Hi! I am Ritu, a San Francisco Bay Area-based author, blogger & writing coach. My book The Empath’s Journey combines personal stories with practical insights to help you in your journey as a sensitive person.
First, my “Official Bio” if you need it.
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx Speaker Andy Mort calls “a fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person.” Ritu is a silver medal awardee at the Rex Karamveer Chakra Awards, co-presented by the United Nations in India and given to people creating social impact through their work. She has been a fellow at Rooted & Written, the first fully-funded conference for writers of color in the United States, with patronage from the California Arts Council. She blogs about sensitivity on her website, Walking through Transitions, where she publishes the popular The Highly Sensitive Creative newsletter. Her work has been featured on The Shift Network, Yoga Journal, Sensitive Evolution, and Tiny Buddha, amongst others.
Get in touch with me at creativecoachingsf@gmail.com.
I also work as a writing coach. Check out my Coaching Page here.
I am a Silver Medal awardee at the Rex Karamveer Chakra awards, co-presented by the United Nations.
I was a Silver Medal awardee at the 2019 Rex Karamveer Chakra Awards, given by the International Confederation of NGOs in partnership with the United Nations in India. These awards are given to people creating social change through their work and the 2019 awardees included people from more than 10 countries, including France, Mexico, and China.
As an artist, it was validating to be recognized for my work around helping spread awareness about highly sensitive people. The Empath’s Journey was a special highlight in this journey of writing about sensitivity and being an advocate for it.
Some Trivia about Me!
I think of myself as a magpie who loves to collect odds & ends. Here are some odds and ends about me:
- My top 5 strengths or “talent themes” (according to the Gallup CliftonStrengths Assessment) are Intellection, Empathy, Input, Context, and Connectedness.
- I am an INFP personality type.
- One of my favorite books is The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. You can see it in my picture above!
- Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, and Kabir are a few of my “poetry loves.”
- Dance is my most natural talent. In a former life, I performed as an Odissi dancer (an Indian classical dance form). I’ve learned spiritual belly dance, salsa, and tango.
- I work with my dreams regularly, using depth psychological ideas, especially Carl Jung’s analytical psychology.
- These symbols and images speak deeply to me: Turtles, Spiders, Hummingbirds.
- I have had real-life encounters with hummingbirds, which I talk about in The Empath’s Journey.
Here is the larger story of how I started writing about sensitivity and why this matters to me.
As a child growing up in India, I was often called “too sensitive.” During different times in my life, I dealt with my sensitivity by either numbing it, avoiding it, or simply attempting to hide it. Growing up, there were also many years when I felt like there was something terribly wrong with me. I remember picturing myself as a piece of glass with a crack running right through it.
It took a lot of inner work to let go of this sense of being “wrong.”
Then, more than a decade ago, I got married & relocated to the United States. This was a lovely, exciting new chapter in my life. But with this move, the old ghosts of what it meant to be “too sensitive” came calling. In a new country & culture, I again felt out-of-step. I again started feeling as if it took me a much longer time to adjust to change than other people.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be more “normal?”
The discomfort of this move ultimately became a catalyst in redefining my relationship with my sensitivity.
I learned about my own needs as a sensitive person. I also realized the importance of the fact that my sensitivity was an actual trait with a basis in biology. I started becoming friends with myself and experimented with ways to strengthen my intuition and learned how to set better boundaries.
As I did this, I was also coming back to my creative, artistic self. I was doing writing workshops. And there came a time when I decided that I needed to put my writing out there.
Because I was struggling with my sensitivity, this struggle as well as the resulting redefinition became the topic of this blog. And the first few years of my new life in the United States became the backdrop of my book The Empath’s Journey.
Of course, this is a shortened version of it all.
My hope is that you will find a believing mirror in this site. And if you are feeling lost as a sensitive person, it’ll give you some clues to reconnect with your sensitive self & be all that you already are.
I write here about topics that are personally important to me: Sensitivity, Creativity, and Touching the Mystery through Dreamwork. Maybe, my personal stories will help you find your own connections or lead you back to the treasure that is your true self!
At least, that is my hope. Thank you for being here! Thank you for being connected to me.
With love, Ritu.
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