Creative Recovery

The demands of daily life can overwhelm us with a lot of responsibility and obligation. It’s easy to feel stuck in a rut and to lose sight of the possibility for growth within every moment and the greater purpose we feel called to serve. This is where our innate creative spirit can help if we take the time to examine what’s keeping us stuck and make choices that nourish our spiritual and creative well-being. Join me as I explore how a healthy creative spirit feeds personal growth and meaningful connection. I guide listeners through a reflection on how stuck energy manifests in the body-mind-heart-spirit, offering insights on how to begin the process of moving from stuck to flow and recovering a zest for life.

Notes and Resources:

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

Rachel Dickinson @geology26 has lived a rich life full of adventure, joy, loss, and love. A native of Freeville, New York, her family first settled in this region right after the American Revolution when her fifth-great grandfather received a tract of land as payment for his services during the war. The landscape of home has always deeply affected her; in particular, features created during the last Ice Age as glaciers carved waterfalls and gorges and rounded hills. In this episode she tells the story of writing through grief after the suicide of her teenaged son, Jack, a decade ago. Her insights into the wild and mysterious landscape of human emotion will open your mind and your heart. With honesty and vulnerability, Rachel explores the relationship between creativity and healing and what it means to seek her truth and to share it on the page.

Rachel received a degree in geology from Kirkland College, studied American History at the University of Delaware, and eventually got an MFA in nonfiction from Goucher College. She was a travel writer for about a decade, publishing pieces in The Atlantic, Smithsonian.com, Outside.com, and Audubon. Her essays have appeared in Catapult, Aeon, and Salon. As an author, she's written seven nonfiction books including Falconer on the Edge, The Notorious Reno Gang, and her forthcoming memoir The Loneliest Places: Loss, Grief, and the Long Journey Home. Her latest book explores the complicated world of loss and grief and what it means to be part of a family after the suicide of her son.

Notes and Resources:

Rachel on Facebook

Rachel on Instagram: @geology26

Rachel on Twitter: @rachelbirds

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

Uniit Carruyo is an artist, educator, and musician. Like most people, her life has been full of transitions, some welcomed, others more unexpected and challenging. However, what sets Uniit apart from the majority of folks is how her creative spirit has helped her navigate transitions and see possibility in life’s unpredictable moments. This conversation is full of inspiration and wisdom with real-life practical applications. Uniit digs deep into what it means to live a creative life and shares how you can bring your creative expression into any space and situation, from the office to the home. Be sure to check her out on instagram @honeypine.house for a peek into how she transformed a bus into a stunning tiny home.

Notes and Resources:

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke @clarke_chad on IG

Every life is a collage of stories. For Regi Carpenter @regicarpenter, the most important stories are the stories that have not been told, what goes unsaid. Stories shape (and re-shape) beliefs, connect humans, and offer a creative container for authentic expression. For over twenty years Regi has been bringing songs and stories to audiences of all ages throughout the world in schools, theaters, libraries, at festivals, conferences, and in people’s backyards. Listen to this intimate conversation about the transformative power of storytelling and how you can re-story your life as a way to heal from past wounds. We also talk about the emerging field of narrative medicine, the healing potential of sharing your story, how to make stories come alive orally and on the page, and using fear as an opportunity to let go and trust.

An award-winning performer, Regi Carpenter has toured her solo shows and workshops in theaters, festivals, and schools, nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of many awards, and her stories have been featured on Sirius Radio, Apple Seed Radio, The Moth, and NPR. Regi is also the founder of Stories with Spirit, a creative initiative dedicated to bringing songs of joy and stories of hope to grieving children and the people who love and care for them in homes, hospices, and hospitals.

Notes and Resources:

www.regicarpenter.com

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

It’s not easy expressing your authentic self. Galina Singer @galinasinger knows this all too well, having grown up in the former Soviet Union at a time when self-expression was heavily censored. Since then, she has devoted her life to peeling away layers of learned behaviors and limiting beliefs that covered her authentic self. Now as a writer and a coach, she helps others do the same. Listen to this riveting discussion and learn how to find safety and freedom to be yourself. We also talk about the process of healing trauma and working with fear and how this kind of deep inner work paves the way for free and open creative expression. Link to full episode in bio.

Galina Singer is a writer, speaker, relationship philosopher, and a coach. She is passionate about liberating relationships from tradition so we can find more authentic ways to be together. Galina investigates subjects deemed taboo: shame, shadow, body, sexuality, infidelity, because what we keep hidden and repressed prevents intimacy in our relationships. By peeling away layers of societal and family conditioning she helps clients to re-discover their authentic voices and wake up to relationships and lives of freedom and fulfillment.

Notes and Resources:

Connect with Galina on her website, Facebook , Instagram, sign up to her Newsletter, and/or read her articles published in Elephant Journal

Gabor Maté

Peter Levine, Trauma Healing

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, The Body Keeps the Score

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

Christian Collier @ichristian3030 was riding back to his hotel after winning a poetry slam contest in Boston when he started taking inventory of his life. He felt so much gratitude for all the people and circumstances that led up to this celebratory moment and asked himself: if I was 15 again knowing what I now know, what would I want to see and have access to? From that moment, the seed of his community building heart began to blossom. He started organizing programs and coordinating literary workshops for teens, the efforts of which eventually led to the creation of The Plug Poetry Project, an arts initiative whose goal is to honor and grow Chattanooga’s poetry community by providing resources, classes, workshops, readings, and events. Christian’s story is deeply inspiring, filled with creativity, compassion, and a commitment to serving others. In this episode Christian talks in depth about his process writing The Gleaming of the Blade, his latest poetry collection examining Black masculinity in the contemporary American South. He discusses the power of journaling, the importance of taking risks in your work, and how being creative also means being resourceful, playful, and generous. Link to full episode in bio.

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Grist Journal, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest. Christian’s poems never shy away from interrogating harsh injustices and contending with the truth of today’s America, a truth sometimes beautiful, sometimes biting

Notes and Resources:

http://www.christianjcollier.com/

Insta: @ichristian3030

Twitter: @IChristian3030

The Plug Poetry Project

Mark Bradford

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

Jasna Bogdanovska @jasnalika describes her first experience with photography as magical. In this episode, she tells her story of switching from the certainty and predictability of mathematics to the wild land of art and how this change sparked and still sparks enormous personal growth. Jasna’s creative process is one of exploration filled with uncertainty, unpredictability, and discomfort as well as adventure and excitement. She likens it to traveling. She says that most of her creative projects start as feelings of discomfort, concerns about social issues, and/or a generalized restlessness all of which she aspires to greet with curiosity and compassion. Listen to this inspiring conversation where we discuss fear as an invitation to be curious, failure as part of the process, and the freedom and strength that is possible when you welcome uncertainty. Link to full episode in bio.

Jasna is a photographer, educator, avid traveler, and explorer of different cultures. She received both her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Fine Art Photography and her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Bogdanovska’s artwork explores issues of femininity, culture, migration, duality, identity and heritage using various mediums such as photography, installation and video. She is widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions including Macedonia, Iceland, Croatia, South Korea, Bosnia, Canada and the US. As an educator, Jasna Bogdanovska has taught classes in Iceland and has created international collaborations for her students with students in Taiwan, Brazil and Canada. As an Art Director and Photographer, Jasna has worked on advertising campaigns both in the US and Europe.

Notes and Resources:

Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

http://jasnabogdanovska.com/

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke

Listen to this self-compassion meditation guided by Brenna to begin to cultivate your inner nurturer.

We all have an inner critic. It’s that voice inside your head saying you aren’t good enough or that you SHOULD do this and SHOULD HAVE done that. A persistent inner critic often leads to the development of limiting beliefs that dampen confidence and paralyze you from taking risks or actions toward your dreams and authentic self-expression. Healing the inner critic is not about getting rid of it because that probably won’t happen. It’s about understanding where it’s coming from, why it’s surfacing, and how you can use it to cultivate more self-compassion and develop an inner nurturer. In this episode I discuss how to explore your inner critic and why cultivating self-compassion is a powerful antidote to fear, doubt, shame, and all the painful emotions stirred up when we “should” on ourselves. Also check out the bonus self-compassion meditation and begin to shift your relationship to yourself from one of criticism to one of compassion. Link to full episode in bio.

Notes and Resources:

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, [email protected]

Creativity is a cornerstone of Kate Nason’s life. It’s how she makes sense of things and how she makes meaning. Kate is a born storyteller who found tremendous healing in the process of writing her memoir Everything Is Perfect in which she explores the roles women inhabit throughout their lives, how they carry trauma, and the lengths they’ll go to protect their children and save themselves. It’s a fierce and often funny self-reckoning, a meditation on learning to trust one’s intuition. In this exciting conversation, Kate talks about the ups and downs of writing her memoir, including the healing power of words and how making collages served as a tool for her to process difficult scenes. We also discuss writing about trauma, creativity as a space to feel it all, trusting intuition, and how you can make the everyday sacred. Link to full episode in bio.

Kate Nason is a writer of narrative nonfiction. Her first memoir Everything is Perfect is the story of ten years that taught her to trust her intuition. It's available on Audible. Her book has been featured in Oregon Arts Watch, The Baltimore Fishbowl, and the NY Post. Kate earned her BA in Art History from the University of California at Los Angeles. After graduation, she moved to Florence, Italy. Two years later, she returned to Los Angeles to enjoy a rewarding career in LA’s contemporary art scene. In 1994, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she created Chairwear, a design business specializing in soft furnishings. Kate's working on her second book, a memoir about her great-grandmother’s fictitious ancestry and the truth about her hidden Italian heritage. Kate still lives in Portland. She returns to Florence every chance she gets.

Notes and Resources:

@stateokate

www.katenasonwrites.com

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke,