Your Transformation Station - 9. Angie Rooker Beginnings of Transformation Arc w/ Favazza

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself? Join Greg Favazza as he interviews Angie and discusses the psychology of character fulfillment and why the power of choice is the really essential component in a transformation arc. Support the showPODCAST INFO:Podcast website: https://ytspod.comApple Podcasts: https://ytspod.com/appleSpotify: https://ytspod.com/spotifyRSS: https://ytspod.com/rssYouTube: https://ytspod.com/youtubeSUPPORT & CONNECT:- Check out the sponsors below, it's the best way to support this podcast- Outgrow: https://www.ytspod.com/outgrow- Quillbot Flow: https://ytspod.com/quilbot - LearnWorlds: https://ytspod.com/learnworlds- Facebook: https://ytspod.com/facebook- Instagram: https://ytspod.com/instagram- TikTok: https://ytspod.com/tiktok- Twitter: https://ytspod.com/x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to your transformation station. Socrates once wrote, The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. It's time to rediscover your true identity and purpose on this planet. Together, we can transform our community one topic at a time. From groundbreaking performers, making their elixir your dose of reality. your transformation arc.

This is your transformation station. And this is your host, Greg Favaza. Greg Favaza, welcome back. This is your transformation station. This is a special treat today. Together we can discover a true identity, our purpose on this planet. Together we can transform our community,

just one topic at a time, from groundbreaking performers, making their elixir a dose of our reality, your transformational art. Start living the exact, example today by becoming your future self tomorrow. On your transformation station, now let's get to the show. Angie, welcome to your transformation station. Pretty good. So let's jump right into this, your literacy pilgrimage within your writing process.

I love why you just like throw these really dense concepts at me to consider very important answers. I feel like I have to a top hat or something and give you a really important answer to that pilgrimage. I never find this at fine. No, I like, I like that. the word because, you know, that's kind of the heart of the series is that each of these characters are on their own pilgrimage to find themselves. And for me, in my journey to find my creative voice, most of it was more of reclaiming things that I had abandoned for a while. I think that we're exploring our creativity in early stages and we share those things with other people. The vulnerability of those shares can either make or break us, right? And for me, it was the latter.

I had some criticism from a lot of different people that I was very private about my creative work. I started writing poems. That was my early connection to voice. Poetry, I had tons of journals. I just journaled all the time and that was kind of my safe space. I didn't have a whole lot of friends. And the friends that I did have, I did not share my work with. I was very shy about it, very protective. I think for a good reason, after, you know, experiencing moments where I decided to take a step out and trust others with what I had created, there was some repercussions. One of the classes that I took in high school was a creative writing class. My work, my poetry was critiqued in a way where it was not encouraged.

And I think that that can actually happen very often. Yes. It's dangerous for youth who are, I feel like the teachers have to just kind of take a little bit of common sense into these experiences with these kiddos. Because if they are expecting world-round poets to just emerge, I mean, sometimes that happens. but for the most part, it's not going to. I think that if teachers were to approach those moments with tenderness versus it should be this or it should be that and cutting things apart, that would help foster that relationship for the person who's trying to develop that skill within themselves, you know,

because for me, I took those things and I used it against myself and I was like, I'm never going to share this. I don't want to write again. Like, it's not important. And you just go in this spiral. For me, what I found in writing, and this is also a part of my, journey back to myself and that pilgrimage back to myself was, this is all healing for me. A little bit about my past and I'm not going to go into a lot of details because I understand the importance of

when you talk about any aspect of trauma, it can be triggering and I don't want to go there. That's not the important part. The important part is that pretty much my entire formative years, there were flavored with shame. And so when I finally got to a place where I learned how to express myself through poetry in writing. That was my lifeboat. What was dangerous in that time was finding the right people to trust, find that healthy support circle that are there to encourage you and offer loving critique, feedback that are, it's valuable. It's important to not just live in an echo chamber of your own making, but to have people who are supportive and offer you things that you can consider in a loving way versus just tearing things apart and really discouraging you from

trying again. Can we backtrack when you mentioned that creative writing process, as you were younger, did you experience that? And did you think you were like everybody else that wasn't going to become the person that you are today? I'm shooting for business management 20 years from now or something of that nature. I don't think I was ever aiming for business management at all. I will choose interpretive dance over that any day for sure. And I'm not that creative but interpretive dancer. But that would be my preference. What's interesting, and this is actually something that I had to kind of grow and learn about myself too in terms of kind of evolved when I was working with youth. So over the last 14 or so years on and off working with youth in an advocacy

role and having these conversations about leadership development and having these conversations about encouraging our voice and having these conversations about believing in ourselves and making long-term plans. And I'll speak from my own perspective. When I was living in a state of trauma reaction, high school, I was pretty much running away. and not wanting to face anything and just kind of utilizing substances and alcohol in order to just kind of numb everything out. So there was no part of me that was like, I'm trying to make a 10-year plan of what this looks like. I had no motivations to like excel in school, to even participate in school. I mean, there was a lot of truancy going on back then.

I just wanted to check out, unfortunately. That was my mindset back then. And I think that I did not have, even think that I had the vocabulary to define those boundaries for myself even. I couldn't even see that that's what I was doing until like years out and looking back and having a bit of sobriety under my belt, like not being able to really see those things because like I said, I was so focused on one foot in front of the other, just run away from the past and just don't look back for the most part. So when I was able to get to a place where I could start to look backward and gain wisdom and insight about those choices and the way that I was living and my behavior and my reactions, taking ownership of those things and then turning those into opportunities where I could grow.

and make new decisions and new choices, at that point, I was able to offer that in those conversations with the youth that I was working with, because they were probably in the same mentality of, hey, man, I'm just trying to, you know, some of them being heads of household in some situations, some of these kids that I was working with, and it's, you know, really sad that that was the case, but it's not a priority. Looking at a five-year plan was in a priority, like graduating Magna Cum Laude was not a priority for me, you know, like going to college. I think the circle that I ran with, if we were all talking about how all of the artists and musicians just died early and they were just like one up in a blaze like Jim, you know, Jim Morrison and Jimmy Hendricks and Janice Joplin, you know, and that was what that circle was like aspiring to become and it was really sad.

Like looking back, it was really sad that that was something that we expected of ourselves that we weren't going to make it past 25. Like, that's just heartbreaking. It's interesting. The thing also is that none of us had a way of articulating that storm that was within us. So, you know, just a lot of us are just kind of running away for own reasons in our own ways. Do you think that's based off your social upbringing, maybe with your parents? Well, I mean, the 90s was all about latchkey. You know what I mean?

Like it's kind of funny because right now it's like, yay, the millennials are, you know, getting, they know how to do this thing because they raise themselves and it's laughable, but it's kind of true, you know. As a parent now, I have a six-year-old looking back in the way. And I've, you know, I've amended a lot of this stuff with my own. parents. So we've had these conversations and this isn't something that's still like an open raw thing for us. But, you know, talking about the different ways of how to parent and how being cognizant of presence, not as in gifts. Like, I'm going to give you lots of presents. I'm trying to like being available, emotionally available, psychologically available,

even when it's difficult to just learn how to be open and vulnerable and listen and have conversations, I don't think that the generation before me knew how to do that. And I definitely know that the generation before them didn't know how to do that. You know, it was all, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and sweep it under the rug and don't air out your dirty laundry and, you know, women should be seen, not hurt. Like, there was all of these ways of living that have eventually shifted. And I feel that as an adult, and I've seen this also with, you know, friends that are parents as well is we're approaching it differently. And it's, it's like, appalling to consider, you know, that we were running around smoking cigarettes in eighth grade and, like,

to think that of our kids is like terrifying, right? So because of those things, at least from what I've seen, and like I said, I try to really frame everything from my own perspective because I can't speak for anybody else, right? I see those things as definitely important learning tools, is what not to do and what not to offer. I have ways of navigating through the world with my daughter, having conversations about boundaries,

about telling me how she feels and feeling safe about that. Those were not conversations that happened when I was a kid. as a cultural, I think that that's starting to evolve and that more people are engaging in that approach because some people will lean in the direction of like, we're all just snowflakes by doing that. But I think sensitivity is important. Vulnerability is important. And to shut that out is cutting out our humanness. That's what we are. I love the philosophy to embrace the past in a way where we can learn from it and we can share it with others so that they could possibly learn from it, but not in like a force feeding kind of a way. Like you're going to do this or else.

Like this take from it what you can learn from your own perspective understand it your way right exactly with your writing do you have like a certain time frame you focus on when you go into your writing in your teenage years your young adult years can we talk about that when i'm capturing like the voice for the characters that's a good question a lot of the characters are they're primarily adolescent and which is kind of it's a play on things too because i'm dealing with fairies which an adolescent fairy is like 82 in human years so there's a little bit of play with like math and having to do the calculations of like if a dragon is you know eight years makes one year of a solar year so i kind of interpret it that way in terms of um lunar time or solar time for them and that's how they kind of calculate their aging process which it can be a bit of a rabbit hole i will i will go there but i've tried to frame it one of the books is going to be kind of an interesting i don't want to give everything away about it but it's a character who in a lot of the other books have been portrayed as an adult, flashbacking and revisiting her adolescence and the choices that she made and how those things have formed who she is today and how that has impacted

her. And so it's kind of like this step backward into those pivotal points in her life. And so she's able to really utilize those. Those are going to be really important in what she's going to offer other people in the storyline as to what they can do to step into their own power, into their own gifts. Kind of going back to you're asking about. the pillar of a midgetia back to self and their journey and what age range I'm kind of focusing on in voice in these characters It's difficult also to revisit that time you know for me in the middle school and high school I was bullied a lot and that's one of the themes actually in dragon is bullying and learning how to stand up for yourself Finding the courage how to do that how to let other people in when you're hurt when all you want to do is just push everyone away

Those are some key themes throughout the book and character arcs you know like for her dragon there's a lot of transfer information goes to her in a sense of she starts out one way, kind of really disconnected and unsure of herself. And by the end of the first book, she's got a stronger sense of what that looks like. And today thinking about how do I explain these characters and their relationships and why these things are important, one of the secondary characters, his name is Kieran, and he acts as part of the group that teases her at school. And he goes through his own kind of character arc, but it's more of growth. So what's interesting about those two, the dynamic between the two of them is that without dragon stepping into her own transformation, he would not be changing. So like his growth is dependent upon what she does

to step into her own power. And, and it's just, it really reflects on the importance of like how what we do and say affects other people, it makes an impact and it ripples out. And so I was kind of thinking about that today. It was like, it's interesting. It's like, I write the work and these things bubble up and in the deeper meetings kind of surface. And I just, A codependent relationship? Can you go into that between the two? A little bit. So when they meet, to explain dragon, dragon is, she's a dragon, obviously, and she was raised

by gnomes, where one of the factors that her name, dragon in of itself, is one of the elements that her peers tease her about, because they feel like, why would anybody, it's like, I would call myself human. And, you know, like, it's just kind of an odd thing. It's awkward. There's conflict about that, about where she fits in, because in her, adoptive family of gnomes, they're very loving, they're very welcoming. The entire community of gnomes are just happy go lucky. They're very cheerful, inviting. There's a whole sense of camaraderie

and community with them. And with dragons, they're kind of more independent, closed off. They're more defensive, you know, so it's a whole culture clash. She doesn't even know what she's stepping into when she's getting to know her peers for the first time. Dragon was adopted when she was just an egg. She was raised by gnomes. She knows how to be affectionate. She knows how, you know, to be loving and inviting. And those are some of her characteristics that she cherishes about herself. And when she's taking that into relationship with dragons who are not of that, you know, of that fabric in their, in their personality, for, you know, for the most part, there are huge clashes. And it creates a lot of tension and she starts to doubt herself.

And the dynamic with Kieran and Dragon was when she gets to her new school where she's interacting with dragons for the first time, he's the first one that she sees. And so it's almost like an imprinting kind of a thing that goes on, but without going into a whole lot of more detail. But it's like if you meet someone and you feel like they're kindred, first dragon of my kind to ever like cross my path. And so there's going to be excitement and there's going to be, you know, like the thrill of meeting someone for the, you feel like you might belong with group wise, like fitting in. But what happens is it's the complete opposite. And he ends up being part of a group that teases her. And so there's just this clash of like, how do I feel about this? You know, like, I want to be a part of this group of dragons, but they're terrible to me.

Like, what, it goes into, yeah, it goes into elements of like, what do we do to do to ourselves? Like, what aspects of ourselves do we cut away or try to cut away in order to fit in? That was the element of my personal voice at that age that I had to revisit and figure out a way to tell in a way that wasn't just going to be so upsetting for me. I couldn't get it on the page for the first part, you know, for. Can we zoom out a little bit? Is there a story behind the title? Enchanted Secret Guard. I can't tell you that.

That comes later. That's one of the secret. as to why the land is named that. But loosely hint at there are multiple realms that the characters explore. And that's all I'm going to say. What were your early influences on your writing, not any authors, books that really inspired you to begin this journey? That's actually a really good question.

It's like, what are the books that have transformed me and really impacted my lens? because I've, you know, I've loved reading ever since I can remember. Stranger in a Strangeland, I read that right before graduating high school, beginning stages of sobriety. And that was like, mind-blowing. Robert E. Heinle, he's phenomenal. And his approach is toward, like, ESP and paranormal is fantastic. It's very, it's amazing.

The stranger in a strange land is a phenomenal book. And then there's also the fountain head, the fountain head, um, way to, I remember reading that and the main theme of this altruism truly exists in this world or are we all just doing things for selfish reasons. And then another, let's see another book, The Alchemist, was important and that is all about journey back to yourself. I think those three main ones were really important in my early 20s. It influenced me in ways that I'm still trying to understand. I studied a lot of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. My father is a union therapist and about psychosperuality, all that stuff.

It's just my jam. It's Greek mythology and learning Latin also in high school for a couple of years. I was just enthralled by it and I don't know why. So these little things that kind of that have tugged at me that I am really excited and passionate about have found them their way into the story. How do you resonate with your readers and world building in fantasy and in science fiction? I think most, if not all of the advantage. trans-streeters who are my, you know, my circle of support for the most part, I've gotten the feedback pretty frequently that that's something that they really thoroughly enjoy is getting

lost in the world that I've created through these characters. And to just kind of escape into a world where it's magical and it's wondrous, not only that, but creating characters that are believable to... White dragons, though. When I, like, initially started this whole book, it was intended to be a memoir and that memoir was built up of pieces of my experience and my past and in journal entries and poetry and mixed media artwork were common themes of like I said, you know, kind of the mythology and these archetypes started kind of jumping out when I, you know, taking a step back and looking at everything. And so for Dragon, the mythology and the archetype, you know,

considering what I was world building with that specific book. He was geared towards how, you know, how our pain can impact us and how we can go in two different directions. We can either take the pain inward and then lash out at others out of reaction, or we can take the pain inward and learn from it and grow from it and find a way to rise above it. So, you know, that's true. That's true to my journey, you know, in terms of past pain, past trauma. You can sit there and use all the excuses in our world as I can be mad at my understanding of a higher power or I can be mad at people because people suck,

or I can be mad at the world because it's a terrible place, and just be fueled by that. And I know a lot of, you know, I've seen a lot of people. I've worked with a lot of youth that are fueled by anger. And it's poison. For me, it was poison. And I had to find a way to transform it and to transmutate it so that it wasn't going to make me bitter for the rest of my life.

I didn't want to live that way. So that's kind of the main lesson for the first book is how to not keep yourself guarded because of being hurt in the past and how to learn and how to be who you are despite adversity, despite what other people tell you, you know, that you are, you are or you are not. Just kind of finding your authenticity in all of that and sticking to it. Why is the unconscious mind a writer's best friend? The unconscious mind. I think that the things that we absorb from the world around us, from what other people

teach us and what other people offer us as advice or critique or whatever that looks like. It can be barriers to the work that wants to emerge within us. I lean too much on what other people are saying about what my work can or cannot be. I will shut myself off at the source. Like I won't just sit down at the laptop and allow it to come through me. And that's the relationship that I have with it is I'm just a vessel. This thing is just working through me and I have to be a willing, not a willing victim but it's you know like a willing participant in this relationship like that's I signed up for something I didn't realize what I was getting myself into at the time it was like oh I just want to write this thing and then it just has exploded into um these things that kind of come through me and it's

not all at once it's not like I'm going to sit down at the laptop and the inspiration is just going to work through me and it's going to come out I'll be able to put down like a thousand words in an hour it doesn't work like that for me at all. Some days, if I set the intention, and that's the importance for me, is having a daily practice and having a daily intention of going to the page and creating something, whether that's editing, whether that's researching, whether that's adding more content, expanding, going backward, reflecting, you know, just listening to the words on, that's one of my tools that I use for editing is I will use the speak aloud tool in Word. to listen to the story. So I go back and I listen to what I've written. And it has to sound

like someone's reading a really fairly good. I can hear, you know, I can hear the gaps and I can hear in terms of what needs to be changed or altered or if there's dialogue that doesn't quite work very well. I can hear it a lot better than if I'm just reading it and writing it. So I'm pretty well-rounded in the way that I engage this stuff. Like it's, it's not definitely not a hobby. It's a way of life. And maintaining that, I have to continually show up to the page and do something to move forward one day at a time. What was the hardest scene to actually write? What was the easiest?

The fact that this is all pretty loosely based on my own experiences with bullying, having to revisit those moments in my life. Like there's a scene where dragons kind of cooped up in a bathroom and she's kind of spinning out in a lot of shame and self-pity. So having to kind of revisit those places in my own experience as, you know, a preteen or teenager, it's not fun to go back there and be like, this is how I felt. And this is, like, that's not a great territory to explore. But in order to capture it in a realistic way, there were, there were two things that where I kept in mind when I did this. It was not just, I'm writing

the story because I want to sell books. Like, it was all starting, it all started out as, I want to write this because I want to heal this stuff that's in me that I don't know how to heal. And writing has always been a balm for me. It's always been something that I can turn to when words escape me in other in other forms so very therapeutic yes absolutely um so for me it was it was I wanted to revisit these things with intention it wasn't just I'm going to extract these things and then market it and capitalize on it like that wasn't my goal at all in any of this it was I want to tend to the things that feel a little you know still tender and broken and move forward a little stronger by learning from these things.

One of the, one of the, you were asking about a difficult scene, any of the dialogue, basically, where Dragon is trying to figure out her feelings and her disillusionment with her peers and her disillusion with herself. And like that self-alilination, it's really, really, really tough to explore that, that ground. So I had to do that very, like, in small dosages. So I had to kind of do scenes and then go back to it and then move forward. And so it was a bit of a tango at times in order to get a chapter done, depending on what was going on. Because I had to personally internally work through this stuff as it was coming up too.

So it wasn't just a story I was capturing and putting on the page. It was me looking back and re-feeling some things that I didn't, that I had maybe pushed aside or had just kind of, you know, in my entire high school years, I was numbing out to avoid this stuff. And so if I'm going back and intentionally trying to not refuel it because I want to. want to dwell in it or anything, but it was like, these things can be teachers, especially in, in a world where we don't know how to engage vulnerability and we don't know how to engage talking about this kind of real stuff. For me, it's important to reach back and find those nuggets and find that truth and kind of gold pan your way through the silt. And then just kind of move forward and do the best you can with what you've gained. Can I ask you why you think by embracing

vulnerability, is there a way we can learn as a society to start embracing vulnerability as their own philosophy? And do we see positive effects from that or negative effects? All of the above. The tricky thing with vulnerability is the only way you learn it is if you practice it. And when you practice it, you're probably going to practice it with people who don't know how to be vulnerable. And that in itself is terrifying. So it's a bit of trial and error. And unfortunately, you kind of have to learn discernment. Like for me, me, I have to know who the safe people are that I can go to to express certain aspects of myself with. I have to know who the unsafe people are. And unfortunately, the only way to do that is

through trial and error. I think the delicate thing in those experiences is that depending on how you internalize those reactions or responses to those attempts at being vulnerable is you can either find all the reasons to just hole up and be a hermit and, you know, shut yourself off from the because you're like, forget it. Like, it's not worth it. What's the point of that? You know, what's the point of being vulnerable when people are just going to be terrible to you? I mean, unfortunately, we have a lot of things to draw from in media and the news regarding

people who are being abused or murdered or harmed in some way because of difference, because of that's a whole other soapbox. But for the most part, it can be dangerous depending on what you're trying to express within yourself. And I know that it gets a little, even more. sensitive and even more tricky when it comes to, you know, learning and exploring aspects of gender or like gender identity or sexuality or, you know, race, religion, spirituality, any of those things. Those are very influential aspects of who we are and exploring those things in safe ways doesn't always happen. I mean, in fact, it's probably the complete opposite where

more harm can occur in the world because people are being who they are. And it's, it's It's so sad because, you know, working with youth and having these tough conversations about with my six-year-old, too, like why do people hate X, Y, or Z? Or, you know, fill in the blank. There's a lot of reasons why oppression occurs in all sorts of different groups of people. But having those conversations with kids and having to teach them that, you know, like, I have to teach my daughter. You can't say hi to people. And she just can't understand that. Like, well, I don't want to say, I'm trying to make friends. I'm like, well, unfortunately, you being a little girl, I hate to burst your six-year-old bubble, but not everybody is kind and not everybody is generous

and not everybody is there to see your best intentions. Like there are people that can harm you, that can kidnap you. And it breaks my heart to have to have those conversations, but that's the reality. And to do that in a way where you're also trying to maintain that innocence and that joy that she has in her heart. It's like, I don't want to shut that off, but we still got to have those conversation about boundaries. it's difficult. I think as long as we are trying, because you ask, how do we do this? Like, how do we evolve? How do we move towards embracing vulnerability? People just have to be willing to show up and try. And to not let the experiences that hurt us define, you know, like, this is going to be black and white. It's going to be either this or not. Like, I'm going to either be vulnerable one time and it's going to work or I'm just forget it. I'm never doing it again. It can't be that extreme. There's got to be tiny moments where we're willing to be. just kind of take a step out and try again. For me, I had to do that with my writing. I had to reclaim those things for myself. I had to go from a place of never sharing anything that I've ever

written for 10 years to I'm publishing the book. And that's scare the poop out of me. You know, like, I'm so not kidding. Because it was like being so guarded about these things that I cherish and the threat of other people tearing it apart, even though that hasn't been the case in this situation, there are people that they put their work out there and it just gets pummeled and it's heartbreaking. But I've seen that happen more cases than not where creative work just gets destroyed right when it's being offered, you know, in a very delicate embryonic state. And it's so bad because people self-reflect their own past onto people and they take it out on them when somebody has something really great to offer. Right. I mean, yeah, you, what you just said was very important. It's the

tapes that other people are playing in their own responses to when other people are being vulnerable, if they don't know how to be vulnerable, or if in their moments they tried being vulnerable and they were shut down and they've learned to be hard and callous as a result, as a defense mechanism, when someone approaches them and they have not moved forward from a place of callousness and then trying to move towards growing and learning from that, they're going to repeat the tape. They're going to repeat the message that it's not okay, that it's not safe, that you need to change, that you need to alter. And it's contagious, unfortunately. Can I ask you how you moved past your own internal dialogue? Like I said, the book took me 10 years to write. Time, dedication. I've been,

you know, very firmly dedicated to not letting these things dictate my path, using them in a way were instead of asking why me, I ask, what can I do with this frequently? Not everybody approaches life that way. And not every day can I approach life that way. I feel that the majority of what has been on my plate that I've had to learn how to grow through and grow around and grow from, it's, it's been just this commitment to myself that I'm not letting these things hold me back at any cost. And when I started this journey writing the book, that was, I made a vow to myself. Like, I'm either on my side or I'm on opposite camp, telling myself and tearing myself apart, but this isn't going to work.

And I had to make a choice. Which camp am I in my aunt, right? Am I going to be infusing the work with belief? With 100% belief. And that was another question that I started this whole journey with is, what if I approached this with 100% belief instead of 100% doubt? Because that's pretty much what I started out with anything. It's like, this isn't going to work.

People aren't going to like it. It's not worth it. You know, like, blah, blah, blah. And it's what stinks is when you feel those things inside and you're not really voicing them, but then you share your work with someone and they they repeat what you're telling yourself inside, you're like, see, I knew I was right. And that's when that's when we double back on ourselves and we hide our work away and we refuse to try again. is unfortunately in those moments, we lose sight of what's happening. And what I've learned is what's happening in those moments is that someone else has shut themselves off from their own creativity and their own creative voice. And that fear is rising up when someone's approaching them and they are in a space of expansion.

And it challenges that person to consider, well, what have I done to my work? And I don't believe in my work. And it's all just old tapes, man. You know, it's generational stuff, you know, it's things that are passed down very specifically, like the belief that it's not okay to feel or it's not okay to express your feelings. Like, that's not safe. That's stuff that, I mean, you've got to get outside help with sometimes. It's not something that you can necessarily do on your own. And left to its own devices, I'm a huge advocate for mental health awareness too.

Like left to its own devices, PTSD untreated, anxiety untreated, depression, you know, untreated. those things can be fatal. I agree. It's crucial to do the work, but to do the work with support in a way that you're gently kind of extracting these things and you're not just diving in and shaking things loose and not having a way of doing it in a safe way. So I have to put that in there. That was really important for me was learning to pace myself.

And kind of how I mentioned when I was revisiting these things to add to the story is I had to take breaks. I had to process. I had to do it in small bits and pieces instead of being like, I'm just going to write this scene and be done with it. And that wasn't being caring to myself if I was going to approach it that way. It sounds like you had a strong support structure in your household. At times.

It's hard. It's hard working full time. It's hard being a mom. It's hard being a wife. It's hard when housework needs to get done. Cooking needs to get done. Cleaning needs to get done. Everything needs to get done.

My garden went untended to for a year. And I was like, my neighbors hate me and they're judging me because my flowers are not planted. These are all the things that are going on outside of just writing. It's crazy. The things that I, you know, I did to myself in the process of trying to get the work completed. Who are you outside your writing process? Can we talk about that? That's always a loaded question, I feel like. And it changes. What's funny is leading up to like the book release. I'm doing some kind of interview questions with some of the characters. And that's one of the questions, one of the characters is asked. And the answer is really cheeky and it's basically my answer too, which is like, I will never define myself with a single

word or anything like that and are constantly cycling and changing and growing and expanding. And the way that I've seen my life now is kind of like a heartbeat. Expanding and contracting and there's constant flow. It's never the same in one moment or the next, but there's consistency now. And I feel like I've built towards that. I've worked really, really hard to build towards that to have a sense of peace and to have a sense of joy and to claim those things. Me outside of writing is, I know for a fact, if you were to take writing away, I would not do well. I would not fare well. It is one of my deepest self-care tools.

Art is one of my deepest self-care tools. So I do mixed media artwork. I do poetry, writing these stories. All of it kind of helps me to process the stuff that comes up on a daily basis in a way that is cathartic. I don't think that I'm just trying to like imagining myself without having some element of creativity in my life, that's a necessary thing. There has to be some element of creative outpour, whether that's in the garden, whether that is doing artwork, whether that is making up stories with my daughter, whether that is daydreaminging up different ideas for new stories, like all of that's kind of in the background. You believe that having a big ego helps a writer or hurts a writer?

Those are great questions. Those are really great questions. And you're asking me to answer those in a couple of minutes, which is not going to happen. But I will try. I will try to do this. So repeat the first. Because I already went off like spinning off. I'm like, oh my gosh.

I'm on the same way. Ego help or hurt a writer. I have been terrified. Terrified of success because of that connection to ego. That has been huge, huge struggle in being vulnerable and being visible with my work. Because in the background, I'm always like, I'm just going to be an egomaniac. Like there's this fear that if this thing. blows up, then I'm going to turn into some person that I'm not, you know, that I'll lose sight

of who I am because of power or influence or all of these things. And so what's interesting that you ask that is my intention every day when I hit the page is let me do this with integrity, let me do this with humility. So far so good. There's the fear of it coming across as egotistical or arrogant or you're just, you know, proud of your work. Why shouldn't I be proud? I put a lot of work into this stuff. So that's weird. Feeling on odds with that. Feeling on odds with feeling pride and all of the energy that I've put into this, that's a daily thing, like struggling with how do I stay right-sized? That's the main question is how do I stay right-sized about this. Just know that I approach that every day. And so far, I'm learning how to do this in an organic way and learn from this in a way where

I'm not getting, can you hear my cuckoo-claw? Yes, I can. Maintaining a, sense of humility and I don't like self-promotion. I don't like, but at the same time, this is business and you have to get to a point of success requires a work outside of my comfort zone in that sense. My aim is to not be ego-driven. My aim is to stay right-sized throughout any of this, wherever this is supposed to go. And I approach that every single day with show me how to be right-sized. How I understand this is you rather self-create rather than being self-defiant, create your path, not allowing everything around you to influence you in a certain way of thinking. Well, everything and everything influences us. It's a matter of how we let it influence us.

Being mindful of how these things influence me to not let it impact me in a way where I lost myself on the journey of getting back to myself. I don't need to do that again in a whole different way. So that's my aim is just don't lose yourself in this thing. I think I need to write it on a wall somewhere as like a big affirmation on the mirror when I wake up in the morning. Don't lose yourself in this thing. What's interesting is like, I will never know what it's going to be like to be a celebrity in any of this until I'm in that place.

And anything that I project, because I've gone there and I'm like, this is a movie, I want Ellen Page to be the voice of Dragon. I'm seriously like, I plot it all out. What's fun is to kind of play with it and daydream a little bit, but to not get, it's going to happen and to build myself up so that if disappointment occurs or if things don't turn out the way that my brain is like, banning it to be, to be okay with that. And I think that that is the danger with ego is, this is my understanding of ego throughout the years that I've learned about it, is when I build up these expectations of a certain thing, if that doesn't happen, then I'm destroyed. My sense of self is destroyed. My sense of purpose is destroyed. My aim is to not go there. Go through whatever changes that this brings with grace and integrity. Through your own reflection, it shows that you've

been journaling for a long time. Yes, mostly have not shared those journals. But, yeah. Every once in a while, I'll go back and I'll peek through them and I'm like, what did I even mean by this? It's kind of funny. I have collections of things that I, every once in all, we'll revisit to just be like, have I learned anything? Am I still repeating the same thing? But I'm very introspective. I think that's a big thing. And Dragon is well.

She's very introspective, hyper-analyzing everything. I've carried that through in her character a lot. Do you believe in Riders block? I used to. This has actually come up in a lot of conversation and with a lot of different writers groups that I've been in was this whole concept of writer's block or creativity block basically and for me what I have learned is the things that are coming up that are providing resistance from the creative flow whether that's fear whether that's shame whether that's guilt whether whatever it is you know fear of success fear of failure it comes in different flavors but for the

most part anytime that that stuff shows up I utilize it I utilize it in the storyline I utilize it with the characters I turn it into these plot points where it's it's actually showing fuel for me now when before it was like, you know, I'm like shut down as a writer and I can't think of anything new or this is not going to be original or whatever. So all of those doubts and those fears and insecurities, those were actually inspiration for some of these internal conversations or these internal realizations that were going on in the characters. And so I weave it in in a realistic way where not letting this thing stop me. Or if I can't see where the next chapter is going to be heading or if I can't see where the next book is heading, I go backward and I edit or I research

or dive more into the content and so that I'm either reframing what I've already written. And then that opens up new doors and I can move forward. I've learned to engage it in one way or another to where if I'm stopping for some reason, I ask the question, what's going on here? What can this teach me? Where can this go? Can this go into the storyline? Is this just a place where I need to probably get a snack? Maybe I'm like, you know, hangary right now. I just need to eat or something. Like, those are the pieces where I have to pay attention to what's pausing me and it's, I don't call it block. I call it a pause. And then I have to ask questions when I'm in those places and then I usually move forward in one way or another. If I'm in a completely like,

I don't want to write, I can't think of anything. I'm not interested. That's when I hit the garden. That's when actually there's like a lot of stuff in my life where I feel like I'm at being powerless over or I'm feeling anger and I can't, writing is not a tool to apply in that situation. I have to go to my tool chest and be like, in this situation, use this instead. So I kind of have garden work is really, really, really good for anger and just processing that grief that is really difficult, you know, or utilizing the grief in the books as well. So with the last two books that I wrote, they had several deaths in the family. We put a dog down. I had emergency surgery.

Lots of upheaval. Having to figure out to keep moving through all of that and keep coming to the page, that was the. important of creating that relationship, that daily relationship with writing, was at that point it was like brushing my teeth. It was like, I know what I need to do. Just go to the page, do what you can do, do the next right thing. And then you'll be able to move through this. You've been listening to Your Transformation Station, rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show. And we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS challenge.

and bi-weekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8 p.m. Central Time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at YTS The Podcast. We'll be back soon. Until then, this is your transformation station, signing off. Life's lock. How can I help? The IRS said I filed my return. But I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.

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