Soul-led Creative Women with Sam Horton

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In this episode of Soul-led Creative Women, I'm joined by TeZa Lord, author, artist, lifelong yogi and self-described spirit artist. TeZa grew up in a family where creativity had to wait until the chores were done. She taught herself to draw in secret, then broke away to art school and built a life of botanical illustration, silversmithing, film work, portrait drawing across the Caribbean and six books. We explore the delicate relationship between skill and surrender. We also talk about how her creativity changed when she chose sobriety and love over fear, and why she believes creativity is how we discover we are spiritual beings.

Three reasons to listen

• If you've ever worried that learning technique might squeeze the soul out of your work, TeZa offers a beautiful reframe: skill is what allows you to let go.
• You'll hear a small, moving story about a fish appearing out of a single pastel stroke, and what it reveals about trusting the process.
• It's an invitation to notice what your creativity is carrying, and to choose to create from love rather than fear.

Key takeaways

• Why learning the fundamentals of anatomy, colour and materials can be the path to creative freedom rather than a constraint
• How the balance of control and letting go sits at the heart of both creativity and spirituality
• Creating through addiction and recovery, and releasing old work that no longer reflects who you are
• Choosing love over fear as a creative and spiritual practice
• The yogic view of creativity as the second energy centre, and what happens when it goes unexpressed
• How training your eye expands perception and builds creative confidence
• Setting an intention before you begin, and how your thoughts shape colour, form and energy
• Creativity beyond art, in how you dress, cook, garden and choose to live

Reflection question
Where in your creative life are you gripping so tightly to getting it right that there's no room for something unexpected to come through?

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep130

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

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Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

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Carine Van Hee is an artist, author and speaker whose work explores what happens when we finally let our creativity show all of us, not just the parts that are easy to look at. 

For most of her creative life, Carine only painted in her happy colours. It took a burnout, her mother's death, and years of quietly discovering how deeply she'd learned to disconnect from herself before she let her art carry the whole story.

Three reasons to listen:

1. Why the gold of your creative expression is rarely the in the first layers.
2. How creating "as if you're on the moon and nobody's watching" can loosen a lifetime of making art to be liked.
3. Why the process, not the finished piece, is where the real transformation actually happens.

Key takeaways:

• Mixed-media painter and author Carine Van Hee works on large-scale canvases on the floor, moving around all four sides so she can approach the work from every angle
• Why layering in art mirrors the layering of self-discovery, and why the "gold" is never in the first, rawest layer
• The practice of leaving a piece of paper beside the canvas to catch the words that surface mid-creation
• How hiding your difficult colours from your art can mean hiding difficult parts of yourself
• Why art installations can open conversations that a formal talk never could

Reflection question: Where in your creative practice are you still only showing your happy colours, and what might it feel like to let the rest through?

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep129

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

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Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep128 

In this episode of Soul-led Creative Women, I'm joined by Niki Borger, an international writer, actor and producer whose one-act plays explore the liminal space between life and death. Over a seven-and-a-half-year period, Niki lost her mother, both grandparents, her stepfather and her father, nursing several of them through their final months. Rather than let that grief define her as a victim, she found a different way through it: choosing which story to tell about what happened to her, and following the thread that leads to growth rather than the one that keeps her stuck. 

Three reasons to listen 

• To hear how Niki turned an almost unbearable run of loss into the creative and spiritual foundation for her work
• To understand why the story you choose to tell about your pain matters more than the facts of what happened
• To be reminded that the thing you're most afraid to name is usually the one most worth following

Key takeaways

• Storytelling as a healing practice, and how the same event can be told a hundred different ways, each with a different effect on who you become
• Why growth is described as the most natural state of being human, and creativity as the vehicle that gets you there
• How energy work and meditation can open the floodgates to creative ideas
• The connection between acting, vulnerability and safety, and how a well-built creative framework lets you take real risks
• Niki's concept of the "golden thread", the thread of possibility hidden inside even the darkest experiences

Reflection question
 
Where in your own story is there a golden thread waiting for you to follow, even if it's something you're still too scared to name?

 
FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep128
 

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

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Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep127 

In this episode, I'm joined by Katie Rizzo, a former science teacher turned poet, whose life changed irrevocably when she lost her son Nicholas to addiction. Katie shares how poetry became the language she needed to grieve honestly, to stay close to Nicholas, and to slowly find her way back to herself. Her forthcoming memoir, The Trimesters of Grief, borrows the framework of pregnancy, the nausea, the numbness, the showing, to make sense of grief's own unfolding seasons. 

Three reasons to listen: 

1. Discover how Katie turned to poetry as a way to stay connected to her son and process grief she couldn't otherwise hold.
2. Hear how her background in biology gave her an unexpected language, turtles, ducklings, a tree Nicholas once helped plant, for understanding loss and transformation.
3. Learn why saying yes to community, even when everything in her wanted to withdraw, became essential to her healing.

Key takeaways:

• Creativity can become a bridge between the living and the people we've lost, offering a kind of connection that logic can't provide.
• Grief often moves in recognisable seasons or waves, and naming them can make them easier to carry.
• Letting go of the need to appear "put together" can open real space for authentic creative expression.
• Community and support groups, though confronting to step into, can transform isolation into shared meaning.
• You don't need years of training to be creative. You need honesty and presence.

Reflection question: What feeling have you been carrying without a place to put it, and what might happen if you gave it a form, a poem, a page, a picture?

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep127
 

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep126 

In this episode of Soul-led Creative Women, I'm exploring what if the things we're creatively drawn to, again and again, aren't random at all? What if our recurring colours, subjects and themes are actually information, quietly revealing who our soul is inviting us to become?

Three reasons to listen: 

• You'll learn why the things you keep returning to in your art (a colour, a subject, a symbol) might be far more meaningful than personality or habit
• You'll hear a simple way of thinking about creative attraction as a language your inner knowing uses when words aren't yet ready
• You'll be invited to look back at your own creative history and notice the trail you've been leaving for yourself, without realising it

Key takeaways:

• Recurring creative pulls, a colour, a subject, a theme, are often a form of information about what we need to embrace or release
• Creativity often knows what we need before our conscious mind catches up, which is why certain images or ideas can feel like they're choosing us rather than the other way round
• Recurrence is data. When something shows up once, it might be curiosity, but when it keeps returning across months or years, it's usually pointing at something deeper
• Looking back at what you were creatively drawn to one, three or five years ago can reveal the trail of who you've been becoming all along

Reflection question: Where in your creative life is something quietly, persistently calling you, and what version of yourself might it be revealing?

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep126
 

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep125

In this episode of Soul-led Creative Women, I'm joined by Kneet, a global independent artist whose music moves between cultures, languages, and truths. Kneet grew up in a strict, tight-knit Indian household where creative expression, especially for girls, wasn't encouraged, and yet music found her anyway, first as a form of teenage rebellion, and later as the thread that helped her find her way back to herself after years of domestic violence and coercive control. We talk about her song "Rise," what it meant to film its music video in the very place where she lost her identity, and how she's turning her story into advocacy for other survivors. 

Three reasons to listen: 

• To hear how one woman used songwriting to reclaim her voice after years of abuse, and what it took to walk back into the place where it happened
• For a beautifully grounded take on creativity as a spiritual practice, across faiths and cultures
• Because Kneet's story is proof that the version of you that had to survive can become the version that leads

Key takeaways:
 

• How Kneet used music as a form of quiet rebellion growing up in a strict religious household
• Why she describes writing "Rise" as an act of reclaiming her voice after coercive control and domestic violence
• The healing power of returning to the site of trauma to reclaim the story on her own terms
• Kneet's view of creativity and self-discovery as inseparable, you can't access one without the other
• How she connects music to vibration and spiritual practice across Sikhism, Christianity, and beyond
• Why her advocacy work, pushing for psychological abuse to be recognised in the courts — flows from the same voice as her music
• A peek into her upcoming, lighter Punjabi and Thai-influenced singles, honouring both sides of her heritage

Reflection question: Where in your life is your creativity quietly asking you to reclaim your identity or voice?
 

 FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep125 

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep124

What if the greatest masterpiece your creative practice ever creates... is you?

In this short poetry episode, I share Beauty in the Fight, a reflection on the quiet ways creativity carries us through life's seasons. It's a thank you to the paint, charcoal and creative process that have helped me navigate uncertainty, disappointment, joy and growth—not by fixing life's challenges, but by helping me meet them with greater honesty and self-compassion.

If you've ever wondered why creativity feels so deeply woven into your life, I hope these words remind you that sometimes the greatest gift isn't the artwork we create, but the relationship we build with ourselves along the way.

Reflection

Where has creativity helped you find light in a season that once felt impossibly heavy?

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep124

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep123

Creativity doesn't have to compete with your career, your responsibilities or your ambitions. In fact, it can become the very thing that helps you thrive in every area of your life.

In this inspiring conversation, I sit down with artist, photographer, plant curator and global transformation executive Rupali Kumbhani to explore how creativity and professional success can beautifully coexist.

Rupali shares how a childhood love of drawing grew into a lifelong creative practice alongside a demanding corporate career, why she refuses to limit herself to a single creative identity, and how art, photography and plants have become meaningful ways to transform spaces, experiences and lives.

Together we explore the relationship between creativity, innovation, personal growth and purpose, and why making time for your creative passions isn't a luxury—it's an investment in becoming more fully yourself. 

In this episode we explore:

•  How Rupali nurtured her creativity while building an international corporate career. 
•  Why creativity and strategic thinking strengthen one another. 
•  Finding the confidence to create on your own terms instead of following industry expectations. 
•  The freedom that comes from embracing multiple creative passions. 
•  How travel inspires both photography and painting. 
•  Creating art and living collections that transform everyday spaces. 
•  Why creativity helps us think differently, innovate and solve problems. 
•  Making creativity a genuine priority rather than something you fit in "one day." 
•  How art creates personal meaning and different experiences for every viewer. 
•  Why failure, experimentation and curiosity are essential parts of every creative journey. 

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep123

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

Send us Fan Mail

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep122

The greatest gift of creativity has very little to do with making better art?

So many of us begin our creative journey believing the goal is to become more skilled, create more beautiful work, or finally bring the ideas in our hearts to life. While those things can certainly happen, they may not be the most meaningful transformation taking place.

In this episode, I explore how creativity becomes so much more than an artistic practice. It becomes a place where we learn patience, courage, self-trust, presence, and resilience—not through theory, but through experience.

Together, we'll look at why every creative session invites us to meet ourselves more honestly, how the lessons we learn in the studio naturally begin shaping the rest of our lives, and why the person you're becoming may be the greatest masterpiece your creativity will ever create.

If you've ever felt there was something deeper unfolding beneath your creative journey, this episode is for you.

In This Episode

You'll discover:

• Why making better art isn't the most valuable gift creativity has to offer.
• How your creative practice becomes a powerful pathway for self-discovery.
• The life lessons hidden within uncertainty, perfectionism, and experimentation.
• Why creativity helps cultivate qualities like patience, courage, presence, and self-trust.
• How your creative process begins transforming your life beyond the studio.
• A different way of understanding the creative desires that keep calling you back.

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep122

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast

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FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep121

In this fun and inspiring conversation, artist, author, and nurse Lora Arbrador shares her remarkable creative journey and lifelong devotion to the ancient art of egg tempera painting. 

From discovering art as a teenager to navigating self-doubt, nursing through the AIDS epidemic, and finding inspiration in the human stories that shaped her life, Lora offers a moving reflection on creativity, purpose, and resilience. 

Together, we explore how art can become a vessel for meaning, healing, and self-discovery, as well as the surprising ways our creative practice continues to call us home through every season of life. 

In this episode, we explore:

•  How Lora unexpectedly fell in love with art at age 12 and began her creative journey. 
•  What egg tempera painting is and why this ancient medium has captivated her for more than 50 years. 
•  The unique process of creating paint from egg yolks and pigment. 
•  The discipline, patience, and quiet beauty of working in a slow, layered medium. 
•  How a career in nursing profoundly influenced the themes and stories within her artwork. 
•  Creating paintings inspired by human resilience, disability, illness, love, and transformation. 
•  The relationship between storytelling, visual art, and memoir writing. 
•  Why self-doubt can coexist with a lifelong creative calling. 
•  The difference between artistic confidence and creative devotion. 
•  Creativity as a practice that continues to nourish and sustain us through changing life seasons. 
•  The moments of insight, intuition, and unexpected breakthroughs that emerge during the creative process. 
•  The possibility that art helps us connect with something larger than ourselves. 
•  Why playfulness may be one of the most important ingredients in a meaningful creative practice.

FOR EPISODE LINKS & MORE INFO VISIT: https://samhorton.co/blog/ep121

Join the Soulful Creativity Video Series

Build a Soulful Relationship with your creativity, WITHOUT Sacrificing Skill, Beauty, or Impact in Your Art. I share the three steps to awaken your creative power, release what's holding you back, & safely practise creative expansion, so that you can welcome more abundance & finally come ALIVE with Soulful Creativity.

👉 https://samhorton.co/scvs

Support the show

Send me a message on instagram - https:/instagram.com/samhortonstudio

Follow Soul-led Creative Women on your favourite platform - find all links at https://samhorton.co/podcast