Community and Becoming | For the Love of Creatives

What if the sound of your creativity could keep someone’s love alive long after they’re gone? In this conversation, Breck White shares how a tragic loss at fourteen, a grave under a tree, and a chorus of wind chimes slowly turned into Love Chimes—a business rooted in memorials, story, and the frequency of love. Breck talks about becoming the kind of person who trusts her own intuition enough to cr...

Have you ever delivered something beautiful, heard the praise… and still thought, “If only they knew—I’m not really that good”? In this solo episode, Dwight sits down as your “Connections and Community Guy” and names the quiet, lonely experience so many creatives carry: feeling like a fraud in the very work that matters most to you. Drawing from the original research on the “imposter phenomenon,”...

Have you ever looked at other artists and thought, “They’re the real creatives… I just dabble”? In this solo episode, Dwight names the inner landscape so many heart-centered creatives quietly live in but rarely language out loud. He walks us through what he calls the Creative Journey Framework: the doubting creative, the awakening creative, the emerging voice, and the authentic creative. Instead o...

What happens when your inner world wakes up… and your outer life refuses to catch up? In this intimate conversation, jazz singer-songwriter and producer Lizzie Thomas shares the story of an awakening that asked everything of her: her marriage, her beliefs, her relationship to patriarchy, and the version of herself she’d been performing for years. Songs began arriving through dreams and meditation,...

What do you do when a “fun little hobby” quietly becomes the truest expression of who you are? In this conversation, Sarah Lentz shares how a throwaway comment from her husband – “you should just make them yourself” – pulled her into a world of wax, wicks, migraines, markets, and slow, deeply human becoming. Sarah doesn’t arrive as a polished brand; she shows up as a woman who loves candles, lives...

What if “becoming” isn’t about fixing yourself, but finally coming home to who you’ve been all along? In this tender, expansive conversation, Priyanka Khandalkar traces her journey from overachieving engineer and burned‑out business builder to soul‑led creative, healer, and mother who finally trusts her own voice. She shares openly about growing up in a toxic home, carrying a deep father wound, su...

What if every big project you care about secretly feels like a test of your worth, not just your skill? In this intimate solo episode, Dwight takes us inside the lived reality of imposter syndrome for creatives... far beyond the Instagram carousels and fluffy posts. Drawing from Dr. Pauline Clance’s original research on the “impostor phenomenon,” he traces how the imposter cycle shows up in our bo...

Take a quick listen to know what's brewing at the For the Love of Creatives podcast... This is Maddox & Dwight! More than anything, we want to connect and communicate with you. We don't want to think of you as listeners. We want to think of you as community. So, scroll to the bottom of the show notes and click the SUBSCRIBE link. Thank you! Thank you for listening to the For the Love of C...

What happens when a boy who lip‑syncs Diana Ross, gets shoved into the bushes for being “too much,” grows up believing he’s not creative at all? In this conversation, Grant Miller sits with Dwight and Maddox and slowly unravels the years he spent making himself small—first as a gay kid with no role models, later as a teacher, and even as an author who still couldn’t claim “I am a creative. Grant s...

What happens when you’ve spent more than half your life away from the place you were born, and still don’t fully belong where you’ve landed? In this conversation, Sudanese-born abstract painter and truck driver Nouman Gaafar shares what it means to live between cultures, between labels, and eventually, between old ideas of himself and the person he’s becoming. Nouman talks about seeking political...

What happens to us… when we slowly lose the ability to connect? Not all at once… but little by little. A message we don’t send. A conversation we avoid. A moment where we choose our phone instead of the person in front of us. Ely comes into this conversation not just through the lens of email… but as someone noticing a deeper shift… especially since COVID. People sitting together… not talking. Wan...

What happens to our creativity when our whole life is built on keeping everyone else comfortable? In this tender, far-reaching conversation, Kimia Penton shares how growing up as a firstborn Persian daughter, an immigrant many times over, and a lifelong “strong one” slowly pulled her away from her own voice—until her body, spirit, and art refused to keep performing. She talks about the breaking po...

What do you do… when life doesn’t just nudge you… but completely levels everything you thought was stable? In this conversation, Megan shares a life that, on the surface, looks full… meaningful work, a growing family, a deep sense of purpose. But underneath it all is something even more powerful… a willingness to keep choosing who she becomes, even when life asks more of her than feels fair. From...

What happens when the life you’ve built… the work, the rhythm, the people… suddenly disappears? For many creatives, identity is quietly woven into everything we do. So when something disrupts that… it doesn’t just feel like change. It feels like loss. In this conversation, Lisa McKenna shares what it was like to move through a season where everything familiar fell away… her work, her community, he...

What if creativity doesn’t begin with talent… but with the courage to look inward? In this conversation, Maddox and Dwight sit down with Erica Allaby , someone they’ve shared community with for years… yet realized they had never fully heard her creative story. What unfolds is a deeply human journey. Erica shares how she grew up with a quiet sense of being a lone wolf… connected to people, yet alwa...

What happens when you realize the life you built… isn’t the life that will outlive you? For many creatives, the path is rarely straight. It bends toward practicality. Toward stability. Toward the careers that make sense on paper. In this episode, Maddox and Dwight sit down with artist Jing Herman to explore a journey that began in childhood creativity, moved through the high-pressure world of fina...

What actually fuels creativity? Most of us think creativity lives in the mind… an idea, a talent, or a skill we develop. But what if creativity comes from somewhere deeper? Something that moves through the body… through emotion… through the very life force that animates us. In this episode, Maddox and Dwight sit down with Australian educator and facilitator Myola Woods to explore a topic many crea...

Have you ever felt like the creative world makes sense to you… but the rest of the world doesn’t? Many artists, makers, and dreamers grow up believing something is wrong with them… too sensitive, too scattered, too much. They struggle in classrooms, workplaces, and systems built for brains that move in straight lines. And quietly, many are living somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum. In this c...

Have you ever been so close to your work… so deep in the tiny details… that all you could see were the flaws? In this conversation, mosaic artist and workshop founder Matt Yigit invites us into a powerful metaphor that feels almost too familiar for creatives. Participants in his workshops spend hours placing tiny pieces of colored glass onto mosaic lamps… leaning in close… noticing every misalignm...

Have you ever reached a point in your creative life where the work itself starts asking something deeper of you? Not better technique. Not more exposure. But more of you . In this conversation, Brandi Jones opens up about the quiet, internal shift that happens when creativity stops being something you do and starts becoming something that shapes who you are. She reflects on growth, mistakes, and t...

What if the hardest part of creativity isn’t learning the craft… but learning how to stand inside who you really are? In this deeply human conversation, Nicko Coleman joins Maddox and Dwight to explore what it feels like to be in the middle of becoming… when the old identity no longer fits, and the new one hasn’t fully formed yet. This episode isn’t about labels, achievements, or artistic mileston...

What if the thing you keep trying to walk away from… is actually the thing trying to bring you home? In this conversation, Sean Delaney shares what it’s been like to live a creative life that never quite loosened its grip. From writing poetry as a kid in a small upstate New York town, to falling in love with hip-hop, to joining the Navy, to building a life that looked responsible on paper... music...

What happens when the version of yourself you worked so hard to become suddenly no longer fits? In this deeply human conversation, Leta Herrera shares what it felt like to lose the life she knew… the identity, the history, the sense of continuity… and how art became the place she returned to when nothing else made sense. Rather than talking about creativity as a career or a skill, Leta speaks from...

Have you ever lived inside a life that looked right on paper… but didn’t feel like you? This week we sit down with Dallas-based artist Dina Elsaid , and her story begins in a place so many creatives quietly recognize… doing exactly what she was “supposed” to do. Dina grew up in a culture where the path was clear and unquestioned. Medicine was honorable. Medicine was stable. Medicine was expected....

Have you ever felt the quiet ache of wanting to be seen… not for what you produce, but for who you really are? In this deeply moving conversation, we sit with award-winning filmmaker, producer, on-camera talent, and creative Tammy Nguyen-Lee as she shares what it was like growing up carrying stories that had no safe place to land. Stories shaped by culture, silence, expectation, and the longing to...