"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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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!!

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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.

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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!!

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

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

Growing wiser into the ancient knowledge of our spirit and the animalistic nature of our humanity demands the realization that many things our society looks at as luxuries are actually necessities.

One of them: rest.

As a society, we have a complicated relationship with rest. An anxious-avoidant one where we long for it, but don't want to get too comfortable in it. We crave it, yet we fear leaning into it.

In this Winter Solstice episode, we lean into a discussion about restoring balance in our natural rhythms and cycles through embracing rest and ritualizing our lives with intention.

I take you through my complicated and once toxic relationship with rest and productivity, and the ways that I've healed it.

What I've found is that -

Inspiration strikes most in surrender,

Romance can flourish in the spaces in between -

And when we allow ourselves the birthright of rest and recovery, we can receive so much more.

In a world that never stops turning, if lighting a candle and reading a book in the sun as it begins to set early is an act of rebellion, then let us all be the leaders of the next revolution.

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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

Rate the podcast on your preferred streaming platform!!

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Growth Diaries Template

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a reminder that it's as easy as a deep breath

and seeing that it has always been okay.

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This episode is about remembering that your purpose was never meant to look like anyone else’s - and releasing the comparison that’s been convincing you you’re behind.

I believe that we all have a gift. I believe that we all have a purpose. I believe that it is buried within the places we don’t want to look. It is entangled in the masterpieces of destruction, it is the diamond in the roughest moments of life, it is forged in the fire of standing tall as you face yourself - no longer running away.

But in this age of endless self-help prescriptions from talking heads on the internet, 25 year old millionaires who tell you you're doing something wrong because you haven't figured out how to make 100k overnight while gallivanting at the beach, how can you not feel like you're behind? Like you’ve missed something?

Comparison does not just steal joy from you - it steals your knowing, your presence, your direction, and the thread of your purpose from you.

These are illusions that are meant to distort our inner compass and seep us into comparison. To keep you running towards something that isn’t your own.

No one else has lived the life you’ve lived through your precious eyes.

And for that reason, the unique purpose that you have - the gifts that you have - are buried within the threads you have been weaving your whole life, not in the framework of someone else’s.

This episode is for anyone who feels like they're behind, who feels a little confused, who feels like they don't quite know their purpose but have been trying to find it, who feels like they have one but don't know where to start in pursuing it, who wants to pursue creativity in some form but feels limited, who wants make their creativity their living but has no clue where to start -

I see you.

But here's the truth:

Knowing your purpose is only half of the equation.

Staying true to yourself in it is the other half.

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READ THE SUBSTACK PIECE HERE

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Saying yes to yourself is an unraveling process of becoming closer and closer to the gift of uncertainty and confronting the fear that holds you hostage in order to receive it.

In this episode, I share reflections of my journey in the last year saying the biggest, boldest yes I ever have: leaving my 9-5 last year to pursue a creative life.

This episode was recorded from an adobe home in Santa Fe, New Mexico gifted by Two Casitas (explore their homes here!!). I found myself here to meet Julia Cameron, author of the Artist's Way at a coffee-shop event she was holding for her latest book. I flew here to say yes to a little call in my heart, to explore what was within it, and to ask Julia to be a guest on this podcast. (stay tuned to see what happens next!!)

This episode covers the many lessons I've learned while taking the Road Less Traveled - including a deeply honest admittance of the challenges that come with choosing less stability for more internal certainty while living in the flux of a place like New York City.

In this episode - I explore what it means to actually say yes to yourself, what it takes to live a creative life, and a few things I wish I would have known before taking the leap.

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Read the Substack Piece

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you can’t create a life you love while starving the part of you that was born to create it.

chapter three of The Perfectionist Diaries is an ode to the Good Idea Fairy - this childlike, intuitive, enchanted part of you that I created to represent the little voice that drops breadcrumbs, whispers nudges, and hands you ideas that could change your entire life (if you'd just listen!!)

this episode is about repairing that relationship:

letting your creativity breathe again,

acting without needing certainty,

learning the sacred art of detachment.

and a core Figuring Sh!t Out theme:

following the spark even when it makes no sense on paper.

and at the end of the episode - big news about how I'm doing just this!! (AGAIN?? ...yes.)

bringing this series full circle and closing the loop on fear, flow, and creative devotion.

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GOOD IDEA FAIRY & CREATIVITY HEALING MEDITATION: Here.

Perfectionist Diaries Episodes:

Chapter 1: Do it Scared

Chapter 2: Make it Exist, then Make it Good

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My Substack <3