaching and spiritual direction ministry.
A Calling, Not a Metaphor
So when I say I’m a missionary setting writers free, I mean it the way my parents meant it. Not a metaphor. A calling.
You don’t have to be fast or certain when it comes to sharing your words and books with world (most of us are figuring it out as we go!). Your persistence is your superpower and your commitment to small steps will take you further than you can imagine.
I’ll go with you.
Deanne Welsh is a writing coach and book doula who walks alongside writers and creatives as they bring their books to life. She is also a spiritual director offering spiritual direction and sacred space for writers, creatives, and leaders navigating the soul work of storytelling and creative calling.
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