Artists for Joy

What scripts are holding you back from creating your own unique path? What would you do if you weren’t so afraid? What parts of yourself have you been ignoring, squashing down, so you can fit in where you are? Are you ready to move forward but unsure of how or where to go? 

This week's episode will meet you right where you are.

Inspired by author Emily P. Freeman, Merideth reflects on what role creativity plays in our discernment process and ways we can shift our mindset to become empowered decision-makers and artists creating the most important thing we make: a life. 

Support us on Patreon

More than 100 new species of sea life found on ocean mountains off Chile

Join The Artist's Joy Creative Cluster 

Pre-order Merideth's book, The Artist's Joy

Pre-order Emily P. Freeman's book "How to Walk Into a Room"

Submit questions for Emily via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org 

Leave your question on our voicemail: 302-415-3407

This week, a coaching exercise we're calling "Rewriting the Unhelpful Story."

1. Take a few moments and fully realize the unhelpful story you’re telling yourself. Write it all down in the third person. What does the rejection mean to her? What is the main character in your story currently letting this rejection mean, or what is he/she/they afraid it means? Spend time writing it out in your journal or speak your thoughts out loud to a safe and helpful friend, therapist, or coach. 

2. Zoom in again and focus on the main character of your story. Write about him/her/them for a second. What is she like? What is her creative potential? What do you like about her? Personify the lead in that story, and write 3 to 5 compassion-filled phrases or truths you want her to know. 

3. Flip to a new page and write a new story. Make the ending good, surprising, outlandish, even fanciful. Be as creative and generous as possible, write a new tale as unbelievable as you can, and fill in all the details you are longing to know. 

Read last week's podcast on Substack

Submit a question or comment to Merideth

via IG

via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org

via phone: 302-415-3407

Support us on Patreon

Leave a review on Apple Podcast

This week on the podcast, Merideth offers three simple (non-judgmental!) steps for taking action when faced with chaos. This episode will help you accept the invitation that life's raw material offers and find more creative joy.

Read our content on Substack

Submit a question or comment to Merideth:

via IG

via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org

Support us on Patreon 

Join the next “The Artist’s Way” Creative Cluster

This week on the podcast, the final word-of-the-year installment (less word, more motto): "Order the Chaos."

What freedom awaits when we stop resisting the chaos of life and instead embrace it as an invitation to creative possibility and joy? 

Merideth explores how this mindset shift is helping her leave guilt and doubt behind and find a more hopeful and gentle way of being in 2024. 

Plus, she'll share stories of 18th-century buildings mended with legos, a deep truth she learned from a 5-year-old, and the tale of one Holy Goose. 

Read our content on Substack

Coaching Questions: 

1. Think of a time when you transitioned or crossed one of life’s thresholds. What was it like for you? Who did you become in the "after"? What gifts were waiting for you on the other side?

2. What creative offerings have you released into the world? And what chaotic trajectory did they take? How did it surprise you?

3. What are you feeling led to give away, to release from your hands, in this season? How can you love yourself well during the vulnerable, sometimes scary process of opening your hands?

Nathalie Duflos Open-handed painting

Submit a question or comment to Merideth:

via IG

via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org

This week on the podcast, the second installment of my words of the year: Open-handed. What are we missing when we hold too tightly to our expectations? What role does letting go play in the creative process and how can we get better at opening our hands and releasing work into the world? Merideth answers a listener's question about how to stay well and inspired on social media and shares a powerful story of an artist seeking joy. 

Episode 2.20: Who do you create for?

Support us on Patreon 

Join the next “The Artist’s Way” Creative Cluster

3 ways to cultivate abundance in your life today:

1. Enjoy what you have. Say out loud what you're grateful for and what delights you.
2. Give more than you get. 
3. Believe in benevolence. Feed Life's algorithm and watch what happens.

Support Artists for Joy on Patreon 

Subscribe to our email list

Where is the line between the power of positivity and foolish denial?

How do we become more comfortable asking for more, hoping for more, believing there’s more?

Merideth lets us in on some of her inner chatter this week as she launches a big project, and she'll answer a listener's question about the spiritual nature of creative blocks. 

Support our new PATREON! 

Join us for the Word of the Year Workshop on January 8th or get the recording

Pre-order The Artist's Joy

Submit your listener question: hello@artistsforjoy.org

This week on the podcast, Merideth helps you choose your word(s) of the year. Grab your journal and earbuds and explore the prompts paired with meditative music to craft an intentional, creative year with joy.

1. Reflect on 2023: looking through your phone at photos of the last year, ask yourself: what do I wish there had been more of? If you had a word(s) of the year, in what ways did you see them reflected in your life? If you didn’t, based on the last twelve months, what words might you have been living by?

2. Now looking forward: Answer this question with a stream-of-consciousness list–This year, regardless of my circumstances, I want to feel… Write as many words as possible about how you want to show up in 2024. 

3. Read your list and circle the words that resonate most. Look especially for verbs or action words. Take the list of circled words and make a fresh list. If anything is missing, add it now.

Sit with this list of words for a few days. Talk to a loved one, therapist, or coach about it. 

What activities, deadlines, trips, and events are coming up in 2024, and which of these word(s) will help you show up as you most want to, regardless of the outcomes or circumstances?

Narrow it down to one (or more) words you’ll live by this year.

Please share yours with me on Instagram on the post for this episode @artistsforjoy so we can cheer you on.

Register for the next Artist's Way Creative Cluster

What if all your feelings were welcome this season? This week on the podcast, Merideth offers a meditation on persistent joy, an invitation to a wholehearted holiday where grief + excitement or sorrow + joy can coexist. She'll share a story of when joy appeared in the most unlikely place and answer a listener's question about maintaining creative routines when everybody's home. Wishing you and yours a joyful holiday, whatever you're carrying. 

Ardie Son's December album

Join the February’s FREE Artist’s Way Creative Cluster

Rate or review us in Apple Podcasts

Buy Merideth a coffee

Podcast transcripts

This week on the podcast Merideth offers 3 ways to thrive this month. "Gigmas," or the holiday creativity vortex that hits freelancers like a polar express, is upon us. Listen for things you can do to keep your head above water during "the most wonderful time of the year." 

This week, Merideth chats with writer Heather Lanier about creating in the cracks, why she writes, and how to become more comfortable with the inherent uncertainty of making a new work of art. 

Heather's bio: 

Heather is a poet, essayist, teacher, speaker, and thrift-store shopper. An assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, she is the author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl (Penguin Press, July 2020), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, along with two award-winning poetry chapbooks, The Story You Tell Yourself, and Heart-Shaped Bed in Hiroshima. She is the recipient of a Vermont Creation Grant and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her full-length poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing, is forthcoming from Monkfish Publishing.

Heather often writes at the intersections of spirituality, motherhood, and feminism. Her essays and poems have been published in The Atlantic, TIME, The Sun, Salon, Brevity, Vela Magazine, Longreads, and elsewhere. Her TED talk, “’Good’ and ‘Bad’ Are Incomplete Stories We Tell Ourselves,” has been viewed three million times and translated into 18 languages. Her essay, “Out There I Have to Smile,” was among the top 10 most-read Longreads essays of 2021.

With an MA in Teaching from Johns Hopkins and an MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State, Heather has taught Shakespeare to ninth graders in Baltimore, conversational English to housewives, ship workers, and executives in Japan, and expository and creative writing to undergraduates at places such as UC Berkeley, Miami University, and Southern Vermont College. After seven years in the Green Mountain State, she is learning to live—and drive—in New Jersey. If you follow her on Twitter or Instagram, she vows never to post a post-workout selfie… although if you do, she’ll cheer you on!

Follow her on Instagram

Subscribe to her substack

This week on the podcast, something we all need to remember: no creative act is wasted. If you find yourself wondering what the point of all the tiny efforts are or if you need a reminder of the long game that is being an artist, this one is for you.

Buy Merideth a coffee

Mental Health Resources

Join our email list

email Merideth a question for the show: hello@artistsforjoy.org

Leave us a voicemail 302-415-3407

This week on the podcast, a Mini-Joys episode all about something that's really helping me recently: an off/on ramp! 

 Listen to learn more, and tell us on Instagram if this worked for you!

 Design your own off/on ramp:

Think of something you’ve been avoiding or dreading, something you've been worried about starting or finishing.

Ask yourself:

• What might future-me need?

• Is there a task, activity, or decision that will help to do or make before or after?

• How do you want to feel?

Make space and set boundaries to give yourself what you need.

Buy Merideth a coffee

Join our email list 

It's hard to podcast when you have no voice! This week in lieu of Ariel from The Little Mermaid (post- encounter with Ursula), you're getting a throwback… one of Merideth's favorite episodes from Season 1. How can letting go be a creative act? What is it in you that only letting go can reveal?

Original show notes (updated):

This week, Merideth explores the the art of letting go. Is it beautiful or just plain painful?  She’ll share her thoughts on how it can be an expected part of the creative process and even a road to healing.

Learn more about artist Emie Hughes: https://bit.ly/3kFUkcx

Blue Jar Studio Instagram: https://bit.ly/3jOqGkp

Pyxis Piano Quartet: https://www.pyxispianotrio.com/

Submit a creative conundrum here: https://bit.ly/3kFNMLf

In today's episode, a loving-kindness meditation to some music by Franz Schubert.

As you listen to each selection, repeat the mantras: 

"May I be well." 

"May you be well." 

"May all manner of things be well." 

Pre-order Merideth’s book, The Artist’s Joy

Buy Merideth a coffee

Email your question to be read on the air: hello@artistsforjoy.org

This week on the show, Merideth answers a question we all tend to ask when the world is on fire. How can I feel creative joy in the face of violence, injustice, and brokenness? She explores why art matters in these moments, especially, and how our creativity offers us a place to process the pain and turn our anxiety into energy that can make a difference. The late famous conductor, Leonard Bernstein, answers the age-old question, “How can we go on?” and we learn about two fantastic non-profits using creativity to change the world.

Peace Drums Project

Little Sun

Pre-order Merideth’s book, The Artist’s Joy

Buy Merideth a coffee

Email your question to be read on the air: hello@artistsforjoy.org

Photo cred: Littlesun.org 

1. When have I felt the most inspired? Remember a time when you couldn’t wait to sit down and make something? What transpired that brought this frenzy of creativity on? What activities or actions inspire you most?
2. What is a way to embed more inspiration into your daily creative life? Where is there white space for inspiration to strike? If you don’t see any room, can you work to create larger margins for yourself so that inspiration can find you?
3. And lastly, what creative endeavor or project is just for you right now? Take out your calendar and find an hour to get out the watercolors or dust off the guitar or take out the novel you were writing.