Painting Peace Leads to Finding a Voice with Jaime Townzen

Physiological peace and rewiring a creative soul. 

Creative pursuits helped my guest, Jaime Townzen, to overcome years of grief and caregiving stress to complete and publish her first novel, but it's not all about writing!

In this episode Jaime shares her journey from high-achieving, people-pleasing pre-med student to embracing her passion for storytelling, a transition sparked by a pivotal moment of encouragement from a college professor. 

A period of caregiving and loss stalled Jaime's writing career, but a spontaneous decision to try watercolour painting during the pandemic provided her with a sense of physiological peace that years of traditional self-care could not reach, while also serving as a bridge to transport her back to writing. 

Her Masters' thesis became the springboard for her novel, Absorbed, a coming-of-age story that explores themes of 1990s nostalgia, teen identity and the complexities of consent. 

The conversation also touches on the importance of granting oneself grace during seasons of emotional exhaustion and the value of following the 'spark''of excitement to reignite inspiration. 

Jaime’s story serves as a powerful reminder that creative outlets are not just hobbies, but vital tools for navigating life's most difficult transitions.

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Transcript

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Jaime Townzen: 0:08

That was the first time that an adult pointed out to me what my interest was and that that was why I was in college, was to pursue my interests, not somebody else's goals for my life. It just completely changed the way that my whole body was feeling and responding to stress. As I started painting, my breath would to a really calm, normal breathing pattern. My heart rate would calm and that constant like shake of stress in my body would dissipate and slowly just go away. And nothing else over the six years before that even came close to giving me that kind of a physiological peace. The lines of consent are blurry and these moms said it took them right back to when they were teenagers and it made them eager to talk to their sons and explain to them that not saying no is also not saying yes.

Claire Waite Brown: 1:07

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits and how their creative lives enrich their practical, necessary, everyday lives. This time I'm chatting with Jaime Townzen. Hi Jaime, how are you?

Jaime Townzen: 1:47

Hi Claire. I'm well. How are you today?

Claire Waite Brown: 1:49

Very good, thank you. You have embraced two creative outlets in adulthood. Tell me what they are, please.

Jaime Townzen: 1:59

I am a writer and a watercolour artist.

Claire Waite Brown: 2:04

Brilliant. Well, we shall find out which came first later. What about when you were younger? Did creative activities play a part in your life at home or in education?

Jaime Townzen: 2:19

I think I was always a very imaginative child. I enjoyed books and putting on little plays and performances. I was surrounded in my family by artists actually. But I was not totally encouraged in that direction because I was pretty good academically. Even though I was really creative as a child and enjoyed stories and even arts and crafts of sorts. My fore parents really appreciated that I was talented academically, that I could get really good grades and understand pretty complex things. So they really encouraged me to pursue more medicine or law or something. And it wasn't until I was in college and miserable as a pre med student that I actually figured out to do what I loved, which was writing. And I changed schools and changed majors and became a writing major and really embraced my creative talents, I guess, but just interests more than anything. It was just more enjoyable for me.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:26

Yeah. So you went pre med but you didn't complete medicine?

Jaime Townzen: 3:31

No, I. I decided to change schools and study abroad and really change all of my focus away from math and science and towards art and history and literature and did a 180 at, at 19 years old.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:47

Ah, but you'd enjoyed those subjects at school. Presumably you were happy to go but pre med and then the change happened while you were at college. And how did everybody around you feel about it?

Jaime Townzen: 4:00

That's interesting to say that as a mom of an 18 and a 16 year old right now, the oldest just started college and the youngest is a junior in high school about to start applying to colleges in the next year. I was very much a fan of all of the attention I got for getting good grades. I was a people pleaser. So I loved that if a teacher gave me a test I could ace it and that they were happy about that and that my parents were happy about that. I, I have an older brother who was more of a class clown and kind of a wild spirit in high school. And so I was the opposite of him. I followed the rules and got the good grades. But I think in high school the stuff that I studied was what everybody studied. Maybe the, the more difficult academic classes, like I took advanced placement physics and advanced placement calculus, but I don't think I really was exposed to a world of having to do that all day, every day until I was pre med at ucla. And suddenly I had no desire to please anybody because I didn't like doing it. It was just not interesting to me at all. I wanted to, I wanted to read stories and escape into even the stories from our past. I liked things like anthropology and history and I just was far more engaged in those courses than I ever was in any of my math and science classes.

Claire Waite Brown: 5:32

So, so was it quite obvious for you and easy for you to take that side path and to find the other courses and things that you did want to do?

Jaime Townzen: 5:44

I don't know if easy is the right word, but I had a professor pull me aside after an English class and I was a freshman in an upper division literature course and I was leading the dialogues about the books we were reading. And she said, I don't understand why my role sheet says that you're a bio major. You're clearly not a bio major. You love this, you're talented at this, you should continue pursuing this. And it was like that was the first time that an adult pointed out to me what my interest was and that that was why I was in college, was to pursue my interests, not somebody else's goals for my life. And so I, I've since in my adulthood reached out to that professor and thanked her for doing that because she could have just gone about her day and never said anything. And I don't know when I would have figured out that my whole purpose in being in college was to figure out my life for me and not for other people. So it was really beneficial. I think, in terms of my parents, the pressure that I had understood about my academics that I was pursuing, I think was sort of that people pleasing mentality. And not necessarily because they were forcing or mandating anything. It was just as I was getting the results of making them happy. I thought that that was what they wanted. And so when I told them that wanted to change schools and change my focus, they were fully supportive. Their only thing was, don't expect us to foot the bill for the rest of your life. You gotta figure out a way to make money, but whatever you do, we want you to be happy. So I was really grateful for that. It definitely was a turning point in my life in recognizing that I was well supported in whatever I pursued that was very beneficial.

Claire Waite Brown: 7:38

That's a lovely story because often it can be the other way around and there aren't the people encouraging you to try something or supporting you. So that is really lovely. So talking about making money and not being the starving artist or whatever, people do wonder, you know, do you think you might do if you, if you go down that line, what happened after college? How were you able to use what you'd learned in the workplace if you were able to use it?

Jaime Townzen: 8:08

Yeah, so ironically, my first job out of college, I was writing marketing materials for a startup company in the Silicon Valley. And that was in the very early turn of the century when a lot of startup companies started going belly up. If you didn't actually work for the AOL or Google at that time, a lot of those companies didn't survive. And the one that I got a job at, I was more in Sacramento area, a little bit outside of the main hub of it. Yeah, they went belly up. And so I actually became a teacher for a little while and enjoyed that. And then I. When we moved back to Southern California after my husband and I got married, I took a job working at an amazing company doing marketing and advertising for exclusively nonprofit organizations like Operation Smile and World Vision. And yeah, we did fundraising for things like vaccinations and education. And when a tsunami hit, we were, you know, responding right away. We did television, we did print ads. And so I was writing in all sorts of different types of marketing and advertising ways, but I was telling stories still at the same time. And I really loved that part of my job. I was telling stories of kids in Sudan or in Sri Lanka and what it was like for them so that people in America, Canada, could understand what these families were going through and how their financial support could really make a difference in the world. I did that all the way up until I had kids. And then my life was changed all over again. And I think that's the part of my story where I lost my way for a while. As much as I love being a mom, I still love being a mom I always have, and love taking care of my family, the needs of everyone else. And that people pleasing aspect of my personality really came back full force after becoming a mom. And I left my creative pursuits for a long time.

Claire Waite Brown: 10:17

But it wasn't just your girls, was it? You had caring responsibilities wider as well, didn't you?

Jaime Townzen: 10:25

I did my kids. I had the intention of staying home with my kids and taking care of them, getting them to preschool and things like that until they were both in school full time. And then I was gonna go back to work. And it was at that exact time in life when I thought I had all my ducks in a row. I had my job that I was starting. And the reality of my loved ones, beyond my little nuclear family getting sick and having terminal illnesses really hit hard. And so beginning in 2014, when I had literally just started working again, I'd been at work for a couple of weeks, we started to lose loved ones and find out that people were terminally ill. And for the, for the next six years, I was engaged in caring for people and helping people go through hospice. So this included my father in law, my maternal grandmother, my stepsister, my stepfather, my biological father. It was eight people in six years. And it was just heart wrenching and also all consuming while still caring for my, my own kids who were little at the time. So that just really prevented me from putting myself first in my own life for those six years. And then the pandemic hit and man, everybody's life got turned upside down. So that experience of grief and stress and anxiety was just compounded in 2020, at the end of those six years of loss and heartache.

Claire Waite Brown: 12:10

So were you. This sounds like a bit of a selfish question. Were you able to have some time for yourself, have some time out, or just have a little bit of a focus to think about yourself? Whether before, before the pandemic or lots of people were able to do a bit more during the pandemic, Weirdly enough, did you experience anything like that right.

Jaime Townzen: 12:31

So I'm very fortunate. I've always had a really supportive and encouraging husband. And he definitely, you know, if I wanted to sign up for an exercise class or go get a massage or take a day away just for myself, he always was very encouraging and supportive of that. So even through those six years, I was reading books, I was walking and going to exercise classes, I'd have lunches with my girlfriends. I was trying to, to take care of myself, as we call it, you know, self care or whatever. And, and I mean, those things, they all helped to move me through these really difficult times. I was in really good therapy for a long time and that helped. But it wasn't until 2020 when the world completely stopped. And here in Southern California, like a lot of parts of the world, we were on lockdown. Like you really couldn't do anything. So it was at that point that I was doom scrolling. And I kept coming across these ads for free watercolour lessons online. And we had gotten a puppy that we didn't know was going to be a pandemic puppy because we didn't know the pandemic was coming. So we had this puppy that needed to be kept away from my husband who was working in the house and like needed to not be making all the noise and the kids were doing, you know, online school and things. And so I decided to one day just click on this ad and get this watercolour, thinking this could be kind of fun. This is something that I can do like in the garage while everybody else is doing their stuff and have the puppy with me and it won't bother me or bother anybody else. So I did the first lesson actually with my daughter, my youngest daughter, and she kind of was like, whatever. But to me, there was something about putting that brush on the paper and focusing all of my attention on this like, really simple, beautiful little picture and listening to this calm, peaceful voice encouraging me to just do it for the sake of doing it. That it's just a piece of paper and I can throw it away at the end, that the process is what matters, not the product at the end. And something about that just really resonated with me. So that first lesson turned into, you know, maybe doing a lesson every week or so turned into doing several lessons a week till by the end of 2020, I was painting every single day, all day long. And I was doing, of course, still tutorials that were available. But then I was, I was creating my own artwork also. And it just completely changed the way that my whole body was feeling and responding to stress. I felt that as I started painting, my breath would return to a really calm, normal breathing pattern. My heart rate would calm, and that hum of anxiety, that constant like shake of stress in my body would dissipate and slowly just go away. And nothing else over the six years before that even came close to giving me that kind of a physiological peace. And so I just wanted more of it and more of it. And so I did. I just kept painting. And by the beginning of 2021, my brain was back to being this creative, imaginative, firing on all cylinders, capable of anything brain. And I decided I wanted to go back to writing again. And I decided to sign up for a master's program. And I ended up starting that master's program in the summer of 2021 and finishing it in the fall of 2022. And the fall final project for my master's thesis was actually writing the first 10,000 words of a novel that now fast forward to 2025 came out in January as a full published novel. And I really do attribute that to how watercolour really changed me from the inside out and helped me respond with peace and renewed my creative soul that had been so neglected for so long.

Claire Waite Brown: 16:47

That's really beautiful. I love the way that you talk about it as the physical symptoms that it brings out in you. And then for that to lead on to the next thing and give you that encouragement and that freedom, that's really very nice. So tell me about the novel then. You started it as your thesis. Not so easy for me to say. Tell me where that came from. Tell me where the themes of that, the ideas behind it. And then how did it continue to then be the full book?

Jaime Townzen: 17:22

Yeah. So it was in yet another really hectic stage of life. I happened to have to come up with the idea for my thesis project in August of 2022. I was sitting actually at the funeral of my grandmother. We went to spread my grandmother, my granddad, and my father's ashes in Hawaii. My kids were literally missing the first day of school in order to be at this event. And so when, as soon as I got back, I was beginning my final six week term and my kids were starting school. My oldest daughter was playing basketball. My youngest daughter was in middle school. They both were not driving, so I was going to be driving them everywhere. I knew that life was going to be crazy hectic. And I had to go, you know, to the old rule of thumb, as they say, and you write what you know. So as I was sitting on that beach, I was like, well, what do I know? What can I write about really easily? Well, I can write about teenage girls. I have two of them. I was one. That's pretty simple. And then I. I started to just, like, you know, thinking about when I was a teenage girl. I happened to have been a lifeguard when I was a teenager, and there was a lot of fun antics at the pool that I worked at. And then I started thinking about the music and the pop culture that I grew up with in the 90s and how different that was from what, you know, the experience of my kids as teenagers now. But then there's so many similar things that you can't get away from. Everybody as teenagers goes through the same issues of insecurity and learning how to negotiate their hormones with expectations of the world and what consent looks like and building relationships and getting stuck in situations that are not healthy. So I just. I. My brain just started, like, really coming up with all of the things that I knew as a teenager and that I knew affected teenagers today. And I really started to realize that I wanted to create some sort of a story that was, like, combining the clueless kind of story that Alicia Silverstone was in the 90s with, like, the sort of the Baywatch like swimsuits, but also Caddyshack, the humorous, the. The kids working as caddies and everything, you know, and all the. The nonsense they get into to combine those three things to create some sort of a story that would connect the moms of today who were teenagers like I was in the 90s, with their teenagers today, and really show them how similar things are. So my story is exactly that. Stacy Chapman is a lifeguard, and she is insecure, and she is doing her first job at a community pool with one of her crushes. And as the. The story goes, she's dreaming of love and drowning in bad decisions throughout the book. And by the end, she figures out who she is and what she wants from life. So it's been really fun to go to book clubs and to discuss it with moms of teenagers today. Also to have teenagers read it and give me their response. I was surprised that I've had a couple of book clubs that I've gone to with moms of teenage boys who were really grateful that I wrote the book because there's some pretty graphic scenes in which consent is not really given. I wouldn't go so far as to call what happens an actual, like, rape or anything, but definitely the lines of consent are blurry. And these moms said it took them right back to when they were teenagers and how scary those situations are and how hard it is to find your voice and say no. And it made them eager to talk to their sons and explain to them that not saying no is also not saying yes. You actually have to hear the yes. The girl actually has to communicate with you verbally that this is what she wants. And so they were really grateful for me writing those scenes that way, because they said it opened up dialogues with them, with their sons.

Claire Waite Brown: 21:38

Brilliant. Did you go down the route of traditional publishing or have you self published? And what was that experience like?

Jaime Townzen: 21:49

I did have a publishing deal and I was going to do that. And then as we were ironing out the details of that, negotiating that, two big things really occurred to me. One of them was just how long and, like, arduous the traditional publishing route is. So my book was completed and really ready in January of 2024, and they were telling me that the soonest it could have come out would be spring of 20. I was like, okay, well, that's kind of a long time. And my sister, my stepsister, who passed away from als, didn't get to see a lot of her own dreams coming true. And so that. That kind of has inspired me in some ways to go ahead and get my master's degree and write the novel I want to write. And waiting around for traditional publishing just didn't seem all that promising because there wasn't going to be a lot of bells and whistles for somebody who's an unknown, you know, when the prince decides to write a book. Yes, everybody in the world gets to know about it when an unknown person writes a book. I still was going to have to do all the marketing myself and everything. And as somebody who had worked with print vendors and graphic designers and has enough background in marketing as I do, I knew that I could actually publish it myself. So I chose to do that. And the beauty of that is that I got to choose my graphic designer for the COVID I got to choose and really pay actors wages to the person who does the narration of the audiobook. And I got to meet her, and I just got the full authority over the book the way that I really wanted to. And it felt a lot better and more authentic to me to do it that way. But it's definitely not easier. It can be faster. But you got to accept that it's. It's a big challenge. And I'm just really grateful that it turned out as well as it did.

Claire Waite Brown: 23:59

There's definitely the sense of control that you have working as I do in editing books. And I know that the time that things take, but also some of the control may be taken away from you. And yeah, that's really good that you could do it in the timing. So what about the watercolour painting? Has that continued? Has the writing taken over that?

Jaime Townzen: 24:24

I have a couple like, practices that I do every single day. I journal three pages every day according to, you know, Julia Cameron's recommended for the Artist's Way. I really do find that that benefits me. It kind of clears the junk out of my head. And then I also do daily drawing and watercolour exercises that are just like simple little things. I do those every single day because I do feel that paying attention to things like light and color and form actually really helps my writing also in. In terms of how I look at the world and how I describe it in words. Probably the thing that I have been surprised the most by with my watercolour is that because it does bring me such joy and peace, I've been really reluctant to allow myself to be a commissioned artist. And so one of the things I happen to have learned how to do pretty well is like, pet portraits. I've had a really great skill at it. And a lot of people who do end up, you know, in an Etsy shop and then they're doing pet portraits all day, every single day. And I didn't, I didn't want that for myself because then it would take away from my ability to write. It would take away from my time with my kids when I want to be available to them. So I only allow myself to be commissioned for things like pet portraits for nonprofit support work. If the high school is doing a fundraiser, I might offer two pet portraits up and then they can be auctioned off. And then that's me giving my time and doing something I love to support a program I believe in. To be completely honest, I, this year have done a lot of promoting of the book and I've really enjoyed that aspect of it. But my. My writing has not really been there because of two huge changes in my life. One, being my daughter going away to college and the nuance of having, you know, a piece of my heart living 3,000 miles away in New York City. And so that's been a big distraction. But also we lost my mother in law this year also. And so, I mean, it's just been so much loss in our family. And I am in charge of my own mother's finances, finances because of some unfortunate realities in her life. So we were selling my mother in Law's house. We sold my mom's house. We sold my mom's vacation property. And just the time of dealing with life, you know, the funerals and the selling of the properties and the moving the kid across the country is really draining on my creative juices. So I. I'm honestly in a place right now where I'm like, maybe just the journaling and the daily watercolour little things aren't enough to get me inspired again because I'm so drained again. This seems to be a pattern that I fall back into. So I have an idea for a book that I've really done some development on, but I've really resisted writing it because of how close it comes to home. It's about scammers, romance scammers who take people's money. And that's how my mom needed me to take over her finances because unfortunately she lost a lot that way. I think I need to come up with a new idea for the time being because it's just. It's like a little too raw and I'm a little too drained, I guess. And I need to. I need to come up with another fun idea to get me back into that, to the daily writing, because I feel that resistance is preventing me from making progress in that. So.

Claire Waite Brown: 28:04

Yeah, yeah. But you recognize that. Yes, and I think that is a good thing.

Jaime Townzen: 28:11

I also think I. I think it's really important for anyone who has the ability to give themselves a little grace and take care of themselves to do that. I happen to be lucky enough to be able to do that this year and focus my attention elsewhere because creatively forcing something to come out isn't gonna benefit anyone, really. I can make myself write it, but I don't know that I'll be proud of it or want to promote it either. So, yeah, recognizing that there's times and places where I'm going to be more effective in my writing is important, but also the muse or the writer's block. These are real realities that, you know, people talk about them all the time. And I have to. I have to push through also. So that's my goal. My goal for the new year especially will be to just push and find something, anything, that I really want to write about again and get back into it again and get a new book out. That's my goal.

Claire Waite Brown: 29:12

I think you're very wise to not want to force it. And I think by forcing it, you could be. Anybody perhaps could be disappointed or they lose their confidence because they're giving them self expectations like you would Put expectations on other people that they had of you. So I think that is very wise. That in itself is a lovely bit of advice for other people. But I did want to ask you if you had any advice for someone later in life, whatever that may be, you know, that has had either a hiatus or a time where they haven't been creative. Any advice for getting started again or getting back into something?

Jaime Townzen: 29:59

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the reason that this book was able to come out so easily and that I was able to have so much fun while writing it was because I really allowed myself to focus on things that I was excited about. Right. And it's the same with my watercolours. If I take a walk with my dogs and I can't help but pull out my phone and take a picture of this flower because it's so beautiful, or the way the light is coming through those trees because it's so attractive to me to see, and I have to snap a picture of it that makes me want to come home and put brush to paper and recreate it in my own way. Right. And so when I was thinking about Stacy's story and I was thinking about the music that I like to listen to in my car and how fun it was to have, like, this book of CDs and flip through them and put it in the stereo and have the windows open, and. And as I thought about that stuff, I literally, like, made a. Like, a scrapbook of ideas to build my characters and build my scenes, just full of all the stuff that I was getting excited about, and even things that, like, oh, I hated that. That was so gross. Put that in, because that's eliciting a really strong feeling in you. And once I was able to generate all those ideas into one location, it became much easier for me to live in that world. And, like, I created my sandbox, and now I could play in that sandbox and just every day want to go back and have conversations between these characters that I had created and have adventures with them where they go to these new places and see these new things. So my advice would be, whatever it is that lights that little fire, that spark of excitement in you that makes you go, oh, I have to. To take that picture or I have to listen to that song. Really follow that. Follow that and feed that part of you, because that is where your inspiration is. That is your creative voice saying, hang on, I want to do that, too. Or I want to create my own version of that and really feed that as much as you can for Some people that might be in writing, that might be in painting, that might be in photography. So you got to follow it any way you can, I guess. Perfect.

Claire Waite Brown: 32:14

Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Jaime, tell me the name of the book and how people can connect with you.

Jaime Townzen: 32:24

The name of the book is Absorbed. It can be found anywhere online that you buy books. My name is not traditionally spelled. Jaime is more like Jaime and Townzen has a Z in it. So definitely look at the show notes for that because most people don't get it right. But anywhere that you prefer to buy from local bookstores or go to the library, I am a huge advocate. I think every town needs local bookstores and libraries and they will order it for you. And that benefits me. And that also that the library enables everybody else to get an opportunity to read it too. So I am a big advocate of that. And I am on Facebook and Instagram. I do have a YouTube account, but I am not a good YouTuber. I don't love making videos. My Instagram is Jaimegetscreative and I love to chat with anybody.

Claire Waite Brown: 33:17

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jaime.

Jaime Townzen: 33:20

Thank you. It's been such a delight to chat with you.

Claire Waite Brown: 33:24

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to future episodes at buymeacoffee.com/CreativityFound There's a link in the show notes. If you are listening on a value for value enabled app such as Fountain, TrueFans or Podcast Guru, feel free to send a few sats my way. And if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you can find out more by listening to my sister podcast called Podcasting 2.0. In Practice.