The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 82: Creative Spark Series - Healing the Creative Wound with Melinda Rothouse & Charlotte Gullick
In this episode of our Creative Spark series, we explore what it means to heal the creative wound so we can fully embrace our creative selves. Many of us received messages in our youth that we weren’t creative or artistic, and we’ve internalized these messages in a way that stifle our creative expression. It’s important to recognize that these stories we tell ourselves may not be accurate, and that we can create new, more empowering and inspiring stories about our creative capacities. This episode, like the mini-episodes that preceded it, also includes insights from our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to reflect on your creative wounds (large or small), and the accompanying stories you may have around your own creativity, and start to craft a new, more empowering story that embraces your creativity.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 22: Creative Play, Episode 35: Navigating the Creative Wilderness, and Episode 51: Curiosity & Exploration.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching, including a monthly creativity coaching group, to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review! We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at info@syncreate.org.
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Melinda: Creativity and community are absolutely vital in challenging times. Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. We talk with visionaries and change makers, and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and mediums - from the arts to science, technology and business.
We aim to illuminate the creative process, from imagination to innovation and everything in between. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte: Hi, I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I'm a writer, educator, and writing coach. We are the co-authors of a book on the creative process, also called Syncreate. At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture and you're not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, now available in both print and audiobook format, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals.
We offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. Our monthly creativity coaching group has begun. We'd be delighted for you to join us. We'd also love to hear your feedback on the show. Please drop us a line at info@syncreate.org. We're looking for feedback on how we can improve the show, what's resonating for you, and what future topics you'd like us to cover.
Welcome back to the Syncreate podcast, where we have these little short things to help you get energized and excited about your creativity and your community. Today, we're going to talk about healing the creative wound. And it has been our experience as practicing artists ourselves, and coaches--creativity coaches--that most people enter the creative process (as adults, maybe not as children but as adults), that there’s somebody in some position of power that has probably said something that you hold, and it's like a barb that sits within you. And we may not always be aware of it, but it's present in our practice (or our not practice). Maybe it's part of the reason that we don't return to our creativity. Because there's a voice, or a memory of something that someone said, or a rejection that went deep.
And so, we want to talk today a little bit about healing that creative wound. I have a few stories around this, and I think that the one that sticks with me the most and has the most impact is, I had a writing mentor in college who basically said, “Yes, you can write your stories.” And I come from outside the dominant culture. And it was so important for him to say “yes” to my writing.
And after I finished my first book (and the two things are not related, although my brain tried to relate them), he took his own life, in 2002. And so, it took me a long time to return to my writing. And a couple of things I want to say about this is, one is - even though he's not here, his faith in my writing is. Like, it's present with me. And that took me a while. Like, maybe that's maturity, that's learning to get some objectivity on things. Which is important for the exercise, our Pro Tip today.
The other thing is to remember the humor with which he engaged students, and particularly me. I would come into class and, let's say there was a scene with nude people… that’s not how my people talk. (Laughter) They say nekked. Nekked. You know, naked is lascivious and nude is art. (Laughter) And that character is nekked. And he would say, “Did you just say nekked?” And I couldn't hear what he was saying. And then he pointed out that there are different ways to say that word.
And so, thinking about the creative process in our lives, and how do we feel more empowered, more connected to ourselves, more connected to the present moment. Like we just talked about in our previous quickie, is thinking about, how can we heal that creative wound? And for some people, it may be extreme, such as in my case. For other people, it might be that person who said to a writing client, “I didn't think you could write that well…”, when they said they wanted to write a novel. And that kind of hangs around. Any examples, Melinda?
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about, growing up, I was always kind of musical and kind of went in that direction with my own creativity. But I never considered myself a visual artist. And I remember taking an art class in elementary school and just kind of feeling like, “Oh, I don't know what I'm doing, and I can't draw.” And all, you know, that kind of stuff. I did do this one drawing of a deer that I was quite proud of, but, you know, for one reason or another just felt like, well, visual arts is not really my thing.
And then there was a period in my life when I was kind of in transition. And this was in my late 20s and I was living in Philadelphia at the time, and kind of in between things and not sure what was going to happen next or what direction to go in. And so, I was just living there and working in a chiropractor's office and I started taking classes in stained glass - just a totally new medium, something I'd never tried before. But I always love stained glass. I always loved color.
And then there was also a local mosaic artist in Philadelphia - he’s fairly well known, Isaiah Zagar - I'm not even sure if he's still around at this point, but he's done these amazing mosaics all over Philly on the sides of buildings and things like that. And he was living in the neighborhood, so I just went over to his place one day and was like, “Hey! Can I like, be your apprentice?” (Laughter) And he was like, “Sure! Pick up that bucket of cement.” You know? (Laughter) So I learned a lot from him until I threw my back out carrying a bucket of cement. So, anyway. But you know, that practice of stained glass and mosaics, it just gave me a lot of joy, and it was like a totally new thing. So I didn't have so much judgment about it.
I was just learning the craft and I found it really enjoyable to work with those materials. Like, work with glass, and there's all these manual processes - you have to cut it and shape it. And in stained glass you have to polish it and then solder, and then finish it with different chemicals and things. It's so absorbing. I just would get into a flow state and kind of everything else would just disappear. So, maybe part of healing the creative wound is trying something completely new and entering into it without judgment.
Charlotte: I think another way of saying that is, what is the story that we're telling ourselves about creativity? And how has someone external, or has society at large contributed to a negative narrative that we have? That we’re not enough or not good enough? And then what are the micro risks that we can take to start to change that story and to heal? It's really important to remember that - you know, a therapist said to me, “We don't heal trauma alone.”
Melinda: Right.
Charlotte: And the trauma response is to isolate. So, I'm not - I don't want to equate all of these things - but I think there's some stuff to be taken from that ideas, that taking a micro risk to say, “Yeah, I'll carry that cement.” (Laughter) Or to go over to someone's house and be like, “Hey! Can I be your apprentice?” (Laughter)
Melinda: It was kind of a bold move, and I knew nothing about that medium, period. But I was just like, you know what? What do I have to lose? What's the worst he can say? “No.” (Laughter) Right?
Charlotte: Right. It made me think about when my first novel got republished and it needed a new cover - and there's a whole story with the cover we won't get into right now - but I had gone to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant in Austin the night before, and I got an email that said, “We’d like to republish your book. Are you interested? And it needs a new cover.” And I love this image. So I went back to the restaurant and I got the woman's info, and I contacted her and said, you know, “I got no money, but I love the image. I think it would be perfect”. And she wrote back - and English is not her first language - she wrote back and said, “Come to my studio tomorrow at 11. We will discuss.” (Laughter)
Melinda: I love it.
Charlotte: And she was great. And so, I brought a copy of the book and she's like, “Yeah - you can use it. It’s a great book.” I think it's again, those risks, I think, to heal.
Melinda: That’s amazing.
Charlotte: I think it's really important. So our Pro Tip for today is to think about whether you have a creative wound or not, large or small. And how does that moment of judgment or exclusion sit within you? And if you could talk to that younger self from the place of the advantage point of time and objectivity and compassion, what would you say to that self? How could you start a new story around your creativity? And since risk is inherent to creativity, maybe we can applaud the risk.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Charlotte: And so it's that where, like, “Oh - you were trying. Look at how much you were trying with the information and skills and ability that you had in that moment.” And that person who said that, or it wasn't recognized in the way that you hoped it could be, that’s when we let it go. Let it go, so that you can come to your creativity with more joy and more sound. Like, we're more sound in our practice.
Melinda: Yeah. So just meeting our past selves with compassion.
Charlotte: That's it. That’s it. Find us and connect with us on YouTube and social media under @syncreate. And we're now on Patreon as well. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Melinda: We're recording today from Record ATX Studios in Austin, with Charlotte joining us from the Hudson Valley. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us, and see you next time.
