In this deeply moving episode, we hear from Chris Siders, an LA-based poet, music producer, and activist. Chris shares his experience about dealing with loss, grief, struggles with his health, and how these experiences have been the fuel to produce multiple albums in such a short amount of time. From his near-death experience and battles with mental health to losing so many close family members, including his father, Chris walks us through his grief-stricken, heart-opening journey that ultimately led him to discover the true nature of abundance in life. Through the content of his work, award-winning Los Angeles-based Poet, Music Producer, and Activist, Christopher Siders, encourages his audience members to think critically about social norms and how we subconsciously affect one another through our everyday behaviors. Within his own experiences as an activist, he is able to share his successes and failures and guide future activists at any institution, to make positive decisions for the community to flourish and teach students to become a better ally for movements or areas of interest. Siders professionally performed alongside poets such as Rudy Francisco, Shihan The Poet, Ebony Stewart, and has graced stages such as Dominican University, Seaside High School, Beyond Baroque, and many more. Connect with ChrisWebsite: https://www.chrissiders.com/Instagram: @thechrissiders____________________________________Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcast____________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Have you ever felt like you were an only in the room? Like no matter how many people you’re surrounded by, you feel like you can’t quite relate to anyone? It’s hard to put a specific word to what this feels like. Our guest today, Anika Aftab, has searched far and wide in many languages and cultures for the perfect word. She ultimately describes it as feeling like the only in the room. In fact, she feels soo deeply about this that she’s writing a book on it, called, you guessed it, The Only in the Room.On the day this was recorded earlier this year, Anika interviewed me for her book and podcast, and we had so much fun that we decided to keep the conversation going and recorded this interview for my podcast on the same day. As life would have it, we’re releasing the episodes on the same day! So if you like this episode, make sure you check out her podcast called The Only in the Room to check out her episode interviewing me.Anika is one of the realest people I know. She doesn’t pull her punches, she gets to the heart of what she’s trying to say right away, and she doesn’t mind being vulnerable about the lessons she’s learned along the way. She has a very excited and grounded perspective of the universe that is childlike yet mature, with wonder yet with clarity, with awe yet with OBVIously….at Anika’s core is a hyper awarness about the duality of what it means to be a human.In this episode, she shares a powerful excerpt from her book about lonliness vs being alone that I know you’ll love. We talk about the moment she realized she was muting her own story, we talk about substance use and abuse and addictions.We talk about the mental wrestling around synchronicities and signs from the universe.We talk about angel numbers and all could mean, and we also talk about how they can could mean aboslutely nothing too.Thanks so much for joining us today, and let’s dive in.Listen to my interview with AnikaListen on SpotifyConnect with AnikaInstagram: @theonlyintheroom Instagram: @anikersssLinkedIn:Anika Aftab____________________________________Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.life____________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Rachel Livinal is a recent graduate at Cal State Long Beach with a BA in Journalism. She just started her position as a higher education radio reporter for KVPR (Valley Public Radio) at the end of this month.Rachel has also been a poet since she was 16, and she is 21 now. It started with sonnets, but quickly developed into this odd freeverse that consists of near rhymes and very loose patterns of rhyme. She grew up in a writing family and was deeply influenced by her grandpa, who still writes poetry today. She uses poetry to free her mind of anxiety and it also is how she works out the problems she can't understand in her head.This interview was recorded in September 2022, when Rachel was starting her senior year at CSU Long Beach where she was studying and working to become an audio journalist. She had just wrapped up a one month series based on the Long Beach elderly community’s experience during COVID, called When Physical Canes Become Mental Chains. In this episode, you’ll hear Rachel mention that it would be a dream of hers to work for NPR one day. Since then, she absolutely did do a project for them!We talk about the impact that poetry and therapy have had had on Rachel’s reflection, healing, and personal transformation.We talk about Rachel’s experience living with her grandparents as her grandma was developing AlzeihmersWe talk about her muse of monarch butterflies and how they’re linked to a teacher that passed away when she was young, and the unbelievable things that happened when she released Monarchs outside her classroom as a tribute.Rachel shares two poems in this episode, one is about her relationship to monarch butterflies and assimilating to living in Long Beach, and the other is a gut wrenching poem about the struggles of being a young renter desperate to keeping a home while being at the mercy of a landlord._____________________________________Watch my interview with Rachelhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/ChGKeEJFkNx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==Rachel’s project with NPR Next Gen Radiohttps://usc2023.nextgenradio.org/california-homelessness-veterans-mental-illness-ptsd-volunteering-long-beach/Connect with RachelInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachel.livinal/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.livinalLinkedIn: Rachel Livinal_____________________________________Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.lifePodcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook_____________________________________Track: Noise — gbry.svg [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusWatch:    • Noise — gbry.svg ...  Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/noise-gbrysvg

Welcome to the Art 2 Heart podcast. My name is David Morin. I'm a former corporate sales guy turned poet. And this is where we explore how finding your voice can help your path and your purpose find you. Whether you're currently in a career transition or can't wait to be in one, we learn how leaning into creative expression can be the missing key to transforming your life and the life around you.  This week we talked to Holly Pelletier from Massachusetts. She’s a storyteller, she’s a painter, she’s a poet, she’s an educator, she’s a mother,  she’s a graphic designer who created the logo and artwork for this podcast, but that is certainly not all. Holly is a badass. She’s a rare human who is a living ambassador of the earth. It could be argued that her greatest art is her devotion to Life with a capital life itself. I want to thank Holly for bringing her whole self to this conversation where we talk about: Holly’s  intuitive approach to visual art and how it differs from writing. Our high sensitivity and empathic naturesthe complexities of multicultural backgrounds the impact of colonialism on the struggle to find a sense of identity Holly’s passed down fragments of culture and how she finds comfort in diverse communities. Holly shares a poem that beautifully explores the journey of finding her roots and identity through nature. Connect with HollyInstagram: @themoonstorybook________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.life________________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier Instagram: @themoonstorybook

Have you ever read a book that changed your life? A book that ties together all of the threads that you’ve been chasing, and suddenly your life feels like there’s some hope?What if you had a chance to meet the author of that book? And what if that author hosted a meeting so that like minded people can get together and begin to create community? And what if that event was freaking awesome!! That’s how me and today’s guest, Adam Avenus, met. We both read a book called The Third Door by Alex Banayan that completely changed our lives by helping us redefine what was possible in life. Adam and I met at last year’s event in July 2022.Adam has lived in downtown Toronto for about 9 years and has a background in real estate. He’s started his business in the personal development space and getting ready to launch an app this summer and he has finised writing his first book. He is a published poet and former Poetry Slam Competitor, and is coming up on his first year of sobriety. He is a daily meditator of 45+ minutes, and is a proud member of the 5AM Club.Like everyone else at the Third Door event we met, we didn’t pull any punches with the questions asked each other. Gone were the measuring stick trivial questions about how people made their money, instead asking about what filled them with life every day.We keep that going in this episode. We talk about the idea of a resurrection of self and how empty Adam’s life felt when he was only focused on chasing money. We talk about the life-changing power of finding a mentor and the power of asking questions instead of talking about yourself. Then we dive deepr into Adam’s sobriety and how learning to sit with his feelings instead of feeding his addictions helped him pursue his life purpose. We talk about our experiences with other addictions like food and weed and porn, and the power, or demise, that can come with the way we speak to ourselves. The name of his upcoming app is Live Aligned, and after hearing from Adam, you’ll see why he’s the perfect person to share it with the world.Other topics we discuss include:embracing our softer side as men in a society that discourages us from doing sothe lack of support you might get when becoming soberpositive habits that Adam implemented to support his sobrietyhow we put the wrong goals in front of our real desiresAdam’s experience stepping away from writing for many years beforehow to manage tackling mulitple passionsConnect with AdamPersonal instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamavenus/Business instagram (Not yet launched): https://www.instagram.com/livealignedltd/Pre-launch website for my business: https://livealigned.app/________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.life________________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Has there ever been a time in your life where you got so tired of ruminating on the same thing? Maybe there was a nagging idea or thought in the back of your mind that just never quite allowed you to experience more gratidude instead of criticism. To feel more acknowledgement towards yourself instead of blame, or more love instead of distrust. Have you ever gotten so real with yourself that one day you asked yourself such an an honest, mind-opening, thought-provoking, reality-bending, life-changing question? Now, that sounds extreme but trust me, that is the power of asking the right questions! But it takes a LOT of sitting with yourself in really diffucult times to formulate such a question.That’s exactly what happened with, Amber Jeanseau, who one day reached a boiling point of repeating the same story in her head that she asked herself such a simple question from such a loving place, and her life would never be the same for it.Amber is a singer-songrwriter originally from East Tennesee. She was born into a life of rhythm and rhyme with a love and apprecaition for poetry and music. After growing up mostly writing poetry, it wasn’t until she got older that she ever considered combining music and poetry to make songs. Despite pursuing a career in business and marketing, music remained her "safe place" for expression. It wasn't until a move to California and a certification in recording engineering that she found herself back in the studio, feeling the most alive she had ever felt. Now, after years of hiding her music out of fear and imposter syndrome, Amber is finally recording her first album and has released two singles! "Drove Past Your House" was released in October 2022 and “All At Once Again” was released in Feb 2023. You can find her music on Spotify and all major streaming platforms under Amber Jeanseau.In this episode, Amber and I do a deep dive into the hard questions we’ve had to ask ourselves and how as writers, we’ve been writing our own lessons without even realizing it. From learning to relinquish control and surrender to the current of life, to finding more compassion, love, and understanding for our parents and how they did their best to raise us with the tools they were given. Other topics we discuss include:how Amber had a poem published on the local news station at age 6!how she was born into a family of artistshow she learned at a young age how to make people like youhow being a writer can turn you into a perfectionisthow the pandemic brought out the empath in herhow her job and people pleasing became an escape from her own self carewhat a soul contract isfiguring out your needs in adulthood outside of the needs to address your inner childhow poetry and expression has helped us improve the relationships with our parentshow powerful it can be to focus on gratitude instead of what we lacked when it comes to our childhoodAmber’s process in the recording studioConnect with AmberIG : @amberjeanseaumusic Linktree and Singles: Amber Jeanseau ________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodIG: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.life_______________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier Clark@themoonstorybook

Accomplishment and emptiness. Gratitude and sadness. Love and grief. Filipino and White.Two things can be true at the same time.Today’s guest is an insanely talented poet and educator who is an expert at holding two things in tension together.Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him/they) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendant of the Confederacy, so he knows the shape of hope and exclusion. He co-authored the poetry book Leave With More Than You Came With from Arroyo Seco Press and the history book Hawaiian in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review (Pushcart Nominee), Mud Season, Sin Cesar (formerly Dryland), among others. Christian has featured for the Autry Museum, the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College. Christian also has a third book being published later this year, a collection of poetry called He’s a Color Until He’s Not.In this episode, we talk about reconciling with two conflicting ideas, like how America can be shitty and awesome at the same time. We talk about the sense of grief that’s immediately followed after an accomplishment, how Charles Bukowski has been an integral part of his life in San Pedro, how immigration and capitalism are so closely tied to one another, and how becoming an educator became a natural fit for his passion and love of writing. We also explore how folding origami frogs became his grief embodied for his sister, and how his love for his students often means never seeing them again.Unfortunatley, this interview was cut short by technical difficulties with the service I was using, and will now never use again. I lost the last 30 minutes of our interview, so the dialogue ends rather abruptly. I was looking for a way to edit it down and clean it up, but Christian brings so much rawness and vulnerability that I didn’t want to lose more than what was already lost.Connect with ChristianInstagram : @poetloz Website: https://www.readontillmorning.org/________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.lifeDavid’s Instagram: @mor.intune________________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Have you ever been afraid of going out and traveling around the world? Does leaving the comfort, safety, and the familiarity of home cause you anxiety to travel? Do you believe widespread media when it tells you that traveling anywhere outside of North America is automatically dangerous? Tanin Kayvan is someone who used to have major anxiety about her safety abroad, but ultimately had an insatiable thirst to explore the hidden, forgotten, and sometimes, neglected parts of the world. I met Tanin during COVID in Alex Banayan’s zoom mentor sessions. He is the author of The Third Door, which is a life-changing book that helped me redefine what was possible for my life. She was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada and studied anthropology at the University of Victoria. A formal college education wasn’t enough for her, so she took her learning into her own hands and traveled the world as a photojournalist to places like Peru, Mongolia, Iran, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Turkey, and counting where she could experience and capture moments of what other cultures in the world are like. Her efforts helped her get published by UNESCO and her work was exhibited at their headquarters in Paris. She has also recently had her work published on CNN, and is now focusing her efforts on creating TikTok videos to bring a pocket of the beauty and magic of our world to your screen. In this episode, we talk about specific tools she used to reconcile with her anxiety so that she can live this life and explore it to the fullest. We also explore her incredible talent of photography and content creating, as she gives her audience windows into what life is like in other countries and cultures to help bring more appreciation to other ways of living. We also talk about the many ways that photography and poetry interlap and how the creative processes are so similar. We explore the link between creativity and spirituality, and how these experiences might be influenced by the presence, or absence, of religion. Tanin also shares advice she received from Mike Posner about what it means to be an artist, and expectations that artists need to release in order to embrace their unique talent and passion. We also share how some of the most unique experiences we’ve had on our travels hold a much bigger fingerprint in our lives than we expected. Connect with TaninInstagram : @taninkayvan TikTok: @taninkayvan Facebook: @taninkayvan Website: https://taninkayvan.com/________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.lifeDavid’s Instagram: @mor.intune________________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Imagine you’re a 12 year old living your best life. You’re in cheerleading, you’re super social and you love making friends, but suddenly something feels off. You begin feeling weaker and you literally lose the ability to smile. You can’t open your eyes. You have trouble chewing, swallowing, and out of nowhere, you helplessly fall to the floor when you’re walking. You know for a fact that something is wrong with you, so your mom takes you to see a doctor, but all they say is that you’re acting out for attention. Your parents are hispanic and from a rural community, so of course, they completely trust the doctor and don’t believe that something is going seriously wrong with you.Meet Elisa Ramos, who’s now 29 years old and lives with a form of muscular dystrophy called Myasthenia Gravis, or MG, which is a chronic autoimmune, neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the skeletal muscles that worsens after periods of activity and improves after periods of rest. In addition, her MG invited two other autoimmune disorders to her life, lupus and sjorgen’s that she now lives with as well. To put it simply, Elisa describes it as her body actively trying to kill her.In this episode, Elisa talks about her journey of being diagnosed with MG at a young age and how finding her voice through writing and painting has helped her to not only empower herself, but to advocate for others. We also talk about how spoken word poetry has helped her heal after being sexually asaulted, and get a behind the scenes look at the daily struggles of living with a disability in Corporate America.Sadly, the service I used to record this episode had a technical error, and the last ten minutes of the interview from Elisa’s end was unforgivably lost. I apologize that it ends rather abruptly, but we talked about too many things that too many people need to hear. .Follow ElisaHer Digital Business CardInstagram : @emramos7________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.lifeDavid’s Instagram: @mor.intune________________________________________Podcast artwork by Holly Pelletier ClarkInstagram: @themoonstorybook

Today’s guest is a freaking rockstar. Eliszabeth Van was born in Vietnam and moved to America at the age of 3, where she would grow up to survive an abusive childhood, be unhoused twice, and witness her father be incarcerated. During middle school, she walked in the Texas summer heat going door-to-door with her mom, filling out job applications because her mom did not know English. Fast forward to high school, she joined a robotics club, found her passion, and got a community in return.After going back to Vietnam to visit her hometown, she was inspired to sponsor and organize a STEM workshop for youth, completing cold calls and securing sponsors to make her dream a reality, all as a high school student. But she was just getting started.The summer after graduating high school, Eliszabeth interned for NASA and worked on a rover that has been to the moon. As a Freshman in college, she applied for a job at Boston Dynamics, the world’s leading pioneer in robotics technology. Oh, and the job listing was for graduating college seniors, AND SHE GOT IT.And through this entire journey, she’s found love, forgiveness, grace, and an unwavering ambition to use her gifts for the good of mankind, and I don’t say that lightly, as you’ll see in the episode. At the time of this recording in Septemer 2022, she was only 19 and is a self proclaimed “time billionaire.”I met Eliszabeth in 2021 in the online mentor sessions hosted by Alex Banayan, the author of an incredible book called The Third Door. During these zoom calls one day, I saw a chat about someone needing help with their college admission essays. I had just discovered my passion for writing, so I offered my help and got to know Eliszabeth and her unbelievable story over the next several months as I helped her with her essays. In this episode, we learn about her journey, and touch on other subjects like:Why making space exploration should remain a priority when there is so much help still needed on EarthWhy young people should focus on becoming great at one thing instead of doing 20 things at once to look good on college admission essaysand how engineering is a form of art Support Liz and Kat on their start-up!Liz and Kat are also currently working on their new start-up for robotics and AI technologies. Their mission is to lead the innovation of the next age of technological revolution in household maintenance (chores and such). They could use your help with their survey: https://forms.gle/cEPyUaGkYkjsy9Qf7Follow EliszabethInstagram : @eliszabethvan________________________________________Enjoy the podcast?Please subscribe and leave a review here!Follow the PodInstagram: @art2heart.podcastWebsite: art2heart.lifeDavid’s Instagram: @mor.intune______________________________________Artwork by Holly Pelletier Clark