Chill Like a Mother Podcast
This show shares stories, offers tips and tricks, and provides education to help you feel more chill like the mother you know you want to be.
Hey! I'm Kayla Huszar, a creative counsellor who's all about unconventional therapy that encourages creativity, curiosity and finding what makes you feel alive (again). I've helped so many women navigate the waves (ups and downs) of motherhood, and I'm here for you, too!
So, if you're feeling overwhelmed or need a moment to yourself, grab your headphones and press play on an episode!
You're not alone, and you already know what you need.
Chill Like a Mother Podcast
9 Ways Expressive Art Therapy is Magic and Makes Mom-Life More Bearable
In today’s episode, Catherine Mellinger and Kayla Huszar share insights on curiosity, connection and creativity and the magic that expressive art gives you as a mother.
"Even when I feel like I've messed up due to my own dysregulation, or when I'm bombarded with 'perfect' scripts in books or Instagram, I know that as a mother, I can always turn to my art journal to find reassurance. It's where I always find a glimmer of hope." - Kayla Huszar
As trained Expressive Art Therapy Therapists, we have discovered the most significant advice for parents: be curious and lean into the glimmer.
We chat about why expressive art is so important for moms (who are often overlooked by society) and how women can cultivate a sense of curiosity to recognize their true worth.
By the way, Catherine is really curious about your shoes, the adorable onesie your baby is wearing, and what kind of support you're looking for from therapy.
Here are 9 ways expressive art therapy is magic for mom-life, tune in to hear more about it!
- Expressive art therapy is a rad way for moms to express themselves without having to overthink it.
- Sometimes, you just need to let your art do the talking.
- It's a cool way to find a solution without someone else telling you what to do.
- It helps you build trust in yourself- even when you're feeling stuck or doubtful.
- Best of all, you can be as bitchy or sad as you want without anyone telling you to cheer up.
- Art therapy can also help you find hope in dark times.
- It's like a mental reset button that can help you get unstuck from negative thoughts.
- By making art, you can start to see things in a new light- even the stuff that makes you squirm.
- And, you get to be seen and heard by your therapist and by yourself, which can help you realize that you're actually a pretty awesome human.
We mentioned Olivia's Book Impossible Parenting.
Catherine Mellinger (she/they) is an Expressive Arts Therapist (EXAT), Perinatal Mental Health Therapist (CC-PMH) and mixed media collage artist who’s works have been exhibited across Turtle Island and published Internationally.
Originally from land belonging to Treaty 6 (Colonially named Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) she currently lives and works in what is colonially named Waterloo, land included in the Haldimand Tract and belonging to the Neutral, Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe peoples. Catherine is a parent of two children, an avid urban grower, and lives within a family structurethat is an exploration space for neurodivergent celebration and ways of being. They are the co-founder of Together: For Perinatal Mental Health Waterloo Region.
Catherine identifies as a queer femme artist living with invisible disability.
https://www.catherinemellinger.com
https://www.instagram.com/catherine_mellinger/
Mama, you mi
Meet Kayla Huszar, the Host of the Chill Like a Mother Podcast
Hey, moms! I’m Kayla Huszar, and I’m here to help you calm the chaos in modern-day mothering with expressive art therapy. As a creative counsellor, I support moms who feel stuck and are looking to regulate their emotions, reduce anxiety, and tackle stress and overwhelm.
SOCIAL WORKER | EXPRESSIVE ART FACILITATOR | PERINATAL MENTAL HEALTH
Join me on Instagram for more tips and inspiration. And thank you for letting me be a part of your day—even with the kids running amok! If this episode helped you feel a bit more chill, please leave a rating or review. Your feedback helps the podcast reach more moms who need to hear it.
I love it when my clients say God, I hate therapy, right? Because it's like they've reached that moment of like they can't go back right. Like they can't unknow now what they know. Yeah, and so you know they'll be like oh God, I hate this, or oh.
Speaker 1:I didn't think that's where this art piece was going to go or oh man, that was not my intention today to talk about X, y and Z. I really wanted to talk about ABC. But the art doesn't lie. Whatever the art is, if it's movement or song, or banging a wooden spoon against a pot, it's unexpected, and I think that's what I love about it the most is that.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what happens after two expressive art therapists for parents get together for the first time in real time after having a parasocial relationship for years? Well, we forget to introduce ourselves. So I'm Kayla Huzar, the host of the Chill Like a Mother podcast, and I am here with Catherine, a prolific expressive arts therapist and artist, and you are going to get an unencumbered, uncensored, totally raw conversation about motherhood.
Speaker 1:Art, creativity, it's wonderfulness, it's applications, it's uses, it's magic, it's glimmers, it's potential, and you're going to want to listen right to the end, though, I warn you, I do leave you on a bit of a cliffhanger, because I normally try to keep these episodes under 30 minutes, because I know you're a mom and you've got shit to do and you've got about 15 to 20 minutes to start and finish a podcast episode. So I have broken this episode into two. So if you're listening to this at the time of its recording, you're going to be left on a cliffhanger and you're going to have to wait till next week to listen. Or if you're binging the content right now, you're going to already have access to both. Happy listening.
Speaker 2:It tells the truth of what's important. It tells the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, and you make the meaning. You, as the client, make the meaning or tell the story or attune to the feeling or are curious about the beginning, the middle or the end.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm not telling you that you need okay, this is your problem and okay. So go meditate for 20 minutes a day or run or like it's not this prescribed self-care as Olivia, as Olivia.
Speaker 2:So coined in her book Impossible.
Speaker 1:Parenting. Like there are moments, for sure, where I make suggestions to people when they feel stuck and lost and they, they just they don't know where to start. It's like I don't know. Maybe play with some meditation this week. Maybe maybe play with going for a walk in the forest. Maybe be curious about drinking more for a walk in the forest. Maybe be curious about drinking more water. I don't know. But like it's not me giving you the six steps, yeah. Like if you don't do it.
Speaker 2:It means there was nothing there for you that felt true in that moment. That doesn't mean that you like failed doing your therapy homework and and then that is like the start of a discussion. You know when clients are just like, oh, like you told me to maybe try doing this and I did it, and it's like okay, so there's where we start, cause I didn't tell you you had to it was just an option.
Speaker 2:Like you, have autonomy still in executing that task yeah, but now I see that offering a suggestion for you means a task. So let's talk about task. Like how do you? Let's just talk about the word task. Yeah, totally, yeah, totally. I'm stuck or I'm in like dysregulation, sensory overload. I still know that it's there. It's like I have a trusting knowledge that, like a glimmer is available. I just have to be ready for it. And it's okay not to be ready for it.
Speaker 1:Yes, or it's okay to like not want the glimmer right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I just right now it's just like I can't like. I thank you very much, glimmer, but like I'm over here, I'm just going to be bitchy and sad for a couple of days Cause I need to be and, like I know, you're available and I'm grateful for you and I'll circle back, I'll circle back.
Speaker 2:I'll circle back, just stay there Like it's. It's a really interesting um. I feel like it has taught me to trust things more and I'm not somebody who like because of my own historical trauma and like a lot of relational dynamics growing up like I don't trust people, I just don't trust, and I think this assumption that we're all just supposed to trust everything all the time is also just. You know, you could have a whole podcast on that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But I don't very easily trust people.
Speaker 2:I'm a very skeptical person.
Speaker 2:I'm always bracing, I'm always and you and I share an experience of having experienced and lived with OCD and so you don't trust people and sometimes you don't trust yourself, yeah, and so that, like, the one thing that I, what it has taught me, is that the one thing I can trust is that there's always potential, there's always potential for something, even if it's like the way and the and the way that I parent to, or just not even the way I parent, because I did my training before being a parent, but then becoming a parent, I was just like, holy shit, I'm really glad I went to express words therapy training school, because I need. I need that so much right now in terms of how I'm like looking at my kids and embracing this really difficult transformation in my life. Uh, cause I need to. I need to also be able to offer them a sense that, like there's always a possibility, there's always the potential for something. Um, and I have two kids who have very stuck brains like do so, yeah, yeah, the glimmer, the glimmer the.
Speaker 1:The thing that has been most profound for me, having gone through my training when my child was a toddler, is that I went through this like perinatal OCD anxiety with like threads of OCD from like a long time ago. I just didn't know to name it that until I knew to name it that and I knew how to recognize it. And and at two years postpartum I went to the 10 day train and left my you know drove 1200 kilometers away from my family and left for 10 days and it was like my brain could now function in an entirely different way because of the express parts. Like. When I came home from that training, my husband was like you are completely different and like not not in a bad way, like in a yeah, I tell everybody who will listen to it that that the expressive arts healed my perinatal anxiety and OCD. It didn't make it go away Like it's still, like it's still back here Right, cause it's it's patterns, it's neurons. It's neurons, it's pathways that have already been formed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And at a very critical, sensitive time, but it absolutely transformed the way that I respond to myself, the way that I show up in the world, the way that I parent, way that the way that I parent. Um, there's there's a lot of information out there right now around like attachment, gentle, responsive, whatever parenting style, and while I think that parents are doing an amazing job, um, I also think that, with the help of the expressive arts, I'm able to sift through all of that and really understand how I want to show up, not how the books tell me to show up, not how Instagram tells me I need to show up or repair or whatever, which is all really great skills. I will always circle back to that, that glimmer, that knowing that there's always possibility in this, even when I think I have fucked it up so horribly bad when I have been so dysregulated that I can.
Speaker 1:I can look at my kids and see that I have scared them or I have crossed the line or I have. I have said and did the thing that I promised myself I wouldn't do. If I can be on the receiving end of that, if I can facilitate it for myself because now I'm pretty skilled at like getting myself in the zone and self-witnessing the process, Yep it like. It always comes back to that Like there's potential, there's possibility, there's curiosity.
Speaker 2:And that I can be surprised here. Like even if it's, even if it's hell, like even if you're going through hell, you can you still have the ability to potentially be surprised in that by something Right. It's like when I'm having a horrible, horrible day, or like recently I've been grieving a lot because I had like loss of a family member and just like lots of loss, and my kids will surprise me and not where I'm, just like the world just seems like a totally dark cloud. And then, like suddenly one of my kids will just come and be like Mama and I'm like yeah, and they'll just like hug me, you know. So, yeah, surprise to that everything can hold a potential surprise or something unexpected. Or, yeah, I feel like it's increased the malleability of my brain, oh yes, and like not in that toxic positivity way, like no, totally don't believe that everything's beautiful. Like the world is not a beautiful place right now. Like let's admit that the world is an atrocious, fairly ugly, pretty harmful place to a lot of people right now. And I say that sitting in an incredible amount of privilege at being like a white person, female, presenting like the world is a really hard place to be in right now for a lot of people, um, and even in that we can figure out a way to be surprised by something or like find the potential.
Speaker 2:Which sort of makes me realize and I've been having conversations with other express rights therapists about this recently is that I think we have also forgotten as a society like where art came from from, in the sense that art came from a place of communicating existence and of mobilizing Like. That's actually where the act of art came from. It came from like a place of. It came from a place of activism. In really many, many ways. It was like don't forget, we exist when we think about, like the cave drawings and things like that, but also this place of like something is up and we all need to come together and we need to figure out a way to get our resistance or our message across in a way that will be accepted and a lot of that terms of the way that we perceive art in the world right now, in terms of this very colonial perspective of like we have art galleries and there's people who are professional and there's people who are not professional and there's people own world it's not the whole of the world of why art exists for us right now and that sort of just brings it back to like individual drive to be seen is really what's at the heart of art making in general, and I think for expressive arts therapists, it's like for us to be able to say to our clients, like let's figure out a way that you can see yourself in, like in a way that's different than the way that you came here seeing yourself, because you know they come to us because they're not feeling well, like clients come to us because they're feeling atrocious or stuck or really struggling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like being able to offer people this little piece of their own like self activist experience, to be like oh wait, like I'm actually a really beautiful person and I'm valuable to this world by my existence. Yeah, and I think for parents in particular, we need to feel that right now, because we don't feel valuable to society most of the time. We feel like our job is to produce children who will feed the economy in the future, like we're not valued in that as like this massive, massively difficult act of raising another human being. So I think parents in particular just really need to feel like they have a place where they can see themselves again, um and and feel like they're important people because we certainly don't treat them like they're very important, or I mean, we sort of cloud it. We're like, yes, you're important, but it's like, okay, can you get back to work now, because our economy is failing? Okay, yeah, yeah sure how.
Speaker 1:how do you frame your practice around, like the idea of curiosity for parents?
Speaker 2:I mean I think I frame it in the sense that I will always be curious, like I think I frame it in the sense that I model it, cause when you're stuck it's really hard to be curious, right when you're feeling like crap.
Speaker 2:So I think that's what I've discovered is that as long as I can model curiosity to my clients and become very curious, not even just about their stories, curiosity to my clients and become very curious, not even just about their stories, but like sometimes I'll just be really curious about like their shoes or like a pin on their backpack, like, as much as I can model curiosity, I feel like then you're just providing a curious environment and then they can sort of ease into the comfort of being in a curious environment and realize like, oh, it's okay for me to go off on a tangent and get curious about the like chalk thing you have on your wall or like what's over there or what's that thing on the shelf or um, yeah, so I think I I frame it in that I model it and I just try to be a very curious therapist so that other people can also, um, start to get more curious in the process and start to like, open up those muscles of like oh, what is this?
Speaker 2:Instead of like tell me what this is, which is also where expressive arts came from. Right, it's moving away from that psychoanalysis of just like I'm going to a professional and I'm going to draw something and they're going to tell me what it means because I will have drawn someone without feet and that has to mean something. And moving away from that psychoanalysis and just being like huh if you're really curious if you didn't have feet?
Speaker 2:what would that feel like, you know? Um, so, yeah, and I think we I think therapy in general is is moving away from that in terms of people feeling like they need to be diagnosed or prescribed or defined as like here's what's wrong with you. Um, thankfully, is moving to this more malleable space of just like, what do you need from this and how can I help you, uh, figure that out? And like curious about how we can do that together. Yeah, cause sometimes people well, I mean, I'm sure you have this all the time where clients come with a goal and, of course, you want to like try to achieve that goal?
Speaker 2:Yes, but how you get to that goal can look like a million different ways. And then I love when clients are just like, oh wait, I actually did hit that goal, but like I didn't think any of this would be a part of that, and it's like, yeah, surprise, we got there, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was. I was working with a client the other day and we just hit this like stuck point in the middle of the session and I just said, how would you like me to show up for you in this moment? And she, like I could see her, like on zoom, do one of these, like I, I actually don't know. And then it was like okay, so yeah, let's like, let's get into the metaphor of what that might mean, because essentially, just like, really get granular with it. I just asked you what you needed. Yeah, yeah, you don't know what I just offered to fulfill a need for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if we can't name a need, then let's get curious about like what's underneath that, like what, what are the roots of that?
Speaker 2:Because, like you just froze up and backed away from somebody offering to fulfill a need for you. That's interesting. Right and so it's like all kinds of curiosity that means that you have this attachment style and that thing and this must be a part of your history. It's like, well, that's interesting. Can we get you to feel safe? Like like, how far away from you do you need to be right now? You to feel safe, like, like, how far away from you do you need to be right now? Conversation.
Speaker 1:Do you want to?
Speaker 2:like back all the way up. Do you need me to back up? Like, do you need me to back up? Yeah, like, can we talk about this? But like, tell me how far you need me to be to talk about this with you, right? Like, if I'm across the room, can we talk about it? Or do you want it, or do you have the urge for us to stay close? Which means, like, what can we talk about?
Speaker 2:yes, like tell me what's okay and what's not okay together yeah, yeah, totally, totally, and that's the play, right, that's, that's the curiosity.
Speaker 1:That's the, that's the attunement that can happen even over zoom. Okay, I just noticed you like deer in the headlights. Yeah, okay, let's, let's name that, let's acknowledge that, and you can just ease into it. You can, you can be curious about where your body needs to be, where my body needs to be. Do we need to add in an art medium? Yeah, like, do you?
Speaker 1:need me to like be like in half of my screen do you need to like run to your kid's room and get their favorite stuffed animal and just like pet it, yeah totally totally, let's like yeah let's figure like, if you want to figure this out if you don't want to figure it out. If you don't it, pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 2:We can also do that, and then as a therapist, you're like note to self, see if this comes back, not like come back to this. I say that often in my notes where instead of saying come back to this, I say see if this comes back, cause it's like you can't force something to come back, right, like that's just kind of harming someone. But so I'll usually say like, see if this comes back, because then I can like be like, oh, it did come back, like, did you notice that that came back? Okay, we're not quite quite there yet to have this conversation, but it came back. Yeah, but it is totally fun because people don't really I mean, I think, unless you and I will also sort of fully divulge like I haven't, I haven't been to classic psychotherapy training because my training is in expressive therapy. So even just that can be really surprising to clients sometimes, where you're like they're like oh, like you'll literally turn your back to me and I'm like, yeah, like, why wouldn't I? That's what would create safety for you right now.
Speaker 2:Or, um, people like turning off their cameras. I have a lot of clients that um have sort of been dancing pun intended towards like exploring potential movement stuff. Um, because, as you know, express arts therapy is intermodal, it's not just visual um, and you can see this, like draw towards it, because you can see them starting to make movements, just as they're talking um. And it's amazing when I'm like what if you turned off your camera? Like, if you turned off your camera, would you be able to go explore this and then come back and turn your camera back on when you're ready, and so, like, offering that, like, I can turn my camera off, you can turn your camera off. Do you want to be muted or not?
Speaker 2:And very often I will have clients, when they're first stepping into that, like embodiment, more like somatic movement stuff or noise stuff, like vocalization, sound, play, volume, play, intonation, play, um, and then it will become this structure of like okay, so I'll you go, you come back, you report to me what happened and then we'll figure out if you want to do it again. And like where you want to go with it next time. And then it's like, okay, take two, turn off your camera and your microphone, go, do the thing, come back, let's see where you are, right, um, and like in express arts therapy language that would be like goal oriented or like take play, but again, like that's not something that people are super familiar with, so it can be surprising when you're like I don't need to watch you.
Speaker 2:I don't need to wit you and witness you in this, like, maybe eventually you'll feel okay with that, but it's totally fine for you to be a black box for two minutes while you go explore the thing that feels really important and then come back to me and tell me what feels okay sharing and like where you want to go with that. And that can be really surprising to people because they're like but aren't I supposed to be comfortable with bearing my soul to you? It's like no, no, you don't actually need to be comfortable bearing your soul to me. That actually probably like. To me. Even that sounds scary to like bear my soul to someone. But we have this expectation that, like, we're all supposed to just crack ourselves wide open and, you know, be okay with anything, and that's kind of what toxic positivity has taught us. It's like everything's gonna work out, you can trust anyone. And it's like, no, you can't. No, you can't Like, that's just, that's just creating like a recipe for harm and trauma for people. So, yeah, I just like having fun with it that way and virtually, I've learned so much.
Speaker 2:At the beginning of the pandemic I was like, yeah, I can't really do expressive arts therapy virtually, and then it just got to the point where the pandemic wasn't ending and I was like, why am I saying that to myself? Like, why am I telling myself that you can't do expressive arts therapy virtually? Like, why am I telling myself that you can't do express arts therapy virtually? And then went through the phase where I was like, oh, I can send people art kits or I can, like tell them what materials to get. And that phase sort of lasted for a while that I was sending art kits to. We were barely using the art kits because something else was pulling them more than that and it might've just, like you said, you go get a stuffy from your kids room or whatever. And so it's just.
Speaker 2:The pandemic actually offered me this really profound like skill development opportunity as an expressive arts therapist of like busting open what I even thought expressive arts therapy was and how you can provide that to other people. Like it has to be in the room and you're going to have art materials and no, there's going to be all these things that are happening and I'm going to be able to witness you. It's like none of that is true and none of that is required to be able to offer expressive arts therapy to people and that's been, really it's been. I'm very thankful for that learning because I feel like it's it's made me the kind of practitioner that I want to be, even though I didn't know that at the beginning. Sure that I want to be, even though I didn't know that at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I love working virtually with people now, cause I'm just like, oh, there's so much fun we can have and you have your whole house and you have like your whole, like your space. You have your whole space as the potential for a material. Like you have your entire house. Like you can go to your room and get a blanket if you want you know, which I don't have in my office or, like I'm, you can go to the kitchen and grab a pot if you want to. Like, this whole window has opened for you to have access to materials and then for clients to be able to see their homes in a different way and see their domestic environments as something different than just a construct of domesticity that they have to clean, that they have to organize and that they have to clean, that they have to organize and that they have to parent in. It actually then becomes like a play space instead of just this box that keeps you locked in your role of parent, domestic partner.
Speaker 1:All that, all that stuff, all that shit all that, all that stuff, all that shit, yeah, yes, and it can add so much um of their own curiosity around, like so say they did go get the pot right, and now they're like wearing it as a hat or like putting, like putting a scarf or something and like whatever urge, that is, like the possibility of ripping paper up and throwing it in there like whatever urge.
Speaker 2:That is like the possibility, Like ripping paper up and throwing it in there like whatever Right adding water to it.
Speaker 1:Whatever, like the possibilities are, so like they're literally endless, endless, endless. When you look at that pot again in a week from now, you might be reminded of whatever takeaway or whatever glimmer or whatever thing came through.
Speaker 1:If you listened all the way to the end for our Hermione Granger kind of listeners, we encourage you to go grab an item wherever you're standing, whatever space you're in your kitchen, your car, the school lineup. I want you to find an item in your pocket to the left, the school lineup. I want you to find an item in your pocket to the left, to the right. Look up and down, look at that item. What is its weight, what is its color? Does it hold meaning, significance? Is it in relationship with the other items around it? How do you feel when you look at it and when you hold it? What are you noticing in your body as you look at it? Hold it attune to it, look at it, hold it attune to it and just see how long you can stay present with this item. Notice, just take notice of anything that's happening in your body as you do. And Catherine and I welcome you back to our next episode next week, where we're going to be talking about how the essence of expressive arts therapy is the exact opposite of rigidity, is the exact opposite of all of the shoulds and the stories that we tell ourselves about parenting and motherhood and how we show up in all of it. So we'll see you in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Extra, extra bonus for all of you still listening. Have you ever wondered to yourself on that Sunday night when you're flipping through your phone wondering, maybe even berating yourself, about how not present you were and wondering how you're going to be present this week? What if presence felt easy in motherhood? I created an online course for busy moms looking for more presence, called show up with love. It is my favorite creative and intuitive tools for how to be more present in parenting and right now you can get it for my exclusive pay, what you can pricing. Head over to the website wwwkaylahuzarcom to get exclusive access to the fastest and the easiest ways to being more present as a busy mom Without having to sacrifice your to-do list. See you back here next week. Bye.
