[00:00:00] Welcome to Your Creative Chord podcast, where host Jenny Leigh Hodgins, author and educator, shares unique insights dedicated to empowering your creative flow and inspired living. Through solo reflections and dialogues with creators and wellness experts, Jenny Leigh shares holistic wisdom influenced by her Buddhist practice, alongside poetic insights and practical strategies for living authentically.  This podcast helps you overcome challenges and unlock your full creative potential.

Welcome back to Your Creative Chord podcast. This is episode 91, Grief, Loss, and Creativity, part 3, Guarded Heart and Creative Block. I'm your host, Jenny Leigh Hodgins, and today we'll close out our three-part series on grief, loss, and creativity a little differently than planned. We had intended to end this series with a guest conversation, but that interview has been postponed due to illness.

So today instead, let's continue from the place we've been building across the past two episodes, 89 and 90, where I shared creatively immersive work through poetry, songs, piano, and orchestral music as ways of processing grief, loss, and meaning-making. And by the way, episodes 89 and 90 were also part of a quiet two-year milestone for me, honoring the anniversary of the publication of both of my books, Start Piano: What You Need for Successful Learning, and Kaleidoscope of the Heart: A Collection of Poetry and Lyrics. And if you're interested in learning more about my books, you'll find them at YourCreativeChord.com/books, and the link is in the show notes. The last two immersive episodes were not only about sharing my own creative expression as a healing practice, but also about something equally important, the impact of engaging with creative work as a listener or observer.

Sometimes when we're in grief, burnout, or facing a creative block, simply sinking ourselves into the work of another creative artist can be stabilizing, regulating, and quietly restorative in itself. Engaging with the creativity of others can be the key to release your feelings and can be a great comfort through loss, burnout, and block.

And it may also take the pressure off the idea of producing, and instead put you in touch with yourself more readily than just pushing through. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to the first two episodes of the Grief, Loss, and Creativity series, I do recommend going back to episodes 89 and 90 before or after today's episode, as they form an important experiential foundation for today's conversation So today we shift into reflection, into what happens after long-term overextension and how grief, identity, and creativity intersect when life has required too much for too long.

Because one of the things I don't think we talk about enough, especially in caregiving, burnout recovery, leadership roles, or high-responsibility lives, is the hidden cost of adapting to survival responsibility for too long. And that cost is not just exhaustion. It's often identity compression. It's the gradual shrinking or postponing of parts of yourself while you focus on functioning, helping, producing, caregiving, leading, surviving, responding, or holding everything together.

Some people reflect on their periods of overextension and they think, "Yeah, I didn't take care of myself." But honestly, I think for many people, especially long-term caregivers or chronic overfunctioners, people pleasers, enablers, that framing might be too simplistic or even unfair. I think a more fair assessment or thing to say to ourselves is, "I adapted to ongoing responsibility."

And adaptation is not failure. It is survival intelligence I've learned from my life that the problem is that eventually the nervous system gets so accustomed to vigilance and responsibility that spaciousness starts to feel unfamiliar or even wrong. And then something really strange happens when life finally slows down a little bit, or when you finally get a chance, or you take the time to settle into silence or stillness.[00:05:00] 

You'd think you'd feel relief first, but often grief arrives first Grief for lost time, lost energy, lost creativity, lost autonomy, lost versions of yourself you never fully got to explore. And I think this grief sometimes surprises people. I mean, that aspect of feeling all my sorrow definitely surprised me because I think we'll assume if I finally have space, I should feel relieved or motivated or even inspired.

But many people, including me, actually feel disoriented instead, and sometimes I still do. As I made time through experiencing loss and more recently through my own burnout recovery, and as I practice my own creative empowerment coaching frameworks that include reset or, you know, making time for things that nourish my life, I felt disoriented by all the negative feelings finally coming to the surface of my life.

So embracing self-compassionate small acts of stillness, nature immersion, poetry, fiction, music and silence brought out a lot of emotions I was not expecting. And I want to clarify, that is not regression. That is actually the beginning of recovery. Because when survival mode or hypervigilance finally quiets down, the nervous system at last has enough safety to process what was postponed, what has been carried for so long.

And that's why I wanna remind you and me that stillness can feel emotionally louder than busyness. You know, keeping ourselves busy keeps us externally occupied or distracted, but stillness reveals what we've internally deferred. And this moment of awareness that stillness brings us connects us deeply to creative block as well.

Because what healing, happiness, and creativity require more than talent or desire is enough internal safety and bandwidth for curiosity, exploration, spontaneity and presence

But if your nervous system is stuck in vigilance, there's very little room left for inspiration. The brain prioritizes protection before play. It's how we're wired. You know, fight, flight, or freeze comes swiftly and automatically. That's why forcing creativity during burnout or grief often backfires. Our nervous system interprets pressure as more threat, and this is where my RESET framework became more than an idea for me.

It became my recovery and restoration practice. It has also become my caregiving and business strategy, so it's baked in to my daily, weekly, quarterly, and seasonal schedule. Because I've learned from my own life, creative process, caregiver role, and as a coach and solo entrepreneur, that regular rest, you know, the R in RESET, is not optional.

It is structural repair. And boundaries are not just emotional preferences. They are physiological recovery tools. Reducing load matters. Recovery time matters. Autonomy matters Rebuilding creativity after burnout or through loss and transition usually does not happen through some kind of dramatic reinvention.

It happens through small, protected moments of presence and intent That's why I continue proactively creating small autonomy rituals into my own life. My morning and evening prayer and journaling, morning walks, my quiet weekly coffee outing, listening to fiction during chores, going to concerts, nature immersion, hiking meetups, deepening friendships through intentional communication and meetups, or taking a local class simply because it interests me, perusing the farmer's market.

I don't do those things to be productive, and I have quotation marks around the word [00:10:00] productive. I do them because they help reintroduce aliveness, identity, fun, and presence back into a nervous system that spent too many years in output mode This also connects to another pattern I've reflected on a lot in my own life, the pattern of being an outsider or feeling like an anomaly.

There were many seasons where I felt different, uncertain, or like I didn't rightfully belong. Um, like as an older student when I put myself through college after I left my Kentucky home state for Florida in my 20s, as the only female composer in male-dominated environments, as a musician, writer, Buddhist, and unmarried woman in a long line of Southern Christian married women whose main focus is on being a wife and mother.

Or when I lived in Japan for five years while recording my original musical theater CD, Butterfly Believe, and performing it with a multicultural band of musicians as the only non-Japanese in the neighborhood and school settings. And as someone repeatedly stepping into leadership roles in college and within arts and community scenarios for decades because competence naturally attracted more responsibility.

And what I slowly realized is this: burnout is often caused by living too long without enough agency, without enough room for your own rhythms, needs, creativity, choices, identity, or humanity. Environments matter deeply, and some environments expand confidence, but others compress it. Some environments support authentic expression.

Others reward over-functioning and self-erasure. And that's important because people often assume confidence is just purely internal. But leadership confidence, creative confidence, and emotional resilience may be heavily shaped by environment and autonomy. In other words, we really must proactively nurture ourselves.

So let's stop now to reflect. Where are you overworking simply because you can?

Where have you confused capability with obligation?

Where do you still feel pressure to prove your worth, belonging, or value through output?

And let's do a practical exercise. Let's make two lists. One list, places, people, or environments that consistently drain you. The second list, people, places, or environments where you feel more energized, spacious, creatively free, or authentically yourself. And then ask yourself, what level of autonomy exists in each of these lists?

That question matters more than we may realize Because sustainable creative flow and a more inspired life do not come from constantly overriding yourself. It comes from rebuilding and nourishing enough internal and external space to hear yourself again and clearly. And that kind of rebuilding usually happens slowly, quietly, gently.

Not through pressure, but through permission So instead of asking, "How do I become more productive?" or, "How do I become more useful?" try asking, "What helps my nervous system feel safer, more spacious, more alive, and more aligned with my true self?"  That question may change more than you realize.

If today's episode resonated with you, you can download my free Burnout Reset Guide at YourCreativeChord.com/burnoutguide.

And for more reflection prompts and practical tools around sustainable creative flow and inspired living, you can explore my Creative Exploration Sampler at YourCreativeChord.com/getinspiredhere.[00:15:00]

If you're looking for deeper support, my asynchronous Creative Empowerment Coaching Program is designed specifically around this kind of real-life integration and nervous system-aware transformation. This means you're not limited to a session moment. Support adapts to your real-life integration as it unfolds.

And you can apply to work with me at YourCreativeChord.com/workwithme.

And until then, let's practice protecting our energy where we can. Sustainable creative flow and an inspired way of life are not built through constant pressure. They're built through cycles of restoration, presence, and enoughness.

Thank you for listening to Your Creative Chord podcast. If you found inspiration in today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe to the show. Your support helps spread the message of creativity and inspired living. Stay connected with Jenny Leigh and a vibrant community of creatives and curious minds.

Visit YourCreativeChord.com for more resources. Remember, daily life is where your creative flow begins. Embrace the journey.