“Every time I turned around to try to step away from it… the music was right there waiting again.” – Sean Delaney New conversation on For the Love of Creatives with a 40-year-old rapper who wrote one of the first hip hop songs on autism while working as a direct support professional.

For the Love of Creatives conversation with painter Leticia “Leta” Herrera on the quiet, costly parts of becoming who you really are as a creative. 🎧 “When Life Breaks You Open and Art Is the Only Way Back”

“What did you let go of?” “I let go of a paycheck. I let go of the security of a secure job. I let go of a community that was the only people I knew… I had to let go of my comfort zone.”

“She passed away in two months… and I thought, if I had two months to live on this earth, what do I want to be doing with my life?” Painter Leticia “Leta” Herrera shares how losing a close friend and collector became the moment she stopped postponing her art and started becoming who she really is.

🎧 “When Life Breaks You Open and Art Is the Only Way Back” www.fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/leticia-herr... Heart-centered creatives, this is your reminder: one of these days is today.

“I am in total ecstasy when I’m in my studio alone… I become this vulnerable being. And if you put yourself in that vulnerability, then you’re ready to create from within you.”

New For the Love of Creatives conversation with painter Leticia “Leta” Herrera on the emotional intensity of creating alone and why that depth is actually where your real work lives. 🎧 “When Life Breaks You Open and Art Is the Only Way Back” www.fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/leticia-herr...

🎧 “When Life Breaks You Open and Art Is the Only Way Back” www.fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/leticia-herr... For heart-centered creatives feeling lost, let your art bring you home.

“It’s very easy to lose track of who you are, but my art has reconnected me with who I am on a profound level.” New For the Love of Creatives conversation with painter Leticia “Leta” Herrera on how art takes us to layers of ourselves we didn’t know existed.

“They’re going home. They’re gonna find themselves within.” In our latest For the Love of Creatives conversation, painter Leticia “Leta” Herrera realizes her Walker figures aren’t just walking toward a beautiful place. They’re walking home to themselves.

That’s the late‑bloomer blueprint: trust the process, choose sustainable consistency, and stop grading yourself against someone else’s timeline. 🎧 For the Love of Creatives with Dina: fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/dina-elsaid/

Dina shared something a lot of us feel but don’t say out loud: “I feel older than some of the creatives who started earlier… but everything takes its time. If you’re genuinely consistent and keep doing the work, it unravels into something good.”

If you’ve been running small creative gatherings, you’re already doing the hardest part: building trust in real time. The offer can come next. 🎧 For the Love of Creatives with Dina: fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/dina-elsaid/

Dina hosted her figure drawing meetup solo, discovered she could actually do it, and then did it a few more times. The result: a group of artists who’ve been showing up consistently for a year. That’s not just a nice community; it’s a built‑in audience for the moment she decides to offer a class.

There’s a special kind of idea that feels exciting and impossible. The vision is big, but your current skill set feels small. In our chat with Dina Elsaid, we floated this: what if that’s your cue to collaborate? Pull in other women artists, share the vision, and let each person carry a piece of it.

A lot of artists say collaboration has been the single biggest contributor to their journey. 🎧 For the Love of Creatives x Dina: fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/dina-elsaid/ If you’re honest, what’s one idea you might need help to bring to life?

Other people might still connect with it… but if you don’t see your vision in there, it can feel like you missed. That doesn’t mean you’re not an artist. It means your imagination is ahead of your current skills, which is actually a good sign. 🎧 fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/dina-elsaid/

Some of the deepest creative frustration lives in the gap between idea and execution. Dina Elsaid talked about how hard it is when you have a strong vision, but the piece in front of you doesn’t reflect it yet.

What if your local figure drawing night welcomed every way of working: iPads, watercolors, messy gesture lines, tight realism… and it all counted? That’s how artist Dina Elsaid runs her Dallas Artists meetup.

Tammy puts words to that specific indie tension: total freedom, total responsibility. You call the shots, but you also live with all the “why am I doing this?” at 2 am. Carrying a project that exists only because you keep saying yes to it? This one is for you. fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/59

“When you do an independent project, there are just so many challenges because there are no rules. In good ways and bad. How you do it, when you do it, how much you do it for is truly on you.”

Just a small example of how people will always read your work through their own lens unless you give them a clear one. What is your favorite “they totally misunderstood my brand” story? #branding #story #creativecommunity

Against The Grain got asked at a cultural fair, “Do you not like rice?” Tammy took the note, made the definition of ATG huge on a trifold, and the team adopted a permanent inside joke: “We love rice.”

Masking tape dolls. Tammy Nguyen Lee talks about rolling tape into little balls, lining them up on the wall, and treating them like dolls so she could talk to them and entertain her baby sister, almost eight years younger and already one of the loves of her life.

Its a soft reminder that our earliest creative acts were often low budget but high love. What tiny, “strange” thing did you do as a kid that now feels like proof you were always an artist? Full convo: www.fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/tammy-nguyen... #creativekid #siblings #story

Raised to be “resilient” by never speaking of the past, but wired to tell the truth anyway. Tammy Nguyen Lee shares why she cannot heal by pretending the wound is not there, and why some of us have to lift the rug, even if everyone else says “we dont talk about that.”

If your art keeps circling the things your family will not name, this one is for you. Full conversation on For the Love of Creatives. fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/tammy-nguyen-lee #healing #story #creativecommunity

“I had people who loved me… but I felt like I’d screwed everything up and had nothing left to live for.” Anna Irvine talks about multiple hospitalizations—including times she checked herself in because she didn’t trust her own safety—while navigating suicidal ideation, depression, OCD, and anxiety.

t can happen to anyone, no matter how prepared or resilient you thought you were. 🎧 Full episode: “Dancing with Uncertainty Lead to Authentic Creative Expression with Anna Irvine” fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/anna-irvine If you’re a creative who’s been there, you’re absolutely not alone here.

Dwight calls “What do you do?” a dreaded question for a reason. In this clip from #011, he talks about how that throwaway question invites quick judgments and makes us forget that the person in front of us has parents (or maybe doesn’t know them), passions, and a whole inner life.

Not everyone needs to chase every AI trend. Bonnie and Dwight talk about “failing fast,” Thomas Edison still needing the laws of electricity, and how wise woman thinking means standing in the universal truths you can count on while others run after the newest thing.

For heart-centered creatives, it’s permission to be grounded instead of constantly reactive. Full conversation:

For everyone whose creative career has zig-zagged through different industries, this introduction is a reminder that it all counts. Full conversation: www.fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/bonnie-danek...

“Professional writer. Multiple books in multiple genres. 20 years as a book coach. Publisher. Former tech project manager who opened a literary consultancy to help people write books.” Bonnie Daneker shares this snapshot of her creative life and talks about new opportunities for her next decade.

There’s a place in New Mexico called Modern Elder Academy, created by Chip Conley, that helps people explore how to become wise, contributing elders. Bonnie Daneker describes going there with her husband and leaning into the shift from “consuming caterpillar” to “benevolent butterfly.”

For anyone navigating midlife as a creative, it’s a beautiful reframe of what this season can be. Full conversation:

For heart-centered creatives who’ve walked through illness or loss, this is a powerful reframe of what your story can become. Full conversation:

After caring for her father through a terminal cancer diagnosis, writer and publisher Bonnie Daneker wrote five books for cancer caregivers and built a business to support them.

A colleague later invited her into a project highlighting women in technology, and she realized she could bring her creativity into the science of tech and honor women by telling their stories.

There comes a moment in every creative career when you stop defending your value. In a new For the Love of Creatives clip, writer and publisher Bonnie Daneker shares how two executive coaches helped her take inventory of a lifetime of work and finally say:

A lot of people say “I’m not creative.” In this moment from #027, writer and ghostwriter Jennifer Locke gently pushes back: if you’ve made choices about how you live, if you’re directing your days at all, your life itself is an act of art.

🎧 Full episode: “Living Art: Embracing Creativity in Daily Life With Jennifer Locke” fortheloveofcreativespodcast.com/jennifer-locke What’s one aspect of your daily life you’d like to approach more intentionally, as if it were art?

You can’t really listen to “everyone” when it comes to your creative path… but you also can’t ignore the reality that rent is real. After rewatching Basquiat, he’s thinking about how hard that life was even when Basquiat was prolific and getting major recognition.

“So I found fluid art. Fluid art is where you have zero control.” Tricia Seymour-Barrier talks about pouring paint and moving it with a canvas or blow dryer, letting it become something totally different than she expected. For her, that loss of control became a doorway to play.

If you’re a spiritual, heart-centered creative, this might be your reminder to let at least one part of your practice be completely unpredictable. 🎧 Full convo:

For heart-centered creatives, that means you’re never actually “out” of possibilities. How are you finishing that sentence this week? 🎧 Full conversation:

“I wonder what would happen if I…” Maddox talks about using this question as a way back into play: What if I use this medium? What if I mix glitter into my paint? As he says, there’s never a time when you’ve explored everything that could be done with what’s right in front of you.

Maddox talks about being wired for a perfect end result after 40 years as a hairdresser and makeup artist, yet still believing that our connection to the infinite allows us to channel all kinds of things.

If you’re a spiritual, heart-centered creative, how do you make room for that kind of channeling in your process? 🎧 Full conversation:

“During COVID, I asked myself what art medium could move me from my left brain to my right brain.” Tricia Seymour-Barrier talks about realizing her left brain had been over-developed through years of entrepreneurship, and how exploring art helped her restore a healthier balance.