Art Heals All Wounds
Do you think art can change the world? So do I! We’re at a pivotal moment when scientists, medical practitioners, and creatives are coming together in recognition of the ways that art plays an indispensable role in our well-being, as individuals, communities, and societies. In each episode we hear from artists and creatives who share their inspiration for their work and its wider impact. These conversations about transformative artistic practices show the ways that art can be a catalyst for healing and change.
How do we change the world? One artist at a time.
Art Heals All Wounds
Holly Ringland: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Author on Reclaiming Your Creativity
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Holly Ringland on Overcoming Creative Fear and Finding Joy as a Writer
In this episode, I sit down with Holly Ringland — bestselling author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding — to talk about her first work of nonfiction, The House That Joy Built. If you've ever struggled with creative block, self-doubt, or the fear that you're just not good enough to create, this conversation is for you.
Holly spent 20 years disconnected from her writing — not because the desire wasn't there, but because fear silenced her. In The House That Joy Built, she shares her deeply personal toolkit for overcoming the inner critic, reconnecting with your creative self, and finding joy in the creative process — even when life has been hard.
We talk about how grief and rage can become unexpected catalysts for creativity, why joy isn't the opposite of pain but can live alongside it, and how returning to your imagination is like coming home to yourself after a long journey.
Whether you're a writer, an artist, or anyone who has ever felt cut off from a creative outlet you once loved, Holly's story and insights will resonate deeply.
Timestamped Highlights
[00:47] — What if you could write about difficult, challenging emotions while still embracing joy? I introduce Holly and the big question at the heart of her work.
[02:35] — Holly shares the origin story of The House That Joy Built — how her publisher Catherine Milne sparked the idea over champagne by the sea, and how Holly said yes to writing it in just three months.
[09:21] — I tell Holly that The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart has the best opening hook I've ever read — and she shares the remarkable story of how that first line came to her in a moment of grief and rage.
[19:25] — Holly talks about what it means to become disconnected from your creativity, and why severing yourself from the thing you love most can be a form of self-protection — and self-harm at the same time.
[23:07] — Why The House That Joy Built isn't just for writers — it's for anyone who has ever loved a creative outlet and lost touch with it, and what it means to find your way back.
[26:46] — Holly shares a Richard Rohr quote that stopped me in my tracks: "Pain that is not transformed is transmitted" — and what that means for how we handle our own struggles creatively.
[29:54] — Holly tells the hilarious and deeply moving She-Ra story — and what a six-year-old girl with a plastic sword and a face mask taught her about facing fear and vulnerability as a creative person.
[37:17] — The difference between outer landscape and inner landscape, and why the places we love hold our memories and emotions in ways that mirror our own inner world.
[44:21] — The desert oak seed pod: Holly explains why this extraordinary tree — which needs fire to crack open its seeds before they can grow — is one of her most powerful metaphors for the creative journey.
[50:45] — What is the house that joy builds? Holly explains the beautiful metaphor at the heart of the book — and why coming home to your creativity is like finding the porch light left on for you by a former version of yourself.
[01:01:07] — Where to find Holly online, including her Substack newsletter, and how she invites readers to send her their questions about creativity and vulnerability.
Links & Resources
- The House That Joy Built by Holly Ringland
- The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, The World Beneath Her Feet by Holly Ringland
- Holly Ringland on Substack: The Joy Rise
- Holly Ringland on Instagram: @hollygoeslightly
- Art Heals All Wounds Podcast: arthealsallwoundspodcast.com
- Art Heals All Wounds on Substack
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Resilience Podcast SeriesWe explore key challenges affecting civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
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00;00;12;00 - 00;00;31;11
Pam
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.
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Pam
What if, what if you can write novels with difficult, challenging emotions, all while embracing joy?
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Pam
My guest today is Holly Ringland. As the best-selling novelist of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
00;01;05;04 - 00;01;10;07
Pam
and the Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, she makes it look so easy.
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Pam
For as long as she can remember. Holly knew that she was a writer,
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Pam
but from the age of 14 to the age of 34, she didn't write.
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Pam
Fear caused her to disconnect from her creative self. Her nonfiction book, The House That Joy Built, is both an explanation of how that fear stopped her and how she found her way back to creativity.
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Pam
Holly has experienced difficult things in her life trauma, violence, but she creates from a place of joy.
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Pam
The creativity is the joy. This book shares her personal toolkit for addressing all the self-doubt, the inner critic
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Pam
that convinced her that she wasn't good enough to be a writer.
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Pam
It also shares a few gentle nudges for anyone who would like to reconnect and find their way back
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Pam
to their creative home.
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Pam
What if.
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Pam
You want to know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy. Right? And if you really want to give the show a boost, leave me a five star rating or review.
00;02;31;19 - 00;02;35;25
Pam
Hi Holly, I am so glad that you're on Art Heals All Wounds today.
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Pam
We're going to talk about your new book, The House That Joy Built.
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Holly
I'm so happy to be here. Pam, thank you so much for having me.
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Pam
Well, so you've written two bestselling novels, and The House That Joy Built is your first work of nonfiction.
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Holly
That's right. Yeah.
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Pam
Now, this book is, like, the most amazing creativity how-to. You could even say it's a writing how to. But you go much. You make it much more universal than that.
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Holly
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
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Pam
And I'm so curious to know,
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Pam
when did you decide to write this book? After. After sort of maybe defining yourself as a
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Pam
novelist, or maybe you didn't, but when did you decide to write this book?
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Holly
It was
00;03;26;05 - 00;03;38;17
Holly
a yes. So I the absolute honest answer is I have an incredible publisher in Australia. Her name is Catherine Milne, and she
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Holly
and I have worked on my two novels together. She has been
00;03;45;00 - 00;04;00;02
Holly
on book tour with me while I've been promoting each of those novels as they've come out and to to both my absolute bewilderment.
00;04;00;04 - 00;04;27;28
Holly
And if she was sitting right beside me, she would interrupt and say I was not bewildered, but I was certainly moved by I know her this well, this is what she would say, and she would say I was not surprised because I bet on both of Holly's novels. But I have been deeply moved to see how readers have responded to her fiction.
00;04;28;00 - 00;04;49;29
Holly
So when she has been with me on the book tours for The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, she has been by my side when I have met readers who have waited in the book signing lines to speak with me, and I have had the deep honor of a even having a book signing line.
00;04;50;03 - 00;04;54;22
Holly
And be that the people that wait in the book signing lines
00;04;54;26 - 00;05;23;06
Holly
are so open and wholehearted with me once we meet, and the questions that I have gotten most often during these moments of connectivity with readers for both Alice and Ester’s story have been questions of how do I do what Alice and Esther have done? How do I do what you have done,
00;05;23;07 - 00;06;01;09
Holly
Holly writing fiction from such a place of all the challenges that you've talked about that have stopped you. So Catherine, as kind of my right hand woman, is like this magical force in the background that's absorbing all of these interactions. And we also happen to really love each other and be really good friends. So I forget when we are together, because we are so close that she has this incredible publisher's sixth sense.
00;06;01;12 - 00;06;14;11
Holly
And I made the silly mistake of forgetting about Catherine’s sixth sense in Summer in Australia 2023, which is the northern hemisphere’s winter.
00;06;14;11 - 00;06;17;12
Holly
and Catherine and I were together
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Holly
where I am based on Bundjalung country in the southeast corner of Queensland. Just for everyone who's listening with us, and I'm near the Pacific Ocean, I have the huge privilege of being and living near the ocean.
00;06;30;22 - 00;06;58;05
Holly
So Catherine was up from Sydney staying with me. You know, I'm in between. I've finally put the publicity for Esther Wilding to bed, we’re together I've fallen into the false sense of security that I'm with one of my closest friends. We're having a champagne because we're together. It's summer. We're looking at the sea. And Pam, she has these amazing blue eyes.
00;06;58;09 - 00;07;37;07
Holly
And when she sets them on you, you have nowhere to hide. And so out of nowhere, we were just chit chatting. And I was like. I was like, Bambi. Just in this innocent conversation, chit chatting about just some amazing responses. Women had been tattooed with Esther's story on their skin, Alice's story on their skin. Women had done paintings with symbols of Esther ‘s story and it's that like it just covered in goosebumps, just talking about it.
00;07;37;07 - 00;08;13;09
Holly
So Catherine and I were enjoying that and she sets the eyes on me, Pam. And she was like, there's a nonfiction book in you. Answer their questions and [laugh] when it's a little bit like being struck by emotional lightning when Catherine Milne does that to you. And so I was not the genius that thought maybe I might have something to offer in a nonfiction way to answer the questions that I've been asked for nearly eight years by readers.
00;08;13;09 - 00;08;44;08
Holly
That really comes from the center of all of our souls. That was Catherine's genius. And she said, I think you have something to say about this. And it was entirely because of her belief in me that I accepted the personal challenge of, do you think you could write it in about three months? Mad. Absolute mad. And so I wrote about this in the opening chapters of The House That Joy Built.
00;08;44;09 - 00;09;09;04
Holly
That the way I went into it was asking, what if? My whole brain was screaming, I can't do this. I can't write this in three months. Catherine's mad. Catherine knows nothing. The inner critic just was like pulling out every lie possible. And so instead, I just thought, I'm going to give it a try and I'm going to.
00;09;09;05 - 00;09;20;00
Holly
There's so much in my brain that is convincing that I can't. But what if I can? And so that is how it exists.
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Pam
Wow. Well,
00;09;21;17 - 00;09;40;22
Pam
that leads me into a lot of my questions, but I do just want to stop and say that I am currently reading The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and I really think you need the award for the best opening hook ever, ever, ever
00;09;40;25 - 00;09;48;07
Pam
in a novel. Thank you. And it just keeps getting better from there. But when you read that first sentence, you will not be putting that book down.
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Pam
It's amazing.
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Holly
It was, you know, over the year. Thank you. Let me just say that I am never not deeply moved, that like, my arms are a little bit shaky hearing that. Thank you so much. Hand on my heart. People, artists talk. Sometimes they describe this moment of download in creativity. People will call it download, or they will call it like the Come to God moment or the, you know, different ways of talking about or framing an experience in creative expression where it really feels like something comes from a place in you that you've never met before.
00;10;37;28 - 00;10;59;13
Holly
And, you know, I think sort of way, way back in, maybe one of her very first Ted talks that's coming back to my mind. Elizabeth Gilbert, it might have even been pre-Eat, Pray Love days. I'm not 100%, but it was ages and ages and ages ago. And she talked about demons
00;10;59;16 - 00;11;04;04
Holly
instead of coming and creativity. That's coming to mind as we're talking.
00;11;04;04 - 00;11;28;19
Holly
So the point being that there's a lot of ways that we talk about this experience that I'm sure you and so many of whoever's joining us today has an awareness and familiarity of where something comes to us, we don't know where it comes from, and we kind of sit back afterwards and think, what just happened? What is that?
00;11;28;19 - 00;11;54;26
Holly
Because we're out of our front controlling brain somehow. And that first sentence is, I have talked about it so often because it's true the way it came to me, and I'm really careful and mindful not to get caught up in my own storytelling about that moment so that I don't mythologize it because the way it happened was magic enough.
00;11;54;28 - 00;12;09;05
Holly
And just briefly, to share with you how that line, how that line came to be, I it was 2014. It was mid year 2014. I
00;12;09;06 - 00;12;16;04
Holly
was deeply bereaved. I was grieving the death of a family member that was,
00;12;16;06 - 00;12;26;19
Holly
unexpected. He got very sick and within a couple of weeks I was at his bedside as he died in hospital.
00;12;26;22 - 00;12;58;23
Holly
And he was one of my biggest champions. I hadn't written a novel at that point, but he knew that storytelling and writing was all I knew about myself. That had never changed throughout my life. So his death was, of course, a massive grief. And as we all know, grief is universal and personal. It has its own way with us.
00;12;58;23 - 00;13;18;25
Holly
We can be fine and we can be grocery shopping. And then our knees are giving out over the broccoli. You know, we're at home, we are fine. And we walk up the stairs and just get hit by a memory and we're on the ground. And it was one of those days. I was home alone.
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Holly
My beautiful partner Sam was at work.
00;13;22;15 - 00;13;43;18
Holly
I was in Manchester in England at the time, and I was walking up the stairs. We were in a two story house. I was walking up the staircase, and I had the moment where my knees buckled and what came in the wave of grief was not just grieving the loss of love. It was the
00;13;43;21 - 00;13;52;11
Holly
absolute rage that I was not writing, that I was confronting
00;13;52;13 - 00;14;23;09
Holly
years of fear that in the wake of how clarifying that death was fear is so boring because when it comes to creative expression, all it does is tell us to stop. It's not nuance. It doesn't sort of give us textured ideas and ways of how we could approach what we want to create. It is so boring it just says don't.
00;14;23;14 - 00;14;56;13
Holly
And I have listened to that for years, feeling helpless to stop myself from being governed by the force of that small keeping stop. So in that leveling moment of grief where my knees gave out and feeling all of that rage, I went into my office and I sat down and I had done absolutely everything right to be a, quote writer leading up to this moment.
00;14;56;13 - 00;15;11;15
Holly
Pam, I had read somewhere that Hemingway why I would want to emulate Hemingway, I don't know, genius of language as he was, but perhaps the misogyny is like, let's drop, you know? So
00;15;11;18 - 00;15;26;17
Holly
Hemingway apparently wrote in a moleskine notebook. So of course I had gone out to the stationary shops, hadn't I? Because a legal pad wouldn't do it had to be a 40,000 pound notebook with like, the creamy pages. I'd read
00;15;26;18 - 00;15;55;27
Holly
You know, my beloved Bronte sisters, our beloved Bronte sisters. They wrote with quills and inks and fountain pens. So I went out and bought my first fountain pen. Having never used one before in my entire life, I was 34 years old. I wore more of the ink than went on the page trying to put the cartridges in. Nevertheless, I had all of the things that I thought that I needed to be a writer and I couldn't write.
00;15;55;29 - 00;16;43;21
Holly
I was just choked by layers and layers and layers of years and years and years of fear that came from many places. And on this grief stricken day, I went into my office. I was rageful. I was hot with it. I was so agitated and in my fury I said to myself, for once in your life, in the last ten years of your life, could you please not listen to all of the reasons why you are not good enough, and not smart enough and not worthy enough, and you are surely going to fail and insult the very trees that have been cut down to make the paper on which you are going to try
00;16;43;21 - 00;16;56;13
Holly
and write something. Can you just not listen to that for ten minutes and see what happens? And I took the lid off my Moleskine pen. I looked out the window
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Holly
of my office at the line of silver birch trees in our northern backyard, and the noise in my mind turned to static, and it was like I heard myself narrate.
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Holly
And I watched my hand write on the page “In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine year old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window, and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire.”
00;17;28;07 - 00;17;42;07
Holly
And that was it, Pam. I dropped my pen, and I hope everyone will forgive me for relaying the truth of the moment. But I was the woman alone in her house who dropped her pen, kind of bellowed, Holy fuck! And then sat there and thought,
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Holly
I think this is something.
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Pam
Yes. And I don't want to veer into talking, making this a show about The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, because you have another book that we’re talking about.
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Pam
But I will say, what's brilliant about that line is that it?
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Pam
It does not prepare you for the complete
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Pam
good intentions behind our protagonist. It's really a great way to kind of shake us up. But so what's interesting about what you just said is that I think I had the question I wanted to ask you was, how did fear and grief
00;18;28;12 - 00;18;32;19
Pam
bring you to this moment where you reconnected with your creativity?
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Pam
But what I'm understanding now is that the grief and the rage were the antidote to fear. It wasn't like fear
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Pam
also. I mean, that's what came before, but like really that that rage, that is a part of grief that is often a part of grief
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Pam
is what really became out and was more powerful than that fear.
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Holly
And that telling you that story about where the first line of Alice comes from is two fold, because it is speaking to the first line of what was my first ever novel that I've ever written start to finish in my life. But in that moment is the seed from which The House That Joy Built, my nonfiction, grows.
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Pam
Right.
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Pam
Yeah. Well, so for people who are going to go read The House That Joy Built,
00;19;31;18 - 00;19;56;06
Pam
I do want to talk to you a little bit about this idea that you were born a creative person. You loved to write as a young girl. And at some point, the way I wrote it down or thought about it was you became disconnected from that creativity.
00;19;56;06 - 00;20;06;24
Pam
And you're talking about fear and trauma and things like that. But is that the right word that you became disconnected or that it was just so heavily suppressed?
00;20;06;27 - 00;20;37;03
Holly
I think what feels truest to me is disconnection and severance, because it was always there. It never left me. I just wouldn't connect with it. And the reason I wouldn't connect with it is because writing is the truest thing that I've known about myself since I can remember remembering. And the context to that is that I have an incredible mother.
00;20;37;05 - 00;20;42;02
Holly
I was mostly raised by her, a single mum who
00;20;42;04 - 00;21;10;17
Holly
worked three jobs to keep us going, and somehow, in all of her own trauma and stress had the capacity to teach me to read when I was three and to encourage my love of literacy and stories and books with absolute abandon. And so I grew up knowing that the only thing I was any good at,
00;21;10;17 - 00;21;37;01
Holly
and by good I mean the thing that lit me up, made me feel alive, made me feel like my brain was engaged with being conscious and aware and and in my body and in and of the world was writing. And so it's taken a number of years to also understand that the easiest way to deal with things in life
00;21;37;01 - 00;21;42;21
Holly
that we find too hard to deal with, was to sever myself from writing,
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Holly
because through writing I was closest to myself.
00;21;46;11 - 00;22;24;01
Holly
I was with myself. I was right by my own side. But if I didn't write, I didn't have to face things that were unbearable and overwhelming and and too much for me to process. I abandoned myself in order to cope. It wasn't ever fully conscious either. In the same way that a little bit like the neurological process of dissociating, when our brain sort of shuts down to protect itself from a trauma or from something that is too much to process.
00;22;24;01 - 00;22;42;07
Holly
It's why we feel later like we have no clear memory of that experience. So it was a form, I think, of self-protection, but in a really imperfect way, because it was also an unwitting form of
00;22;42;10 - 00;22;58;08
Holly
I'll use this term loose, like self-harm. Writing was the best thing for me, but by not writing, I was. My brain was okay protecting myself, but also harming myself because I lost my outlet for
00;22;58;13 - 00;23;07;08
Holly
understanding self life ideas, exploring catharsis, you know, anything like that.
00;23;07;08 - 00;23;46;24
Holly
So writing The House That Joy Built when you mentioned before, it's for writers. But I wanted to go broader. I wanted to talk about all those tiny little severances that can happen to our creative expression. So the book is not just for writers or artists, or it's for anyone that has ever loved an outlet for their imaginations, which we are all born with and is, as far as we know, an extraordinary uniqueness of being human.
00;23;46;26 - 00;24;49;25
Holly
That we can daydream and create and express ourselves through imaginative emotional articulation. I wanted to write for anyone who has ever felt paper cuts and slamming doors, and even the sneakiest feeling of I really used to love mosaicing. Why don't I do that anymore, right? And exploring why we don't do those things anymore. Because it is in the making and the crafting and the expressing of our imaginations that we are with our whole selves and find through the process what we need for resilience, what we need to stay open hearted in an increasingly distressing world that is accessible in our pockets.
00;24;49;28 - 00;25;27;20
Holly
Harrowing. How do we stay open hearted to ourselves and each other and our humanity? And we all have this act of connection through creative expression. So having experienced that severance myself, that's how I wanted to write the House That Joy Built. And what I wanted to offer was all the different types of fear that I have experienced, totally muting me and causing me to sever myself from myself and my imagination, and how I respond to those things to offer any sort of.
00;25;27;23 - 00;25;33;02
Holly
Maybe this is a comfort to you, to.
00;25;33;04 - 00;25;41;06
Pam
Right? Right. And I think it's so interesting how.
00;25;41;09 - 00;25;49;01
Pam
I mean, unfortunately, you are forcing me to be compassionate to some of these people who are causing such horrible
00;25;49;01 - 00;25;50;19
Pam
harm in the world.
00;25;50;20 - 00;25;51;29
Holly
Very hard thing to do.
00;25;52;01 - 00;26;16;00
Pam
Right now. But when I think about that, there is even an overlap between these women asking you how you did it and these people who are acting in such hateful ways that maybe the same medicine could be given to both, I think a better.
00;26;16;00 - 00;26;46;20
Holly
I think about that often myself to yes, what to do with pain. All the different ways that pain can be transformed. It reminds me of that Richard Rhor quote Father Richard Rhor. And he wrote and says, pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
00;26;46;23 - 00;26;50;00
Pam
That's brilliant. Wow, that's so true.
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Holly
And are we not responsible with any modicum of privilege and capacity that we have to find ways to transform pain so we are not transmitters of it?
00;27;11;12 - 00;27;12;26
Pam
Wow.
00;27;12;29 - 00;27;23;11
Holly
That's is that how we each explore not doing harm?
00;27;23;14 - 00;27;34;22
Holly
And the, the extraordinary thing about having imaginations, which we are all born with is.
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Holly
That through creative thought and expression, we can honor, joy and love and everything nourishing and meaning in our lives. We can lay flowers at the feet of the gifts that we have through our acts of creative expression. But how profound also that it is through our imaginations that we can find a home for homeless emotions like unrequited love, grief.
00;28;18;05 - 00;28;33;29
Holly
We can give a home. We can create a home for the things that haunt us through our creativity, that otherwise have nowhere to belong.
00;28;34;01 - 00;28;49;17
Pam
Yeah, that is so. That's fascinating. You're really making me consider some things. Sorry. My my dog is.
00;28;49;17 - 00;28;52;09
Holly
Just I was I like that much.
00;28;52;12 - 00;28;53;22
Pam
Did you hear the little click, click of the toenails?
00;28;53;22 - 00;29;16;13
Holly
Click the little claws. I live for that sound. But we have six Australian Shepherds in our family, so the sounds of dog paws on. It's my happy place. I was actually thinking to myself, I hope that's a pup, because that's I feel like it's almost the perfect soundtrack. Dogs are our...Dogs are our great gurus, right?
00;29;16;13 - 00;29;22;09
Pam
That is true. That is true. They are the saints that walk the earth. That is very true, but.
00;29;22;10 - 00;29;26;21
Holly
All of my books. This was written with dogs at my feet. So there we are.
00;29;26;22 - 00;29;27;09
Pam
Okay.
00;29;27;10 - 00;29;27;28
Holly
Yeah.
00;29;27;29 - 00;29;31;03
Pam
Well, so.
00;29;31;05 - 00;29;54;00
Pam
What I really love about your book is you have this whole little, very, very personal toolkit to deal with things like your inner critic, self doubt and fear. I loved. Can you tell the She-Ra story?
00;29;54;02 - 00;29;56;04
Holly
Oh, God, yes.
00;29;56;07 - 00;30;15;09
Holly
So I don't know how. I don't want to offend anybody with a little bit of what I call foul mouthed fairy language. It's fine, but I do think that well placed swearing is a great act of creativity in and of itself. And so when
00;30;15;09 - 00;30;38;23
Holly
I was, when I was writing The House That Joy Built, as I said earlier, I wanted to offer and share and name all of the things that have stopped me in my life, all of the different types of fear that have stopped me in my life, and not just leave it there, but offer the response.
00;30;38;23 - 00;30;57;23
Holly
So if you think of the fear as the call, the sort of overwhelming, almost deafening call, what is my response? Offering that response. And that became what I call in the book my Toolkit of Unfuckable with Magic, or
00;30;57;23 - 00;31;06;11
Holly
TUM for short, which delighted me when I realized that was the shorthand, the acronym, because it all comes from the gut, right?
00;31;06;12 - 00;31;09;05
Holly
It's all gut leads. And so
00;31;09;05 - 00;31;27;24
Holly
one of the one of the stories that I tell in exploring the toolkit is when I was a kid and I was I was a kid in the 80s, and so I experienced the original She-Ra cartoon
00;31;27;27 - 00;31;35;18
Holly
as it came out sort of live. And I mean, what's not to love and what wasn't to love?
00;31;35;19 - 00;31;58;03
Holly
As a girl in the 80s, seeing a woman raise a sword and save men and transform herself and ride a horse with rainbow, you know, I mean, it ticked every box. So I was a firm fan and we are talking, I may be six years old and
00;31;58;03 - 00;31;59;12
Holly
in Brisbane,
00;31;59;15 - 00;32;04;11
Holly
north of the Gold Coast in Queensland, there's like a, I guess
00;32;04;11 - 00;32;11;12
Holly
you would call it an annual like fairground, big carnival kind of show.
00;32;11;14 - 00;32;14;22
Holly
We call it the Ecker it's the royal show. And
00;32;14;22 - 00;32;23;02
Holly
there's a public holiday, everyone gets to go to it. And in the 80s there were show bags and everybody loved their show bags.
00;32;23;07 - 00;32;26;29
Holly
We all saved up our pocket money for it. And so
00;32;27;02 - 00;32;32;19
Holly
mum and I went to the Ecker and I got a She-Ra show bag.
00;32;32;22 - 00;32;37;03
Holly
In the She-Ra show bag was a gold plastic sword
00;32;37;07 - 00;32;45;16
Holly
with the She-Ra full face mask, crown thing and the sort of gold plastic arm cuffs.
00;32;45;18 - 00;32;57;04
Holly
I think I slept with them on, I slept with the sword beside me in bed, but I came to use them in a real world kind of way.
00;32;57;07 - 00;32;58;02
Holly
When
00;32;58;02 - 00;33;36;26
Holly
I became, at the same age, conscious. This is my memory of becoming conscious of the awareness that when I was watching TV at night time before dinner in our living room, I became aware that if the lights in the living room were on and it was dark outside and the curtains were open, somebody could be outside in the dark and I could not see them if I was in the lit living room, but in the darkness they could see me.
00;33;36;27 - 00;33;38;14
Pam
That is creepy.
00;33;38;16 - 00;34;15;28
Holly
And that that creepiness, that sense of vulnerability. It was that's my memory of becoming aware for the first time. I didn't know this in this many words, obviously at the time being six, but I became very aware of the “ick” sensation of feeling seen, but not knowing by who or what and when I look back on that as an adult, it is absolutely the feeling of vulnerability.
00;34;16;01 - 00;34;25;16
Holly
When we are in any situation where we do not feel emotionally safe and we don't know
00;34;25;21 - 00;34;43;07
Holly
why or who or how we are being seen, perceived, that sort of thing. And so the vulnerability and the being seen go hand in hand together. So the way that I remedied this when I was six, in this time of having the She-Ra show bag is
00;34;43;07 - 00;34;48;07
Holly
I got really pissed off with the feeling in my six year old capacity.
00;34;48;11 - 00;35;08;04
Holly
I didn't talk to anyone about it. I just remember me thinking, okay, how am I? How am I troubleshooting this? What are we going to do about it? Also, because six is the age right where you're really you've sort of really and I can do it myself, really practicing those vibes. So
00;35;08;04 - 00;35;19;05
Holly
mum and I chuckle about this because, you know, there was one night where she sort of left me in the lounge room with my snacks and my little juice box to watch TV before dinner.
00;35;19;05 - 00;35;19;21
Holly
And
00;35;19;21 - 00;35;34;14
Holly
the next time she checked on me, I'm sitting watching TV with my full face She-Ra mask on, my plastic cuffs, and my sword raised by my side because that is how I figured I would face the dark
00;35;34;20 - 00;35;44;05
Holly
And like I hissed, I remember like, having all my stuff and hissing and it has stuck to me that memory like a beautiful burr.
00;35;44;11 - 00;35;54;04
Holly
Because as adults we find ways. What is the sword we are raising? How can we raise our sword so that the fear
00;35;54;07 - 00;36;17;17
Holly
the fear of being seen and the fear of the unknown does not stop us from sitting with our snack bowl and our juice box watching the thing that brings us joy, also known as allowing ourselves to enjoy for pleasure and indulging any activity that makes our brains feel
00;36;17;20 - 00;36;20;09
Holly
creatively glorious and fed.
00;36;20;11 - 00;36;27;10
Holly
So that is my She-Ra, my my lifelong She-Ra love stems from there.
00;36;27;12 - 00;36;30;11
Pam
Well, you know, it's so interesting.
00;36;30;14 - 00;36;44;21
Pam
I do want to talk about the importance of landscape. You do talk a lot about that time in Manchester and your little I love the little writing,
00;36;44;24 - 00;36;46;11
Pam
the mobile home.
00;36;46;14 - 00;36;47;15
Holly
Oh, the caravan.
00;36;47;16 - 00;36;50;24
Pam
The caravan. That's right. The different vocabulary.
00;36;50;27 - 00;36;53;23
Holly
Yeah. The different vocab. Right. We call it a caravan in Australia.
00;36;53;24 - 00;37;17;25
Pam
We call it a caravan too sometimes here, but it's mostly. Oh well, it doesn't matter. But anyway, the caravan and things like that. But what's interesting is that this book kind of goes seamlessly from these outer landscapes to something that you call your inner landscape. And I'm wondering if you could talk. What is the inner landscape?
00;37;17;26 - 00;37;19;14
Holly
Such a beautiful question.
00;37;19;16 - 00;37;28;26
Holly
I think anybody that has ever loved a place which is all of us,
00;37;28;28 - 00;37;32;23
Holly
even those of us who grew up in urban areas.
00;37;32;24 - 00;38;05;07
Holly
There are generally speaking, is a natural place, a green place that we have interacted with and that holds our memories and stories for us. I was exceptionally lucky and privileged in many ways to grow up here on the Gold Coast in south east Queensland, where I was surrounded by subtropical rainforest or
00;38;05;15 - 00;38;13;04
Holly
in close proximity to the Pacific Ocean, or when I was in neither of those places, I was in my mother's garden.
00;38;13;10 - 00;38;47;01
Holly
She is a gardener. And so in the same way I knew about writing when I was three, I have known the natural world from the same age, and that knowledge of the natural world has shaped me and and I think informed how I think about story and memory and our relationship to where both of those things live in landscapes.
00;38;47;04 - 00;39;18;04
Holly
When I was a kid, when I was nine, my family lived in a coffee and cream striped GMC van in North America for over a year, and we traveled from national park to national park up and down the west coast of North America. So as a child, away from the subtropics of the Gold Coast, I experienced Grand Teton National Park,
00;39;18;07 - 00;39;23;05
Holly
Monument Valley in Utah, Yosemite...
00;39;23;07 - 00;39;54;13
Holly
You know, the list is endless. Like the Okanagan. Like it just I experience the natural world at a scale that I think irrevocably changed my mind at that age. And so what fascinates me always is that it is never deliberate to me when I sit down to write, to think about. And now, how shall I write natural landscapes into this?
00;39;54;16 - 00;40;28;06
Holly
It is kind of it's just a pre conscious part of my storytelling that I didn't even know about myself until I wrote The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which works so much with native Australian Flora. But all of this experience in being in the cycles and rhythms of nature, even if, as I said, it's a green space, it's a park in an urban landscape.
00;40;28;09 - 00;41;02;01
Holly
We are exposed to both the subliminal understanding that we are a species in nature, no different to the oak or elm tree that we rely on seeing on our drive to work or our afternoon run. We are a species just like that tree, which is why seeing that tree makes us feel deeply connected. Because we come from the same world, but also that we live in relationship.
00;41;02;05 - 00;41;21;10
Holly
Just keeping this example going. We we live in relationship with that tree. That tree has watched us move into the neighborhood, grow our family, grieve someone that we've lost who's died, rage against someone who treated us like shit and broke up with us.
00;41;21;10 - 00;41;31;03
Holly
We've run to the tree, on our runs, on our bike rides. We've been there for a picnic with somebody that we've shared a precious memory we will never have again.
00;41;31;04 - 00;42;10;05
Holly
Our emotional inner lives are like inseparably entwined with the places and the the figures, if you like. By figure I mean the tree, the bay of water. The lake, the river. The field of wildflowers. The range of mountains. Our experience of being alive and being emotionally feeling creatures are imprinted and held by the places where these lives that we live happen.
00;42;10;05 - 00;42;11;29
Holly
And when we go back
00;42;11;29 - 00;42;41;09
Holly
those places, we return to ourselves. We return to the parts of ourselves that those places are ever holding for us. And our imagination is no different as a landscape inside of ourselves. And it is there that inner world where every single moment we have ever lived and has made us who we are.
00;42;41;11 - 00;43;33;10
Holly
That is all held in a wild inner landscape of ourselves, and it is made of imagination and memory and pain and joy. And that's why when I was writing The House That Joy Built, I realized that as much as I was talking about our outer world, I'm talking about our inner country, and that just like we long for that place, that field, that tree, that cabin by the water, that that annual trip we took with our family to Tahoe or Nevada or, you know, Cape Cod or or anywhere we long for those places as much as we long for them.
00;43;33;10 - 00;44;02;04
Holly
We also long for what we have inside of ourselves. We long for it inside of ourselves, and the way that it feels to return to a place that holds our memory in the outer world is as emotional. Perhaps it's even more emotional to return to that place inside of ourselves. They are mirrors of each other and they are in relationship with each other.
00;44;02;07 - 00;44;12;01
Pam
That's so beautifully put. I, you know, again, I keep thinking about,
00;44;12;03 - 00;44;21;03
Pam
All the metaphors and symbols that you use in this book. One thing I really loved were the desert oak seed pods.
00;44;21;05 - 00;44;22;11
Holly
Oh, yes.
00;44;22;15 - 00;44;32;01
Pam
So what is the. They need something very special in order to germinate or to sprout. What is that?
00;44;32;04 - 00;44;37;16
Holly
So I, I had the great honor of living
00;44;37;19 - 00;44;38;28
Holly
on Anunu land
00;44;39;05 - 00;44;45;13
Holly
in the western desert of Australia for four years, and it is a semi-arid desert
00;44;45;17 - 00;44;56;07
Holly
for anybody who isn't familiar and maybe hasn't had the extreme pleasure of visiting. The soil is red. It's an
00;44;56;11 - 00;44;59;17
Holly
iron ore rich soil, and
00;44;59;17 - 00;45;20;23
Holly
the great illusion about it is that it's a desert where there is nothing like Death Valley in the sense of vegetation, but being semi-arid, there are gullies of these spectacular, magnificent desert oak trees, which are a type of casuarina.
00;45;20;25 - 00;45;25;08
Holly
And I loved them desperately while I lived there.
00;45;25;08 - 00;45;26;21
Holly
They have needles
00;45;26;21 - 00;45;45;09
Holly
instead of leaves and their needles on their boughs. When a hot breeze blows through the desert, or a cold breeze in the very cold winters, Their susurration on the wind is truly like whispers. They're very evocative,
00;45;45;09 - 00;45;46;13
Holly
very tactile.
00;45;46;13 - 00;45;50;08
Holly
Their bark is furrowed and cork like,
00;45;50;11 - 00;45;53;04
Holly
which is a fire retardant
00;45;53;06 - 00;45;56;23
Holly
sort of barrier, if you like.
00;45;56;25 - 00;46;31;28
Holly
But I lived there and loved them with such great longing and passion, and didn't really know much about their propagation or how they grew until much later, which is that in the circular life of a desert oak, when their seed pod falls, the seed pods need fire to split open and to germinate and grow. Fire has to crack them open so that they can take root and grow.
00;46;32;00 - 00;46;40;09
Holly
And then once that happens, as they grow, they stay very thin and skinny.
00;46;40;12 - 00;47;06;00
Holly
As some of the Anunu ladies used to say to me in English, they stay really thin and skinny until their roots go deep enough to hit the water table under the ground. Once their roots hit the water table, then they get fat and happy and they expand and become magnificent and flourish.
00;47;06;00 - 00;47;34;12
Holly
And their boughs reach out and take up so much space. And they can live for hundreds and hundreds of years. And then again, before they can do that, they have to be opened by fire. So we come back to the beginning of the circle, right? So they remain one of my favorite, most beloved trees, even though I'm a total tree tart and have like 4000 favorites.
00;47;34;14 - 00;47;40;20
Holly
But the desert oak have. The desert oak have a very special place in my heart. Yeah, yeah.
00;47;40;20 - 00;47;48;06
Pam
That's amazing. I'm always thinking how incredibly brilliant trees are.
00;47;48;09 - 00;48;20;25
Holly
This is the thing about any, any, anything in nature. If we pay close enough attention, we will find that there is a recognition in the growth and propagation of flora and fauna that mirrors our psychological and emotional survival and ability to thrive and flourish, not to mention our own physical cycles. Because we are no separate, we are no different.
00;48;20;29 - 00;49;00;27
Holly
But that is what I. That is what writing has taught me about myself. That I did not know about myself until I started writing in that same circular fire seed pod water table kind of way. Is that in every book that I think I will write, I. I did not know how interconnected exploring my characters inner worlds would be to how they perceive their outer natural world and what they learn about it.
00;49;01;00 - 00;49;37;24
Holly
Until I started writing and thinking, oh my God, how did I where is this come from? It's like uncovering something about myself I was not consciously aware of was this knowledge that I have absorbed since I was a child, that if we pay close enough attention to anything in nature, it is mirroring our psychological and emotional survival, and where the keys are and how we can embrace and accept that we are not on and productive robots all the time.
00;49;37;26 - 00;49;46;20
Holly
We are cyclic creatures with seasons, and our mind and hearts are no different.
00;49;46;22 - 00;50;17;13
Pam
Well, again, I'm not going to try and turn this into a conversation about The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, but I will say that the landscapes in this book are so important to her journey. And just like they're so different and she's able to find this sort of inspiration and refuge and a lot of the things where she would have never expected that she could.
00;50;17;14 - 00;50;37;10
Pam
So yeah, yeah, yeah, I completely believe you that that is a huge part of your awareness. Maybe not when you first started writing, but that, that that's something that, as you reflected on it, that that was really important.
00;50;37;13 - 00;50;41;00
Pam
I do want to ask about The House
00;50;41;04 - 00;50;45;15
Pam
That Joy Built. What is what is that house?
00;50;45;17 - 00;50;55;14
Holly
So, as we can probably all tell, I love a good metaphor. She loves a good metaphor. This one
00;50;55;17 - 00;50;55;26
Holly
and.
00;50;56;04 - 00;50;58;18
Pam
And yours are really good. Yours are really good.
00;50;58;20 - 00;50;59;18
Holly
Thank you.
00;50;59;25 - 00;51;01;20
Holly
Another thing I didn't know about myself,
00;51;01;20 - 00;51;17;06
Holly
until I started writing over a decade ago, was how much I love a bloody good metaphor. Like, no idea, but. And that's my my sort of oldest and dearest friends are like, Duh. You've been talking in metaphors for like 20 years. Like welcome.
00;51;17;10 - 00;51;29;05
Holly
I think the reason I love metaphors so much is because they are tiny stories. And I know for so many of us, we can access ideas
00;51;29;06 - 00;51;32;17
Holly
with so much more
00;51;32;20 - 00;51;41;29
Holly
freedom and accessibility through story than through statistics and facts and figures.
00;51;42;02 - 00;52;20;16
Holly
At least that's my lived experience of of speaking to many people and understanding that things will land for us all in a much more universal and fluid way if we can access them through story. Because our brains are hard wired for storytelling, right? So when I was writing The House That Joy Built, I was really conscious of not wanting to write a sort of how to bullet point, outcome, outcome, productivity, achieve, achieve book about creativity.
00;52;20;19 - 00;52;49;01
Holly
I wanted to use everything that I had to tell a story about how we can embrace and use our innate stories to bring the joy that we want from creativity back into our lives, to come back to ourselves. And this taps into all of the core things that we long for belonging,
00;52;49;03 - 00;53;04;25
Holly
acceptance, connection, love, and a massive one that is kind of holding hands with belonging but is its own as well, is a sense of home and safety.
00;53;04;25 - 00;53;36;00
Holly
Feeling safe, feeling like we are in the sanctuary of a home, whatever that means to us. Feeling at home with ourselves rather than outcast, self-exiled, disconnected. Banished from ourselves. So as I was writing, you know, I think one of the greatest gifts of any art form in my experience in writing in particular, is
00;53;36;03 - 00;53;48;13
Holly
The more I write, the more the story exists, but the more I exist at the same time, the more I understand myself, the more I am created through the writing.
00;53;48;13 - 00;53;56;08
Holly
And once I started writing The House That Joy Built. And in the introduction I talk about our inner country.
00;53;56;10 - 00;54;00;22
Holly
I then sort of was thinking about
00;54;00;24 - 00;54;20;07
Holly
what sort of structure I wanted to give the process of returning to our inner country, how that feels. And this sort of all happened because ideas, as we all know, they so often do not wait their turn.
00;54;20;08 - 00;54;23;10
Holly
They don't happen in order. They are not
00;54;23;14 - 00;54;44;06
Holly
chronological or linear. Sometimes it is like a food fight. It is like paintballs coming at you. It's balls of twine are unraveling and you are just in knots in thousands of ideas. Hundreds, dozens. Like just many ideas all at once. And so as I
00;54;44;08 - 00;54;58;28
Holly
centering myself and writing around the idea of the inner country, a number of things were happening around this, which was I got the title for the book, I was doing the mundane task of
00;54;58;29 - 00;55;02;19
Holly
like laundry, doing, sorting the loads, folding them.
00;55;02;19 - 00;55;55;13
Holly
And I got the idea of the title. It was a little bit of a first line of Alice Hart moment where I just, I bent over to pick up a pillowcase, and as I stood up, it was The House That Joy Built came together in my mind and at the same time, swirling around it, in this non-linear way came this sort of slotting of pieces, at the same time that I understood that the feeling of coming home to ourselves, the feeling of returning to our inner country after we've been disconnected or exiled for whatever reason from ourselves deep inside is like that feeling of coming home from a long, hard, harrowing journey.
00;55;55;15 - 00;56;20;00
Holly
To see, as we return, that someone has left the light on the porch, light on for us, and that person that left the light on for ourselves is a version of ourselves in time. It's another version of ourselves. Who was the last version of ourselves, perhaps who was deeply connected to their inner country.
00;56;20;00 - 00;56;24;28
Holly
We might have been a child at the time. Before I wrote Alice Hart,
00;56;24;29 - 00;56;54;24
Holly
The last time I remember my inner country being tended and lush and embracing and a place of belonging, where I had, like my dream, like writer's retreat house was when I was 14. Wow. And that 14 year old girl left the light on for 34 year old me. And she was there in a circle of time, like a circle of seasons.
00;56;54;25 - 00;57;46;04
Holly
Like the circle of a life span of a tree. She was there at 14 when I was 34, raging and sobbing and feeling like I wasn't good enough. And I picked up my pen and wrote that first line of Alice Hart. And I came home to the house that she had created. And the more that we create, and the more that we create, for the sole reason of the fact that it brings us joy and the power that that joy has to help us keep going and to keep thriving, and to keep finding our humanity and to keep doing the best we can to make our life and the lives around us good and beautiful
00;57;46;04 - 00;58;15;16
Holly
with what we have. It all comes back to the house inside of us, on the inner country continues to build and there is no scarcity, and there is enough for everyone to dwell there. But I understand too. And it's important to say, and I do say this at the beginning of this book, that to create can often be a privilege.
00;58;15;18 - 00;58;20;00
Holly
It is the privilege of having time. It is the privilege of having
00;58;20;03 - 00;58;45;28
Holly
the finances and the the economical standing to be able to take time to create. It is so many different layers of privilege that go into being able to create, and it is not to suggest that all of the systemic reasons and damages and breakages that stop us for creating are on the individual to fix.
00;58;46;00 - 00;59;12;18
Holly
It's more trying to speak to the idea that if we have any capacity to create and fear is the thing that is stopping us, that we also are an equal force to meet that fear with, and to be able to give ourselves the joy that we need.
00;59;12;21 - 00;59;25;00
Holly
To notice and to allow both our inner country and the house we build there for ourselves of joy, to flourish and to exist.
00;59;25;03 - 00;59;29;01
Pam
That is so beautiful. Well, before we say goodbye.
00;59;29;07 - 00;59;43;08
Pam
First of all, if there ever create an Olympic sport of creating metaphors you are going to be, you're going to take home all the gold.
00;59;43;10 - 00;59;47;04
Pam
But you're right, it's it's like that. You just
00;59;47;07 - 00;59;59;24
Pam
that's all so visual. It's really, really does impact in a different way. But I do want you to tell people where they can find you if they want to follow your work.
01;00;00;00 - 01;00;01;05
Holly
Thank you.
01;00;01;07 - 01;00;08;17
Pam
I know that you often have many, you know, pans in the fire, but
01;00;08;20 - 01;00;09;11
Pam
what's the best
01;00;09;13 - 01;00;12;28
Pam
way for them to follow you, to connect with you?
01;00;13;00 - 01;00;14;04
Holly
Thank you. Pam,
01;00;14;04 - 01;00;26;04
Holly
that's lovely. And I, I take having a space online really seriously as a place for connection with readers. So
01;00;26;07 - 01;00;40;24
Holly
it's highly unlikely you will ever see any photos of what I have eaten or, which is no shade on anybody who loves to share photos of what they've eaten that day, because that is their joy.
01;00;40;25 - 01;00;48;02
Holly
But I use for myself. I use my space online to talk about
01;00;48;02 - 01;00;59;24
Holly
the tender, brave work that creativity requires and wherever possible, with a sense of humor so that we all stay sane and stay alive. So
01;00;59;27 - 01;01;11;10
Holly
I have been writing a newsletter, dispatch, for about 15 years and just recently have migrated. In the last two years I've migrated it over to Substack
01;01;11;18 - 01;01;12;14
Holly
so people
01;01;12;14 - 01;01;17;11
Holly
can find me there and I can give you links and all of that sort of thing.
01;01;17;11 - 01;01;21;14
Holly
If you have transcripts and stuff so people can click on the links.
01;01;21;15 - 01;01;24;22
Pam
I do. I have transcripts and show notes.
01;01;24;24 - 01;01;27;20
Holly
And show notes. My God, we've got everything. So
01;01;27;20 - 01;01;39;15
Holly
everything, all the bells and whistles. So I'm on Substack and that's where I writing. To connect is where I like to invest most of my time. I'm also on Instagram.
01;01;39;18 - 01;01;43;05
Holly
And so between those two places,
01;01;43;05 - 01;01;58;26
Holly
yeah, I focus on the Substack because it allows me to write rather than to get caught in the furnace of the Instagram algorithm tool, though for connectivity as it still is, but
01;01;58;26 - 01;02;00;20
Holly
something that I love to do.
01;02;00;22 - 01;02;03;22
Holly
I've been offline actually since December.
01;02;03;22 - 01;02;06;23
Holly
I've just finished writing my third novel,
01;02;06;25 - 01;02;09;16
Holly
so I just finished it like a week ago.
01;02;09;16 - 01;02;15;16
Holly
So I've just finished. It's called The World Beneath Her Feet. So
01;02;15;16 - 01;02;18;08
Holly
yeah, I've really I've really gone into the
01;02;18;08 - 01;02;24;03
Holly
the under the underground metaphor. We will all be shocked. She's gone into metaphor, everyone.
01;02;24;07 - 01;02;34;25
Holly
But. So I've been off Substack for a few months to focus on letting the story live through me and to just be very single minded to meet deadline, largely.
01;02;35;00 - 01;03;07;28
Holly
But I'm coming back online now and I'm drafting my first newsletter. All of which is to say that something I love to engage with on, like through my newsletters, is I welcome readers to write any question that they might have to me, and then I answer them in three free to read posts so that because so many of our questions are, well, all of our questions are unique and personal to us, and I think it's always shocking for us to realize how universal they are as well,
01;03;08;04 - 01;03;20;18
Holly
how much we all benefit from being reminded that we are not the solo freaks we think we are with our questions about creating and art and vulnerability and
01;03;20;18 - 01;03;30;28
Holly
how hard it can be, even though it's the thing that we love to do the most, that sort of thing. So that's where I invest my time online, where and how,
01;03;31;01 - 01;03;32;28
Holly
and that's where people can find me.
01;03;33;02 - 01;03;33;22
Holly
Yeah.
01;03;33;22 - 01;03;38;18
Pam
Well that's wonderful. And I'm so glad that you came on the show to talk about this.
01;03;38;21 - 01;03;40;29
Holly
Thank you so much. Thank you.
01;03;41;04 - 01;03;41;19
Pam
Yes.
01;03;41;21 - 01;03;42;18
Holly
For having me.
01;03;42;18 - 01;03;51;09
Pam
I'm so happy to have such a. I was going to use the word bingeable
01;03;51;11 - 01;04;08;00
Pam
author, but that's that's mixing my metaphors with viewing and reading. So I don't know what the right word is for reading, but definitely your work is something that people will not be able to put down.
01;04;08;02 - 01;04;10;21
Holly
Oh, that's really kind, thank you.
01;04;10;24 - 01;04;12;19
Pam
I haven’t
been able to in any case, so.
01;04;12;20 - 01;04;14;02
Holly
Oh, I appreciate that.
01;04;14;03 - 01;04;16;11
Pam
Yeah. Well thank you so much, Holly.
01;04;16;11 - 01;04;26;03
Holly
And thank you for your time. And thank you. Anybody who's made it to the end and listened along with us. And has absorbed all the metaphors.
01;04;26;05 - 01;04;27;28
Pam
That's right, that's right.
01;04;28;05 - 01;04;30;25
Holly
May we all be desert oaks seed pods today.
01;04;31;01 - 01;04;36;13
Pam
Ah, wonderful. Thank you!
01;04;36;15 - 01;04;50;20
Pam
You’re listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
01;04;55;16 - 01;05;15;04
Pam
Thank you so much to Holly Ringland for being on the show today to talk about her book, The House That Joy Built. She is a delight to talk to and her books are the kind that you just don't want them to ever end. She's just finished her third novel, The World Beneath Her Feet.
01;05;15;07 - 01;05;21;12
Pam
I'll put links up in the show notes so that you can connect with Holly on Substack and follow her work.
01;05;21;15 - 01;05;30;26
Pam
Thanks to all of you for listening. Today, I'm not using social media right now, but you can always reach me through my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast. com.
01;05;31;03 - 01;05;37;21
Pam
You can also find me on Substack, where I post more info about the episodes on the show.
01;05;37;24 - 01;05;42;25
Pam
The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa, Lobo Loco, and Barbara Higbie.