Heal and Grow with Creativity

045 - Ancestral Gifts, Cooking, Creativity & Healing: A Conversation with Joanna Oyarzabal Méndez

What does it look like to leave everything familiar behind and build a life that actually feels like yours? In this episode, I'm sitting down with my dear friend Joanna Oyarzabal Méndez — a multi-passionate healer, writer, and creative soul who left her 9-5, moved from California, USA to Oaxaca, Mexico, and began the deeply personal work of unlearning, reconnecting, and coming home to herself. We talk about following intuition when the path isn't clear, cooking as a love language, why creativity belongs to everyone, using art to process difficult emotions, body liberation, neurodivergence, and what it means to be multi-passionate in life and business. This is a conversation about trusting what you carry, honoring where you come from, and giving yourself permission to live differently. 📝 Read the accompanying blog post for this episode [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/ancestral-gifts-cooking-creativity-and-healing-a-conversation-with-joanna-oyarzabal-mendez].  🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:  * Joanna’s Substack [https://profundacomoelmar.substack.com/] * Joanna’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/la_juana_oyarzabal/] * The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor [https://www.sonyareneetaylor.com/books/the-body-is-not-an-apology-the-power-of-radical-self-love-h2x6p] (Book) * Dra. Dulce’s Love Journal [https://www.dracrzn.com/offerings] Connect with Renata 👇🏽 * Subscribe to my newsletter [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/newsletter]. * Book a free discovery call here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/discovery-session].  * Renata’s website [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/] * Renata’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renatamcelvany/] * Renata’s YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@renatamcelvany]

044 - When the Right Decision Feels Like a Mistake: Understanding Your Nervous System's Fear Response

Have you ever made a decision that felt completely right — and then immediately felt awful about it? You're not broken. You're not impulsive. And you definitely didn't make a mistake. In this episode, creativity coach Renata unpacks why good decisions so often feel bad — especially for sensitive, intuitive, and neurodivergent women of color. Drawing from her own experience of a stressful move, she explores three reasons this happens: the deep-rooted fear of trusting yourself, the nervous system's resistance to change even when it's good for you, and the way intuitive decision-making gets mislabeled as impulsivity. If you've ever second-guessed a choice that felt right in your bones, this one's for you. 📝 Read the accompanying blog post for this episode [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/when-the-right-decision-feels-like-a-mistake-understanding-your-nervous-systems-fear-response].  🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:  * Get tickets for Pause & Release, A Live Expressive Art Workshop here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/a-moment-of-support] * Listen to next: A Reflection of Friendship and Emotional Labor [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/a-reflection-on-friendship-and-emotional-labor] * Subscribe to my newsletter [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/newsletter]. * Book a free discovery call here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/discovery-session].  * Renata’s website [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/] * Renata’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renatamcelvany/] * Renata’s YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@renatamcelvany]

043 - Creating As a Form of Self-Care with Kait Matthews

This week on Heal and Grow with Creativity, I’m chatting with our first guest, Kait Matthews. She’s an artist and illustrator born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, of Ojibwe/Potowatomi heritage. She graduated from the Laguna College of Art and Design, and currently resides in North San Diego County with her partner and their four-legged rescues. During our chat we talk about:  * Creating as a form of self-care  * How creating can help us to shift our relationship with ourselves  * Finding creative community and connection without losing ourselves, and  * The power of self-talk as we attempt to sit down and create Moreover, we also discussed her passion for painting portraits and how she’s using her art to amplify and celebrate stories, myths, and legends of Indigenous women from around the world. She also shared about her own journey reconnecting to her native heritage and how this experience has shaped her relationship to her art and healing journey.  📝 Read the accompanying blog post for this episode [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/creating-as-a-form-of-self-care-with-kait-matthews].  You can check out her work here:  * Website [https://www.kaitmatthews.com/] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kaitmatthewsart/] Other links mentioned in this episode: * The Clarity Tarot Deck by Debra Zachau and illustrated by Kait Matthews [https://www.kaitmatthews.com/matthews-zachau-clarity-tarot-deck] * The Flowerwise Oracle by Leigh Podgordski and illustrated by Kait Matthews [https://www.kaitmatthews.com/the-flowerwise-oracle] * Feathers of Wisdom Book by Leigh Podgorsky and Illustrated by Kait Matthews [https://www.feathersofwisdom.com/] Connect with Renata: * Subscribe to my newsletter [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/newsletter]. * Book a free discovery call here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/discovery-session].  * Renata’s website [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/] * Renata’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renatamcelvany/] * Renata’s YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@renatamcelvany]

042 - A Reflection on Friendship and Emotional Labor

Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling strangely empty—even though you were the one listening, caring, and showing up? Nothing technically went wrong, yet something didn’t feel mutual. That quiet sense of invisibility can be hard to name, but deeply unsettling. In this reflective episode, I explore what it’s like when friendships quietly turn into one-sided emotional labor and when you’re cast as the “unofficial therapist” and begin to question whether your needs are allowed. Rather than offering quick fixes, this is an invitation to notice, reflect, and gently reconsider what you need from connection. 📝 Read the accompanying blog post for this episode [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/a-reflection-on-friendship-and-emotional-labor].  🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:  * Book a free discovery call here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/discovery-session].  * Why You Feel Behind Before Your Day Even Begins (Especially Right Now) [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/why-you-feel-behind-before-your-day-even-begins] * Subscribe to my newsletter [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/newsletter]. * Renata’s website [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/] * Renata’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renatamcelvany/] * Renata’s YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@renatamcelvany]

041 - Why You Feel Behind Before Your Day Even Begins (Especially Right Now)

Have you ever woken up already feeling behind, before you’ve even gotten out of bed? In this episode, Renata explores a quiet but heavy experience that often shows up at the start of a new year: the sense that you’re already late, already failing, already not doing enough.  For neurodivergent, multi-passionate, and deeply sensitive women, this feeling can hit hard and often without a clear reason why. What if this feeling isn’t a personal failure? What if you haven’t actually done anything wrong? If you’ve been craving clarity, ease, and permission to start your day without already feeling behind, this episode is for you. 📝 Read the accompanying blog post for this episode [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/why-you-feel-behind-before-your-day-even-begins].  🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:  * Book a free discovery call here [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/discovery-session].  * Why is expressive art such a powerful tool for self-discovery [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/blog/why-is-art-making-such-a-powerful-tool-for-self-discovery] * Subscribe to my newsletter [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/newsletter]. * Renata’s website [https://www.renatamcelvany.com/] * Renata’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renatamcelvany/] * Renata’s YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@renatamcelvany]