69. Creating in Chaos

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.—What are you paying attention to? That's the question at the heart of today's episode. My thought-partner in this conversation is Marina Gross-Hoy, PhD, a storyteller and Museum Studies scholar whose work invites people to cultivate new relationships with the experience of being alive.Episode HighlightsHow studying abroad in Italy sparked Marina's love of art history and launched a personal and professional inquiry into paying attentionWays slow looking (spending longer with something than you usually would) shifts us from "I know what this is" to "I don't know everything," revealing what you didn't see beforeUnderstanding how art historians approach visual analysis, and how we can bring those techniques to our daily lifeAttention not as something to "add on" (because we're already doing it!) but to notice where you're directing itThe necessity of micro-moments of awe in daily life to receive care, connect us to something larger, and soften rigid thinkingNoticing as a tool to support your mental health on hard days, reclaiming meaning, and rewriting the stories of our your own life How practicing attention can give tangible form to something intangible, and that can be a whole experience Attention redistributes authority by finding your own interpretation rather than looking a way a curator thinks you shouldThe subversive act of letting something be without rushing to fix it or share it—and what shifts in us when we slow down enough to truly be present and resist the urge to immediately share something online3 invitations to practice noticing Meet MarinaMarina Gross-Hoy, PhD, is a storyteller and Museum Studies scholar whose work invites people to cultivate new relationships with the experience of being alive. She is the founder of the Laboratoire d’attentions, a research-creation initiative centered on experimenting with alternative approaches to inhabiting and understanding attention. Her newsletter, The Museum Gaze, explores what looking at artwork can teach us about seeing the art of our ordinary lives. Originally from Michigan, Marina holds degrees in muséologie from the École du Louvre (MA) and the Université du Québec à Montréal (PhD). She takes playing in museums very seriously.Links + MentionsPaying Attention to the In-BetweensThe Museum Gaze (Substack newsletter)A guide to slow looking from the Tate museumJessi Rado's The Museum of Healing AttentionEkphrasis poetryCezane's Still Life with Apples and PeachesStay Connected🌱 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.—Finding time to write is one of the biggest challenges for writers, but what if we're thinking about our relationship to time all wrong? Spiritual Director Charlotte Donlon is here to help us reframe time, freedom, and rest, offering new perspectives to support our writing practice.Episode HighlightsSpiritual direction as a framework to ask good questions, cultivate belonging, and create pathways into creative mysteryHow recognizing that "everything in life is the writing life" helps us stop seeing other responsibilities as competitors and reframes them as support beamsWhy naming yourself as a writer is the doorway to finding more time to writeReframing time from something to battle against to something fertile with possibility—and how 15-minute writing sessions keep you connected to your workWriting as a basic need and why ignoring our writing practice is a way of ignoring ourselvesViewing the passage of time as accumulation rather than depletionCharlotte's a-ha moment in the midst of a grieving period that led to a radical perspective shift and a new narrative about what it meant to be a writerUnraveling productivity stories around rest and practicing self-compassion when faced with loss of all sizesInterrogating the stories and rules you've absorbed about what it means to be a writer helps you reclaim agency over your time and energyWhy she doesn't write every day (and doesn't believe in writer's block)Trusting the magic and mystery that permeates the creative process Meet CharlotteCharlotte Donlon is a writer, spiritual director, creativity coach, and faculty member for Alma College MFA’s spiritual writing pathway. Her books include The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (Broadleaf, 2020) and Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life (Here Below, 2026). She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.Links + MentionsSpiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing LifeSpiritual Direction for Creative Souls (Substack)Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia HersheyStay Connected🌱 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here."Seasonality isn’t just a feature of Japanese culture; it’s an inextricable keystone of life in this country.”One of the foundational principles of Japanese culture is kisetsukan, the sense of being present with each season as it happens. In this rich conversation, Alexis Agliano Sanborn shares insights from her new book, Moments in Bloom, and guides us through the layers of the Japanese seasonal calendar so you can develop your own practice.Episode HighlightsHow an early fascination with manga and anime grew into deep study and teaching abroad in JapanWays the Japanese practice of kisetsukan (presence with each season) offers an architecture for deepening your own awarenessSeasonality as a counterforce to our urgent, always-on cultureMoving from a technical understanding of the 24 Japanese seasons to noticing what's abundant right now in your own place and timeThe joy in hunting for and discovering what defines each season where you live Seasons aren't just about nature—they're the rhythms and rituals woven through your own everyday lifeHow noticing the impermanence of all things builds resilience and supports your wellbeingFinding unexpected support and grounding in seasonal awareness, especially during life's most challenging momentsThe evolution of hosting a podcast to writing a book with a co-authorLinks + MentionsMoments in Bloom: Japanese Seasonal LivingFoundational Japanese literature: The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, and Manyôshû and Kokinshû poetry collectionsSeason by Season podcastMeet AlexisAlexis Agliano Sanborn is an independent researcher, nature enthusiast, and award-winning artist. She is an inventive storyteller who enjoys working across media. Among other creative projects, she directed the award-winning documentary short Nourishing Japan (2020), which explores the impact of food education and the school lunch system on Japanese communities. Alexis co-hosted and produced Season by Season, a monthly podcast that celebrates our connection to nature through sound and story.She received her bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from UC Santa Barbara, a master’s in regional studies of East Asia from Harvard University, and a master’s in public administration from New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. In her free time, she enjoys gardening and painting. Alexis lives with her husband and their two cats in the Northeast.Stay Connected🌱 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here."Like seeing the sky, writing allows you to breathe. You ascend the stairs leading to your own thoughts and words the way water runs downstream, always searching for the larger substance from which you came." In Jenna Brack's Pass-Through Place, she explores landscape, home, and the invitations available to us wherever we're planted. Jenna grew up in Kansas, but this expansive conversation encourages you to consider your own relationship to place.Episode HighlightsThe ache of belonging to two places at onceDefining home through a shifting lens of time and experienceHow distance reveals what we couldn't see up close, and what announces itself only after we've leftGrief as a doorway into understanding ourselves and our writing more deeplyHome as emotional and spiritual territory, not just physical locationWriting Kansas with nuance rather than clichéThe value of learning to wait and let our work settle while working within our limits and capacityJournaling prompts inspired by Pass-Through PlaceMeet JennaJenna Brack is the author of Pass-Through Place (Meadowlark Press, 2026), a collection of essays shaped by growing up in central Kansas. Her essays and poetry have been featured in Every Day Poems, Coffee + Crumbs, Fathom, The Sunlight Press, and others. A former educator and college instructor, Jenna now encourages other writers through editing and coaching. She holds an MA in English from Kansas State University and currently lives with her family in Germany. Links + MentionsPass-Through Place by Jenna BrackWisdom from a Wheat Farmer (Substack)Exhale Creativity writing community for mothers and artistsWyatt Townley, former poet laureate of KansasStay Connected🌱 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.Writing in the margins—a philosophy that has guided me for two decades—was born out of constraint. I'd just finished graduate school, started working full-time, and came home too tired to write. But what I learned during that transition has guided me ever since. In a special anniversary episode, we're reflecting on 20 years of writing in the margins.Episode HighlightsThe origin story of my "writing in the margins" philosophyCombining the method and mindset to support your creative practiceWhy 10 minutes matters more than you thinkFrom writing on walks and in the kitchen, how Wallace Stevens and Emily Bronte found time to writeTinkering, staring at the wall, stretching, and other essential approaches to writingWhat I wish I knew when I started working full-time5 takeaways from 20 years of writing in the marginsLinks + MentionsMaking Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life by Mason CurreyThis Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life by Deborah LutzThe myth of 9-5 writingStay Connected🍂 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.My 2026 word of the year was ease, but the universe had other plans. After a summer break, we're back with lessons learned, the movie I can't wait to watch, and a conversation about the different kinds of liminal space we encounter.Episode HighlightsReflections from 2026's summer of white spaceAn easy way to know if something is right for youHow I'm staying afloat through lots of uncertaintyUnderstanding focus months vs. meandering monthsWhy we get more ideas when we spend time offlineGentle strategies for writing through liminal space and low-capacity timesLinks & MentionsEpisode 49: Seasonal Reflection RitualsEpisode 63: Refining Our Raw Material with Allison Mei LiStay Connected🍂 Free Seasonal Workbook: Download THRESHOLDS and begin wherever you are 🎙️ Slow Writing Newsletter: Exploring creativity, seasonal living, and the writing life 📚 Curl up with one of my books

In the early 1950s, Anne Morrow Lindbergh—writer, pilot, mother of five, and wife to aviator Charles Lindbergh—spent two weeks alone in a small cottage on Florida’s Captiva Island. During this trip she collected shells, cooked simple meals, and wrote about the trappings of modernity and the search for simplicity. Although this was before cell phones, the internet, and social media, her insights are just as relevant today.Episode HighlightsWhat Anne Morrow Lindbergh considers to be the true enemy of creativityHow distraction “pulls one off center,” and ways to remedy this shiftGentle ways to reduce the noise in your lifeWhat it means to ‘create a container’ around your writing, and ideas for summer (or any season)Simplification as an intentional, inside jobInvitation vs. optimization+ Go to the show notes for links and resources mentioned in the episode+ Sign up for my encouraging newsletter+ Curl up with one of my books: WILD WORDS and EAT THIS POEM

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay “put away the call of her soul” to become a scientist, earning a PhD. in biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology. But after two decades as a science writer, feeling grateful for her career wasn’t enough. Her debut novel, Chitra Demands to Go Home, was drafted in the car during her youngest kid’s tennis practice, and Raj proceeded to encounter the sheer vulnerability of fiction where you can’t hide behind rules, facts, or data. Episode HighlightsUnique ways science storytelling prepared Raj for fictionMoments of generosity that led to writing (and finishing) her novelWhat happened when she accidentally showed up to an open mic night with nothing to readFirst draft strategies: writing in the car and using a distraction-free typewriterNavigating a story through ambiguityHow an ordinary conversation with her mom planted the seed of her novel ideaWriting the realistic yet mythological mother/son relationship in Bengali cultureThe surprising reaction from her LinkedIn community after announcing her bookThe vulnerability of publication after a lifetime of meeting external expectationsLinks + Mentions⁠Chitra Demands to Go Home⁠, out from Modern Artist Press⁠Freewrite travel typewriter⁠Let’s ConnectSign up for my encouraging newsletterCurl up with one of my books: WILD WORDS and EAT THIS POEM

For Part 3 of our cycle series, I’m in conversation with Vanessa Novissimo Wright, a creative communications strategist, writer, and certified life coach for midlife creatives. Before she was fully tapped into her midlife joy and authenticity, Vanessa had a pretty rough perimenopause experience. She generously shares the low points in her journey, which led her to develop a self-care method that keeps her connected to herself and her creative well. If you’re struggling to make sense of this life stage and in need of some wisdom from someone who’s been through it, you don’t want to miss this one.Episode HighlightsHow her perimenopause symptoms forced her into deep relationship with herselfThe daily practice of surrender The FLOW method that keeps her groundedVanessa’s “self-care-bag” and how she made her car a creative cocoon when her kids were youngHow a “planting seeds” approach to pave the way for embracing creativity in menopauseEssential practices when you’re experiencing fatigue, brain fog, and can’t string sentences togetherThe creative permission slips she’s giving to midlife folks she coachesReleasing perfectionism around journalingThe necessity of fun, whimsy, and joy on the journeyMeet VanessaVanessa Novissimo Wright is a creative communications strategist, writer, and certified life coach for midlife creatives. She helps them navigate menopause with creativity and joy so they can show up vibrantly for their community. Using her FLOW self-care method, Vanessa guides clients to embrace this age and stage of life with clarity, creativity, and curiosity. Follow her on Instagram and Substack.+ Go to the show notes for links and resources mentioned in the episode+ Sign up for my encouraging newsletter+ Curl up with one of my books: WILD WORDS and EAT THIS POEM

Perimenopause, over a period of many years, is a radical recalibration of brain and body. As Lisa Mosconi writes in her book THE MENOPAUSE BRAIN, “it’s not just brain energy that changes during menopause but that the brain’s structure, regional connectivity, and overall chemistry are also impacted.” We feel these changes physically, mentally, spiritually, and also creatively. This episode explores the tangible ways perimenopause symptoms require us to reimagine our writing life, and practical suggestions for navigating the sometimes choppy waters. Episode HighlightsPhysical, mental, and spiritual symptoms of perimenopauseReframing this transition as a creative rebirthThe moment Roxane Gay understood writer’s block as a menopause symptom and not a moral failure. Honest reflections from my own perimenopause journeyLearning to move at the pace of fluctuating energy levels 3 perimenopause and menopause books to read+ Go to the show notes for links and resources mentioned in the episode+ Sign up for my encouraging newsletter+ Curl up with one of my books: WILD WORDS and EAT THIS POEM