Art 2 Heart

My new poetry collection Milkweed is available now. Find the digital copy here ! https://stan.store/Morintune/p/get-milkweed-now We are surrounded by pressure. A constant pressure to post the right opinion, to protest the right issue, and to position ourselves on the right side of history. But in all that noise, are we actually helping, or just performing?  This episode poses a challenging questio...

What We Fear More Than Death  This podcast was originally uploaded under a new podcast, but I ultimately decided to bring it back for Art 2 Heart Season 2.  Most of us aren’t afraid of dying. We’re afraid of what death reflects back at us. Our regrets, our tenderness, our joy, and everything we’ve been avoiding. In this episode, I share my story and the vision for this podcast. I talk about what i...

This episode was originally published in a new podcast but decided to bring it back for Art 2 Heart Season 2.  What happens when the theology you were raised inside begins to soften, and the person who taught it to you is willing to soften too? Last year, I completed what was my own "Year to Live" exercise. At the top of that commitment was my relationship with my mom. She raised me and...

Darkness, Surrender, and the Poet Within with Sarah McCash This episode was originally published under a new podcast, but I ultimately decided to bring it back to Art 2 Heart for season 2.  In this episode, David Morin and Sarah McCash dive deep into David's life-changing experience of a darkness retreat four years ago. What began as a casual phone call between friends turned into a moving, u...

In this episode of the Art2Heart podcast, I return after a year-long hiatus to share updates, reflections on the first season, and exciting new plans. I discuss overcoming initial insecurities about taking center stage and learning the importance of consistent, meaningful content. I provide insights into my transformative experiences volunteering with incarcerated individuals, which led to a fulfi...

Episode Summary : Join David Morin--former Peace Corps volunteer and sales professional turned death doula, poet, and prison rehabilitation facilitator--as he shares his transformative journey into guiding individuals toward clarity, purpose, and a deeper connection to life through the lens of mortality.  In this episode, David introduces his upcoming program, A Year to Live , inspired by Stephen...

In this deeply moving episode, we hear from Chris Siders, an LA-based poet, music producer, and activist. Chris shares his experience about dealing with loss, grief, struggles with his health, and how these experiences have been the fuel to produce multiple albums in such a short amount of time. From his near-death experience and battles with mental health to losing so many close family members, i...

Have you ever felt like you were an only in the room? Like no matter how many people you’re surrounded by, you feel like you can’t quite relate to anyone?  It’s hard to put a specific word to what this feels like. Our guest today, Anika Aftab, has searched far and wide in many languages and cultures for the perfect word. She ultimately describes it as feeling like the only in the room.  In fact, s...

Rachel Livinal is a recent graduate at Cal State Long Beach with a BA in Journalism. She just started her position as a higher education radio reporter for KVPR (Valley Public Radio) at the end of this month. Rachel has also been a poet since she was 16, and she is 21 now. It started with sonnets, but quickly developed into this odd freeverse that consists of near rhymes and very loose patterns of...

Welcome to the Art 2 Heart podcast. My name is David Morin. I'm a former corporate sales guy turned poet. And this is where we explore how finding your voice can help your path and your purpose find you. Whether you're currently in a career transition or can't wait to be in one, we learn how leaning into creative expression can be the missing key to transforming your life and the li...

Have you ever read a book that changed your life? A book that ties together all of the threads that you’ve been chasing, and suddenly your life feels like there’s some hope? What if you had a chance to meet the author of that book?   And what if that author hosted a meeting so that like minded people can get together and begin to create community?  And what if that event was freaking awesome!!  Th...

Has there ever been a time in your life where you got so tired of ruminating on the same thing?  Maybe there was a nagging idea or thought in the back of your mind that just never quite allowed you to experience more gratidude instead of criticism. To feel more acknowledgement towards yourself instead of blame, or more love instead of distrust.  Have you ever gotten so real with yourself that one...

Accomplishment and emptiness.  Gratitude and sadness.  Love and grief.  Filipino and White. Two things can be true at the same time. Today’s guest is an insanely talented poet and educator who is an expert at holding two things in tension together. Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him/they) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendant of the Confederacy, so he knows the shape of hope and exclusio...

Have you ever been afraid of going out and traveling around the world?  Does leaving the comfort, safety, and the familiarity of home cause you anxiety to travel?  Do you believe widespread media when it tells you that traveling anywhere outside of North America is automatically dangerous?  Tanin Kayvan is someone who used to have major anxiety about her safety abroad, but ultimately had an insati...

Imagine you’re a 12 year old living your best life. You’re in cheerleading, you’re super social and you love making friends, but suddenly something feels off.  You begin feeling weaker and you literally lose the ability to smile. You can’t open your eyes. You have trouble chewing, swallowing, and out of nowhere, you helplessly fall to the floor when you’re walking.  You know for a fact that someth...

Today’s guest is a freaking rockstar. Eliszabeth Van was born in Vietnam and moved to America at the age of 3, where she would grow up to survive an abusive childhood, be unhoused twice, and witness her father be incarcerated. During middle school, she walked in the Texas summer heat going door-to-door with her mom, filling out job applications because her mom did not know English. Fast forward to...

Peace Corps. SCUBA Diving. Long distance relationship during COVID. What do these three things have in common? They’re all really damn hard. But doing hard things is nothing new to today’s guest, Kayla Noble, who has always had a natural inclination go outside of her comfort zone. It hasn’t always been easy, but damn it if it hasn’t been rewarding and an adventure of a lifetime. From taking a leap...

You know that feeling when you have a job that you’re great at? One where you’ve been training and failing and investing years of time and energy and lessons into building a career for the rest of your life? But then one day you realize that this job and life you’ve earned doesn’t actually fulfill you like you thought it would. But you’ve worked so hard for so long to get there, so you stay hoping...

Have you ever heard of a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?  There are many of us out there, but often we don’t know the term exists, or how to conceptualize our day-to-day experiences. HSP’s are often deemed as “too sensitive.” While it is true that we are more sensitive than most, that is because our brains process life differently. We notice more than most people do, so life moves us and influences...

Imagine you find the perfect partner. You fall in love, build a life together, get married and then make plans to start a family. Sounds pretty ideal, right? Except for the part where covid shuts down the world 48 hours after your wedding. Oh and the part where life decides to wreck havoc on your hormones, causing you to have 2 miscarriages in the same year, forcing you to fight a battle you never...

Have you ever had a relationship where part of the time, everything was perfect and it was everything you ever wanted? But then there are other times when that same person completely disregards you, pretends you don’t have a connection, speaks as if you’re not in the room, and actively tries to remove any trace of you from their life?  This wouldn’t be the ideal relationship, so why do we allow ou...

Have you ever had too many expectations for a trip or an event? Were those expectations realistic? Did you realize it in the moment that you set yourself up for failure? In today's episode, I talk about a recent traveling experience that I expected to give me all of the clarity I'd ever need, only to fall flat and have a breakdown instead. Enjoy the podcast? Please subscribe and leave a...

Grieving is something we’re all familiar with, whether it’s a premature death or losing someone we love from natural causes. But how does the grieving process change when the death could have been avoidable, or comes at the hands of those who have sworn to protect?  In this episode of Art 2 Heart, Ghada Morad shares her story of how life and grief were flipped upside down after her brother was kil...

When most people think about the word trauma, it is usually heavy. Trauma is often viewed as the clouds that follow us and the storms that we assume must become a part of our life forever.  In this debut episode of Art 2 Heart, Soul on Fire shares a powerful poem, Something Borrowed, that fundamentally changed the way I view trauma and the relationship that can be had with it. He sheds light on ho...

Are there parts of yourself that you dislike so much that it prevents you from having a positive relationship with yourself? Is self-care something that you have distanced yourself from because you thought it wasn’t for you? In this episode of Art 2 Heart, Nobody Flowers shares a poem called Nappy, which highlights his animosity towards his hair, and how his hair ultimately became a gateway to int...