Honestly, Dear Listener

In this episode of Honestly, Dear Listener, we dive into the magic of creative collaboration and how making art with others can be an act of rebellion and resistance. With over 30 years of creating together, we share insights on what makes a great artistic partnership: trust, filling in each other’s gaps, and finding that creative flow. This week, we filmed a music video to Alanis Morissette’s “Ir...

In this episode of Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about the magic of making time for ourselves and how vital it is to nurture that connection. From our evangelical days of “doing devotions” to discovering sacredness in meditation, mindfulness, and even tarot, we reflect on how these practices—though seemingly worlds apart—both invite us to pause and connect with something deeper. Carrie sh...

This week on the podcast, we're getting specific about what we’re creating. Every quarter, we want to do update episodes like this to revisit what we’ve made in the past three months (what worked, what didn’t, and to celebrate our forward movement) and also to set goals for what we want to accomplish in the next quarter. So today, we’re talking about Quarter 4 of 2024 (the “rewind” part) and Quart...

Happy New Year, dearest and darlingest Listener! This week on the podcast, we're talking about the difference between New Year's resolutions versus intentions. We're also talking about Emily's intentions and how we can expect the resistance (aka: embracing the suckage). We're also talking about how we can set realistic expectations for ourselves, how to stop overthinking and start doing, and how w...

TW: This episode contains talk about mental health struggles, religious trauma, and sexual abuse. Also, we are not mental health professionals; everything in this series is OUR experiences and opinions. Please consult your doctor. Note: This is part one in a two-part series on mental health. If you haven’t listened to part 1, you can do that here. This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talkin...

TW: This episode contains talk about mental health struggles, religious trauma, and sexual abuse. Note: This is part one in a two-part series on mental health. This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about a subject near and dear to our hearts, brains, and nervous systems: mental health. We dive into how growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment often left us more confused t...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we once again welcome Denver-based Saxophonist, Artist, and Educator Sarah Mount of Sarah Mount and the Rushmores to the podcast. We discuss something people don’t talk about enough: perimenopause. Did you know perimenopause can start ten years before a woman’s body starts menopause? We’re talking mid-30s, people, or even earlier! And when the hormones start s...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about the ways we put up barriers to our own creativity. We often have a creative idea but judge it too early, essentially killing it before it’s had time to marinate. We also discuss the difference between bragging and sharing our joys with others. References:Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience...

This is part 2 in our series on purity culture. If you listened to part 1, go back and listen to part 1 and then come back here! Trigger Warning! We’re talking about sexual trauma as a result of religious abuse and purity culture. If that sounds like too much, feel free to skip this episode. Take care of yourself, Dear Listener. This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re returning for the second...

Trigger Warning! We’re talking about sexual trauma as a result of religious abuse and purity culture. If that sounds like too much, feel free to skip this episode. Take care of yourself, Dear Listener. This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about how we grew up and, in particular, the real downer we’ve come to know as purity culture. As so many listeners were, we were raised in Evange...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re circling back around to how the way we were raised (in fundamentalist, Evangelical, Pentecostal Christians) has influenced the way we create now. We also dive into how the beliefs we inherited when we were kids continues to contribute to our mental health struggles. On a lighter note, we also discuss the holes in our pop music upbringing, exploring what...

Note: We recorded this episode the day after Election Day 2024, and we gave it all we had--which wasn't much. We feel empathy and compassion didn't win this time, but we're not giving up hope. We talk about where we're going from here, what we plan on doing, and what we're going to be pushing into even more now. Please take care of yourselves and be kind. Hope is not lost, Dear Listener. Hosts: Em...

🎃 This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we're getting scary. REAL scary. 🎃 We discuss what scares us most about the entire creative process and how we're actually more scared of success than of failure. We dive into the fears and insecurities that plague us and other artists, the daunting process of starting new personal projects, not resting on our laurels, and the long road to creative success...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we discuss validation--what it is and whether we need it or not. We also compare and contrast validation with encouragement. All this and more after a discussion about how Emily should have been a hand model! References:The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, book by Julia Cameron Opal appTIMECODES0:00 - Intro0:29 - Emily shoulda been a hand m...

Welcome back to Honestly, Dear Listener! In today’s episode, we discuss Week 7 of Julia Cameron’s classic The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. We talk specifically about how accessing our creativity is like letting ourselves fall down the well to join the river of inspiration underneath our everyday lives. Often, creating can feel like we’re straining to make something happen....

Welcome back to Honestly, Dear Listener! In today's episode, we dive into the tantalizing prospect of sudden wealth, its complex implications, and how it would change our lives as creators. Emily shares her dream expenditures, from hiring personal trainers to collaborating with top-tier scenic designers, all while navigating the high costs of New York living. Carrie, on the other hand, advocates f...

It’s our first episode of Season 4! This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we welcome vocalist, voice coach, friend, and frequent contributor to the show Amber Mogg Cathey back to the podcast. We discuss our strategies for how to positively motivate ourselves instead of what comes naturally to us: kicking our own butts into submission. We talk about positive versus negative motivations and how effe...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we face one of the hardest weeks for our creative practice: an entire week of NO NUMBING OUT. Inspired by Week 4 of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, we said no to reading (yes—reading), audiobooks and podcasts, social media, TV, and anything else that we do to fill the silence around us. In this episode, we relay how this silence has changed or hasn’t changed...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking to our friend Gemma Sugrue about how to find our creative identity. Gemma is a vocal coach and performer turned business coach. She has worked with the likes of Bon Iver and Damien Rice and has built several successful social media platforms including a Tiktok with a following of 450K and YouTube with 170K subscribers. Through our conversation, G...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re delving into the concept of Shadow Artists. In her bestselling book on creativity, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron introduces the “Shadow Artist,” someone who is deeply connected to the arts but isn’t fully expressing their own creative potential. She goes on to describe Shadow Artists as individuals who are often attracted to creative fields but remain...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about time traveling back to parts of our wounded childhood selves. We talk about how behind every traumatic event in our lives, we form a belief about that thing, and often, these unhelpful beliefs keep us stuck. We discuss pulling up those (often unconscious) beliefs, examining them, and walking our childhood selves through the trauma, with the...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re harkening back, back to when we were wee ones; what did we need back then but didn’t have? We discuss how Emily stumbled upon a quote: "I think we become whoever would have saved our younger self." We talk about how we are becoming who we needed and how we can re-parent our inner children with love and kindness. We also discuss idealism, Christian fundam...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about living a centered life that is rooted in the present. Carrie shares how she feels she is constantly being pushed forward by the past (or the left side) of the frame AKA time of an autoscroll Mario video game, and Emily feels she is ever pushing forward wanting to go faster into the future (or the right side) of the frame. Both the past and...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking to Sydney Parks Smith, Producing Artistic Director of OpenStage Theatre in Fort Collins, Colorado on how we know when it’s time to walk away. Sydney has always acted on stage, and in 2019, she stepped into her dream role as Producing Artistic Director of OpenStage. But when happens when your dream isn’t what you really wanted? Sydney shares her p...

This week on Honestly, Dear Listener, we’re talking about trying new things even when we feel stupid or vulnerable. Just the thought of looking foolish makes most of us squirm. It’s easy to keep at doing the same things we know we’re good at and pass up all the things we fear we could be “bad” at. However, learning new things is good for us—and especially for our brains. Join us as we discuss rece...