In this ad hoc episode, KimBoo and Melody hold down the fort while Gina is dealing with some unplanned traveling up north (well, “north” for Florida, which in this case means her homeland of North Carolina). Circumstances being what they are, we go into a deep dive on grief, trauma, stress, and (you guessed it!) creativity. We talk about ways of being compassionate to ourselves while also being true to our creative nature. When Melody tells you “be like a wolf!” it might surprise you what she actually means by it!

We cover heavy topics but our goal is always to do so in a way that brings enlightenment to your creative journey. Thanks for joining us!

Resources

We talk about the original run of the Seasons of Writing, which cover episodes four through seventeen. You can either scroll through our backlist, or do a search for “Seasons of Writing” to pull up those episodes.

• Five Seasons of the Writing Process – Overview
• Soul of the Seasons book by Melody A Scout

Ep. 24: When it’s All Just So Much

KimBoo York
0:00
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo. I just wanted to give you a heads up that Melody and I talk about some heavy issues in this episode, including grief, pet loss, chronic health issues, long COVID, and climate change. While our goal is to help you stay connected to creativity while dealing with traumatic events, we wanted to let you know what’s in store so you can be emotionally ready for it. With that said, here’s the episode.

Dave Hogan, Gina’s Pop
0:27
Welcome to Around the Writer’s Table, a podcast focusing on the crossroads of creativity, craft, and conscious living for writers of all ages and backgrounds. Your hosts are Gina, Melody, and KimBoo, three close friends and women of a certain age, who bring to the table their eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives on the trials, tribulations, and the joys of writing. So pull up a chair and get comfortable here around the writer’s table.

KimBoo
1:09
Hey, y’all, welcome back. It’s KimBoo. And you are listening to Episode 24 of Around the Writer’s Table. And this is a special episode because today we’re missing one of the three musketeers. You’ve only got KimBoo and Melody here today, and Gina is on the road. She’s had some family issues. She’s been traveling around. She went up to North Carolina. If you follow her on Facebook, you’ve seen some of the beautiful pictures she’s posted up there. So we’re gonna hold down the fort while she’s dealing with all of that. 

And today’s gonna be a little off-topic for us. We usually plan these episodes out a long time ahead of time, based on the topics we want to talk about and The Creativity Quest that we’ve been going over and seasons of writing from Melody’s book Soul of the Seasons, focusing on plant healing medicine, plant medicine healing, I always get that wrong, Melody. I’m so sorry.

Melody, A Scout
2:04
It’s okay. That is close enough.

KimBoo
2:07
But today, because we don’t have Gina here, we’re going a little bit off-script. And what Melody and I were talking about before we started recording was the sense of overwhelm that a lot of us are experiencing these days. We both happen to know a lot of friends and family who are dealing with health crises, whether it’s their own or that of a loved one. There’s been so much pet death, surprise pet death, through a lot of my friends that are dealing with that. And of course, my dog Keely is getting old, so facing her mortality is very worrisome for me. And not to mention climate change. We’ve got the heat going on. Right now, today, it’s not too bad here in Tallahassee. We’re recording this on July 27. But the temperature is gonna go up next week again, and we’re going to be having some wild, wild heat-index temperatures, wild and dangerous wet-bulb temperatures. So it’s going to be something that we’re not looking forward to, I assure you, but that quails in comparison to the fires on roads and the hot waters off the coast of Florida, killing all the coral reefs out there. And the fires going on up in Canada and

Melody
3:18
That we, that we have seen the smoke from all the way down here in Florida.

KimBoo
3:23
Yes, yes. I was out with my friend Kim, also Kim, the other day, and she was like, yeah, I was like, “You smell that?” and we smelled it. And she’s like, “That. That has to be local.” It was not local, friends. It was literally the fire smoke coming down from Canada, draping across the U.S. and affecting the weather in all sorts of ways. So that’s the litany, the depressing litany of things that’s going on.

Melody
3:45
Oh, that’s the tip of the iceberg. Trust me.

KimBoo
3:50
Yeah. I know, I know. I have been keeping up with the climate change issues as well. And it’s just the Antarctic ice. It’s winter down there in the southern hemisphere. And the Antarctic ice is still melting. So that’s not good, friends. We’ve got some things going on. 

But I don’t want to get us into the depths of that kind of reporting. What I’m trying to focus on is the fact that as creators, as writers, we’re all dealing with an immense amount of trauma. And one of my favorite sayings that I ever heard was that you can’t be post-traumatic stress syndrome if the trauma is not yet post. If you’re in the midst of it, it’s current traumatic stress syndrome. And I think a lot of us are feeling that, in a lot of ways. And what Melody and I were talking about, is the idea of how do we manage that, as creatives? How do we deal with the grief of losing loved ones, or seeing loved ones, people we care about lose their mobility, their mental functions? COVID is still ongoing. Long COVID has stolen so many lives and we’re just looking around, and we’re seeing all of that. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

And if you don’t know me, I’m KimBoo York. I am a professional author and former project manager that works in productivity and coaching, productivity coaching. Let me say that correctly. I do a lot of different things. I’ve got a lot of newsletters going on and publishing some stories, so a lot of hands in the fire. And I will let Melody get a word in edgewise here. After that long introduction. So Melody, who are you? Why are you here?

Melody
5:35
Oh, god. Okay. My name is Melody, A scout, and I love all things plants. I’ve been called the plant whisperer before. I took a course, a two-year training, in plant spirit medicine out of which birthed my book Soul of the Seasons. And it’s based on Five Element medicine, which is all about the seasons and cycles of life, how they differ, how they work together, what it looks like when you’re balanced, and what it looks like when you’re not. And everything in life has a season and cycles around, so we have been applying this template to the writing process. And if you go back and look at our past podcasts, you’ll see podcasts in depth on all five seasons. So it is a rich, rich source of wisdom for me, and I love when I can apply it or bring it in or help me cope with, adjust, avoid meltdowns, whatever.

KimBoo
7:00
Avoid meltdowns. There we go. That’s the topic for today.

Melody
7:03
Yes.

KimBoo
7:06
I was excited when I thought of this topic and was thinking about what we’re going to cover for this. I was actually kind of, I’m not say excited as probably, but I was interested because grief is so strong. And there’s so much grief around the trauma that’s going on, but there’s also the grief and the anger wrapped up in the idea that: This isn’t happening to me. Why can’t I write? This isn’t something that I have control over. Why can’t I just put it aside and write? 

And I know you’ve dealt with these kinds of traumas with your clients and through the healing of the medicine that you use and that you have access to. So I was really excited to hear some of your insights into: what’s really going on while we’re dealing with all of this?

Melody
7:51
Well, first of all, as my beloved plant spirit medicine teacher used to say, “Everything has to do with everything.”

KimBoo
8:00
That narrowed it down. But you’re right. Yeah. So it’s like COVID has to do with, you know, us as a population of species. And climate change has to do with all of the species, so that’s true.

Melody
8:16
Yeah. And what happens with some of these major issues, how they’re being handled, and how we approach and interact with them, tells us a lot about where both our balances and imbalances are on any particular subject. And as sensitive creatures, sentient beings that we are, as are all beings on the planet, we feel this. As I get older and do more introspection and work on myself, I find myself becoming less and less tolerant of accepting bullshit. So, which means is I feel things more deeply. And I used to have this complaint to Elliot, “What’s going on? I’m just crying over, you know, TV commercials and the least little thing.” All this emotion was coming up and he said, “What makes you think there’s something wrong?” 

KimBoo
Ooh, oh yeah.

Melody
We are meant to feel deeply. We are meant to recognize that this isn’t the Earth, it’s our Earth. It’s Mother Earth, and we’re all in community. All the people you love, all the people you do not love are all part of your community. And however, balance is the core at the very heart of Five Element medicine. So if you are feeling overwhelmed by your emotions, and you are not able to do the things you want to do, you love to do, like writing or your art, then that’s a signal that there’s some kind of imbalance. 

And KimBoo and I were talking a little while ago about how that imbalance occurs. And for me, one of the ways it occurs is when I inundate myself with too much information. And it is a kind of an addictive cycle. You want to be informed, you want to be in the know, you want to know how to prepare. And so I keep ingesting more and more data, more information. And just, I wrote about this in my book is, I love lemon meringue pie. But if I eat more than one piece, I am not doing well. So I cannot have a steady diet of lemon meringue pie, no matter how much I love it. So I have to be aware of how I get into my state of overwhelm. 

What do you think, KimBoo, is it for you? How do you land in that state of overwhelm?

KimBoo
11:32
When you were talking a little bit earlier about getting older and being more introspective, and you, the retrospective perspective, right? Looking back at how I dealt with things, and for a long time, I made a joke about, you know, I turtle. I just withdraw a lot. And lately, I’ve realized—and when I say lately, I actually mean over the past four years of going into the political situation here in the U.S. and then COVID hitting us and the pandemic lockdown going on for so long, and then COVID still being around and, and just all of these types of things—I do fall into the habit of trying— It’s interesting, cuz I fall into this habit of— 

You’ve got me thinking, Melody. So hold on, let me track this thought. I pull away from the things that require energy but are enriching. And I dive into the things that I can do passively but that are overwhelmingly negative. And, we were talking earlier about the early start of the pandemic and the lockdown where I couldn’t barely focus on anything because I was so busy trying to keep up with all the data and the numbers and how many people are sick and who’s reporting and who’s not reporting and what the politics were. And masking, does masking work, does masking not work, like what all these things were. And it was a very passive way to feel like I had control over the situation, but in doing that, it took me away from the things that I actually do have control over, which is my own mental mind, my own activities, my writing. I did not write almost at all for the first year and a half of the pandemic because I was so busy being scatterbrained about everything else.

Melody
13:32
You were in survival mode as we all were.

KimBoo
13:37
Yeah, but you know what? I feel guilty about that. I feel guilty about that. I feel guilty that I wasn’t able to… you read about all these people: Oh, yeah, I wrote four novels. Yeah. Ryan Sanderson wrote four novels during lockdown or whatever. And why can’t I do that?

Melody
13:48
God bless him. God bless him. You are not him. We all manage stress and threats of survival, which, quite frankly, you can’t cut it up or dice it any other way. The pandemic was all about our survival. And we all went into interesting and creative ways. We have our favorite ways. We have historical ways that we manage stress and the threat of survival. So you did what your very basic self does, or has been taught to do on how to manage that. It’s too much. I cannot deal with a global pandemic. But I can manage binge-watching Netflix to soothe myself or computer games or whatever.

KimBoo
14:52
Yeah, like the first two years of the pandemic, I probably read more fanfiction in those years than I had in the 10 years previous. That was my escape from everything really. And because the brain doesn’t stop. It still wants something. It still needs something. And so when we were talking about this issue, that’s why I wanted to come back around to it because you’re dealing with these kinds of traumas, what can we do as creatives that won’t make us feel more guilty? Like, hey, that’s where I’m stuck.

Melody
15:28
Well, feeling guilty is a whole other Dr. Phil that we can talk about some time. 

KimBoo
Oh, no.

Melody
That is another reflexive reaction to patterns that were created long ago. So you can take a look at that, and like, oh yeah, why am I feel guilty? Because like everyone else during the pandemic, you coped in ways that were familiar and to a degree effective to you. And I do that, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If I need to self soothe by going and playing my Wordle game for four hours and take the day to do that, I don’t give myself shit about that anymore. I used to, like, I could be productive. I could be doing this. I could be doing that. Yeah, I could be giving my brain of fucking break, because it’s just been overloaded with more than any reasonable person can manage. And we do need a break. And then, however, as I have done my own inner work, I’ve realized, okay, a steady diet of computer games or whatever, it’s not healthy for me in the long run.

KimBoo
16:57
Well, I think it comes from that bridging point, which where, it’s coping bridging over to addiction. Yeah. You know, I’m of the school that believes addiction is trying to fill an empty space, trying to fill an empty space of, of need, or whatever, love or whatever you don’t have. But, that’s the thing that really worries me about situations like that. I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older at identifying them, but oftentimes these days, I’ll pull out of a funk, a two-day funk and realize, oh, yeah. There’s coping and then there’s aggressive avoidance.

Melody
17:43
Well, but that tells you that’s a clue. If you look at everything that happens in your world as a clue, then that’s a clue at the depths of the issue you have been trying to manage. 

KimBoo
18:03
Hmm, what season is, really, are we? Because I understand that they’re all connected and there’s different elements of it. But when you;re talking about this kind of shared trauma, grief thing going on, can we look to the seasons as you’ve explained them in your book as a way of dealing and working through and getting back to your creativity?

Melody
18:23
Absolutely. So whatever your response is, if you turtle and go inside, that’s an aspect of winter, where we withdraw. We go in, we need a rest. We take a, you know, our brain takes a day off. Our body takes a day off. And it’s also connected. That’s a season of fear. And that’s a pretty natural response to fear, is going within. If you respond with anger, irritation, rage, all of that, then you need to look at the season of spring, which is about expansive new growth, but it’s also about boundary issues and injustice issues. And we were talking about this earlier, if you have a lot of anger about what’s going on, it is a clue to you that you have not been able to resolve the issue in a way that feels effective. It hasn’t brought resolution within you and that is really, was a big aha for me when I learned about that because so many of these issues are, you know, they’re global in scale. What can you…? 

KimBoo
19:47
Yeah, I was joking earlier, you know, I can’t go throw ice cubes in the ocean off the coast of Florida. That’s not going to cool the sea.

Melody
19:57
Right. And anger requires… actually, that’s an interesting analogy, it actually might help you personally, if you threw ice and to disperse, you know, hurl those ice cubes. Because it requires a physical response. So you need to do something to release it in a physical way. So exercise, dancing.

KimBoo
20:28
Throwing ice cubes. 

Melody
20:30
Yep, throwing ice cubes. Absolutely. Whatever feels right to you. If you go back into our previous podcasts, you’ll be able to see what our balance states in each of the seasons. And I would draw on those balance states, as we listed, we’ve also done in our workbook sheets, have listed balanced and unbalanced states for each of the seasons. And I would say, go through and look at those and start feeding yourself some of those balanced states, activities, ideas, if you’re getting stuck. You may, some people decide, well, let’s stress. I may need to work harder, I may need to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. So we have included too much fire, too much productivity as a way to manage because that takes us out of our current state. And we can focus on something that feels productive. 

KimBoo
21:36
So what you’re saying, what I’m hearing, is like the world is unbalanced. People are unbalanced. Health issues, climate issues, that’s all imbalance. We can’t balance the world. We can do our part to try to make what’s coming easier for ourselves and others, but the real key is to balance ourselves, because that’s the only way we’re going to, that’s what I’m hearing is the balance has to be internal. We have to have that balance. 

Melody
22:03
Yes, absolutely. Because that’s always where it begins. But I would say that we can balance the world through balancing ourselves. Because just as we were talking about this earlier, too, when you have the mind—that, as my teacher used to say, everything has to do with everything—and you can see that, oh, it’s not just a little bit of coral off the coast of Florida, or if it’s not that just little endangered frog, that is just part of an entire ecosystem that affects the entire world, when your mind knows that. It goes to that and understands that. That also can contribute to the overwhelm. 

But conversely, our actions are our endeavors to bring ourselves and our environment and our communities back into action, also spreads on the same way. One affects all. So our small actions do make a difference. You never know who’s watching and listening to our efforts to bring ourselves back into balance and take that on, whether they ever say anything to you or not about it. So it can make a difference. If each person helped a turtle out of the road, that makes a big difference to an ecosystem and entire region. We saw this in… I was watching a documentary about how they introduced the wolves back into Yellowstone and how that—

KimBoo
23:45
Yeah, I love that story. If our readers aren’t familiar with it, go ahead and recap what happened because I think a lot of people don’t, never heard of that before. 

Melody
23:53
Yeah, because, as seen as predators, we want to do the black and white, good guys, bad guys thing and wolves are seen as bad guys. And they were just hunted nearly to extinction. And there became an effort—I don’t know all the factual details of it—but there was an effort to bring wolves back into Yellowstone. And they did and it started with very few of them. I think there were maybe a dozen or more. And their population grew to, I don’t know, I think it was like 1500 over right now. But that, when the wolves came in, the other animals started to behave differently, and they moved around. They went to higher elevations. They did, changed their patterns. And that changed the whole environment, improving it in Yellowstone, just by bringing the wolves back in and made it healthier. 

The same thing was done with beavers introduced back into some small area, I think it was, I want to say, it was California, in the desert areas. They came in on these little streams, built up their dams and created a whole lush ecosystem in the desert that’s now green and filled with life, just by reintroducing one animal back into the environment

KimBoo
25:27
Truly profound.

Melody
25:28
It is. It is. And I love those analogies, because they give me hope. And that’s the way I bring myself back into balance is focusing on those things that do make a difference, that have shown change. And, it always warms my heart, and it warms my heart as well to read stories about people who faced adversity or a trauma or some tragic experience. And they said, this happened to me, but I don’t want it to happen to anyone else. So they just started out very simply and talking to their neighbors and friends, and soon it became a movement and powerful and worldwide in a lot of situations.

KimBoo
26:23
I think, too, sometimes we get, because we are humans and sentient, self-aware, we get a little caught up in the philosophies and the theories and the history, but as you were talking, I was thinking we need to be the wolves. We just need to allow ourselves to be a part of our ecosystem, and do the things that we’re supposed to do. And then the ecosystem will improve around us. The wolves didn’t move into Yellowstone saying, I’m going to change the flow of the river and green spaces up, make greener pastures up higher on the mountains. That was not the goal. It wasn’t a goal of the people who reintroduced them either. But that’s what ended up happening.

Melody
27:06
And they did that by the wolves just being the wolves.

KimBoo
Just being the wolves, just being there and doing their thing. Yeah. 

Melody
Being themselves. And how critical that is to creating stability and calm not only in our own world. You know this for a fact, when you come into an environment where there’s a lot of hostility, anger, you know, you feel that. Maybe you even, you know, brings you into that. But when you have a calm one, that also resonates through us. And there are times for anger, there’s times for rage, there are times for all the emotions, whether we think of them as negative or not. I prefer to call them just emotions, because they all serve a purpose. Fear serves a purpose. It keeps us healthy, it keeps us alive. It keeps us aware and alert to making healthy decisions that are good and safe for us. 

So when I turn myself away from the drama-trauma on a daily basis, which is hard because it is addictive. It releases chemicals in your brain.

KimBoo
They design it to be addictive. Specifically meant to be addictive.

Melody
Absolutely. You got typically 24 hours of doom at your fingertips, and it has changed our culture and our mindset in our country. That 24-hour nonstop. It has made people more anxious and fearful, less optimistic. And honestly, the number one way to manage that is just cut it out, or minimize it. Trust me, if something big goes on, you’re gonna hear about it.

KimBoo
29:07
I always used to joke with friends, because we live in Florida, I used to live further south, used to live in the Orlando area, and people would be tracking the hurricanes and watching the hurricane tracker, and I would not because I’ve lived here since 1983. And they were just like, “Well, don’t you care where it’s gonna go?” And I’m like, “Look, if an evacuation order comes in, I will find out. They will be knocking on my door telling me to leave home. I’m just not going to worry about anything. I cannot control where the hurricane is gonna hit. I just need to do what I need to do in the meantime.” 

Prep for it. Have water on hand, whatever. Get ready to roll if you need to. The possibility exists. Don’t be unprepared. But for me, it was just like there’s pointless to just read the hurricane updates every five minutes. And now that I’m remembering that, I’m like, you know, I need to bring that energy to my daily life now, because there’s, I need to be the wolf. I need to just be the creature in the world, doing what I need to do, helping the environment in the ways that I can, and helping my friends and my family in the ways that I can. And the way to fight that helplessness is to simply be present in the moment and not sit there and read the hurricane updates every five minutes, because I can’t control those things. And the helplessness is really hard. In my grief cycle, when my parents died, the helplessness is really what overwhelmed me, and I’m working really hard not to fall into that. But it’s an old habit.

Melody
30:38
It’s a perfectly natural response. Grief and losing both parents in a fairly short period of time. That’s a huge amount of trauma to deal with in process, and you can tell from your experience, I know it for mine, sometimes you cannot manage that much and you have to get up and go on with life. And you have to put that on the back burner. And then later in life, it shows up for you to manage and deal with and in process it. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. In fact, that is a perfectly normal and, actually, it’s your mind and your body protecting you from being completely overwhelmed to where you cannot function at all. 

KimBoo
Hmm. 

Melody
So if we start reframing what’s going on with us in our actions and responses to it, I think that’s another way of dealing with the overwhelm. And I feel, for me, one of the ways that I helped manage it is, we all know, I’m a big nature freak. So I love to go out into nature or connect with nature on a very personal, physical way. I love hiking, I love canoeing, I love swimming, I love tree hugging. Can’t tell you the benefits of tree hugging. To be able to discharge that, and I’m taking off this weekend for that very reason. I’ve been working, working, working. I just need downtime. I cannot produce anything creatively when I’m overwhelmed, because creativity requires a state of vulnerability. And if we are in trauma mode, if we are in survival mode, that is not a safe place. That is not a time to be vulnerable. That’s a time to be a wolf. Right?

KimBoo
32:58
You know, you just lit a light bulb on me for that, that creativity requires vulnerability. I knew that. Trauma response is the opposite of vulnerability. It is shutting yourself down like a clam closing its, shelled, and boop, nope, not taking any more in, I’m not going to deal, I’m not going to be vulnerable in any way. And it’s the first time I’ve really made the connection between those two facts, right. I know those two facts independently. But when you said that, I was like, Oh, that’s why I couldn’t write during the first year and a half of the pandemic. My clamshell was closed. Like, yeah, like no. Nothing getting in, nothing other than the, you know, just like the doors are closed. Nobody’s home. And that was my trauma response. And so, I think, that just that answers a lot of personal questions for me about why my creativity felt so stoppered at that point, because I didn’t have, I could not access the vulnerability I needed to be able to feel what my characters are feeling. Because stories involve dramatic traumas sometimes, and even if it’s just a light hearted genre, romance novel, you’ve still got heartbreak and anger, right? So like, there’s vulnerability as a writer that needs to be there that I was not able to access. 

I think what I would like, because we’ve been talking about this for a while, and we could do it for another two hours, but as we come up on the 30 minute mark, what I would like for you to address, you’re, between us, you’re the healer, and I would like to say, what would you, what advice would you give to authors, writers, any form of creative artists, fine artists, who are feeling this tug, this back and forth pull of the trauma response shutting you down, so you’re not vulnerable, but the need to be vulnerable in order to produce your art? And how can an artist or a writer, wherever they fall in that range, deal with that in a productive way? And by productive I don’t mean output. I mean internally productive, making your life better, so you can create what you want to create.

Melody
35:05
Absolutely. As I recommended before, go back and look at each of the seasons and look at those, some of those balanced examples. Listen to the podcasts, because we talk about that. 

And so if anger is your jam for everything, go in and see, feed yourself some area of your life that you can create healthy boundaries and structure. And see how that feels when you do that. If you’re becoming a workaholic or you’re just go, go go, burning the candle at both ends, then in the season of Summer, bring in something to smooth that, like time with community and friends, some shared laughter, asking for help from your community, and see how that feels. If you move, if you feel insecure, the season of harvest is all about security and abundance, if you feel that’s lacking. Try to bring in those things that make you feel abundant. Maybe it’s a luxurious meal. Maybe it’s shared experience with family. Maybe it’s recognizing the abundance of the Earth and what she gives us. 

In Fall, the emotion is grief. If you feel the overwhelm of the loss, try to remember what’s valuable and precious to you. Try to honor that thing that you feel you have lost or are losing in some way. Maybe even create a little ritual around that. 

And then in the season of Winter, we talked about this earlier, this is a season where fear. It’s about going within. It’s a season of rest. Do you need to take time off? Do you need downtime? Do you need quiet? And do you need to give yourself the time and space for those creative sparks to start bubbling up again. 

And as you go through those, you will begin to see which one feeds you the most, which one brings you back into balance. I mean, they’re all designed, we need to draw on all of them to help support us as we move through life. But I think most of us will find, Oh yeah, that thing. I need to go have a day with my girlfriends and just laugh our assess off or whatever it is for you. I need to go hang with my grandkids and just revel in their beauty and how much I love them. Whatever it is, you will start to know. 

And in those ways, we can start to feed ourselves to bring ourselves back into balance. Because the thing is, the thing to remember, a couple things I want to just fill in before we go, one is as Elliott used to say, “The Earth can take and will take care of herself.” 

KimBoo
Hmm, yeah, that’s true. 

Melody
We might not fare as well, if we keep going in the direction that we’re going. And that was a comfort to me because I felt a lot of grief over the desecration and damage being done to the Earth. And I thought, Oh, that’s right. Wwe may poison ourselves into non-existence or whatever, through our actions, but the Earth and relatively quickly can recover. 

And the other thing, if I can remember it, because now my mind just went away is, I think to not give ourselves too much crap over what we have done. Or maybe what we would consider ineffective means of bringing ourselves or taking care of ourselves. The more important thing to remember in that situation is that you recognize that and then you should make a change. Not that you’ve done it, but you’re growing and that you recognize it and that you make a change. And as you continue to do that you will start to recognize it earlier on. So I won’t need to go into a six-month slump where I shut everyone and everything out. I’ll do I’ll do a couple of days and then I’ll go Oh, yeah, look at you do that. You could do something differently.

KimBoo
40:03
We can be taught. 

Melody
40:07
It’s shocking, but true.

KimBoo
40:08
I know, right? If we try hard enough. If we try hard enough. That’s all excellent advice. I think my takeaway for me personally is, when you were talking about the seasons, what resonated was that I need quiet. And by quiet, I don’t mean sound. I mean, quiet from the news, quiet from the ongoing trauma. Not shutting myself off from the world necessarily, but allowing my brain to take a rest from everything that’s going on. And that means not going on Reddit every 15 minutes to check on the climate change, not going on Facebook every 20 minutes to check in on all the latest grief issues. And just as we’re recording this, we just lost Sinead O’connor yesterday on July 26, and it’s absolutely wrecked me and most of my cohorts, Gen X’rs for whom she was an icon. And so, it’s good to acknowledge that loss. And it’s good to acknowledge who she was and everything like that, just as we have to acknowledge climate change and what’s going on. 

But for me, personally, I think it’s time for me to get a little quiet in my life. Allow my vulnerability, allow the clamshell to creep open a little bit louder, allow things to flow through and move on and feel some tranquility, because I’m just feeling very, very on edge about everything. So I think that’s the one that resonated for me anyway. What about you. You’re going back to nature, right? You said, going out to the beach. You’re going, not the hot beach, which is down south, but you’re to the Gulf Coast beach, which is a little bit better off at this point.

Melody
41:50
Exactly, I was thinking as you were talking that downtime is my creative, my creative self. When I’m too busy, that part of me gets pushed aside or pushed down. And so I need expanses of time. It’s sort of like the creativity is a little being and it’s kind of shy. And she’s got a sense of humor, but she’s not to be manhandled. She needs time and space to know it’s come out to do that, to play, that it’s okay. It’s nothing weird, whatever she wants to do. So that time and space is good, I’m enjoying some of that. 

I need the interaction with friends, which I’m going to get also this weekend. Going to see some of my friends. And I also need beauty. Beauty is one of the most healing things I can do for myself. I need to be around beauty, whether it’s beauty of nature, or art, or the beauty of people in general. I just need to, that’s very soothing, enriching for me.

KimBoo
43:13
That’s awesome. That’s gonna be great. Yeah, what an amazing conversation we have. I know Gina is probably going to end up listening to this. Do, Gina, wish you were here, like an exciting conversation as far as some of the topics we’ve covered. We understand why you can’t be. Our next podcast, we should be back on track with the three of us going on. We might do some more ad hoc podcasts like this in between our regularly scheduled ones. Gina and I have talked a little bit about doing one on the subscription model that both of us are working on for our writing. So maybe you’ll get some extra episodes in there, folks. So that would be exciting, at least for us. I don’t know about you. 

But that’s it. That’s all we’ve got this week. I will include in the resources, links to the older episodes where we talk about the seasons on our website, because that’s where you can find the downloads and the worksheets that Melody has been talking about, within the page for, on our website for this episode. I don’t think we’re going to have any specific downloads. I might do a repost. I know what I’ll do. I’ll repost the overview of the seasons, seasons of writing, so people if they don’t want to go look at the older episodes, they can at least look at that. 

I highly encourage everybody listening to go by Melody’s book, too. It’s not a Dan Brown novel, okay, people. You’re not going to sit down and read the thing front to back. It’s got so much information in it, when you’re lost, when you’re looking for some answers. I have my own faith practice, but this is a great supplement to that because it really has, it’s almost like an encyclopedia of emotions and thoughts, and working with healing and nature. So that’s Soul of the Seasons. There is a link on our website, the links to that. Definitely go buy it. I highly recommend it. And I think that’s all I’ve got. That’s it for me. Melody, you got anything to sign off with?

Melody
45:06
I just encourage people also to go on our website, please leave comments or questions for us or anything we’ve talked about that’s benefited you. We would love to hear from you.

KimBoo
45:18
Absolutely true. We’ve got a little contact form right there. I know it works, because we sometimes get spam, but we’d rather hear from actual listeners. So please go to our form on our website and give us some contact. If you’re listening to this on Apple podcast or Spotify, bive us a Like, give us a thumbs up. Share it with your friends. We’d really love to increase our reach with people because we’re here to help. So anyway, we’re going long so we better wrap it up. Thank you so much listeners for joining us. This is KimBoo signing off.

Melody
45:49
Bye.

Dave
45:55
Thanks for joining us around the writer’s table. Please feel free to suggest a topic or a guest by emailing info@aroundthewriterstable.com. Music provided with gracious permission by Langtry. A link to their music is on our homepage at AroundTheWritersTable.com. Everyone here around the writer’s table wishes you joy in your writing and everyday grace in your living. Take care, until next time.

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Around the Writer's Table and its co-hosts, Gina Hogan Edwards, Melody, A Scout, and Kimboo York own the copyright to all content and transcripts of the Around the Writer's Table podcast, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity. ​​You ​are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words) in media articles​, such as ​​The New York Times, ​Miami Herald, etc.; in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., ​​Medium); and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. No one is authorized to use the Around the Writer's Table logo, or any portion of the transcripts or other content in and of the podcast to promote themselves.