118. Let's Catch Up!

This episode is just you and me. I thought it would be a great time for us to catch up on what's happening and let you know what I've been up to. It will be a little bit of a different episode...rather than talking with you about art therapy and creativity, I hope to let you know me a little more. I'm talking about a month in Paris, lingerie, what book my anti-racism group is reading, my latest book, how I write, and what is happening with my kid.

I mention these episodes and events I think you would enjoy:

117. Feasting with your Eyes - Interview with Bebe Black Carminito

112. Women in Leadership - Interview with Dr. Shilpa Reddy

The Paris Retreat 2026

Transcript

This episode is just you and me. I'm calling this the Catch – up episode, and I thought it would be a great time for us to catch up on what's happening and let you know what I've been up to. It will be a little bit of a different episode, so I'm not going to be teaching you anything about art therapy. Rather, I hope to let you in on knowing me a little more and let me know what you think. 

Welcome to the modern creative woman I am. Your host is Doctor Amy Bakos, and I am all about the art and science of creativity. And it's always been this tug in my mind and in my profession between psychology and art. And someone told me once I was a little too psychology for art therapy and a little too art therapy for psychology. And nobody likes being told they're too much or too little of something. And it occurred to me at that point that I was really just straddling that space, and that was where I wanted to focus my time. And my professional energies. But furthermore, it's how I think of the world. What I see, the aesthetics creating something new, whether it's synthetic creativity or innovative creativity. It's what I'm always looking for. And I've always loved museums and nature and making art and doing art with other people. And I've always been interested in what makes all of us tick. I'm curious about my own mind and the mind of others. So here I am, occupying this space 30 years later between art and psychology. And I think you're here because that's a space that interests you as well. I wanted to do just a catch up episode and see what's happening in your life. If you message me what you've been up to. I would love that. I love hearing from you. I have spent the last month in Paris. I just got back. I'm home in San Francisco now and it was an incredible month for me. This is something that's been on my mind since I was probably 13 years old, maybe sooner. Earlier, my parents had a painting in their home that's now in my office of the stairs of Art. It was a painting that they bought, I think, when they were in New York one summer, and I just stared at it every day, I loved it. If you've ever seen those steps, you know, it's pretty interesting view. It's from the top of kind of the only hill in Paris in Mount Art, looking down over several flights of stairs into the city. And I always dreamed of going there since I was little, and that is probably where my interest in Paris began. Around junior high, I started thinking about how do I get to this place? And I began taking French classes in school. I took an amazing class with a professor who not only was teaching us the language, she was teaching art. And so there was art history lessons, and it was all about the artists in France. I stuck with French all the way through junior high and high school, and I applied to go abroad to study, and I was not accepted into France. I was accepted somewhere else. And I remember being so disappointed. I thought, why did this happen? I put all this effort into learning French and focusing on trying to understand the culture and the history, and I was really upset. So I saved up money. I worked waiting tables. I remember one summer I waited tables at Perkins during the week. And at the yacht club on the weekends. And all I wanted to do was be able to go to France. That was my big dream. And I made it when I was, I think 19. Yeah, I had just turned 19. So right after my birthday. And it was exactly what I thought it would be. It felt so familiar because I'd been looking at this one painting, and since then it really has been my dream to be there for a longer period of time and to study. And I've been going the last few years hosting retreats, which has been a dream come true. To be able to share what I know about Paris, and I'm partnering with a woman who lives there. And it's been transformative for the women on the retreat, and also for me as the facilitator, to be connected with women in community, which is one of my goals and values. And also to be in such a beautiful space, there is nothing like the femininity of Paris. I think everyone resonates with a place or a particular location or a type of location. And for me, I've always loved living and traveling in cities, and going to Paris has always been my favorite. So this dream from childhood, to be able to spend a chunk of time in France has finally come true. I'm 53 years old, so a long time coming and really so much fun in our retreat. Aurora and I have been hosting a women's retreat called the Paris Retreat Treasure Hunt, and we spent a week in beautiful salons learning about aesthetics and style and art therapy and neuro aesthetics. We also visited a dear friend, Paloma Castillo. She is a lingerie designer and we got to tour her atelier where she does the designs and the custom work is created. And then the woman got to spend some time with Paloma, trying on and having individual conversations about the importance. A foundation in your wardrobe and why it really, really matters to be able to dress yourself with love and care in a way that often no one else will see. It's the first thing you put on in the morning and the last thing you take off. Truly an essential in self-care to have nice lingerie. We also spent time at the Dior museum, looking at the archives and seeing the history of another really famous designer who created a house, and then a series of designers that followed, but still continuing in that beautiful Dior tradition. We had high tea at the Ritz. We did a beautiful dinner cruise on the sand at sunset. We had a day long cooking class with a master chef. We did experience in the market shopping, how to select foods, understanding what's in season and how to be creative in planning. Creating a recipe based on what's available instead of following a recipe and perhaps purchasing things that aren't necessarily in season. It was a huge part of the lesson, and then we spent the entire day creating an amazing meal, which ended in a peach tart, which was my absolute favorite. Going at such a slow and leisurely pace to savor and understand the food, I think was really helpful for everybody. We all have a relationship with food and it can get really kind of distorted, and many women struggle with how we look at food as nourishment or comfort, and figuring out how to use food as nourishing and comforting without using it in a way that is like self-soothing. And it really is something to enjoy with others. The pleasure of eating, I think, has been largely corrupted in the United States. When we're getting so much kind of fast food, we're not eating with other people. I know many people don't stop to eat, they just eat at their desk. And this was a true lesson in how to savor your food. I spent the next week on my own little writing retreat. I was by myself, and I would walk around a little bit every day, and I got started on my next book, which is an art therapy toolkit and its lots of interventions using acceptance and commitment therapy. And this is a book I'm so excited about. It really will be for everyone, not just directed for clinicians or people who are, um, curious about themselves in terms of the psychology in the art. This is all art and interventions that will give you a lot of pleasure. So that is underway, and it's always been my habit to go away to get started on my writing. Beginning with my dissertation, I checked myself into a hotel and spent the weekend outlining, writing, and getting going. And I've used this strategy for all of my books to be away from my usual routine and start writing in a different environment, and I find it so helpful. It's, of course, a delight to be alone and write. There's other ways that you can do this. You can go sit at a fancy hotel and write. You can go to a friend's house and write. You don't have to go all the way to Paris, but it sure was nice. In the last two weeks, my family joined me and we had a great time doing some super fun tourist things and also just going slow spending time in the Rowden Garden, the Luxembourg Garden. We climbed to the Montparnasse Tower and spent the afternoon just wandering around on their rooftop, admiring the view and being able to go slow while on holiday was so pleasurable there was no rush. Aurora and I are getting ready for next year's retreat, so if these kinds of experiences are appealing to you, you can check it out. It's on the Modern Creative Woman website, and the experience of being with other women in a beautiful environment. Exploring all aspects of the self is a completely unique experience. If you want to know more about it, just message me. You can message me in the show notes or on Instagram, and I would be happy to tell you more about the experience. Recently I interviewed Bibi Black, Carmen Nieto and you can listen to that conversation. It's episode 117. She's an incredible woman who has devoted her career to aesthetics, and she has worked as a makeup artist, a food stylist, and her latest venture in food is a beautiful cookbook. And the aesthetics in this book are incredible. I really want to encourage you to check it out in the show notes of episode 117. You can find the link to find her book. She is such a delight, so be sure and check out that interview. Lately, my anti-racism group has been reading a book called Becoming Kin An Indigenous Call to Unforgiving the Past and Reimagining Our Future. And the book is by Paddy Kerouac, and I highly recommend it. It's focused on indigenous, American and Canadian, and understanding the history of being pushed out of their own land, forced to attend different schools. And Paddy is such a great writer. It's a really beautiful book. One thing I'm seeing in this book is how much racism overlaps among cultures, and it's the same kind of chaos over and over again. I am also deep into helping my son with college planning and figuring out where he wants to apply. Understanding his interests has been a wonderful process. And so now we're into the application stage. If any of you have kids who are heading off to college or recently off to college and you have advice, I am totally open. The modern creative woman has a few things coming up. I'm hosting an in-person retreat in San Francisco, and it will be a day of art and delicious food and aesthetics, and I'll share more about that coming up. I'm also teaching philosophical foundations at Dominican University this fall, and it's a class that I've taught many times before, and it became a book I co-authored called Philosophical Foundations of Art therapy. And the book, it really explores why and how art matters in our lives. And I'm excited to be teaching this class and learning from all of the students in the doctoral program there. And lastly, I've been doing my usual August planning and I think of August as my preparation month for the year. I focus on taking just really good care of myself and setting aside time for planning, and I set up my new calendar for the year. I start to organize my trips when I'm going to be visiting family, and I'm also sorting through how I plan to be working on my latest book, the Art Therapy Toolkit. And I think I've shared this on previous episodes that all of my books have been done in 20 minutes a day, and I got that idea from a book that my friend shop already recommended. And you can go back to a previous episode and listen to a conversation with her. She's an incredible psychologist and really has a great sense of self-care and how to live one's life while being a woman in leadership. That's episode 112, and she gave me this book when I was teaching dissertation students called Writing Your Dissertation in 15 minutes a day. And I started to kind of blend it with the Pomodoro technique, which is working in 25 minute increments, and then a five minute break and. It allowed me to overcome a little bit of writer's block or resistance or concerns about writing, and I think it really worked for my students as well. The idea that you can sit and write for 20 minutes a day, no problem. It's not so long. Everybody has 20 minutes a day for their project that they're excited about and want to complete, and this 20 minute idea has spread throughout my life. I journal for 20 minutes every morning. I set my timer all the time, and in 20 minutes I can go a little longer if I want to. Yet I can do the minimum of 20 minutes. And so I'm planning 20 minutes a day again for this book, and I've been doing a pretty good job at that. I schedule myself, I say I'd like to write 20 minutes every day with the plan that I will take 1 or 2 days off in a week at my discretion. So usually I take Sunday off, and if I'm busy with clients or I'm doing something with my family, maybe there's another day that I might take off. So five days a week, 20 minutes. It won't get the whole book written, but it sure gets a lot of it written. I will spend longer periods of time as it gets closer to a particular deadline, and I have my own sort of inner deadlines. I'll have something in every section done by the end of the year. I'll begin much more intense writing, um, in editing starting in January, and I'll have that aspect done around March, and then that will give me time to kind of mess around with it, send it to my editor, and play around with it before it's finally due to the publisher in August. When I signed my book contracts, I asked for one year and three months, and I know that it takes one year and three months, because the first time I asked for a year and it wasn't done in a year, it took me three more months, and I wanted that bit of padding for creative reflection and to not rush the idea that I want to be able to peruse it a little bit more and get the feel of it and see what else might need to be added or more likely, removed. So giving myself that little bit of padding. Time wise has been incredibly helpful, and I've also applied that to my life as much as I can to try and give myself a little extra time for things, and it's not always the case. There are times I'm recording this podcast Tuesday night for it to drop on Wednesday, but more and more as I get older, I want that little bit of padding and I no longer want to rush through things. There really is no hurry for me. If you are writing a book or always wanted to write a book, let me know. I would love to hear what you're thinking about. And if you've already written a book, send me the link. I would love to read it. Okay, my beautiful friends. That wraps up my check in with you. I hope you let me know what you think to have this conversation. Just me and you, without a lesson. Without an interview. It is Saturday morning, and my husband and I are going to go on along by crying. We're going to head downtown in San Francisco and have a little lunch. We're going to visit the Levi's store. My husband wants new Levi's, and then my son's having a slumber party with all his friends before school starts. So that's my weekend. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and that you take time to go slow. Give yourself a little bit of time. Time to eat. Time to prepare your food or your environment. Go slow. Give yourself a little extra padding around time today, and I think you'll find it's so much more pleasurable when you take time. Thank you, as always, for being here and I will see you in the next episode.