Fiber Artist Nathania Apple on Creative Play and Reclaiming Identity

In this conversation with author T. Thorn Coyle, Nathania Apple shares her journey as a multidisciplinary fiber artist and theater professional, exploring her creative roots, the influence of her family, and the connection to nature. She discusses the importance of cultural heritage in her work, the act of reclaiming identity through craft, and the significance of context in creativity. Nathania also delves into her spiritual practices, the role of play and enthusiasm in adulthood, and her current creative projects, emphasizing the importance of expanding perception and understanding in her artistic journey.

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Transcript

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Hello friends, it's your intrepid host, T. Thorn Coyle, back with another episode of Magic, Creativity, and Life. Before we get into the show, I would like to give you a personal update. I am finishing fulfilling the last Kickstarter for The Winding Road. All the Deluxe Special Editions are finally with the company that's spraying the beautiful edges, so those should be shipping out in the next couple of weeks. Hooray. I'm also building out the next Kickstarter for Evolutionary Witchcraft, the 20th anniversary revised edition and its companion book, Stars of Power. I'm really excited about that one and I hope you all head to Kickstarter and follow that project. I know a lot of people are really excited about this revised edition, so I can't wait to share it with you. In writing news, I am working on bookish baddies, which is book six in my Pride Street, cozy Corgi mysteries. And I can't tell you what a joy it is to be back in that world, writing from the Corgis point of view. So Marcia, Klaus, Garrett and John are all off on a new adventure and you can find out what happens sometime in 2026. And other than that, I am working on some new omnibus editions of The Witches of Portland. I'm really loving designing these books. The new covers are gorgeous. I'm enjoying formatting the new interiors with interior illustrations, things like that. those will never be available on retail, but you can get them soon. They're actually up for pre-order right now at thorncoylebooks.com Other than that, I'm still going for my daily walks, taking photos, which a lot of you comment on on Instagram, Blue Sky, or Facebook, and doing what I can, like we all are, to help folks and community make sure people have some food to eat and places to sleep and all the other ways in which we're all taking care of each other during these times. And I was thinking about it. It's one reason I appreciate doing this podcast and I so appreciate all of you who support the podcast on Patreon because right now when times are so hard for so many people, sharing some art, some magic, some music, some creativity gives me hope. And I hope it gives you hope as well. And I hope together we can continue creating a new vision of what this world can be. kinder, more beautiful, more just place. So that's about it for my update. Let's dive into the show. Hello everybody, welcome back to Magic, Creativity and Life, Conversations with Interesting People. Today's interesting person is Nathania Apple, who is a multidisciplinary fiber artist and theater arts professional with a lifelong obsession with textiles. As director of sales and marketing for Cherrywood Hand Dye Fabrics and theater department associate and costume designer for Wayzata High School Theater, she stitches stories together in both her personal and professional life. Nathania lives in Minneapolis with her partner, youngest child, a standard poodle and an assortment of sewing machines, spinning wheels and too much fabric and thread to count. Nathania, welcome. Thank you. So nice to be here, Thorn. So I've known you off and on for many years in various guises and I follow you on Instagram and folks who want to follow you can find you at Pearls Beyond Price. I'll put that in the show notes. But I want to ask you what I ask everyone who I talk to on this podcast and that is what are your creative roots? Like what forms did creativity take in childhood for you? Was it theater? Was it... were you always interested in sewing or fabric? Were you a writer, a singer? Just tell us some about your creative roots. Well, really, it's all of the above. um Yeah, I grew up in a very creative family on both sides, actually, although I didn't really understand some of the creative roots on the Chinese side of my family until much later in my life. But my father's family particularly was musical, and that sort of formed the chrysalis of that for me. My father and his brothers all played musical instruments. grandparents actually met at a dance where my grandfather was playing the upright bass. In the 1930s, he traveled around the country and played in big bands, you know, doing that big band jazz style. And my grandmother was a concert cellist. So music was sort of the undertone of everything. There was always music happening. There was always music that we were listening to. And in In my early childhood, I had these fantastic experiences of being part of the tapestry of that, where the family would come together and have jam sessions. until I was almost an adult, I didn't realize that the Beatles were a separate band. I thought that all the Beatles songs were written by my uncles, because those were the only versions I ever heard. It really was. And then, It was my paternal grandmother who really got me started with fiber arts. She was a huge football fanatic, go Vikings all the way. And she would spend her Sunday afternoons watching football and knitting or doing needle points. And so there was also this constant theme that she was making things and that Sundays were her days when the rest of the family was sort of. wrapped up in other things and she could be attentive to something that was for her only. uh And she taught me to knit as part of that. But going even further back, my great grandfather, my grandmother's father was a painter and a writer and an outdoorsman and an athlete. And so there's this just kind of theme within my whole family of people who express their creativity in a multitude of ways, that being in nature is a way of expressing creativity, that putting together words on a page, whether that's in prose or poetry or a song, those are all ways of being connected to ourselves, connected to our stories and connected to our people. Great. That's interesting. Yeah, go ahead. I had an interesting experience just this week as a matter of fact. One of my uncles is elderly and disabled and we are in the process of closing up his apartment. And while doing that, of course, you sift through all of the stuff that people collect in their many, many years of life. And as we were cleaning out his books, we found a folio that my great grandfather had made. for my grandmother when she was a child. And I was shocked to find it because he died when she was quite young. She wasn't even 10, I believe, when he died. And during one of the summers when she was away visiting her grandparents, he put together a scrapbook of things that he thought she would enjoy. So he wrote in a letter that he was burning things in the furnace, old papers, and he came across these. pictures of things that he thought she would enjoy. So there were pictures from the Como Zoo and pictures of animals. There was a picture of Amelia Earhart and one of Charles Lindbergh. And it was interesting to see through his eyes the kinds of things that he wanted to share with her that she thought would be interesting. And at the very back, there were pictures of him and my great grandmother on one of their many canoe trips and setting a camp. the places that they visited and it was his way of showing her visually what that life was for the two of them and what she could participate in, how she could participate in the world in those ways. it's just, I teared up looking at it and seeing that care that he had for her. And that's a... It is, it's a big part of how I think about how my art and the stories that I tell are leaving a legacy for my children and for all of the children that I interact with. Right. You know, speaking of legacy, you mentioned connection to the land and the people. And when I think of Minnesota, you know, I think of Viking descendants. I think of a bunch of white people, but you are mixed race and have a different experience growing up in this place where you loved the land and you loved the people. And I'm wondering, if that influences your creative process as well, or if it doesn't really have much to do with your creativity and how you express yourself. So I grew up in northern Minnesota, which is a very different landscape than here in the Twin Cities where I live now. I grew up on 40 acres deep in the woods, 20 minutes outside town. And I spent a lot of time in the forest as a child. We didn't have a lot of things that were material with the exception of books. Books were a... kind of a constant theme. But it meant that I knew the land that I lived on in a very intimate way. uh My brother and I were constantly running through the fields, picking flowers, finding toads and turtles and all kinds of creatures down by the lake. Sometimes we would do something that we called Pet for a Day. Mm-hmm. we would catch a frog and we would carry it around in a little bucket and we would talk to it. And then at the end of the day, we would let it go back into its natural environments. And there are things about living in a forest like that where you aren't confronted with kind of the trappings of modernity. We lived off the grid. We didn't have electricity or running water or a telephone. Wow. was just us out there helping my dad in the garden, helping him build a timber frame structure that we lived in while he built a bigger one. And it impacts the way that you see things because I think you notice more of the small, fine details. rate. that when you don't have the distraction, certainly then we didn't have cell phones or things like that, but we didn't even have television. So my brother and I were turned outside to just go explore. And so I would spend hours in the gravel pile because my dad had gravel brought in for cement, sorting rocks and looking at the different structures. And so when it came time in school to learn about geology, Like I had firsthand knowledge of what those rocks felt like and what they looked like and what they smelled like. And so I think that gives me kind of a 360 degree view of the world that I think is, I certainly miss that level of engagement in the natural world, although I try. uh Much as you do, I notice your photographs of flowers and bees and birds and things like that that are your ways of noticing the world around you. I similarly am always looking not only at the kind of macrocosmic vision of the entire landscape, but the microcosmic that I see in the grains of pollen on the stamen of a flower or uh I have a habit of greeting all of the creatures that I see when I'm outside. I'll say hello to the bunnies and I'll tell them to make sure that they stay away from the roo-doo-doos. I don't know if you remember that from, gosh, name of, Wattership Down, yes, this is what they called the cars. And I talk to the squirrels and I talk to the crows and they're as much a part of my... my sense of myself and my sense of place as anything else. and when it comes to, you know, thinking of the land that I grew up on, of course, all of that was Indigenous land. And I was very cognizant of that because as a mixed race person of Chinese descent, I received a lot of the negative attention that the Indigenous people on that land did. Where I grew up, most of the Indigenous kids lived on the reservation. They didn't come to school in the town where I was. That was mostly white kids. And so I was aware of those divides. uh But I was also, because of the family that I grew up in, because my great-grandfather had spent so much time on the land and, you know, and traveling it with his actual feet and by canoe had a reverence for the land. And my father, when I was very young, began investing time and energy into some indigenous practices. So one of the very first books that I remember him reading to us once we got to the age where we had attention enough for larger books was Black Elk Speaks. And so we had this connection and awareness that we were growing up in the Chippewa National Forest and that there were people there that lived in a different way than we did in modern times and that we were borrowing this land, that we're part of the evolving story of it. where it began was not with people that looked like us. And that's important to me because looking at culture and especially as I've gone into practices of fiber arts, there are many, many different cultural traditions in those artworks. And I find it fascinating and also very important to mark the distinctions of those so that as we're practicing them, we're honoring the roots and the intention from which they came. Right, because every culture around the globe has their own textile history and methods of, you know, whether it's weaving or dying or spinning. Like, sure, I know there are commonalities, but I also, as someone who is not a fiber artist, I can see and feel the differences. Absolutely. It's interesting to me because textiles are kind of one of the most fundamental things when we are looking at different traditions, but also the commonalities that we have as humans. And you can tell so much from textiles. If you are looking at anthropological records, some of the most valuable pieces that we have to tell us about how a people lived and what was valuable and valued in their culture, we look at their textiles. We look at the types of fibers that were used. We look at the types of colors that were used, how those dyes were derived. We look at all of those materials. We look at the time and energy that it takes to put into a garment to tell whether that society was a subsistence society or whether it was a society that had wealth and whether... you can tell things about social standing. It's remarkable really how much information you can glean from that historical record just in the textiles themselves. Well, and I'm also thinking of the impact colonialism had on textiles, um know, colonial machine-made fabric taking over woven fabric. You know, I mean, India is the classic case, right? You know, and it was one reason that one of the rebellions was getting people to weave their own cloth again, right? And... um You know, of course, there's the traditions of the Scottish weavers. I mean, we could go on and on em about the impact of colonial cultures on smaller, localized craft people and how that shifted the balance of power in society. And I'm also thinking of just in my lifetime, you know, my mother sewed And I learned to sew as a child because at the time sewing our clothing was less expensive. And of course, with global capitalism, that is no longer the case. It is now very expensive in the US to sew your own clothing as opposed to buying like fast fashion. Right. So that is the new colonialism is things like fast fashion, which decimates a lot of cultural practice and you know of course we end up with garbage dumps in countries that otherwise might be a very nice place to live but we ship the U.S. and other countries ship our garbage there right. I don't know where I'm going with this but I'm sure you have thoughts on the... it. A lot of thoughts about it. mean, there's... So the first thought that comes to me is about reclamation, right? That when we are in... active negotiation with our clothing, what we wear, what's important to us. First of all, we're reclaiming our identity because I could go out to the Gap and or wherever and buy a shirt and know that there are going to be thousands of people out there who have the same exact shirt. When I make something for myself or I make a costume for one of the actors that I serve in the theater, I am expressing a viewpoint. I am expressing things that matter to me. I am expressing things about the uniqueness of our bodies, which is a thing that I think we really don't look at quite enough in our culture. For the majority of people, their clothes don't fit in a way that is comfortable for them. because our bodies in their infinite complexity and variability, they don't fit that standard model. And so because I am living in a body that has a lot of uniqueness shaped by various experiences, because I have literally had pieces of my body amputated, Mm-hmm. When I make a garment that suits me and the body that I'm in now, that is an act of claiming who I am and all of the history that came to bear on this particular body. It's a way of reclaiming cultural practices. It's a way of reclaiming time and attention to detail. Great. that is kind of revolutionary because we have so many things in this current capitalist society that just tell us that the only value we have is productivity, that we're supposed to be producing constantly, that we're supposed to be going, doing constantly, and that all of that doing should be in the aim of capitalism itself, whether that's to make money for the company that we work for, or to spend money on consumer goods that we don't need. It is an act of revolution in itself to be that individualistic and to express oneself into those specific ways. uh And in, you know, we've, see that throughout history too, that the clothing that people wear, it signals to other people what they're about. So, you know, when I, when I walk out of the house and I'm wearing a rainbow on my t-shirt, That's very deliberate because I'm sending a message to the world that says, this is something that I value, right? When I wear slogans or whatever. The same is true if I am upcycling garments and people see new and unique ways that they can use the things that no longer serve them in its original format. Great. a way of saying it is valuable to me to find new use for these things, that I reject that which is disposable and instead invest in it in a new and different way. And that to me is how we keep ourselves in relationship and in conversation with ourselves and the environment that we create for ourselves. Right. Well, and the conversation too, you know, we are so isolated even as we are more connected than we've ever been, right? With the, you know, amazingness and the terribleness of the internet. But crafts people, especially sewing people and fiber arts people, right? That was communal activity often. and sewing circles or knitting circles. And I always appreciate the revival of that. I know that there are groups that try that. They've got weekly sessions where you show up with your project and just hang out and talk to people that you may not otherwise ever talk to. And the thing I love, though, that feels really revolutionary to me are these pop-up mending events. whether it's repairing old clocks or kitchen appliances or teaching people how to mend their own clothing, right? That sort of thing feels revolutionary to me on that small community building, taking your power back basis, which I really love. I agree with you. I think it's really fascinating to see people who are engaging in crafts that are on the brink of extinction. You know, I think about like what gets lost when the last person who does this particular thing is gone. Right. And those are some of the creators that I love to interact with on the internet. It's one of the great things about the internet. Like I will sit and I will watch videos about thatching, like the old style thatching, know, from cottages in England. I think it's absolutely fascinating. Or I will watch someone, you know, carving finials. That kind of craftsmanship to me is utterly fascinating. And I also constantly wonder what is that experience like for that person? It's a uh window into a world because, know, in times past artisans would spend their whole life doing that and we had systems of apprenticeship that would pass those down and something gets lost when you can 3D print that thing. rather than feeling the shapes of those things yourself. And so I love to see people who are teaching others or providing those skills so that, again, we can take a step back from that capitalist push or that planned obsolescence where, you know, I remember when you bought a fridge in the seventies, that thing lasted forever. Yeah. now you buy a fridge and like, you five years later, you're like, I have to buy a new fridge. That seems. is, horrific. It is. You know, and as a someone who grew up in a working class, working poor household as a child, I really was in the love of that sort of craft and that sort of labor was instilled in me at a very young age, right? Honoring, you know, human activity, the ability to hand build things. And I'm really struck when I was teaching in Germany years ago, I saw someone who looked like they were in like this corduroy outfit. They had these really amazing corduroy trousers and a corduroy jacket and a fancy hat. And I said, what, you know, and they were at a payphone. And I said, what is that? They said, oh, that's a journeyman in Germany. When you do an apprenticeship and you're you're in between, you know, apprentice and mastery, you actually still have to go on your journey. You have to go to a different place and throw yourself on the mercy of the townspeople there and study. Right. We have even lost the fact that journeymen meant you had to go on a journey. You could not continue to study your craft in your hometown. You had to go study with other crafts people. Right? Which then shared the craft and expanded the craft because everyone got a little bit of a technique or lore from different places. And mostly in the world we live in, we have lost that completely. Which is interesting to me that things used to be set up so that there was cross-pollinization, there was more information sharing. but it was closer in, right? You had to make one-on-one contact with people. Yeah, there's something that I'm kind of teasing out in my brain in what you're talking about there, Thorn, that is about perspective that's about broadening the context in which we live our lives. context to me is a thing that is so important and it's a thing that I'm very, very specific about in my work, particularly when I'm working in the theater because I'm helping to create a world in which these actors are going to be carrying forth this story. And I'm always talking to them about the importance of costume in creating their context. So when I'm dressing these teenagers, I will talk to them about the history of the types of clothing that they're wearing. And I ask them to really feel into their bodies how specifically these clothes alter the way that they move, that they stand, that they speak. Even do they have different thoughts? And to me, that act of stepping outside one's comfortable environs and engaging in somewhere new. as a process of learning is extraordinarily important because it builds those muscles of learning, taking in, absorbing, and distilling that experience through one's physical hands, uh through one's physical body. one of the things that I find myself most concerned about in modern culture is that because of all of this external focus on media and the internet and all of those things that we take ourselves out of our bodies and we live so much in our heads. Because so much of what we experience is second hand, right? You're watching a curated version from outside the context in which it resides, but you don't get the actual physical presence of that thing. You can watch glass blowing on video, but you don't feel the heat in your face. You don't feel the vitality of the fire and the glass as it's being transformed from solid to liquid and back to solid again. And so, you know, as part of my fiber arts practice, it really is about getting down into the physicality of what that is that I'm working with. And that's been a hallmark of my practice, not just my fiber arts practice, but my spiritual practice as well, that everything that I set my intention to is about finding a way back into my body as it experiences being a human because those are the tools that I have uh that keep me grounded in the same way that setting my feet upon the earth as a little kid running around in the forest barefoot, like that's all of those textures, all of those sounds, all of those smells are a part of becoming more myself and more of how I engage with the world around me. Yeah, and you know, I think children are animists, right? And as an adult, it's interesting being an animist, because a lot of people are not animists. And that comprehension that the world around me is a living, breathing thing, and that I can have relationship with it is very to my existence because I'm an intellectual, right? I could live in my head, but the importance of the body became very clear to me at a pretty young age. You know, I was a theater kid and a dancer and an actor and a singer and all of that. But it wasn't until I joined a dance troupe in my 20s that I realized just how important that physical activity was to me because it gave me access to my emotional body, which I didn't have before. So I'm wondering, you talked about the importance of the body to your spiritual practices, and I'm wondering what are a couple of core or key spiritual practices that help you? The first one is... It's kind of nebulous and I don't put words around it a whole lot. So it's an interesting exercise to try and language that. But it has primarily to do with discernment. I grew up in a very complicated family with people who are big emoters and For a very, very long time, I identified as an empath. And it became clear to me, I guess it was probably in my early 30s, that my sense of self was very much tethered to other people and who other people. wanted or needed me to be or who I perceived that they wanted or needed me to be. And I think that that perception is a big part of it. And so that's really where I started a lot of my journey into different types of meditation and movement, trying to find the ways that would bring me into more harmony with myself. And What I have discovered is that I no longer am comfortable with the word empath as an identifier because What that meant for me in a lot of cases was actually self abandonment. That in identifying so much with other people's feelings, it would knock me off of my own center and I would be sort of carried along in the tides of their emotions or their experiences or their needs. And that left me really at the mercy of other people. And so I found myself newly divorced, living by myself for the first time and realizing that I didn't know who I was if there wasn't somebody else in the room with me. And so I began a practice of yoga and different types of meditation to really discern what's me and what's not me. What is emerging from me the energy of my own body, what is emerging from me the energy of my own thoughts, and where and how it interacted with other people. It became very necessary when I became a body worker um because in body working, I found that I was highly sensitive and I was very, very good at listening to people's bodies through my fingertips. but that I would have these experiences, which some people might call psychic. And I couldn't explain how these things would come up, but it was very vital to me to understand what was arriving sort of in my energetic field versus what was emanating from my energetic field. And That has been a very, very interesting practice because I found a space where I could feel and be centered and have something arise in my consciousness. And I would have this sort of way of sifting through it and saying, that me? Am I interjecting this into this field? Or is that a message that I need to pay attention to? And often I would distill that as a word. uh And so being able to do that, I am able to move through my life and the world with a lot more autonomy. It also means that I'm very sensitive to what happens in my own body, which has served me very, very well in the last few years, dealing with a multitude of health issues, being able to discern what's in my body where it's emanating from and being able to describe that has been vital for diagnosing a number of things that have been very challenging. So that discernment piece is really, I think, the core of my practice. And there are different ways that I do that. many of which we explored together, you and I, in psychic skills courses that we did in exploring the pentacle work and things like that. part of what I've discovered is that I now recognize myself as a highly sensitive person and that I am able to perceive when there is disturbance in the energetic field around me and that that's enough, that I don't have to identify every single instance of that. I don't have to lean into that disturbance. that often, because I am a human and humans are, we always want to like create story around things, uh but I am very apt to misinterpret those things because my ego gets involved. And so it just helps me stay centered and focused to be in my body. And part of that is also in my creative fiber arts practice, because that's part of what keeps me in tune with my body. Yeah, and then you're not taking on other people's stuff constantly, right? And therefore you're actually able to be of greater service to those around you. Because your boundaries are more clear, you have more grounding, right? And listening to you talk, I was thinking, well, that discernment you're speaking of is truly what it means to be an adult human being. And there, we often, a lot of people lack that ability to be that sort of an adult human being. It's why my, what started off as my warrior's pentacle turned into the pentacle of autonomy. But I often think of it as a pentacle of adulthood. You know, it's commitment, honor, truth, strength and compassion, right? If I am working all five of those points, I am acting in the world as an adult human being and therefore I am of greater help to those around me because I have that clarity and discernment you're talking about. Yes, absolutely. And it also opens up a whole new dimension I am discovering, you know, in my mid-50s. Because I work with teenagers a lot of the time in the theater, it has opened up a whole world of play for me that, you know, I think that our concept of what it is to be a grownup, to be an adult, is so flawed, that it is so rigid and so confining. I am discovering like just how wacky and funny I am. And I enjoy actually hanging out with the teenagers often more than I enjoy hanging out with adults because there is this kind of enthusiasm that is allowed in that age group and we just have the best time. I laugh so much and at the same time I'm also there to be a steadying force and a teacher and a person in whom they can confide. a person who is holding space for their uniqueness, their queerness, their zaniness, their creativity. And it is remarkable how much I enjoy that. Because I always thought that I was a little kid person. I love being with babies and toddlers before they're really verbal. just kind of being with, you know, the, the pure presence that, that those really young people have. But I've discovered this whole world, um, that is just full of delight and joy. And it's a thing that, you know, when I, when I was their age, if I thought about people in their fifties, I thought, oh, well, you know, they're all established and fuddy duddies and. All of that. Old, they're old, yes. And I don't feel old except sometimes in my body because there are things that happen. But my mind does not feel old. My mind feels young and curious and engaged and joyful. curiosity is one of my big words that I invoke often. You know, I want to get back to you use the word enthusiasm. And one of the meanings of that is basically God touched, right? Possessed by deity. And there's an openness required to be enthusiastic. You know, we can't be shut down and closed off. We have to be in active relationship with the world around us, with the seen and the unseen, right? And we have to be willing to create and be touched by magic, to be enthusiastic. And it strikes me that, you know, adulthood to be a flexible adult, there's some combination of that curiosity and responsibility both. Right? And I think sometimes people err too much on the side of responsibility and that becomes a burden rather than a joy. And, you know, I find responsibility to be satisfying. I recognize, you know, my layers of privilege in that also, but I find adulthood to be satisfying, but I think I find it to be satisfying because I also have access to joy, right? It's not just dull, rote, repetitive grinding, right? There is magic in the world that I can tap into and I can bring that to my work. I can bring a sense of play to my work. work and writing mantra is let it be easy. And what that means for me is bring lightheartedness to the task, no matter what it is. And I definitely feel what you're talking about with the teenagers. know, my 16 year old, my inner 16 year old is still very much with me. Even as I also have a lot more equanimity. And I am grateful for the equanimity, let me tell you. Yeah, mean, definitely in observing kind of the ebbing and flowing emotions and, you know, they're theater kids, so there is definitely drama. But yes, having the emotional equanimity to, you know, to allow things to move through me. I think that's a part of it that, you know, when you use the word responsibility, the first, first thing that pops up for me is actually stewardship. That, you know, part of my responsibility is to hold space for my own creativity and to things for things to move through me, for things to be of me, but not by me. If that makes sense, especially, you know, when I'm when I'm talking about, you know, creating art, you know, when I'm using a pattern or materials or if I'm engaging with a particular lineage of fiber arts, like letting all of that move through me and inform my experience is important. But I'm also creating then space for other people to engage with it. So, you know, as I'm working with the teenagers, I'm holding space for them to experience theater and the costumes and all of those things in their own way. I try to hold that responsibility lightly because I think when we get too stuck in the structure and too stuck in the parameters, we tend to invest less in the energy of the doing and the making and the creating and the being and more into that rigid, what we think of as adult behavior. And I think it's important to model that for not only the children that are in our lives, but for the other adults in our lives, because they need that access to themselves as well. I agree. And in a counterpoint, I would hazard to guess that the young people you work with find you trustworthy because you still have enthusiasm and a sense of joy along with equanimity and responsibility, right? Whereas if we're around adults, like, you know, my childhood had adults who were not adults and very dramatic, horrible mood swings, all of that. They were not trustworthy or safe people to be around. even adults who are lightheartedly dramatic, right? There's still that destabilization that's going on. And so it strikes me that there needs to be that... Shifting balance, it's a both and rather than an either or that is useful as creative people and creative adults, I think. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I mean it to me is a constant dance of those things, you know and Because I I too grew up in a sometimes very unstable environment and and there there are pieces of where I will cling to structure But I also because I have this practice in noticing what's happening in myself and in my body I often can catch myself in the act where I can recognize that, I'm reaching for safety right now because something feels destabilizing to me. What is it that I need to find ground again? Whether that's spending time with myself, re-engaging in a particular kind of practice, recognizing when you know, my physical needs are not being met, whether that's, you know, my nutrition or movement or touch and connection or those kinds of things. Having the practice of understanding where I am in that equanimity and when my balance shifts too far in one direction or another helps me come back to center again. yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful way of putting it, thank you. So we're starting to wind down now. I'm sure we could keep talking for another half hour, but. um I would like to close with two questions. One is, is there a current creative project that you're just really enjoying right now? So I am a process driven creative rather than a product driven creative. And that is one of the things that I have had to come to terms with because there is a lot of shame in our culture, especially around folks who have certain kinds of neurodivergence uh and being late diagnosed as both having ADHD and autism. uh I used to really deride myself for not finishing every project. uh And now I allow that to be, again, it's a dance of ebb and flow, and I am able to follow where my interest is. So I'm playing with a new technique right now, which is a lot like painting with fabric, where in quilting, very often the structures are very rigid, meaning that there are a lot of straight lines and that where they intersect, the points are supposed to meet. There's an exactitude which I find very satisfying in the execution sometimes, but where my heart is leaning and as I'm exploring some of my own artistic creations. I'm wanting to move in the direction a little bit more of creating this sense of painting with fabric, which means that the structures need to be a lot more flowy. There's an artist from Australia named Ruth DeVos, and I'm working on a pattern of hers right now so I can learn her technique before I apply it to my own artistic visions. And it's very satisfying because it feels a little... a little off center, a little risky, and that tells me that I'm learning something. So it really has my attention right now. And that's one of those things that I tend to lean into when I find an edge there where I'm like, I don't know quite what this is all about, and I don't know quite how to do it, but I'm going to go in and figure it out. That is an edge that I find just delicious and I enjoy so much that process of learning and growing. it may be that I don't finish this piece because I'll have gotten the learning piece that I need out of it and will immediately apply it to something else. And that's perfectly okay with me. That's beautiful. I like that. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, I find that space where I don't know exactly how something works and I need to learn it for some reason. I often resist that edge, but then when I say, it be easy, and I let myself cross that threshold, I often find it really satisfying in the way you're talking about. So thanks for sharing that experience. And my final question. You can answer it as large or small as you wish. What is your current why? What is my current why? just sitting for a minute and letting that percolate. My current why is actually my always why. And that is that I have always looked to expand my perception. And it makes sense to me on so many levels. So I work for a company that hand dyes fabric. And I remember the first time before I worked for the company, I went to the studio and I was standing there with uh the woman who is now my boss, Carla. And I looked across the room and I said, that's an interesting color. And I was holding a color that was very similar in my hand. And she said, isn't that the same color? And I said, no, that one is warmer than this one. And I walked her over and I held up the swatch that was in my hands against the one on the thing. And she said, you're right. Well, I've since learned that I have something called tetrachromacy, which is something. uh genetic mutation that happens on the X chromosome, where rather than the three standard types of cones that are in the eye that discern color, I have an extra one. So I have four, which means that my color perception is able to discern literally millions more colors than a person who only has those three cones. So that is something that is inherent in my genetics that allows me to experience the world in a different way than some other people. I'm also a person who stands in liminal space a lot as a bisexual identified person, as a multiracial person. So being able to perceive from different vantage points is very important to me. It always has been in order to understand myself through the lens of my family in Minnesota that was Croatian and Scots-Irish and Quaker. And then my Chinese family that came from mainland China and had an immigrant story. And so being able to perceive on those different levels. allowed me to form a broader view of who I am as an individual. And so I spend a lot of my time seeking to expand my perception. And I do that through every type of media that I engage in. I do that in listening to different kinds of music. I do that in listening to podcasts and listening to people talking about. consciousness and art and literature and notions of race and gender and sexuality. I do that through reading books and deliberately selecting books that are outside of my own experience so that I can have a view into a world that I may not have understood before. And that has been my lifelong quest is to expand my perception. And that is my why. Thank you. I love that. Well, thanks so much again for joining me today. And thanks to all of our listeners. I've been speaking with Nathania Apple. You can find her at Pearls Beyond Price on Instagram. That's P-U-R-L-S, beyond price. And you can find me at thorncoyle.com. Have a magical creative day. Wasn't Nathania just lovely? She's such a kind and gracious person and so thoughtful. I really appreciated talking with her and talking about her journey as an artist, um as a theater person, all those good things. And I hope you got some inspiration from that. I know I did. And I hope you... go check out some of her art on Instagram. And as always, you can support the show on Patreon, patreon.com backslash thorn coyle Thanks so much.