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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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@stateokate

Creativity has been a driving force in Werner Sun’s life since he was a kid. The urge both to process his inner life and express it to others led him to play the piano as a youth, explore physics research later in life, and develop into a multimedia visual artist. Werner sees creativity as a safe space to explore the unknown, develop trust and patience in yourself, and grow through challenges. In this episode he shares fascinating insights into the creative process and how it can serve as both a catalyst for personal healing and a vehicle for intimate connections with people and the environment. This conversation will flip the script of everything you thought you knew about the world and thrust you into new ways of seeing and thinking about art and life. We discuss the importance of play, trusting the process, obstacles as portals to growth, vulnerability as an act of generosity, and much much more!

Werner Sun @wernersun is a visual artist who lives and works in Ithaca, NY. His work has appeared in such venues as the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Aon in New York City, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH, and the Islip Art Museum. His essays and images have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Interalia Magazine, and Stone Canoe. He is the 2019 recipient of the Aon-CUE Artist Empowerment Award from the CUE Art Foundation as well as a 2017 recipient of a Strategic Opportunity Stipend from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, NY. Werner recently completed a sculpture commission for the Cornell University Botanic Gardens that is currently installed in the Nevin Welcome Center.

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Alicia Free @aliciafree_bellydance is a badass belly dancer, musician, and podcast producer. She wants us to shake off the heavy and dance to feel lighter. Alicia uses movement, live music, and simple costuming as her favorite creative endeavors. In this uplifting and inspiring conversation Alicia shares her own story of being drawn to dance as a way to feel free in her body, mind, heart, and spirit. She recounts one performance in particular where she allowed grief to move through her without controlling it and realized the healing power of movement. Alicia is committed to personal growth and to social justice. Her performances, teachings, and podcast highlighting dancers of differing cultures and identities are all creative expressions deeply rooted in an intention to serve others. In this conversation, we also touch on why so many people are afraid to dance and how you can bring more dance into your every day.

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Juhanna is an artist, educator, and motivational speaker encouraging people from underrepresented populations to live out loud and unapologetically. Her story is a beautiful example of the ways in which art and activism can align to improve lives and strengthen communities. In this conversation, Juhanna openly and honestly recounts her own challenging life transitions and experiences as a woman of color with the kind of courage and vulnerability that arises from years of deep introspection. The way she applies her wisdom and creativity in service of others is inspirational and exactly what the world needs right now. In this episode, Juhanna generously shares helpful tools and practices for letting go of toxic beliefs and habits formed in response to societal expectations and inequities. She is a role model of free self-expression and how to bravely become who you aspire to be.

Dr. Juhanna Rogers is a motivational speaker, commentator, artist, and education activist currently residing in Central New York. As a native of Newark, New Jersey, Dr. Rogers has a commitment to social justice, education, and the arts, having grown up in a diverse and resource rich environment. Over the last ten years, Dr. Rogers has traveled the world exploring ways through which underrepresented populations, specifically people of African descent, can improve their lives and communities. She has become passionate about bringing narratives out of the women she has met along the way to students in urban communities and using these stories as tools for empowerment. Today, Dr. Rogers utilizes her national and international experience to motivate and educate Black and Brown leaders in order to create change in their communities and professional spaces.

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When Stacey @staceyhenrycarr left the corporate world to become a hypnotherapist and transformational coach, she “did an unbecoming.” She let go of all the shoulds and musts, all the familial and societal expectations she had been living by and uncovered her true self, someone she had been all along but did not fully embody. She loves the work she does now helping women discover old imprints and beliefs and the root causes of those beliefs that have forced them to show up to their lives on autopilot as if they are a robot. She discusses her work helping people interrupt autopilot and awaken to their inspired, creative, soulful self. She talks about how to identify fear and doubt and locate it in the body. Stacey also facilitates a healing hypnotherapy exercise to clear the blockages that prevent authentic self-expression.

Stacey Henry-Carr is an ex-corporate leader who now helps people identify, interrupt, and replace blockers with living more meaningful and intentional lives. She is a Certified Life Coach, Certified Hypnotherapist, an author, a mother, and a wife with a positive approach to life. She practices authentic leadership and servitude in everything she does. Her twenty-two years of corporate leadership, training, and career development have equipped her with a proven track record to help guide others in their journey of discovery. She has always had a passion for helping others become their best selves. She has a passion for reading, writing, traveling, dancing, singing off-key, and the beach.

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For most of her life Suzanne Onodera @sazaono, a painter and deeply creative soul, has pondered the big questions: who am I, where did I come from, and how can I express myself with authenticity and artistry? Listen to this fascinating conversation with Suzanne in which we explore such topics as mystery, memory, and the relationship between fear and authentic expression. Suzanne tells stories of turning grief into wonder through creative process. She talks about how she found strength and inspiration in excavating her own family’s traumatic history as prisoners in Japanese internment camps during World War II. Suzanne’s journey of connecting to her ancestry is powerfully expressed through her exhibit “After the War” in which she shares scenes of family lore and national history as glimpsed through the luminous haze of memory. She talks in depth about how this creative project led her down new paths in art-making and new ways of understanding her own identity.

Suzanne Onodera was born in Berkeley, California. She attended the School of the Art institute in Chicago and the California College of the Arts, where she pursued a BFA in painting. For over a decade, Onodera worked in the art departments of LucasArts and EA, envisioning and realizing fantastical environments for video games set in the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings universes. In recent years, Onodera has mounted solo shows at venues on both coasts. In the words of Michaele Weissman, author of History of Women in America, “Suzanne Onodera’s paintings illustrate and yet undermine what is familiar. Mystery is present in her work, as are highly resonant, psychologically deep themes of decay, loneliness, stewardship, and regeneration.”

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What is creative energy and why does it get blocked? Join me in Episode 7 of Creative Recovery as I explore creativity from a holistic mind-body-spirit perspective. I will guide you through a reflective exercise to facilitate awareness of and curiosity around your own creative spirit and what might be blocking it. My intention is to support you in moving from stuck to flow in your creativity and in your life.

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This episode was edited and mixed by Chad Clarke, @the.podcast.producer

In Episode 5 we heard part 1 of my Creative Recovery conversation with Dr. Sarah Jefferis @dr.jefferies.write.now, author, editor, coach and speaker. She recounted her story growing up with trauma and how writing served as a powerful vehicle for transforming her traumatic wounds into meaningful poems, novels, and essays. We explored what it means to rewrite a story of trauma, and Sarah shared a reflective journaling exercise that can facilitate this process. We also touched on how creativity, spirituality, and healing are inextricably linked. In Episode 6, part 2 of the conversation with Sarah, we discuss how to cultivate a healthy relationship to fear and the importance of staying present and embodied, especially while writing about trauma. Sarah also shares about her commitment to speaking out against injustice and the personal healing she has experienced raising two feminist girls.

Dr. Sarah Jefferis is an author, editor, writing coach, and speaker. Through her business called Write.Now., she offers coaching, poetry readings, presentations on diversity, and interactive dialogues on using writing as a healing modality for sexual assault survivors. Jefferis holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Hollins University, an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University, and a PhD in Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton. She has taught writing and literature at Cornell University for over twenty years. Her most recent poetry collection, What Enters the Mouth, was published in February 2017 by Standing Stone Books. It was praised by Ansel Elkins, author of Blue Yodel, who wrote, “these are fearless poems—a reckoning of the violence of girlhood rendered with grit and clarity.” Sarah has recently become a certified Yoga teacher. Her most important calling is to raise two powerful feminist girls who love themselves and who are willing to speak out against injustice. She is currently working on a collection of essays about the challenge of solo motherhood in a pandemic.

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What is the relationship between creativity and healing? Listen to Dr. Sarah Jefferis @dr.jefferies.write.now, author, editor, coach and speaker as she recounts growing up with trauma and how writing served as a powerful vehicle for transforming her traumatic wounds into meaningful poems, novels, and essays. In part 1 of our conversation, we explore what it means to rewrite a story of trauma, and Sarah shares a reflective journaling exercise that can facilitate this process. We also touch on how creativity, spirituality, and healing are inextricably linked.

Dr. Sarah Jefferis is an author, editor, writing coach, and speaker. Through her business called Write.Now., she offers coaching, poetry readings, presentations on diversity, and interactive dialogues on using writing as a healing modality for sexual assault survivors. Jefferis holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Hollins University, an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University, and a PhD in Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton. She has taught writing and literature at Cornell University for over twenty years. Her most recent poetry collection, What Enters the Mouth, was published in February 2017 by Standing Stone Books. It was praised by Ansel Elkins, author of Blue Yodel, who wrote, “these are fearless poems—a reckoning of the violence of girlhood rendered with grit and clarity.” Sarah has recently become a certified Yoga teacher. Her most important calling is to raise two powerful feminist girls who love themselves and who are willing to speak out against injustice. She is currently working on a collection of essays about the challenge of solo motherhood in a pandemic.

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In Episode 3 we heard part 1 of my Creative Recovery conversation with Delia Ahouandjinou, dancer and body-centered therapist. She recounted her story growing up with a misdiagnosed autoimmune condition and how her life journey led her into a deeper understanding of the relationship between creativity, embodiment, and healing. We explored what it means to be embodied and how developing a healthy relationship to the body facilitates access to and expression of personal truth. In Episode 4, part 2 of the conversation with Delia, we discuss how fear and trauma can block creative expression. Delia offers tools and practices for grounding in the body and getting stuck energy to flow again. Listen to this episode’s bonus meditation: Grounding in Earth’s Energy.

Delia Ahouandjinou is a body-centered therapist in Manhattan, New York where she practices manual therapies, including non-invasive hands-on techniques such as CranioSacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation and Somato-Emotional Release. Delia was born and raised in Normandy, France, from a French mother and a father from Benin, West-Africa. Her dedication to the healing arts was naturally born during her former career as a dancer for the Opera of Paris and the Martha Graham Ensemble when she experienced the tremendous wear and tear placed upon an athlete’s body. To add to this demanding lifestyle, after years of unexplained pain, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune illness that caused chronic inflammation. After years of extensive healing through Manual Therapy and energy work, she was finally free from pain and medications. This challenging experience allowed her to find her inner voice. Upon retiring from dance, Delia was ready to share with the world her explorations in the profound, nurturing, life changing potential of the art of Manual Therapy and healing work.

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Creativity is not just for artists; it’s a way of living, a way of being. Listen to the story of Delia Ahouandjinou, dancer and body-centered therapist, as she recounts growing up with a misdiagnosed autoimmune condition and how her life journey led her into a deeper understanding of the relationship between creativity, embodiment, and healing. In part 1 of our conversation, we explore what it means to be embodied and how developing a healthy relationship to the body facilitates access to and expression of personal truth.

Delia Ahouandjinou is a body-centered therapist in Manhattan, New York where she practices manual therapies, including non-invasive hands-on techniques such as CranioSacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation and Somato-Emotional Release. Delia was born and raised in Normandy, France, from a French mother and a father from Benin, West-Africa. Her dedication to the healing arts was naturally born during her former career as a dancer for the Opera of Paris and the Martha Graham Ensemble when she experienced the tremendous wear and tear placed upon an athlete’s body. To add to this demanding lifestyle, after years of unexplained pain, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune illness that caused chronic inflammation. After years of extensive healing through Manual Therapy and energy work, she was finally free from pain and medications. This challenging experience allowed her to find her inner voice. Upon retiring from dance, Delia was ready to share with the world her explorations in the profound, nurturing, life changing potential of the art of Manual Therapy and healing work.

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The process of creative recovery involves unlearning habits and limiting beliefs that don’t serve us. Much of this looks like shedding the heavy layers and inaccurate perceptions about ourselves and our purpose in life that we accumulated from childhood to adulthood. Creative recovery is returning to that innate sense of wonder and curiosity we were born with and that we called upon as a kid exploring the world. It’s a process of cultivating more play and pleasure in our lives. In this episode I step into conversation with my 11-year-old niece, Norah Beemer, to discuss creativity from a child’s wise view and how it enhances life every day.

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The intention behind Creative Recovery is to help people heal and become as fully expressed as possible in their lives. Creative Recovery is about embracing the process of becoming, of recovering your authentic self and growing into the person you aspire to be. It’s a process that involves understanding what shaped you and your beliefs about yourself and exceeding the limits of who you think you are as well as challenging yourself to express who you are, what you want to say, and how you want to connect with the world. Creative Recovery is about seeing beyond the familiar, playing with the unknown, turning fear into curiosity, letting go of the inner critic, cultivating self-compassion, and nourishing a creative relationship to life. Join me as I explore these topics and more in conversation with people of diverse backgrounds and identities committed to creative living.

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In this episode Creative Recovery host, Brenna Fitzgerald, steps into a rich and inspiring conversation with Gladys Brangman, Founder of Business Leaders of Colors (BLOC). Together they explore the topics of entrepreneurship, creativity, social justice, and much more. Listen to the story of how Gladys discovered her lifelong intention to serve others and how this intention infuses her entrepreneurial creativity and commitment to social justice. Other highlights of this episode include the importance of creativity in the life of an entrepreneur, tips on navigating change with grace, strategies for staying positive in the face of challenge, and how simply asking questions can help entrepreneurs better meet people’s needs and also grow their businesses.

Gladys Brangman is at her best when serving others and has set out to make the local Ithaca, NY small business world more profitable. She does this by offering support services and networking opportunities for all types of businesses. Her most recent venture is Business Leaders of Colors (BLOC) a local network designed to support small businesses. She believes that if business owners of color(s) are going to thrive they need to be aware of and support one another. A gathering to celebrate Black History Month three years ago, transformed into a network that transformed into a business. BLOC offers reduced cost business and financial training, marketing, a web presence, and networking opportunities. Originally from Albany, New York, Gladys came to the upstate NY area to study at Cortland State and has lived in the Ithaca area for the better part of 30 years. She makes her home in Lansing, teaches dance when she can and believes that there is no higher calling than that of a servant.

Topics

.Serving others and the origins of Business Leaders of Colors

.Creativity and business

.Challenges as opportunities to be creative

.The value of pause, rest, and reassessment

.Staying connected to intention

.How negativity and resistance block creativity

.The importance of asking questions

.Social justice in the business world

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