Diane Hinchliffe

I am a Poetry Therapist | a Psychotherapist | a Creative Therapist | and a published author of poems. I work creatively with adults and children offering new ways to share thoughts and feelings to support healing and growth. My work is to support emotional health and wellbeing, by providing safe spaces for conversation which allow for reflection, exploration, and challenge, in working towards change in people’s lives. If the space is right, we might create poetry together. I didn’t know back then that my journey into writing began in my early teenage years with a diary, a padlock, and a key—a place and space to hold the secrets of my life. Over time, my writing has taken many shapes and forms. In my work as a poetry therapist, I support the voice of others to bring words once unspoken to become spoken, and to be seen, heard, and validated. My own writing emerges in the darkest days and nights as a source of healing. Words emerge from deep places within and scatter form across the page, touched by lived experiences of the heart, of life and living, grief and loss, love and joy. I have learned that my writing is not just for my own healing but for others too, to touch the deepest part of others’ lives for healing. No longer are my words locked behind a padlock and key, instead, I entrust them to others to take from them what is needed in order to grow.