92: ENCORE: Nicole Gulotta, Beauty and the Beast & thoughts on creativity and body

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with NICOLE GULOTTA, the author of Wild Words: Rituals, Routines, and Rhythms for Braving the Writer's Path and Eat This Poem: A Literary Feast of Recipes Inspired by Poetry, which was inspired by her blog of the same name. Her winning poetry chapbook, Migration, was published by Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. As the founder of the Wild Words community, she helps fellow writers embrace the season they're in, create at their own pace, and care for their minds and bodies along the way. Nicole holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her essays and poems have been published in Life & Thyme, LitHub, Motherwell, The Write Life, The Portland Review, Georgetown Review, and others. As a Daring to Rest™ yoga nidra facilitator, she guides women to feel both physically rested and tapped into their creative potential. Born and raised in Southern California, she lives in North Carolina with her family. Connect on Instagram @nicolegulotta.author. Things we chatted about in this episode: the fairytale Beauty and the Beast how Belle is such an introverted bookworm and such a caring person themes of digging under the surface relationship with creativity how creativity ebbs and flows with the seasons in fall and winter cosiness and consumption rules over creation in spring and summer creative energy and starting projects rules how her creative process includes a lot of thinking pondering time before creation comes how asking the question "am I in a season of consuming, or a season of creating?" is useful how creativity is affected by how she feels in her body if she doesn't feel good there isn't enough creative bandwidth to explore her work how walking relieves and shifts any creative roadblock – how physically changing space and walking away from whatever it is you're facing and getting fresh air and letting brain and mind go to work gets you unstuck relationship with body the importance of caring about how she feels in the body, rather than what the number on the scale says, and how much exercise has been done how having a baby changed her body relationship drastically on pregnancy and nurturing a baby in their first year, and how much things change how luxurious really getting dressed feels after having a baby on reintroducing her body to herself, and how much yoga and walking helps how neck and shoulder tension tells her she needs to care for her body more how important self care is for parenting in a present contented way