Xenia Viray is an otherworldy writer, artist, facilitator, and overall spiritual wise person who is on a mission to heal our imaginations @mythsofcreation.

Melissa invites friend, collaborator, and former coaching client Xenia to be the first guest of the Season 2 reboot of Coherence Podcast because of her gifts of seeing how all the parts contribute to a system, from the microbes and bugs to the stars and planets. Xenia fuses philosophy, science, creativity, and metaphysics to help her clients return to their essential nature.

In this episode, Xenia and Melissa talk about the importance of creating your own meaning making system, embracing your authenticity (and caring less about what others think), and the vulnerability and faith it takes to create something new.

You can find Xenia at:

Website: www.mythsofcreation.com

IG: @mythsofcreation

Welcome back to Coherence Podcast! 

Season 1 was about how individual creatives bring together the different parts of self. Season 2 is all about making sense at the collective level and envisioning a compelling way forward for our society as a whole. 

This new conversation series features innovators helping to create new meaning for our society during a time where we are missing a shared sense of what makes life worthwhile.

Ahran is a multidisciplinary artist, mindset coach and group facilitator who uses art, improv, conversation and storytelling as a way to help us shift ancestral patterns.

Ahran shares about the multi-chaptered journey she’s taken to get to a place of authenticity with her art practice. A practice of vulnerability and pleasure — she trusts creative expression as a critical component to shifting deep seated family patterns. This is an open-hearted conversation that is bound to have you reflecting on your own relationship to your creativity.

** At the end of the episode Melissa breaks down one of the topics from the conversation and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Learn more about Ahran:

IG: @ahranmakes

Email: [email protected]

Kim is a marketing expert and coach based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the founder of 3pts, which provides guidance, tools and community to self-funded, creative entrepreneurs.

Kim shares about how he arrived at his current mission and purpose of helping people pursue their passions and some of the top challenges he sees creative entrepreneurs facing (hint: it’s not a tactic, it’s a mindset)

He knows the impact of laying intentional infrastructure as a self-employed creative and shares his tips on how to know what mode of operation to be in based on what your creative business needs.

This conversation is not just relevant to business owners but really anyone who is looking to sustain a flexible, self-directed work life.

** At the end of the episode Melissa breaks down one of the topics from the conversation and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Learn more about Kim:

IG: @kimrobinsonjr

Newsletter: 3pts.co

Rachel Smith is a content designer and artist who runs the Words of Mouth newsletter and Repair Shop. 

Rachel shares about how she balances her part-time consulting work for non-profit design agency Civilla with her longstanding newsletter for creatives looking for compelling jobs, and somehow still finds time to run a textile repair shop and sustain her own art practice.

We investigate the power of having a unifying thread that ties your work together as a multi-hyphenate person and the times where it’s beneficial to ‘screw the thread’ and just let yourself be free to operate without a pressure to be consistently one thing.

Rachel illuminates how creating an offering with a simple structure and resisting the pressure to grow or evolve it can lead to an effective formula for success.

** At the end of the episode Melissa breaks down one of the topics from the conversation and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Learn more about Rachel:

website: www.rachelmeadesmith.com

IG: @stormcloudsmith

repair shop IG: @rrepairsshop

newsletter: www.wordsofmouth.org

Maggie Hayes is a painter, movement instructor, and a DJ who spreads joy as Miss Paradise.

Throughout all of her mediums, she tries to hold a torch to invite others to envision what a world would truly look like if we could be in paradise together.

In this episode, Maggie shares about her healing journey with cancer and how it’s impacted the way she relates to her art and a sense of what’s possible.

If you want to hear about the path from just scraping by to getting to a place of financial stability and valuing your work, this is the episode for you!

** At the end of the episode Melissa breaks down one of the topics from the conversation and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Connect with Maggie:

IG: @paradisevitalitystudio

Website: https://www.paradisevitalitystudio.com/

Art website:  https://www.maggie-hayes.com/

Stevie, aka ‘Spaghetti Witch’, runs her own casting company, co-hosts a popular astrology podcast, she is a writer, producer, friend, lover, carb-queen, the list goes on!

Melissa interviews Stevie about her freelance journey of working for bad bosses, starting side projects in her spare time, launching her own business, and learning how to ride the waves of the freelancer’s work cycle - boom times and bust times.

Stevie shares about how she’s found power in collaboration trios, and how to find a structure to help produce consistently. Listen in to hear how she articulates what she does and how it all fits together.

** At the end of the episode Melissa breaks down one of the topics from the conversation and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Connect with Stevie:

personal IG: @spaghetti_witch

podcast IG:  @whatsyoursignpodcast

Website: https://stevies.world/

Kaylene is channeler, tarot reader, and astrologer who also makes music under the name “Krystal Visions”.

Melissa interviews Kaylene about her path to graphic design and social media curation through her music and how she’s grown in her confidence to charge what she’s worth as she’s acquired more and more experience and truly stepped into the role of a teacher.

Kaylene presents a healthy view of how to relate to social media and shares how having a creative alter-ego or moniker can open up portals to creativity on a regular basis.

** Listen until the end of the episode for a digest where Melissa breaks down one of the main pieces of advice and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Connect with Kaylene:

IG: @krystal_visions

email: [email protected]

Melissa interviews Isaac Green Diebboll, an artist and filmmaker who has learned how to sustain several film projects while also run a non-profit and still carve out time for his friends, family, and dog Alaska.

We talk about how to balance time, money, and relationships as he finds a sustainable rhythm producing multi-year film projects.

** Listen until the end of the episode for a digest where Melissa breaks down one of the main pieces of advice and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Learn more about Isaac:

website: www.greendiebboll.com

non-profit: www.engncntr.com

email: [email protected]

Melissa interviews Brooklyn-based artist and cultural curator Molly Surno.

Molly gets real about how being on early teams at companies like TED and Kickstarter helped her find the security she needed to support her creative practice and live a lifestyle she knew she wanted. We explore how she leveraged her network and mentors to find herself exhibiting at institutions like the Getty Museum, Essl Museum, Salzburg Museum of Modern Art, Suzanne Geiss, and Anat Ebgi Gallery.

Hear about how Molly is currently reimagining domesticity as part of her pandemic processing and balancing life as an artist and mother.

** Listen until the end of the episode for a digest where Melissa breaks down one of the main pieces of advice and offers up a personal challenge you can try.

Learn more about Molly:

website: https://www.push-projects.com/

IG: @missmolinga