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 98: Creative Spark Series - Creativity and Humor
.In this episode of our Creative Spark series, we discuss the connections between humor, creativity, and health, specifically how we can use our creativity to find humor in difficult situations, including end-of-life medical situations. Melinda and Charlotte share their own experiences of medical challenges and sitting with dying parents who maintained their sense of humor to the end. 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 to think about a difficult situation and see if you can find any humor in it. This is a great practice for seeing challenges through a different, and perhaps more creative lens.
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 49: Creativity in Challenging Times, Episode 82: Healing the Creative Wound, and Episode 84: From Surviving to Thriving.
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 media - 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: 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, including our monthly Creativity Coaching group. 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 everyone to the Syncreate podcast, where we like to talk about so many things, with creativity at the heart. And this is one of our Creative Spark episodes so, it's short and sweet and just full of so much richness.
Melinda: Yes.
Charlotte: And today's topic, I think, is… I think it's fascinating because we wanted to talk about health, humor and creativity. Right. Kind of that combo. And I mean, as you have been known to say, we are all creative, and I believe this to be true. And kind of what we want to talk about today is highlighting how our creativity is such an essential part of our self-care. And a tool and the toolkit when you're going through medical challenges. So, we're going to reveal some down and dirty stories today.
Melinda: Alright. Let's get to it. (Laughter)
Charlotte: So, as Melinda knows, I'm dealing with something right now, heart related. I’m not quite sure what's going on. And it kind of sucks because I have less energy, and my get up and go has gone up and went, without me. And so, one, it makes me really grateful for all the times I feel well. So, thinking about that. And then, you said to me recently, “Do you think it's because you're stressed?” And I was like, “My heart is beating too slow for me to be stressed.” (Laughter) It’s not even an option.
Melinda: I can’t rev up to stress. (Laughter)
Charlotte: I can't rev up to stress. Or, maybe there's a lesson here. Like, maybe I just need to be more chill, more of the time, you know?
Melinda: Yeah.
Charlotte: I got a ton of stories here, but I know that you have a good one too, about this. And, the role of levity…
Melinda: Of levity, even at the end of life. So, I may have mentioned this story in an earlier episode, but… oh, I just lost an earring. It just went flying. Oh, well, there we go. It’s fine. I'll just carry on. (Laughter) So, my mom passed away on November 1st of last year after, you know, she had some chronic health problems including kidney failure. And she was, you know, basically ready to go. And we had talked about it. Thankfully, my mom was very open about her wishes, and she was not afraid of death. And she was a retired physician. So, you know, I went over to see her when she was kind of, I guess, in retrospect, beginning her dying process. It was about five days or so before she actually passed.
But she was starting to have these, like, really intense tremors, and she had some tremors already, but this was like, intense shaking that she could not control. And (laughter), you know, just being her daughter and having grown up with her and always asking her medical related questions (because she knew a lot of answers to them), I was like, “What’s happening right now?” Like, almost as a doctor, “Is this part of your, you know, like, kidney failure or what‘s happening?” And she goes, “I don't know. I've never died before.” (Laughter) Which was like, kind of shocking and hilarious at the same time, you know. And so my mom, you know. So her personality.
Charlotte: And so true, right?
Melinda: And so true. Right. Least not in this lifetime. You know.
Charlotte: Least not in this lifetime. Did you both laugh?
Melinda: Yeah. I mean, there was laughter and tears that night. That was like, our sort of moment of closure. You know?
Charlotte: I think it's making me think about, you know, just the role of creativity when we cycle out of this life, and that role… and maybe that's a whole other topic… it makes me think about, you know, my dad died of kidney failure, too. As a secondary cause of colon cancer. And he'd had a colostomy bag for quite a few years. And this was about four weeks before he died. And I wanted to know his experience. Not in, like, a “Oh, like, I wanna get gross details…”, but, like, “I want to offer you the space to talk about your experiences.” Because I don't think we give those spaces enough. And part of that has to be like, our comfort level with our own mortality.
Melinda: And our bodily functions.
Charlotte: Right. Exactly. (Laughter) Things we don't talk about. And I mean, helping my dad, I was very informed by Zen Hospice and, you know, being mindful and present with someone. And so, he had a colostomy bag, and my dad was a very working-class man. And I was thinking about his experiences, and I just said, “Dad, do you ever miss taking a shit?” (Laughter) And he said, “Thank God somebody asked me.” (Laughter) And then we talked about it, you know.
Melinda: Right. One of the great pleasures of life, right?
Charlotte: It’s like power, sense of control and relief. Like, all these things he was grieving but he didn't necessarily have a space. And I think it's my creativity and also bluntness that I learned from him.
Melinda: Totally.
Charlotte: And also thinking about audience. Like, he's not… I don't think my father ever said ‘bowel movement’ in his life.
Melinda: Right. Right.
Charlotte: So, like, what are the terms that he would use? And meeting people where they are. I think that's also part of the creative process. So, it was hilarious and I'm so glad that I asked. I mean, he'd had that bag for two years, and no one had asked him what that experience was like.
Melinda: Right. It makes me think about just, I feel like my sister and I evolved from a young age, this gallows humor just to cope with life. And, you know, some things that most people probably would not find funny at all, we were able to find humor in our situation, you know… whatever it was. Just little quips or sarcasm, or just, like, seeing the humor in the absurdity in certain situations growing up. You know, it helps you get through.
Charlotte: It helps you get through. It totally does. And so, that's making me think of another story with my mom when she was in the hospital last year, and there was a certain doctor that had made a lot of mistakes in her case, and her situation. And I advocated for him to reconsider some stuff. And his last name began with an F, and he had a full name, but a lot of people call him just Doctor F. And my mom is very religious and very upstanding, (laughter), and she’s like, “Well, when that doctor F will let me out of here…” (Laughter) Just, I think that the way that humor allows us to access our creativity in really hard situations and give us a little bit of room to expand into. I love that. I love it. And having humor is a way to kind of disarm difficult situations.
Melinda: Yeah. For sure.
Charlotte: And create connection between people in a really hard time.
Melinda: Yeah. And then of course, there's also like - this just came up for me last night because, in our charged political time - you know, sometimes things that we think are funny might not be funny to everyone. And like, how do we navigate that? And I was having a text exchange with my friend Anne last night, and I was like, “I'm having trouble keeping all the balls in the air.”
And she's like, “You got big balls.” (Laughter) And I'm like, “I got big balls, and I cannot lie…” You know. (Laughter) And I actually posted that on TikTok just because I thought it was hilarious, with like, an instrumental version of that song from back in the day. And then I thought, “Is that wrong?” Like, I don't know. I thought it was funny. Anyway.
Charlotte: Who knows? You know, it's all about context. (Laughter)
Melinda: Exactly.
Charlotte: And also then see how it does on TikTok.
Melinda: Yeah. Right. What does the wider world think? Yeah. So…
Charlotte: So, our Pro Tip for today is to think about a difficult situation and see if you can find any humor in it. And maybe it's - what if the roles were reversed? Or what if you had to mime what you needed to say? Or, you know, like, how do you… can you look at the situation, the difficult situation, through another lens? Which is a creative thing. You're asking yourself to toggle into a different viewpoint and see if there is any humor in that situation. And, I will venture to say that sometimes looking for the humor can also help us find the gratitude.
Even in really, really difficult situations. It’s kind of when we're in our experience and we're locked into our own suffering (which is legit and real), is if there's a little bit of facility with space with humor, then we might be able to say, “Oh”… Like, in my case, “I have access to health care right now.” I don't have a lot of answers yet, and I've dealt with a lot of bureaucratic frustration, but I have access to health care, and that kind of lights me up a little bit. So, there.
Melinda: There we go. There we have it.
Charlotte: There we go. Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media @syncreate. And we're now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Melinda: And again, we'd love to hear from you. So, drop us a line anytime at info@syncreate.org. We'd love to hear your feedback, if you tried some of our Creative Sparks out and you want to let us know how it went, or have ideas for potential topics or guests you'd like us to cover.
We're recording today at 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, here in Austin. Thanks so much for being with us. And see you next time.
