In this deeply expansive conversation, Sarah Tacy sits down with creative director and co-founder of the Prism House, Kristen Burgess, to trace the long arc of a relationship that began at the very start of Kristen's wedding planning career and unfolds into a story of identity, creativity, partnership, motherhood, and personal truth.
What begins as a nostalgic return to Kristen planning Sarah's wedding quickly opens into a much larger exploration of thresholds—those quiet, often disorienting moments where life asks us to outgrow who we've been.
Kristen reflects on the early days of building her wedding business while working full-time, the instinctive trust that shaped her creative path, and the evolution from wedding design into storytelling for brands through The Prism House. Along the way, she shares how motherhood, partnership, and creative expansion reshaped everything she thought she knew about capacity, identity, and leadership.
The conversation deepens as Kristen speaks candidly about burnout, over-functioning, and the long process of shifting out of survival-driven patterns shaped in childhood. She names the moment she began to move from constant doing into creative clarity—and how that shift quietly changed her marriage, her work, and her sense of self.
A pivotal part of this episode is Kristen's time in a remote A-frame in Vermont, a self-imposed retreat that became a turning point for reflection, grief, and truth-telling. From there, she shares the unfolding of a major life transition, including divorce, the complexity of love, and what it means to choose alignment even when it disrupts everything familiar.
At its core, this episode is about:
- Listening to inner knowing when it contradicts external stability
- The nervous system cost of over-functioning and urgency
- Moving from survival patterns into creative and emotional truth
- The grief and expansion that come with outgrowing a long relationship
- What it means to rebuild a life from self-trust
Sarah and Kristen also explore the tension between truth and belonging, and how identity shifts can reshape relationships, community, and creativity in unexpected ways.
This is a conversation about endings that are also beginnings—and the quiet, irreversible moment when you start living from what is real now.
Topics covered:
- The early days of wedding planning and creative intuition
- Building and evolving a creative business while working full-time
- Motherhood and the breaking point of overwork
- Transition from By Emily B to The Prism House
- Feminine/masculine balance and nervous system patterns
- The A-frame retreat in Vermont and inner reckoning
- Divorce, grief, and relational transformation
- Self-trust, truth, and rebuilding identity
If this episode resonates, it may be pointing you toward your own threshold—where something in your life is asking to be seen, felt, and reoriented.
About the Guest
Kristen Burgess is a Creative Director, stylist, and co-owner of The Prism House, a Boston-based creative agency known for immersive brand storytelling, event production, and visual worlds that feel as transportive as they are strategic. With 17 years of experience in styling and art direction, she leads end-to-end creative for photo and video shoots, helping lifestyle brands, hotels, and restaurants translate their identity into meaningful, high-impact visual narratives.
Her work is grounded in a narrative-first approach shaped by a decade in editorial as a photo editor, overseeing copywriting, sourcing, and visual production across more than 15 magazines annually. Earlier in her career, she was named among Martha Stewart's Top 50 Wedding Designers, quickly establishing a reputation for creating unforgettable, highly crafted visual experiences. Alongside her creative work, Kristen is known for a life lived in full expression—rooted in movement, nature, motherhood, and a willingness to evolve through both ambition and personal transformation.
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