In the week of 9th-15th March 2026, something amazing happened.

First, I discovered that the temporary accommodation that I moved into in August 2025 is now my home until August 2028. When I found that out, I submitted a scholarship application for the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP) — one of the most rigorous and respected mindfulness teacher training courses in the world, led by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. Less than an hour after I submitted, I was awarded a 75% scholarship.

The programme runs from February 2027 to July 2028 — almost exactly the window of time I now know I have a stable home from which to do this work. It felt like a sign.

The timing means more to me than I can easily express. In March last year, my husband, John, and I found ourselves homeless after a work-for-accommodation arrangement turned out to be uninhabitable and the workload nothing like what had been agreed. For five months we bounced between the cheapest Airbnbs we could find, friends, family, a holiday home that a wonderfully generous woman on one of my courses arranged for us, and the back of our van more than once.

Through all of it, I kept teaching. I kept showing up for the community of writers I have built. I kept writing, mentoring, and holding space for others even when we had nowhere certain to call home ourselves. That experience changed me. It stripped away what isn't essential and clarified, with complete certainty, what is. And it makes the home we now have — and this amazing opportunity — feel like nothing short of a miracle.

Who I am and why this matters

I'm Amanda Saint — a writer, writing mentor, and the founder of The Mindful Writer, a platform that weaves mindfulness and contemplative practice into the heart of creative writing. I am also the author of two novels and a novella-in-flash, and for over a decade I ran Retreat West, which provided courses, community and was an award-winning independent press that published 24 books and supported hundreds of writers to find their voice and bring their work into the world.

For fifteen years I've been teaching creative writing, and for the last three years I've been deepening that into mindful writing teaching — working with writers not just on craft, but on the inner landscape that writing asks us to inhabit: the fears, the self-doubt, the comparisons, the stories we tell about ourselves, and the transformation that becomes possible when we meet all of it with presence and compassion.

I hold a Diploma in Meditation Teaching, a Diploma in Therapeutic Journaling, and have already completed mindfulness mentoring training with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield last year through another scholarship I was awarded. I teach through my Year of Mindful Writing programme, my Writing Sangha community for women, and the Mindful Novel Course, and I work 1-1 with people through Mindful Mentoring for Writers. I'm also a newly accepted teacher on the Insight Timer meditation app; and I run the WestWord literary magazine, which I founded in 2022, publishing nuanced stories filled with compassion for humanity from writers around the world.

I have given everything I have to this work — through financial insecurity, through years of living without a permanent home, through months of literal homelessness, through the uncertainty of building something meaningful outside of any institutional safety net — because I believe in it completely.

The people I work with are not just learning to write better. They are learning to know themselves more honestly, to meet their inner critic with compassion, to use the page as a place of genuine healing and discovery, to connect with themselves, others and our world more deeply. I hear regularly from people for whom this work is having a real impact.

This teaching training is the next step on a path I have been walking, in one form or another, my entire adult life — and it is the most significant professional and personal commitment I have ever made. The MMTCP is an eighteen-month immersive training with two of the most respected mindfulness teachers alive, designed to produce teachers capable of meeting real suffering with real wisdom. To have been accepted, on a 75% scholarship, within an hour of applying — I am still absorbing what that means.

As part of the application I had to say which aspect of the curriculum most resonates with me and this was part of my answer: "I am especially interested in the Transformational Applications part of the training as mindfulness has transformed my life since developing a practice a decade ago when I went through a very challenging period."

This is the heart of it for me - making a difference in people’s lives the way the teachers that brought it to me helped transform mine.

In their welcome letter, Tara and Jack wrote:

"Our world is calling for what you will cultivate here: the capacity to bring mindfulness and compassion alive, and practices that heal both individuals and the communities around us."

And: "This entire training is designed to bring out your best by deepening your wisdom, nourishing your heart, and strengthening your capacity to serve. You are on a path with unlimited potential for your own awakening and, through you, for the countless lives you will touch."

I believe this is the path I am here to walk and that everything in my life has been preparing me for it. The writing. The teaching. The contemplative practice. The nomadic years of learning to live lightly and presently. The experience of continuing to serve others even from a place of uncertainty and precarity. All of it has been leading here.

What I need support with

The 75% scholarship is wonderful and I'm deeply grateful for it. But the remaining costs are significant:

I am also hoping to raise additional funds beyond these costs which will be a financial buffer across the ten months of preparation before the course begins. My income is all that currently supports both me and John as he has been retraining as a qigong instructor and is just now starting to build his teaching practice. A buffer would mean I can give the preparation, including completing the required Power of Awareness course with Tara and Jack, which begins in two weeks and requires significant time and energy, the full attention it deserves, rather than working from a place of financial anxiety.

The way this platform works is to set interim goals as the fundraiser progresses, which is why the initial goal is lower than the funds I need to pay the course fees. I would love to raise £5000 in total to cover the costs and provide a small financial buffer.

What your support makes possible

When I complete this certification in July 2028, I will be able to bring a depth of mindfulness teaching to my existing community and beyond that I simply cannot offer at my current level. Every writer I work with, every person who finds their way to The Mindful Writer, every session of the Writing Sangha — all of it will be shaped and deepened by what I learn and embody through this training. And it will enable me to extend my offerings beyond the writing community to those who really need mindfulness in their lives but perhaps feel it's not for them. I truly believe it's for everybody.

As well as my own development, it is a commitment to showing up as fully as I possibly can for the people I serve, and for a world that genuinely needs people that can help others through this kind of work.

If you've been touched by my teaching, my writing, or The Mindful Writer in any way — or if you simply believe the world needs more people willing to do this kind of deep and dedicated work — I would be so grateful for your support.

Sharing my story with others is also a great way to support me if you're unable to pledge. Any help you can give is gratefully received.

With love,

Amanda