A reflection on coming back to creative work after a long, necessary silence
I promised myself I wouldn't cry when I finally sat down to record again.
That was a stupid promise. Of course I cried.
It has been months since I've released a new episode of the Creative Genius Podcast. Months since I've shown up here in the way I intended to, in the way I believe matters. And if you've been following along and wondering where I went — I owe you an honest answer.
The short version: I hit a wall. A trauma wall. And I had to stop.
The longer version is what I want to share with you here, because I think it's actually part of the conversation this podcast has always been about. The conversation about what it means to stay connected to your creative self — that deep, radiant, knowing part of you that is animated by something bigger than any one of us — when the world around you feels like it's coming apart at the seams.
When the Guide Loses Her Way
There's a particular kind of shame that comes with being someone who talks publicly about navigating hard things with creativity and grace, and then finding yourself absolutely unable to do that.
When the political and humanitarian crises that have been unfolding — in the United States, in West Asia, around the world — reached a kind of crescendo for me last year, something in me just... went offline. I tried to keep going. I recorded episodes. I told myself I could keep accessing that tender, luminous part of myself and keep this important conversation alive. But I was lying to myself, just a little. I was running on fumes and grief and the kind of full-body exhaustion that doesn't respond to a good night's sleep.
So I stopped. And then I couldn't make myself come back. And every week that went by, I felt the guilt of it — this sense that I was letting you down, that I was abandoning something that mattered. All of that just made the wall higher.
What I had to eventually accept was this: I could not be a guide for anyone else's creative awakening while I was completely lost in my own dark forest. And pushing through wouldn't have been brave. It would have been dishonest. The most authentic thing I could offer was to honor the limits of what I actually had.
So I gave myself permission to stop. And I sat inside the quiet, and I waited.
What the Silence Taught Me
Here is what I didn't expect: the silence wasn't empty. Even in the depths of what I can only name as depression — the heaviness, the doom, the grief, the days I genuinely couldn't get out of bed — something was happening underneath the surface.
I kept showing up at my studio at Granville Island, where I sell my jewelry and artwork. And day after day, without trying, I kept finding myself in the most remarkable conversations. With visitors from across Canada, from the United States, from all over the world. People who were scared. People who were angry. People who were grieving the world they thought they lived in.
And something would come through me in those conversations that I can only describe, a little awkwardly, as channeling. Words I didn't know I had. A perspective that felt larger than my own small, frightened view. A knowing — bone-deep and steady — that what we are living through right now is not the end of something. It is a beginning.
The Birth of a New Humanity
I want to say this carefully, because I know how it might sound. I'm not a relentless optimist. I don't traffic in spiritual bypassing. I see the darkness. I feel it. Some days it flattens me.
But underneath all of it, I carry this knowing that I can't shake and don't want to: what we are witnessing right now — this terrifying, painful, disorienting eruption of old and ancient ways — is the eruption that happens right before something transforms. The darkness rising to the surface is rising because it is finally being burned away.
We are living through the birth of a new humanity.
And we are the ones — us, right now, in our grief and our fear and our creativity and our love — who are bringing it into being.
That's what this podcast has always been about, really. Creativity isn't just art-making. It's the intelligence that animates the entire universe, and it lives in every one of us, and it is precisely what we need most right now. Not as a distraction from the hard things, but as the force that will actually transform them.
Coming Back
I recorded a new episode this week. It's short. It's not polished. It's just me, sitting down and reaching a hand toward you and saying: I'm here. I'm still in it. And I think what comes next might be the most important chapter of this conversation yet.
If you've been here since the beginning, thank you for your patience. If you're new and found your way here somehow — welcome. Something clearly brought you.
The podcast is back. So am I. And I genuinely believe the best is ahead of us — not despite everything that's happening, but because of it.
Let's walk forward together.
— Kate
Listen to the new episode here. And if it resonates, please share it with someone who needs it. That one small act of passing it along is how this work finds the people it's meant for.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:00] Hello, my loves. It has been a minute. I recorded a handful of episodes towards the end of last season that I had intended to share with you in the fall, and the truth is I've, I kind of hit a wall when
Trump came into office last year. I went into a,
I don't even know what to name, the state. I went into like a shock, fear. It was like fight, flight, freeze all at once, I tried to kind of keep going and keep accessing this kind of tender. A beautiful, soft, radiant, knowing, creative part of myself and keep the conversations on creative genius going and keep that part of me lit and alive.
But the truth is, I was in a prolonged state of [00:01:00] overwhelm and I really, really lost my way,
and I didn't feel it was right. To try to continue to be a guide or facilitator for this deeply important conversation about awakening our creative genius to save humanity when I didn't seem to be able to really even do it in my own life.
So at first it was a little bit of a break, which I usually do in the summer. I usually take August off, and that felt really good, but I didn't want to come back in September. And I forced myself to come back in October and I released a beautiful episode with Jamie Townsend, which I hope you had a chance to listen to.
but that was it. That was like the last leg of the race. You know, I felt like I was at the end of a marathon and I, I truly didn't have anything else in me. And so , I gave myself permission to stop,. And I was grappling with [00:02:00] depression and it felt deeply physical. Like I really felt like I couldn't get outta bed a lot of days.
Uh, I felt a lot of like doom and gloom and what's the point? And grief, massive grief. And I just wanted to cocoon and not have any extra demands on me. And I. Trusted that I just went into it, but with every week that went by that I wasn't making an episode for you. I felt this guilt and this shame and this responsibility to you
because what we're all walking through right now is just so enormous and terrifying and sad. And angry making and confusing and disorienting, and we need each other, and I felt like I was letting you down and I'm sorry I promised I wouldn't cry. [00:03:00] It's a stupid promise. There's no reason not to cry. It's okay to cry.
What we're walking through right now is both extraordinarily beautiful, and I'll get to that in a minute, but also really, really hard. And it's important that we know our limits and it's important that we are gentle with ourselves and it's important that we, we feel like we need to stop everything for a little while, that we trust that there's wisdom in that.
There were several months in the last little while where I truly didn't know if I was ever gonna come back to the podcast and. I had to let myself get to a point where I was okay with that for my own mental health and survival. I think part of me always knew I'd come back, but it couldn't be from a place of feeling like I should [00:04:00] or had to.
I knew I needed to wait until it beckoned me as it did in the beginning. And over the last little while I've had lots of messages from listeners who have said, you know, I'm just checking in. Are you okay? We haven't heard from you for a while. It's okay, but we just wanna let you know we miss you.
And those messages have kind of started to speed up a little bit lately, which is interesting 'cause it's also coincided with me feeling like the podcast has been kind of tugging at my skirt. Trying to get my attention. I've been thinking about it more. I've been curious about guests more. I've been thinking about what would we talk about?
How would it look? Just very naturally, it's kind of just been coming back. And then earlier this week I got a message from a fellow podcast host Meredith Hit Estevez, who hosts Artists for Joy and has written several books and was a [00:05:00] guest on our show a couple years ago, and we really hit it off and connected.
But she lives far away and you know, we've never met each other in person, but she just wrote me this message out of the blue saying, , Hey, I've been thinking about you and I've noticed you haven't had a new episode since October. . And like of course if you need a break, that's great, but I just wanted to let you know you're missed in this space. And I just started crying those tears of like recognition, joy.
That come when you know that there's something bigger than all of us guiding it. And that has been whispering to me and also speaking to her and you and I knew I needed to sit down with you today and just reconnect and say hello, and I'm okay. You know, as much as we can be during these times and.
And that I do have things to offer you that have been coming to me in [00:06:00] this
dark time. You know, it's been quiet, but that doesn't mean there isn't stuff happening under the surface. you know, I work at Granville Island in the public market where I sell my jewelry and my artwork, and I meet. Tons of people. Every day that I'm there, I'm there about eight days a month, and for sure at least once a day I have a conversation with somebody.
I'm not exaggerating. It is at least once a day where one or both of us is crying and I always feel like it's a great day if I, if I could make someone cry in the good. , We talk about what's happening. , A lot of the customers I have are American visitors who are coming to Canada , but people, I meet people from all over the world and we talk about what's happening.
We talk about the darkness, we talk about, you know, the pure evil, how overwhelming it seems, how out of control it feels like a lot of the time. I've never really talked about channeling anything. I've never felt like I was somebody who could channel anything. I don't even know what I would be [00:07:00] channeling.
But when I was reflecting on these interactions I have with people in that space, that is actually the closest word I can come to. There's, there's like, something comes through me when I'm talking to these people and you know, and I, I say things that surprise myself about how beautiful. Actually, what's happening right now is this dark, evil, tarry thick, ancient evil, negative energy has risen to the surface and is literally being burned away.
And I know, I know this isn't like a wishful thinking thing that I have. I know that what's happening right now is the birth of a new humanity. And that brings more tears to my eyes because it's the thing that we've been yearning for for centuries. [00:08:00] It's we're living through the beginning of it right now, and it's so hard and it's so uncomfortable, and there's so much death and so much pain as we shed this false version of our humanity and angle evermore, earnestly.
And confidently toward our magnificence, what we really are, what we really are capable as individuals, but also more than that, what we are capable of and what we truly are at our depth as a humanity. And so from one perspective, I can absolutely see and feel like cellularly and actually it's beyond even cellularly like I can feel with like this aura that goes on beyond my body, this knowing.
That where we're going is wonderful and beautiful. And then I kind of zoom back into what I call small Kate, which is like, just like the view outta my own little limited eyes, [00:09:00] not every cell in my body. And I see just the day-to-day stuff, the stuff in my feed, and the fear in. My friends, and especially the fear in my friends , in the United States, but we're all living it now.
Everybody on earth right now is, there's a lot to be scared of and there's a lot to be angry about and there's a lot to be frozen by. And there's a lot that makes us want to give up. And I think it's okay that we feel those feelings. Um. But I think it's really important that as we're feeling them, we're also training ourselves to feel what's beyond them, what's behind them, what's underneath them, what existed before them, what will exist after them.
And when I do that, it's like I zoom out to this radiant kind of emptiness [00:10:00] that's holding it all. Where the voice of your intuition comes from, where the voice of your gut feeling and inspiration, all the things we talk about when we talk about creativity,
you've always heard me say that. That's that intelligence that's animating the entire universe. That is what we must stay tethered to, and even if you can't hear a clear voice from it right now, giving you marching orders or instructions for how to navigate. This particular moment, even practicing, finding ways to feel into the feeling tone of that spacious thing that's animating everything is, is, is profoundly important work.
I wanted to let you know that there's been important things percolating and that I'm trying to find my way to articulate it. I had a really beautiful phone conversation with my dear, dear friend Tracy Major, who, if you've been following along since the beginning, was a guest [00:11:00] in season one, I think.
Um, incredible woman. Uh, she was a, high powered TV producer in Hollywood and lived that whole life. Made that whole dream come true and created a whole bunch of crazy success for herself and realized like, oh my God, this isn't what I want. And quit it all about six years ago to become an artist who channels Tree Energy, and she has a beautiful company.
Trees have feelings and she's written a book recently about a raven named Ravina. And, uh, anyway, we were talking yesterday and she said to me, Kate, you know, one of the things I love about talking to you so much is that you're just so good at articulating these big feelings.
And I got off the phone with her and I was like, what is she talking about? I feel like that's something that's so hard for me. I can feel, like I know where we're going in my bones as a humanity, as a species. I, I can see how creativity is the love of our lives and has [00:12:00] been trying to find its way to have a big time reunion with us, which will actually save humanity and earth and all of it.
But I find it really hard to articulate it, and she's like, no, no, no. You're articulated all so well. , So that is my. I guess offering to you over the next little while as I come back to creating episodes is that I'll explore articulating what I feel in my soul and what I, the knowings that are coming to me about where we're going.
Because it's all really good news, and I know that's surprising and it even, I don't even believe it every day depending on my perspective, but I know it, like my highest and truest self knows this. On a really deep level, and I wanna share that with you and explore that with guests and walk this new world we're creating together.
We have to do this together. What's being undone is enormous, [00:13:00] but what's being born, what is ready to emerge is even bigger and better and more beautiful and more powerful, and it is us who will bring it into being. And it is us together who are bringing it into being. So it feels almost like a new iteration of the podcast.
I don't really know what it's gonna look like, but we're gonna be in it together and I'm really glad you're here. And if you're listening to episodes. Or even you listen to this message and you think, oh my God, I know three or four friends who need to hear this right now, please share it. One of the reasons I had to step back from it was that I was putting all this effort into it and I just didn't have the resources to then promote it too.
So I count on you and other. Beautiful Humans who don't know about this show yet are counting on you in ways they don't even know, uh, for you to share this with them. So make sure you're subscribed in Apple Podcasts and that you share it on your Facebook feed or in an email to [00:14:00] somebody, or even just text it to a few friends.
Every little moment where we take the time to do that, it really helps. For this energy to spread. And we are, these are sparks that we're creating and it's these sparks that are gonna spread like wildfire before we know it. thank you for being patient with me and for being here, for tuning back in again, I'm really looking forward to the next chapter of all of this with you all my love. Talk to you soon.
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