Claim OwnershipLet the Verse Flow: Personal Growth Thru a Creative Lens
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© 2025 Let the Verse Flow: Personal Growth Thru a Creative Lens
Description
Join writer and host, Jill Hodge, as she shares her creative self-care journey through a soulful mashup of storytelling, spoken word poetry, and music. Part self-help/part performing arts, this podcast explores personal growth through a creative lens.
Through an immersive backdrop of music and soundscapes, Jill explores a variety of practices and tools drawn from positive psychology like mindfulness, positive reframing, gratitude, and creative flow.
Dive into creative self-care techniques such as journal writing and affirmation meditations. You’ll find journal prompts at the end of every episode to guide your own self-reflection.
This podcast was born out of the struggle (and then insight) that Jill experienced as she dealt with her mother’s ailing health. She turned to creative expression for comfort and discovered the life-changing ways that it revealed a path toward a more purposeful life. In verse form: “I thought I’d lost myself along a road that was seldom straight or supple, but after the broken shards fell away, I glimpsed the undergrowth. From every tear that had fallen, nestled in life’s rich soil, there sprang a stalk, now entangled and evergreen. Exhausted, I rested under the lush canopy. This is my story.”
Let Jill inspire your creative self-care journey as she shares her “reflections from the bright side of the beat” and join this growing community by connecting with her at https://www.lettheverseflow.com/.
Want to ignite your creative self-care journey? Sign up for Jill’s free companion newsletter, the Me-Time Mixtape, which offers 3 essential, hand-curated creative self-care resources designed to put you back on your to-do list.
64 Episodes
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What does it mean to be true to yourself? It’s often a question that we ponder at pivotal points in our lives, especially during midlife. In this episode, I explore what it means to be yourself creatively, authentically, and with greater self-awareness. For inspiration, there’s poetry and a discussion of the role of mindfulness in living authentically. I also discuss an inspirational quote by Allen Ginsberg. It’s his iconic advice to writers (but it applies to all creative beings – whic...
Grief comes in waves – successive, unpredictable, fierce or tumbling – and with each wave, we get swept up and taken to another place. It's often a mixed bag of emotions and thoughts, a place of anger, shame, nostalgia and memory, great sorrow, or even laughter and gratitude. How can we steady ourselves when faced with all these conflicting feelings? With self-compassion. 💝 In today's episode, I talk about: the three elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindf...
This episode begins with an ode to an overwrought caregiver. I'm reaching out to my fellow caregiver tribe to remind you that what you do matters. When we care for an aging parent, child, partner, or neighbor, we impact our small piece of the world with our hearts and hands and unseen strength. We can get so wrapped up in our caregiving tasks that we lose sight of what our caring means. There often isn't much time to reflect on how we are showing up for our loved one or friend. We just ...
Do you have difficulty handling strong emotions like anger or frustration? Do you find yourself reaching for distractions like food or shopping, or alcohol to deal with stress or emotional overload? What does it look like to process emotions like anger successfully? In this episode, I walk you through one recent instance in which I transformed my anger without engaging in any negative avoidance or distraction behaviors. I explore how I sat with my feelings, reframed emotionally-charged ...
In this episode, I explore how I transformed a recent fear-based question about the limits of aging into a reflection on possibilities, presence, and personal growth. In my last days of vacation, blissfully snorkeling in Oahu, Hawaii, I had a lingering question pop up in my mind about how much longer I would be able to snorkel. Could I snorkel at age 80 and beyond? This fear-based question about the unknown future (which I affectionately call "the Undiscovered Country" -- yes, I'm a Trekkie) ...
In this episode, I unpack my wonderful vacation to Oahu, Hawaii, with a deep dive into how the flowers, sea animals, scents, and people inspire and re-energize my energy and commitment to my mindfulness practice. These two weeks of vacation are an important refresh, and the memories I make on these trips come back to me throughout the years, helping me be present for all the facets of my life. On the island of Oahu, flowers hang in full bloom like lanterns, and sea turtles glide beneath...
Do you struggle to let go of negative and automatic thoughts of dread about potential upcoming events? Do you second-guess yourself and replay past situations and decisions, wondering how you could have made so many mistakes? Do you find it difficult to let go of anxious questions and scenarios that play over and over again in your mind? Khalil Gibran once wrote, "We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” I certainly do it through my overthinking, worry, and rumination. ...
In this episode, we’ll explore the restorative powers of deep rest -- a quiet, safe, still space that helps re-energize just about every part of your life. Through deep rest, you heal yourself all the way to the cellular level and find a new vitality that helps you be more creative and focused. After a month of heavy life transitions, I found myself needing to rest, not sleep or distraction, but a sort of surrendering. And a few days later, I reaped the rewards of rest with greater clarity an...
Explore how Vincent Van Gogh’s insight into small, consistent actions can transform your personal growth journey. Learn why tiny steps toward your goals can lead to great success. This episode, inspired by my trip to the Netherlands and a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, is about the genius of small movements in the direction of your goals, desires, and passions. A year after I visited the Netherlands and the Van Gogh Museum, I saw this quote, which sparked a desire to explore its r...
In this episode, we explore mindful ways to cope with grief and loss, embracing the changing, shapeshifting nature of grief. If you or someone you know is navigating grief, this episode offers compassionate insights and healing strategies. After nearly four years of dealing with the sadness of handling my mom's Alzheimer's and ill health, I'm noticing some changes in my thinking -- especially when dealing with the disruptive and shapeshifting waves of grief. In this episode, I'll share ...
In this episode, I explore how embracing minimalism in midlife can simplify your life, reduce clutter, and free your mind. Discover how letting go of possessions, but holding onto memories, can transform your emotional wellbeing. The older I get, the less stuff I seem to need. For most of my life, I was firmly rooted in the knick-knack, bric-a-brac camp (isn’t bric-a-brac such a great phrase?). I love thrift stores, but as I get older and learn to say goodbye to my mom's things as a way...
When does self-improvement cross the line into self-flagellation? Are we using personal development and goal setting to undermine ourselves? How can self-improvement and self-acceptance co-exist in a world that increasingly wants us to choose sides? In this episode, we'll reflect on what's working in our lives and strike a balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance by acknowledging and being mindful of our wondrous qualities. We'll: Explore the ways we feel wondrous or do wondrous t...
Do you struggle to make time for artmaking, causing you not to get started? Do you think your art isn't worth appreciating or sharing because it's not good enough, finished, or polished? Sometimes these negative thoughts can be overcome when we lower the stakes around our artmaking. We may put so much pressure on ourselves, that it stifles our creative process. And that's a shame because the world needs your creativity. This episode is about recognizing the benefits of short crea...
Feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands? Need a buffer to preserve your optimism and sense of purpose in an increasingly stressful world? Then, this episode is for you! Discover how art appreciation can restore energy, inspire creativity, and deepen your connection to the world. Press play and listen to this episode as I explore: the benefits of art-making and art appreciation, especially in lessening emotional burdens and reducing stress, our universal need for self-expression and connec...
While writing this episode on caregiver burnout, my mom had a medical crisis that nearly killed her. I picked up my tired and weary bones and found the inner strength and energy I needed to be by her side. Along the way, I recalled how she and my support system helped bolster me during these challenges. Each time these crises happen, it reinforces how important it is for me to give to myself. In this episode, I outline the causes of caregiver burnout and offer seven ways to reduce the ...
Don’t let anyone tell you (and don’t tell yourself) that your small acts of kindness are not great! Each act of connection, charity, goodwill, mentorship, and civility adds up. In a world that can feel like everything is being torn apart, we still have a well of greatness in us that doesn’t come from how smart we are, how much money we have, how beautiful we are but from how humbly and lovingly we can reach out to one another with gestures of kindness. How well we can maintain our humanity an...
Are you holding yourself back because of fear, feelings of imposter syndrome, and self-imposed ageism? There are plenty of obstacles to achieving our goals without us adding elaborate "stories" based on "what-ifs" and fear. Let’s dispel some myths, and lean into the self-reliant power of getting older (and wiser). In this episode, I make a case for making friends with fear (with a bit of recognition and acceptance), examining the underlying lie of imposter syndrome, and using the wisdom and e...
When can we say that we have enough, and can we turn off our craving for more to find satisfaction with ourselves and the state of our lives right in this moment? I’m exploring these questions, sparked by a Sylvia Plath quote on "enough-ness". I’ll touch on gratitude, reducing social comparison, mindfulness, and building community as powerful allies in the fight to be content in a world that seems to push us to mindlessly want more. We’ll explore why that next purchase or fantastic, magical g...
Reducing overthinking, rumination, and worry can be a beast to tackle, but consistently reorienting our minds and bodies through some creative practices can help increase awareness as we work to replace these thoughts with more inspired ones. I’m using a Khalil Gibran quote as a jumping-off point for a discussion on how to stop “choosing sorrows” through overthinking. I’m also introducing eight strategies across four modalities that will help reduce overthinking, worry, and rumination. Those ...
This guided meditation (with visualization) accompanies episode #43 on cultivating a sense of belonging (to others and yourself). To explore the ways in which you belong to others and then to yourself, I guide you through a visualization exercise where you imagine yourself talking to a partner about an object of significance to you. You’ll explore how these objects help define deeply-held beliefs, creative passions or values that you have and then find a way to claim those values and beliefs ...
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