"We are mosaics. Pieces of light, love, history, stars. Glued together with magic and music and words." - Anna Kritzen

There’s a quiet grief that lives inside a lot of people.

Because we’ve learned how to contain ourselves.

Creativity was once somewhere we all went to feel alive, and became something we use to prove who we are.

We learn to identify with a medium, a label, an aesthetic, a version of ourselves to be understood, admired, approved of. And without realizing it - these identities shrink us.

This episode is about how identifying too tightly with a creative medium - or with being good at something - can quietly disconnect us from our true nature, which is plural, fluid, and undefinable. When creativity becomes performance, identity, or ego, it stops being an expression of our aliveness and starts feeding validation instead.

Today, I’m talking about creative repression, the “shadow artist,” and what it really means to be a starving artist - not financially, but spiritually. We’ll explore how boxing ourselves into one identity limits our expression, why losing passion is often a sign of creative deprivation, and how curiosity, play, and permission to be bad can reopen the door.

As Julia Cameron once said: ""You're either losing your mind or gaining your soul."

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THANK YOU for listening!! If you love FSO & this episode, leave a comment!! Tell me what resonated, share what you want to hear next <3 Don't forget to rate the podcast on your preferred streaming platform!!

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IG: @byvanessafontana

TIKTOK: @butterflyfountain

COSTA RICA spots are still open!! DM me over IG if you wanna chat about it / want a discount code <3 YOU HAVE UNTIL JAN 30 TO BOOK.

MAILING LIST (Sign up for 10% off Merch + a Free Energy Protection Meditation <3)

MERCH

If you liked this episode, you may like this one too:--

This episode is not what you think it is.

It is not a hustle-forward, all-gas-no-breaks charge to a new year.

But it is also not a total rejection of the new year.

It is a subtle and soft invitation into moving forward with reflection, ritual, and intention.

Through redefining and examining our relationship with "locking in," or what we turn out focus towards, we can refine our communion with newness in a way that feels true to us.

This episode offers a three-phase process to entering - might we even say *sauntering* - into the new year in a way that will allow our new year practices to feel like sustainable daily rhythms rather than temporary sprints & quick fixes.

This is a conversation about where and how we spend our time & attention, and will give you a framework of tools to carry forward as you reflect on the previous year and look ahead at the new one.

It asks two questions to answer honestly, poignantly, (and to take time meditating upon):

What have you been locked into in 2025?

And what are you ready to unlock in 2026?

These questions aren't so much asking to be answered directly, yet used as pointers to the emerging answers within you that come from peering inwards and sitting with self.

May these suggestions support you as you continue to evolve & figure sh!t out in 2026.

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THANK YOU for listening!! If you love FSO & this episode, leave a comment!! Tell me what resonated, share what you want to hear next <3 Don't forget to rate the podcast on your preferred streaming platform!!

----

IG: @byvanessafontana

TIKTOK: @butterflyfountain

COSTA RICA spots are still open!! DM me over IG if you wanna chat about it / want a discount code <3 YOU HAVE UNTIL JAN 30 TO BOOK.

MAILING LIST (Sign up for 10% off Merch + a Free Energy Protection Meditation <3)

MERCH

If you liked this episode, you may like this one too:

Ep. 72: CREATE OR BE CONSUMED

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Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Digital garden: https://fransfieldnotes.substack.com/p/how-to-make-a-digital-garden-a-beginners

Wild geese podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4j9fApvoYIkFYkJrMeHifp?si=b7ade01156704390

You need to be bored: https://hbr.org/2025/08/you-need-to-be-bored-heres-why

"Allow shame to find no home in your posture, in your dances, in your aura, in your lovemaking sounds, in your dreaming spaces, in your every single desire," - India Ame'ye

This episode is an exploration of releasing shame, guilt, and fear from our bodies and rekindling our inner magic.

Through poetry, storytelling, and recommended practices of somatic wisdom and inner reflection, this episode of creates conversation around what it means to let the soft animal of your body love what it love and wants what it wants.

Most saliently, it asks a few important questions (left here for your courtesy to journal about after listening):

1. What does it look like to take the best possible care of myself in this present moment life-situation I find myself in?
2. What would I do if it didn't have to be perfect? Or good? If the inner critic in my heart wasn't watching, judging, and eclipsing the inner child who just wanted to try?

If you take anything from this episode, let it be this:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to crawl on your knees for hundreds of miles repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

(Courtesy of Mary Oliver, Wild Geese.)

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If you love FSO & this episode, leave a comment!! Tell me what resonated, share what you want to hear next <3 Don't forget to rate the podcast on your preferred streaming platform!!

----

IG: @byvanessafontana

TIKTOK: @butterflyfountain

COSTA RICA spots are still open!! DM me over IG if you wanna chat about it <3

MAILING LIST (Sign up for 10% off Merch + a Free Energy Protection Meditation <3)

MERCH

If you liked this episode, you may like this one too:

Episode 102: Unapologetic, Unconditional Beingness: Take up Space!