Rediscover Your Spark: Creativity Tips with Amber Vitti Hill

Feel inspired and empowered in this week's episode where Maureen and Heather chat with Amber Vitti Hill, a creative coach, writer and mom who’s all about helping people reconnect with their creativity and rediscover themselves. Amber shares practical tips for reigniting your passion and gives moms everywhere permission to focus on their own needs with a creative outlet. If you’re ready to spice up your daily life and rediscover your creative spark, this episode is just what you need!

Work With Us!

• Book a Lactation Consult with Heather! Click HERE for the deets.
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THANKS TO OUR NEW PATRONS, Deanna Milano, Franziska Marie Ronquillo, Chris John, Jaclyn Petrov, Brigitte Driller, Alexis Soto, and Emily Novet!

Connect with Amber:
Literary Sipper Blog
Literary Sipper Podcast Spotify | Apple
Amber Vitti Hill Website | Instagram | Facebook

Other helpful resources:
Sketchbook Skool with Danny Gregory: Top Sketching Courses Online: Beginners to Pro | Sketchbook Skool

Prefer to read the transcript? Click Here 

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Milk Minute Podcast. Heather, Maureen, oh, and Marty. I was going to introduce Marty and then she just spit up on me. Hey, everybody. Marty's back in the podcast room with us today.

She's loud. She's proud. She's going to be here for our intro and outro. Anyway, I'm welcoming you to a very special episode. One of the times we're veering a little bit away from social media. specifically breastfeeding and just focusing on parenting and ourselves. I had the idea to invite my old English teacher to chat with us today.

Her name is Amber Vitti Hill and. She has since after teaching, I don't know how many hundreds of students and helping them really grow in incredible ways. You know, she was like that impactful English teacher, the one everybody I hope had in school. She is now a creative coach and she focuses on helping people find their way back to their creativity or how to maximize their creativity.

So she's also a mother. So we're inviting her on the show today to chat about that and to chat with you guys about her work. Finding yourselves again in the postpartum. I hear this as a very common complaint. Not even complaint, just like a, this is what's happening, I don't even know who I am anymore.

And when I try to remember who I am, it feels like putting on a pair of pants that's too tight. Which is also happening, you know. It just feels uncomfortable sometimes to try to go, you know, back and I think Amber is really good at helping you move forward. Yeah, yeah. So I hope you guys will enjoy that as much as I will.

I'm going to try very hard not to call her Miss Vitti the entire episode. Marty's eating tissues. Fantastic. But before we do that, let's thank some patrons. Yes, we have just gotten so many new ones still from the summer that we're cycling through. So thank you everybody for your patience. All right, we would like to shout out to Deanna Milano, to Franziska Marie Ronquillo, Chris John, Jacqueline Petrov, Bridget Driller, Alexis Soto, and Emily Novet. 

Guys so much for supporting us. We sincerely could not do this podcast without you. And if you guys are interested in becoming a patron, helping us produce more episodes of the Milk Minute you can find that at Patreon. com slash milk minute podcast. You can also still access every single episode of Beyond the Boob that way.

If you have a new pregnancy, if you have a friend with a new pregnancy and you want to recommend it, that is our favorite way to get it to you. All right, everybody. Well, let's take a quick break. We're going to thank a sponsor. And when we come back, we are going to welcome Amber into the studio. Okay, welcome back, everybody.

And Amber, welcome to the Milk Minute podcast. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's still, I have to say, it still feels weird to call you Amber because my head is like, it's Miss Vitti. No, it's Miss Hill. Oh, and it's very strange because I get emails and Facebook and all of the things from former students and they all start with Miss Vitti.

Yeah. And I guess I didn't realize that you were Maureen's sister. Teacher ? Yes. Mm-Hmm? . I was your teacher and I think I was your college counselor too, wasn't I? Yes. Was that your, yes. That was your, so I taught you Oh boy. And I was your college counselor. So, alright. New plan. This episode is now all about telling me what Maureen was like back in the day, and also her old sister as well.

Yes. So, yeah, so I have both experiences, which were very different experiences with the feral sisters, but well before we revenue this. Could you introduce yourself to our audience a little bit more? Tell us about you. Sure. So my name is Amber Vitti Hill. I kept both names. I do both names. And I am a creative coach and right now and I started my career as a teacher and we'll get into that probably in a little bit.

But I had my first classroom at the age of 21. And I taught at or and or counseled until I was 38, and I had my second child. So when I had my first son, I worked and did the daycare thing and all of the balancing that happens with that. Once I had my second son, just wasn't fiscally responsible to have two in daycare and work in the education.

sphere. It's just all of your salary was going to daycare. So I really felt like it was an opportunity. We took an opportunity to kind of, we moved at the time to Massachusetts and that's when I kind of really started to explore my creativity and explore other opportunities. And I did private independent counseling for a while.

And then I really kind of fell out of love with the college process and all the heaviness politically that is happening right now with it and how out of touch I think money is and convincing kids to go into debt and like all of these things I don't believe in anymore. And I just said, why am I doing this?

I am a writer and I'm a poet and I should be doing that. And so I began my blog, which is called the literary sipper. And it has led to my podcast, which is the literary sipper. But primarily what I do is work with parents who want to balance their life with creative pursuits. And in the business right now, I'm a book midwife.

Where I help people birth their books and help them, you know, start to translate their creativity to the outside world. And that's men too. My, you know, a lot of my clients are, are dads as well. Sorry, you just like hit a big nerve for me that I didn't know I had, and I'm not much of an emotional person.

But I feel. A lot of things right now. But what I mostly feel is like you hit on something that had been asleep for a really long time in me. Like, I have a nine month old, I have a five year old, I have an 11 year old. So like, as soon as I would sort of come out of the fog of having a young child, I'd have another child.

And I used to be a really creative person. Maybe I still am not quite sure. And also, whenever we have interviewed people that have written books on the show, We're always like so excited for them and to hear about the process and the process sounds grueling and most of the time when I go through those interviews, I'm like, thank God they did it.

So we don't have to actually, we didn't think it. We've said that out loud multiple times. So the fact that you are a book midwife helping those people birth it, you just like awakened in me this thing where it's like, could I? Yeah. give birth to my own creativity again? Is it even possible before my kid goes to kindergarten?

My last one, do I have to wait four years or like, is it gone? Like, is that even important to me anymore? I don't know. These are all things. So like you hit, you like awaken something that I hadn't really thought about in a really long time. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been running a workshop, a few workshops lately with a friend of mine named Tanya Walsh, and she's a yoga instructor.

And so much more, but we do these workshops and what I'm fascinated by is the age range of women who come. So we tend to have young moms, really like not, not yet moms of littles, I should say, not young moms, like who are 19, but moms of babies or just had their first or, and now they have, they've taken enough time.

To hit the RSVP button to a workshop, right? So they've, they've made this time sacrosanct. They've done their 30 minutes of yoga. That's how we start it with. And then we, we move into this question of where is your creativity gone? And how do you open the door to it? Even if the door is only open for five minutes a day.

Because what it allows you to do is reconnect with self. And we're very willing to do that in terms of exercise. A lot of, you know, moms are, are like, Okay, I'm going to go take my walk, or I'm going to, I'm going to drop the baby off in the gym and I'm then I'm going to go run on the treadmill. I'm going to, you know, do a yoga class cause I need to center myself.

And we're very willing to do that sometimes for personal care. Like, Oh, I want to get my haircut or I want to get a massage. And we, we sort of say those things are self-care, but what. What Tanya and I are trying to do with our mindful creating workshops is elevate creativity to the level of self-care.

That taking care of who you are outside of money, outside of motherhood, outside of even partnership, whoever your partner is, who are you and what brought you joy? when you were young, can also be translated into what's going to bring you joy now. There's a poem by Donald Justice called Men at 40, and it talks a lot about men at 40 close doors softly to rooms they will no longer be entering, is the line.

And I argue that mothers are trying to reopen doors to who they were before they, before they were changed so completely their sense of self. And so sometimes that door can only be open for five minutes at a time. And in your case, five years at a time, right? Before you're, you're right back in the, in the swing of things.

And there was a big difference for me personally, between my first child and my second child. Because with my first child, I was still working you know, 60 hours a week plus, you know, I was taking work home. I mean, as Maureen knows, it's like I was at every event, and every, on a Saturday, or taking kids on field trips, or to Europe, or whatever, and I had a baby, and I was trying to do it all.

So the idea of having kids creative time or writing poems, like for what, to what end? Like, no, I need to take a nap and a shower. But when I had my second child and I no longer got the creative fuel from work, because as much as I was busy at work, I loved my job. I loved teaching and I loved thinking of new things.

And reading books and, you know, coming up with new creative ideas for them to engage with literature. That was a real passion for me. And so I felt fulfilled in a lot of ways creatively from that. But then all of a sudden I'm home. And I'm home with these two kids. is, you know, attached to me physically, you know, relying on me to eat and all of that.

And then one of whom's a two year old running around and I'm an older mom, I was 38, 39, you know, and I'd had a life. And then all of a sudden that was gone and it got very dark for me. And I really struggled with who am I, if I'm not a teacher, who am I, if I'm not getting energy. In that energy exchange that I have with students, I love the conversations.

I loved what they were doing. I loved when they were in plays and they would tell me, Oh, I read this. You know, you said this in class and I went home and read it. And then we would have this great exchange. And then all of a sudden I'm alone and I'm like, okay, what did I used to do again? What was I into?

And I, I found myself. On a trajectory of trying a lot of different things. Like I went and learned through pottery, you know, for, for like three weeks. I, I'd like say Thursday nights, I'm going to the studio and Dave would take the kids and be like, yeah, go do it. You know? I mean, and I think that. It was terrible.

It was horrible. It was messy and yucky, but it was okay because it's okay to be a beginner. And I think that so many moms, we're, we're, we're convincing ourselves, like, you have to be the expert, right? You have to know all the things, you have to read all the books, and then you'll do it, and then you'll begin.

And I am here to say, Jump in, take a ballet class, take that drawing class on the internet. Every Thursday at 9am, do the sketchbook school with Danny Gregory. I can't recommend it enough. You can find these little pockets of Things that may be used to light you up and let them light you up again and pay attention to the things you're already doing.

You know, if you're putting dinner on the table every night, that's an act of creativity because if you're not relying on You know, the same five things over and over again, but maybe you really like to cook. Well, there's a creative act that you can elevate. Maybe start taking photos of them, recording a recipe, sharing them, whatever it is, you know, take maybe what you're already doing that you feel is just part of the drudgery and see if you can elevate it a little bit or romanticize it a little bit and be mindful like the monk washing the dishes, right?

The monk says the most conscious act is washing the dishes. So what are you already doing as a mom? Are you super into gardening and being outside and growing things? Well, that's a creative act, you know, so how can you then make it something meaningful to you and allow yourself to call yourself an artist because that's what you are.

And I love that, but can I push back really quick? Yes, please. Okay, so here's my beef with this situation. I get it in my head where I'm like, yes, I'm going to turn dinner into a creative act. I'm going to do this for me tonight. And then they fuck it up. The kids mess it up. My husband takes a work call and is talking at a decibel that is very inappropriate.

And then I get mad and I'm like, I can't even make, Like, I am now not even able to make Kraft Mac and Cheese creative. Thanks a bunch. And you know what? The branching out into, like, a new creative endeavor after having kids felt completely different than before because it suddenly felt like the stakes in life got so much higher and failure was never an option, right?

You're like, if I fail, this kid dies. I don't know. Like, if I don't feed them, they don't survive. You get used to that level of anxiety and, and it starts feeling like everything matters that much. And also like so many of us were raised in a way that failure just felt like not an option anyway.

Absolutely. You know, and we get to this point where, yeah, if you want to try pottery for three weeks and you're not good at it, it feels it's, it's not a good, it's hard to have fun. Yeah, I feel good. I thought I was going to walk in there and be amazing. I was, I was so used. amazing at things like, you know, and I was like, Oh, I'm really terrible at this.

But the thing is, is like, did I like it? What was it that I was after? Yeah. You know? Was I after being alone? Was I after being out of the house? Like, not trying to learn something at home, but instead, like, going into a studio, taking a lesson, being around other people. Was it the idea that it was new?

That it was not something old that maybe carried some ghosts with it or some skeletons or some what ifs, right? It's like, I, I spent, I was a singer my whole life and a poet, but I didn't go back to those creative enterprises because they felt too loaded. And the, Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so you, I went to the things that were new that if I failed, who cared?

Who cared? And I wasn't letting my old self down, right? But it just allowed me to dip my toe into an experience and say, you know what? I do miss Being creative. I do miss trying on new things. And I was able to then go back and say, you know, I really want to talk about books. That's really what I love. I love writing.

I love books. I love craft. How can I make that into something else? You know, that is meaningful to me and that I want to spend time on. And now it's like, I, what I do is I try to, I find myself trying a lot of new things. Like last year I took ballet for the year. Mostly because if I find myself working with a client who was a dancer and now has had a child and maybe their body has changed and they can't, they don't feel as good dancing anymore.

I want to know what that feels like in my own body so I can have more empathy and I can maybe make suggestions that aren't beyond the realm of imagination. But I would say like the going to the cooking thing, Heather, I think that if the other people in the space are making that hard for you, then that don't let them in your space.

That's, you know, to elevate that to a creative enterprise. So it's like, then I would say you a strategy might be like, Like, I'm going to spend time writing this stuff down or taking photographs or just maybe going to browse other cookbooks in the library and bringing them home and looking at, okay, let me look at this cookbook.

This is like a really cool one. I love why do I love it? Maybe? And then see the work, as Austin Cleon says, right? It's 20 recipes. Well, I have 20 recipes and maybe it's just a small project that doesn't see the light of day or maybe something that actually captures your imagination and you want to keep moving forward with it.

But I think the point is that if, if it's loaded in a way where the other people's response to it are making you feel resentful and making you feel angry and annoyed, then that's not the right move, you know, because it's supposed to be self-care. It's supposed to be a reclaiming of you. And when you're in the middle of motherhood, especially early motherhood, like so many of your listeners are, you don't even have your body to yourself, let alone your mind.

So the idea of some, like, I'm going to have two hours to paint in the studio. That's never going to happen. That's bullshit. You're, you cannot expect that, but what you can expect from your partner is, Hey, I'm feeling really confused about who I am right now. I used to be a really creative person and I miss that.

Is there a way we can find space for me to do that again? One of the best gifts that Dave ever got me after I had my second son was he got me. Four sessions with a woman named Miranda Hersey, who was a creative coach, and she basically helped me figure out the pockets of time that I could write poetry because that I could write a poem, right?

You can write a poem in no time. It might not be good, but you can write it in no time. And she helped me bring You know, a short story I was working on all the way to publication by just being sort of the accountability partner. Hey, I have to talk to her, you know, and I have to say, you know, I did this because I didn't want to fight.

I didn't want to let her down because there's the people pleaser in every woman, but also I felt very supported by her. And, and in a sense, As well. It was like that adult conversation with her was so necessary because she didn't care about my kids. She didn't care if Finn was sleeping through the night yet, or if Tate's latch was better.

Like she didn't care about any of that. She was like, did you sit down? And work on that opening line. Like you said, you were going to, because it's the choice sometimes between, I don't know, getting the oil changed at your car and bringing your notebook with you or sitting there folding laundry, the laundry will wait.

Like you can take the 20 minutes to write a poem. If that's going to make you function in a better headspace. ultimately. And I think there's so much about time, which is the myth that I think a lot of, I don't have any time. I don't have the space. So, and then what is my intention? So if you're, if your time is limited because you have a child, of course, and it's not your own, cause you're not sleeping through the night or nap time, but we all know they say to sleep at naptime, but nobody really ever sleeps.

We all do a million other things. So what if you did Five minutes of vocal exercises. If you were a vocalist at some point, you just sang into your phone. The best thing in life is this voice memo. That's the best thing. You know, you can do anything. You can write a, you can write songs, you can record ideas.

You can sing, you can do so much in it. That works. That counts. It counts. You know, it doesn't have to be a finished painting that gets shown in a gallery and bought for 1, 500 to count. Yeah. I actually really love keeping an idea list, like my notes app, you know, it's just chock full. But after, after I had Griffin.

I was staying at home with him, but definitely had a very hard time getting back to painting. And so I had this list of like, maybe 200 ideas. But when I finally felt ready to get back to it, I was like, Oh, I can just pick. I have this list now of things that I've already thought through and they're already in my head and I can say, Oh yeah, that one.

I had that idea about that mushroom and that log. Like I can do that. I can do, I could start that one. And, and it felt less intimidating. Because I wasn't starting from the very beginning. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cause you're just leaving yourself breadcrumbs, right? You're just, you're leaving yourself breadcrumbs back to yourself.

So, and when you, the time does open up because it will. It will open up. Then you take advantage of that. And I think the best and most supportive thing that you can do for a friend who might be feeling the same way you are is to say, okay, Tuesday for this hour, can you watch my kids while I do this? And I will do the same for you and have that exchange of time and energy.

That's a great way to have connection because the community. When you are an artist, it's so much of it is solo, right? Unless you're, well, I mean, a musician, usually it's collaborative, right? But I mean, I'm watching Dave write music. It's him in his room, you know, by himself. So there's so much of that solo when you have a community around you that are also mothers, that are also trying to figure out who they are creatively.

If you can find that, There's a lot that can happen and, and I think we won't, we don't get then so consumed by our child's output if we are modeling our own output. So if we are, if we're sort of saying my creative time is important to me and I treasure it and they're watching you treasure that or they're, you're showing them what you worked on that day.

It allows them to see you as a more multifaceted thing than just as an extension of themselves. And that's so important. So that is important. And isn't that always just like the dream though? It's just it's the dream where you're like, when I imagine myself as a mother, I'm obviously showered and my hair looks amazing.

But also, you know, like I'm taking my kids in the garden and we're, you know, You know, looking at vegetables and we're maybe drawing together, working on the same picture collaboratively. And I'm just watching them hone their skills. And like, they look at me with reverence and how amazing and artistic I am.

Okay. But like, don't invite them to your party. That's my, my, my my thought. What, you know, yes, that's a beautiful vision. I would love if my. My son's, you know, look, you know instead of like being annoyed when I play my guitar at like four in the afternoon and they're like, well, you can't hear anything.

I wish they were like, mom, that sounds amazing. You're just, your voice is like angels, but that's not the reality. I think even, and they're older, they're teenagers. So anything I do is stupid, but I, but when they were children, it's like, it was about. them seeing me alone doing that thing. So it was about, even if it was reading, you know, I mean, a lot of, a lot of young moms, it's like, that's, they, they, that's all they have energy for.

They can't necessarily output there. Maybe they're inputting now, right? They're, they're downloading, they're, they're getting their ideas. They're keeping their notes lists. They're maybe reading a book or they're You know, looking at recipes or they're the only physical movement that they get to do is just that general like walk in the afternoon.

That's all they can handle. But it was alone and it was important to them. And what I find now as my children are older is their memory of me doing that stuff by myself is part of their story of me. So the idea of like when, you know, I was published in a literary magazine, a very small one, it's not like a big deal.

It's not the New Yorker or anything, but for my children, they were like, my mom was a writer. Like, that's what they tell people. And that was huge for me to even say that about myself. Let alone, like, that's how my kid is introducing me to people. So, it's the idea of the things that we're doing that we don't even realize we're doing.

And if you take time to do them, they are watching you. So, tell us, for somebody that's listening to this that was like, I push play on this episode, but I'm not that creative. Why is it important? For the people who say they're not artistic, I would say don't limit the idea of creativity to just the traditional like painting, drawing, singing.

I think that there's a lot of things that people take pride in their clothes or their homes, like interior design. There's like a lot of things that we do all of the time that are creative, but we just Don't we dismiss them as not being important or not being what a real artist is. And I think people can journal, people can take photographs.

I mean, it's never been easier to take photographs, right? So what, why not just take some of those amazing pictures on your phone that you truly love and get them printed out, blow them up. Look at them in a different way, look at them with, with different eyes. And I think you'll find that you, everyone has something that they were interested at one point in, and put away because they were, it was dismissed as childish, unnecessary, unproductive, fiscally irresponsible, whatever it is, you know.

And I think there's been a lot of that. And sometimes just guided journaling is a great place to kind of just, Just figure those things out and see what keeps coming up for you. You know, I had the idea to contact you for this episode after listening to an episode of your podcast, the one about mattering.

And hearing you speak just now, I was thinking about that and, you know, how, how what we create feeds back into our self-worth and our self-identity and reminds us that we matter, that we matter to other people, we matter to ourselves, to our family. And it can, it can be a very transformative experience to begin creating again and realize that you do matter and you're not just.

an afterthought in the family. You're not just the caretaker for your children. Absolutely. And, and to take up space with that. I I'm running a workshop next week on space, like literally, like where in your house are you doing things, you know? So if you are a writer, if you are an artist, if you are like, do you have a table somewhere?

Is there a room? Like, I mean, Virginia Woolf wrote A Room is One's Own. We're still talking about it. I'm 50. I just got my own room. This is my room. Nobody's allowing in it but me unless I let them in. And, but this is, I'm 50, you know, like, this is not, you know, something I had at 25 and in a one bedroom apartment in Queens.

That's not what happened, right? But I always had a space. Like, I had a card table next to the washing machine in one house, and I, because I was there anyway, so I started pairing. Whenever I put a load of laundry in, I would just stay at my desk for 10 more minutes, and I just sat there. And some days I just sat there, and I had like an old school boombox, and I just like listened to Joni Mitchell and just sat.

Because, you know, a lot of writing is, is thinking, you know, so you can get away with it. But you, and I just sat and thought of it. Some days I just doodled for 10 minutes, you know, but I had a space and It was hard for me, even at 50 to say, Hey, I think I want to convert that room. Cause my kids are older now.

They don't need like a playroom. I was like, I want it to be my room. And Dave was like, of course, like, cause he has a studio. So he's like, yeah, do what you want. But it's like, I needed it. I needed it. And I didn't realize how much I needed it until it was there. Because you need the door. You need the door.

I do need the door, Amber. You need the door. And not a French door. I don't want them looking at you. You need a door. And sometimes you're not going to have that. The reality of space and the reality of money and the reality of all that is that you're not going to have it necessarily. But, the card table in the laundry room.

The desk in the bedroom. Like, really just, Somewhere that you can, you can be. And when you're sitting there, it's just sending a visual signal to them that, that you're in your space. And I really feel like I saw one woman who took our workshop a couple months ago. She converted a closet and her sons, like her son went off to college and she converted her closet into like a desk area.

And she said, it's the first time she's ever had a space of her own. And she's 60 and I'm like, no, no, we need to like, That needs to just be the thing. You have to have a space of your own. Why do your kids have space for their toys? Right? It's like, so they can foster creativity. That's what you want for them.

So why don't you want them to have space? I'm getting fired up. I knew it. I knew you would Heather. They don't even play with those toys. I didn't really prep you like at all for this episode, but I was like, you're, you're going to love it. I'm so mad right now. It's time, space, and intention. Those are the three things, right?

And the time for young moms with baby babies, it's going to be two minutes. It's going to be five minutes. It's not, you know, it's not going to be a whole, you're not going to go for a writer's retreat in Costa Rica. And if you can do it, I'm not saying don't do that. Reality is no, right. But then that time will change every season.

And I really recommend living by the seasons. Like, I'm a fall girl. I'm a teacher, right? September, I want new pencils. I want a new project. I want to have, you know, new episodes of my podcast planned out. I want to, you know, have my writing retreat booked. I want to have all those things done. And then winter is doing them.

Is the like, insulation. It's raining here in Seattle constantly. And that's what I'm doing. And then the spring, right? It's like reawakening. I want to, I want to do all the things outside, right? I want to go to like hear a concert, or I want to go out and see a poet speak, or I want to join a writing group, or I want to be out in the world.

And now summer is like, Scramble time, right? Cause you're, the kids are home and I'm trying to like figure out when the time is, and I'm trying to keep a little bit of consistency, but it's, it's not always easy and that's why you need that fall reset. And I really recommend. For every mom of any age, especially those young ones who are living or listening to your podcast, most likely is it will change.

It will change. And the moment you're in now is not the moment you're going to be in three months from now. So just like do what you can right now. And then in the fall, try one new thing. One new thing, like maybe it's putting a desk somewhere. Maybe it's saying every day, I'm going to, I'm going to journal every day for a week and see how that feels.

Maybe it feels like crap and it feels like an obligation and you don't want to do it. So you take your voice memo out and you just talk to it. Instead. Can I just tell you a funny story? So I didn't realize that I've been desperately trying to do all the things that you've, you're talking about for like years.

And I just didn't have like a plan with them. So I would like try it and things like this would happen. So we had an extra little desk at my office. So I was like, Oh, I'm going to bring this home. I'm gonna make myself a little space. I'm gonna, like, put it in the living room. And it's really heavy, so I dragged it myself one day.

This is how motivated I was. From the garage, I dragged it all the way through the house, to the other side of the house, put it in front of the window, and I was like, I'm gonna drink coffee, and I'm gonna, like, do a little work on my laptop, maybe do a little podcast creative stuff, look out the window at my beautiful magnolia tree, got pulled away to do something else.

And I kid you not, two hours later, I go back and my husband has sprawled out all over the desk with his laptop, all of his papers, he's got a metal tooth picker, like a dental tooth picker, and a dirty Q tip with earwax on it. And I was like, this is the kind of shit I'm dealing with! You people are the worst!

It's like, okay, I do need a door. So that's why I was cracking up when you were saying that because like 100 percent I mean, I live with people who have severe ADHD, who were like, Oh, sweet surface and talk about time blind. Right? My, my husband is totally 20 minutes and he's been in there for two hours, you know?

And I'm like I'm going into this room right now and I'm not coming out for two hours now, you know, just so you know, but it's, it is definitely, I, it's, it's training like anything else, right? You don't expect them to be potty trained in a day. You're like, this is my desk. This is my room. You cannot come in here unless you have asked permission or you cannot come in here, which I want them to be in here.

Under certain circumstances, you know, like right now my 12 year old is very into anime and we watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure together and that's what we do in here at night, you know, and that's like a connection point for us because it's special for him to be in here. But when I had my car table down in the laundry room, Oh yeah, there was definitely cables, cords, you know, old things.

And I'd be like, honey, why is that on my desk? Put it on the washing machine. It doesn't need to be on my desk, like, and I'm a very type A, like my desk is neat for the most part unless I'm in the middle of, of a project. So then it invites the stuff, right? You have to be willing to say what you need.

And that's hard. And that's hard because sometimes, especially when you're in that fog of early motherhood, you don't know what you need. You don't know what's going to make you feel better. I was just going to say You have no idea. Like, I didn't know if it was like I don't, I don't need to be writing a short story.

I need a nanny, you know, for like an afternoon. But it's like you, you can't, you just have to keep trying things until you really figure out a routine that's going to work for the time that you're in. Cause it's gonna change. It's never gonna be the same. And if you just think I'm going to now write my novel and I'm going to work on it, you know, 20 minutes a day or 20 pages a day or 200 words a day, however you're going to do it.

That's fine for that day, but it's not going to be what it looks like every day for a month. I feel like I should pay you. I feel like this has been really enlightening for me. I'm, I have a plan, and I'm fired up, and I'm getting my desk back, but maybe I'll, I don't know. I gotta, maybe I'll burn the house down and get a new one.

Well, on that note, as we're wrapping up, Amber, Do you want to tell people, you know, what, what you offer, how they can look into that further if they want to participate? Yeah, I mean, you can go to my website. It's AmberVittiHill.com and on there, it talks about what a creative coach is, what we do and who I've studied with and et cetera.

But basically, you know, working with a coach, it is like having an accountability partner, you know? And so we would set up sessions on whatever it is. With some people, it's about beginning a practice. For some people it's about creating a project. For some people it's about just, Hey, I want to check in every week because I want to make sure this is my priority or it is a priority.

Some people I meet with once a month, you know, so it's just about keeping themselves and their creative voice at the forefront and not letting it get lost down at the bottom of the to do list. And then I have my podcast, The Literary Sipper, where we talk, you know, everything, books, writing, creativity, and then my friend Tanya and I are running a series of workshops called Let Go and Begin, which is just about creative mindfulness and yoga and how they work together.

And I think that my biggest, if I could offer a quick like to do for your audience, that's something they can do right after this is, you know, make sure your voice memo Is on the front home screen. Make sure you're recording something every day. Even if it's just like, I really wish I had time to blank.

Just say it out loud. Because saying things out loud has power. And if you are saying, I'm a mom, I'm a mom, I'm a mom all the time. It's easy to forget. I'm also a dancer. I'm also a singer. I'm also a person in the world who deserves to be heard. Whose voice is important and who matters. Who matters. Well, thank you so much for coming on our podcast, Amber, this I, I really hope everybody else listening feels as inspired as I do.

And I don't know, it's given me a lot of the warm fuzzy. Oh, I know, I feel so warm and fuzzy. And whenever you said, you know, I'm, I'm a mom, but I'm also a dancer. I just had this flash of me. in college, like four times a week going out clubbing and dancing, like literally by myself. And I loved it. Like nobody does that anymore as an adult.

But anyway, Amber, thank you so much for being here. And y'all just go check out her workshops and her website and all the things and enjoy tapping into your new creative self. All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Maureen, big thanks for bringing your high school teacher onto the podcast. I wasn't really sure where you were going with this until I met her and she started talking and I was like, Oh, yeah, this is, this is targeted for me.

Yeah. I actually didn't prep Heather at all. I was like, guess what? We're talking to my old English teacher. It's going to be great. She's a really good speaker, so it'll be fine. Yeah. I, Maureen has said, Several times to me when I've planned episodes where she's like, I feel targeted right now, I feel targeted right now, but hopefully in a way that's going to help you grow and I really, I just love listening to Amber speak and I feel like every time I speak with her and I've had the pleasure of, you know, doing that a couple of times since high school, but every time I can.

Speak with her. I'm like, Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I can totally change my life. Thanks for that. Yeah. She's really just one of those people that she's like the ripple effect where she's like the pebble that gets dropped in. And then you're like, Oh, look, I did this one thing. And now I'm totally different as a person.

Thanks so much. Yeah. And if you, if you can hear Marty's back with us in the studio again. Yeah. She just couldn't get enough of these cords and wires. She's. Really into it today. And hopefully she'll join us in saying bye bye. But before we say bye bye we do have an award. Marty's going to practice the whole time until it's time to say bye.

Today's award goes to Erica. She is a listener of ours who let us know that she just got through a two week nursing strike, which is so crazy and always so traumatizing, and she did that with the help of some of our episodes with the help of a local lactation consultant, and we are super proud of her for sticking through it because that is a very difficult thing.

So, Erica. I'm going to give you the crossing the picket line award for breaking that baby's strike. You did it. Never negotiate with a baby. Anyway but really good job sticking through that because that's very difficult. And I think that takes us to the end of our episode today. All right, well, I'm gonna go clean off my microphone and we'll talk to you guys later.

Okay, Marty, do you want to say bye bye? Bye bye.