Motherhood, Meltdowns, and the Power of Creative Breaks

Motherhood can feel like an endless cycle of giving—to your kids, your partner, your job, your home. But where does that leave you? In this episode, we’re breaking down why creativity isn’t a luxury—it’s a lifeline, especially for busy moms. 🎨💡

You don’t need hours of free time (ha, what’s that?) or artistic talent to feel the benefits. We’re talking about five intentional minutes of doodling, journaling, or even just soaking in the colors around you.

Join me and art therapist Ashleigh Gureckas as we explore how small, creative practices can help regulate your nervous system, create a sense of calm, and reconnect you with you. Bonus: it’s science-backed and mom-approved.

In this episode, we cover:
✨ Why creativity is essential (not extra) for moms
✨ The surprising neuroscience of a 5-minute creative practice
✨ Practical tips to sneak creativity into your chaotic day

Take a deep breath, grab a crayon (or just your coffee mug), and hit play. This is your reminder that you deserve moments of joy and self-connection, no matter how busy life gets.

Chapters

• 0:01 Reconnecting With Creativity in Motherhood
• 7:55 The Power of Creative Expression
• 19:54 Exploring Creativity in Therapy
• 27:50 Deepening Well-Being Through Creativity

Transcript

Kayla Huszar: 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome to the Chill Like a Mother podcast. I am your host, kayla Huszar, and we are here with today, who is an art therapist in Nelson BC. She works mostly with children and youth, but we are here to talk about art therapy as something, as a very powerful tool for adults and, in my opinion, especially mothers who are looking to reconnect with themselves, because even five minutes makes a difference. So welcome, Ashley, I'm so glad that you're here with me.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 0:35

Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor and yeah, everyone listening it's such an honor that you're here with us today too.

Kayla Huszar: 0:43

We have a like a pseudo Instagram relationship. I just want to name that for today, too. We have a like a pseudo instagram relationship. I just want to name that for people that we have never met in real life and but I feel like, as instagram does, I feel like I know you because I get a lot of value from your um art therapy videos, that you, I, that I know as a business owner you put so much tender love, love into spreading the love of art therapy and I just want to thank you for everything that you put out in the world and the energy and the capacity that that takes in your life oh, thank you so much for honoring that.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 1:16

yeah, it's a huge passion of mine to share it and make it tangible and make it bite-sized for people, and it's an incredible challenge to do that and I'm so glad people are resonating with it and that we found each other too.

Kayla Huszar: 1:29

Yes, so the problem, the problem let's just name the elephant in the room the problem that I hear from most of my clients is that they lose track of who they are. I think that can be said for anybody who goes through a big life transition, especially for parents. And how do you view creativity in some of those gap people?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 1:59

Yeah, so creativity is part of our essential essence, right, it's part of our deepest core self is creativity Everything we're doing.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 2:09

It's not just visual arts, it's not just dancing or singing, it's everything we're doing, whether we're cooking or baking or we're looking at a landscape and just intertwining ourselves with the world, is creativity. And we live in a society and this is what I feel this is the biggest problem right now. We live in a society where we're so on a fast track, everything is fast. We have such big expectations on ourselves, our jobs, our families. There's just so much expectation on us. There's so little room to just slow down and to just dive into like little moments of creativity, and they're not just art, they're everything we do.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 2:45

So I feel like that's the big statement is that creativity is not just art. It can be art, but creativity is our entire life and letting our ourselves kind of like meld back into that can give us so much more connection and peace and nervous system regulation. And when we give ourselves that, we're giving our families that, our co-workers that and we're sharing that love. So it's a really big piece I'm passionate about is helping folks get back to noticing where creative energy wants to flow in life.

Kayla Huszar: 3:21

Yeah, yes, and so I'm going to name something that even I struggle with sometimes. I'm gonna, and I'm gonna get you to help me walk it back.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 3:31

so tell me about the myth that creativity is only for people who have time and or skill yeah, it's probably the thing I hear the most and having yeah, I have an Instagram with lots of different followers from all sorts of places around the world and all different walks of life. That myth seems to be so potent and in like the front of all of our minds that you know, if we're sitting down to do art, it has to be an hour, or it has to be a finished product, or it has to be something that's based on a skill like I have to know how to use watercolor in order to do watercolor. It's the biggest myth. And it's not our fault for believing that myth. It's really not. It's society.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 4:19

And it's just years and years and years of this ingrained sense that we have to be an artist in order to dive into creativity at all, and so dispelling the idea that we have to be an artist, but then also connecting with artist identity in a different capacity, is where we find so much freedom. And freedom is found in the play, and it's so hard to play. And freedom is found in the play and it's so hard to play, yes, if we let ourselves just settle down for even one moment and give ourselves, like a discipline of the devotion, to just give one minute to creativity a day, we can expand within that rigidity. You know, like giving ourselves a regimen allows us to expand within it and then that can grow and making a little bit more space and time, because we feel good after we do that there's so many layers to this.

Kayla Huszar: 5:14

Yes, so many layers, and I completely agree with you Because, seriously, on the weekend I had to be creative In some form. Normally I take place in some form. Normally I'd place like in my journal. I came up against that moment to do it. That was the time for me. I'm an expressive therapist. I know better, I know better and I didn't. I didn't sit down one time this weekend to do that thing, even though I spent more time about it than it would have actually taken to sit down and do the thing.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 5:53

Yeah, yeah, I hear that. I totally agree. I myself have been going through a little bit of a creative block being in the spotlight with art and being a person that's trying to promote creativity and promote, yeah, like art making as a form of well-being. Going through that myself, I can totally empathize with what you're going through there and just the actual mental capacity it takes to just think about, oh, like should I go and make something? Or like I want to, but like I'm not going to. It takes way more effort than actually just sitting down and doing the creating and giving just the space and the time to do it and remembering that it only takes such a little pocket of time for our nervous system to come down and that our alpha brainwaves start turning on. And even if it's just five minutes, it's an expansive pocket.

Kayla Huszar: 6:42

You know that five minutes isn't taking up our day, it's five minutes expanding into a lot less stress over the day yeah, yes, absolutely, and I feel like it's a similar experience to when I sit down and meditate, and and by sit down and meditate sometimes I also mean like while I'm in the shower or walking the dog. I do a lot of like movement-based meditation as an 80-person. A quiet room is not a space, even though I like to sit there, you know.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 7:31

Creativity gives me that same physical, that visceral experience of sitting down to meditate. Yeah, but I bet it only gives you that visceral experience when you're releasing perfectionism and releasing pressure, right, because when we start and sit down for creativity and we have these pressures on ourselves that we're going to make a fish piece of art like then it's, it's not the same, right, I bet. I bet that sticks your hands, right absolutely, absolutely.

Kayla Huszar: 7:55

When I have something in mind and my, my clients experience this too I do a lot of like, um, guided visualizations. In my work with my clients and because almost all of them say they need like a lead in, you know, they need like, I can't just be like so, what would you look like if you were a butterfly? They would be like um, I, um, I'm so, um, the, the releasing, the perfection. When I sit down to create something like it has something in mind, it almost never goes in that direction anyway, because I get into that flow state and into that like, that groove of like, oh, I wonder what this would do, oh, I wonder what this color would do, and oh, I've, now I've got glue on my fingers, and now what am I going to do with all this? And and so it.

Kayla Huszar: 8:37

It really is a, a muscle that I think I've stretched over the last seven years, um, and even longer. But as a like, as a trained expressive arts therapist integrating this into my life, I have found that even when I sit down and I think about creating something, it never ends up going in that direction because that muscle is so well stretched of. I don't have to be perfect at this, or it doesn't have to look like the gray cloud that you thought it was going to.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 9:08

Yeah, yeah. And for the folks that are listening, like this is an affirmation right that, like, even trained art therapists and expressive art therapists go through this same motion of feeling the pressure sometimes or feeling the need for perfectionism, and that it is such a muscle like I've been using that term a lot lately, kayla like this idea that like, just like we go to the gym or we start a new like health regimen in our life or physical health, we have to keep up the habits for creativity in our life too and for, like those moments of creativity and like having a consistent returning to them and a consistent like intention with them and a consistent passion with them. Otherwise we don't stick to things like you don't, you don't stick to going to the gym at 5 am if you don't have fun with it. So it's about, yeah, when we try to do the same thing with creativity because we know it's good for us. We know when we get into the flow state, we feel amazing, we feel proud, we learn something about ourselves.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 10:05

But if we're not allowing ourselves to get to that place and also have the like self-compassion that some days is just not going to get there and some days we make something that's really frustrating to ourselves. Or some days we sit in the park looking at the birds and wanting to have this moment of calm and we just can't get there and then our timer goes off and we got to go, you know, pick up the kids or go back to work or whatever it is, and the self-compassion that not every day is going to be perfect. And it's an information because, yeah, art therapists and expressive art therapists go through this too, and it's about consistency. Coming back to that intention, coming back to yourself it's a big thing. Yeah, thinking about a lot lately, yes, yes.

Kayla Huszar: 10:48

And so, for those who don't know, who are still hanging with us, what happens to the brain, to the body, to the system when someone dedicates just five minutes to a simple act of creativity, whether that's doodling, or coloring, or writing, or just literally letting the mind wander for a minute? What happens to the system when they allow that five minutes?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 11:15

Yeah, to put it into the most simple terms I can think of, right, I like to think of it like a stoplight, our nervous system like red and yellow and green. We want to be in the green state more often in our life. That's the time our ventral vagal nervous system is turned on. We're able to make social connections, we're able to play, we feel like ourselves and it's okay to not be in the green all the time. Healthy nervous system is actually the ability to dip into the yellow and dip into the red and be able to come back down and so having a flexible nervous system.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 11:52

And so when we're making art, whether we're in the red, like we're in fight or flight or a functional freeze lots of folks are in functional freeze in our day-to-day life we're kind of going through the motions, taking time to sit and let that like five minutes. It just has to. You know it could know it could be one, but it could be five minutes, it could be 10 minutes, whatever feels right in your schedule. Our brainwaves begin to change when we're not thinking about the art and we're taking body up processing. So when our body is actually starting to move, I'm taking a marker and I'm making doodles and I'm using the materials as a guide, like maybe moving this slowly or just noticing how a chalk pastel feels more soft in my hands and just taking moments to notice it pulls our brainwaves into alpha. And that's that state that when people say they're meditating and they have these incredible visions and this incredible sense of calm, the same state that we can achieve through creation and through visual art, and all it takes is a few moments.

Kayla Huszar: 13:03

It's really special oh, it is so special and I um, I have the headspace app. Anybody has paid for the Headspace subscription. If you go into the videos, they have like these one minute, one and a half minute videos, and there's this one that describes the like. Not every meditation is going to feel the same, and when you have a bear quotes a bad meditation, it makes you feel like you don't want to do it again, like it's the meditation's fault, like it didn't get you where you wanted to go. And it talks about like beginning again and and starting starting again.

Kayla Huszar: 13:45

Just because it was bad yesterday or you didn't get into that flow state yesterday doesn't mean that it's not worth pursuing again.

Kayla Huszar: 13:50

And that really sticks with me, especially when considering creativity in the context of the motherhood, because I think sometimes I can sit down with my creativity, my journal, my art journal, or even just like a meander through the park thinking that it's going to give me exactly what I need, and then, when it doesn't, I'm mad about it.

Kayla Huszar: 14:10

Right, I'm like I wasted. I wasted this 20 minutes, the only 20 minutes that I have for the next 30 days, let's say for me to like actually sit down and do something for me. I'm like I'm mad at the process. And so I think there's also a distinction that I've had to make between that nervous system regulation being beneficial versus the benefit that I thought it would bring, because I think I can like discount the like I did get there. You know, I did get into the flow state or I did do the thing, or I honored an urge and like that's enough to bring that nervous system down a notch, even if the process made me mad or the outcome wasn't what I wanted it to be Like. Maybe it took me somewhere that was like even more triggering than the thing that I started with. And so there can be this like tug and pull between that nervous system regulation and then my perception of how I just spent my time perception of how I just spent my time.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 15:14

Yes, exactly, and I'm of the opinion it's really important to remember like the process is more important than the outcome, and so I say this to folks, whether they're in my art therapy sessions one to one or in my groups or doing things online, and we're just in conversation. You know, it's not always about having, like a finished piece of art to hang up on the wall and put it in a frame. So taking that five minutes and just you know you didn't get to the place you wanted to, but the process was there and like honoring yourself that like you took that time for yourself and that is the most important thing, and sometimes too right, like when we experience something more dark or something more triggering through the process. It's about the integration.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 15:58

Hey, like for the rest of the day noticing wow, like that anger really showed up in me and I really don't want it to show up for the rest of the day.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 16:06

So how can I give it the most space? One minute walking back to my car here from the bench where I was doing the doodle in the park. How can I give it the most space? You know, as one minute walking back to my car here from the bench where I was doing the doodle in the park. How can I give it the most space it needs, ask it what it's here for and then shift it for the rest of the day and maybe notice when anger is trying to creep up or whatever emotion it is, whatever darker emotion or challenging emotion it is, and try to integrate it. You know, not dispel that idea that you got frustrated from making art, but yeah, I got frustrated from making art and maybe that's eliciting. Something that I'm also frustrated in my life is that I'm frustrated that I can't get this done or that done right and noticing it and that's going to teach you something too, just as much as a beautiful nervous system regulation piece of art would do and having self-compassion for yourself in the process.

Kayla Huszar: 16:55

Yes, absolutely Absolutely. There's a memorable moment that's coming to mind. I dropped my son off at a birthday party at a family's house that we'd never been before, and they were going to be outside and it was summertime and they were going to be in the pool. So I was like, okay, it's all good. You know, like parents seem capable, they're going to be in the pool, there's lots of kids, they're not going to be in the house running around and you know all these things getting more revved up than what he needs. And I got home and I like I was vibrating, the like.

Kayla Huszar: 17:24

The intrusive thoughts started to come in around, like what if these parents suck and they're not supervising, you know, the pool party or like whatever? Just like all the things, all of the worst case scenarios possible, but I also still had my littlest one with me, so it was like I kind of had to pull it together. Right, it's like I can't. I can't succumb to the intrusive thoughts, but I also need to like be like hey, yeah, you're there. This is like this is a really good red flag. Right, like maybe, maybe you feel like you should have um talked with the parent more. Like this is like information gathering, right, like. And so I sat down. I put my littlest one in front of the tv and I sat down and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna like make a spontaneous collage, all of the images that like pop out at me from the magazines. I'm just gonna rip them out. It's no surprise that they were all water images, one that included a crocodile and a tidal wave, and all they were like they were fun, like they were fun images, but they were also like I knew that they were like the the darkness of it was coming through, right. And then, and then I I have this old vintage, um, uh, wizard of oz books, and so I like to like cut the words out of because they're like magical and there's also like metaphor in them. And so I like to like cut the words out of because they're like magical and there's also like metaphor in them. And so, anyway, I was like making this poem and I wasn't getting to the solution fast enough, right, it was like I wanted the calming feeling. I wanted the words, the epiphany, the aha moment to like jump out at me and and release me from the intrusive thoughts, right In the time that it took for my youngest to watch his TV show and it wasn't happening.

Kayla Huszar: 18:58

And I just, I vividly remember standing up from the table. I was also like double doing this. I was recording myself, thinking that I would turn this into some social media content, which also added the cloud of like content, which also added the cloud of like thing that I was trying to get to. I remember standing up and my, my youngest, looked at me and he was like, mommy, are you done? And I was like, no, I'm not, but I need to like walk away from this. And so I stood up, I did a lap around the kitchen, grabbed some water, got a snack, sat down with him for a minute and then I was able to come, to come back to it in a way that that felt like it served me.

Kayla Huszar: 19:43

And once I had that pause button, that perspective, I came back to it and it was easier or it came. It had a different feeling about it. And so it's interesting that, as an expressive arts therapist and like you, already named as an art therapist, we also go through these moments where, like, creativity isn't straightforward and it doesn't always give us the result that we're looking for and it doesn't always give us the result that we're looking for, and so if people are currently making art, they are currently like, leaned into that and it's not giving them what they need.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 20:27

What do you suggest as an art therapist to them? Yeah, layered right. I have a really big passion for the neuroscience aspect behind the art therapy, so my thesis and my research was all based on the interrelation of neuroscience and, like what's happening in our brain and our body and sometimes, if we are not getting what we're needing from it, we we have, just like you did, taking a step back and noticing what part of our body are we in. Are we in our thinking mind or rational mind? Are we having pressures or any kind of sense of like perfectionism that this needs to be done or we need to have an answer, or are we allowing flow, in whatever shape or form it turns into, from that safer part of our nervous system? Are we feeling like the art or the making is really coming from a tense body, or is it coming from something more open and more fluid and more playful or not? And just taking a step back, and where are you coming from in the making right now and is this serving you right now? Asking yourself, is this serving you right now?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 21:37

Another big piece there is noticing.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 21:46

Yeah, like noticing if we're in a story as well.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 21:50

So not everyone agrees with this, but there is harvard brain science around the idea that sometimes we can get really caught up in a story and sometimes that can actually guide what we feel are our emotions and like we feel like we're really deep into something.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 22:04

But if we take a step back and wonder, okay, is this part of a narrative that I'm making up? Or like I'm I'm diving too far into this that no longer serves me, like I'm diving into my worry or I'm diving into my fear, and get really caught in that, and then that can really create a block in the art or can bring up things that aren't meant to be brought up right now. Maybe we just need to take a step back and notice yeah, you know what I am thinking about grief, and I really am caught up in the, the unexpressed love right now, and that is making this day-to-day thing way harder. And just noticing that and coming back and stepping out of it and then returning to the art. That's a big thing I've learned over the last few years. It's just noticing our brain and our body and our stories and our emotions. All is separate but intertwined and just like hopscotch, you know, like take a like, take a little hop forward and notice right, if you're over there.

Kayla Huszar: 23:00

Notice if you're over there I felt my body have like a whole release when you said that, like, is this serving or is this part of a story, is this part of a narrative? I work with a sentence stem a lot of I'm telling myself is, and sometimes that story is rooted in some fact. We all get first right and so if your partner or your or your or whatever behaved in this particular way, you're going to get the next time. And so it's like this, I'm telling myself, is dot dot, dot. And I use that a lot as like a starting place in my, in my therapy with people, because sometimes it is rooted in fact, and sometimes we need a place to process that, and other times it is like this total fictitious story that we have spun and woven and and projected. And now we do this like story lens and it can be really powerful, like you just said, to ask the question of like, is this serving me?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 24:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kayla Huszar: 24:15

So I think some of the most amazing pieces of being a professional expressive arts therapist and you can, you can echo this is I love working with people because it deepens the experience, why sometimes people find me because they're already engaged in a creative practice or they're looking for a creative outlet, and other people find me because of the motherhood piece and the art comes as a surprise. So what I love about making space for this is that container to explore emotions with someone who's witnessing it, who can mirror back things, who can simply just like repeat what you just said and like give it back to you in a different way than maybe you would have thought it. What are some of your like top three things you love about the benefit of working with people through art therapy?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 25:11

Yeah, yeah, I echo all those statements. I think number one, first and foremost, is the relationship, and it's seeing yourself in another, having someone exactly like see a part of you that maybe you're not seeing, a beautiful part of you, maybe a part that, like you're abandoning, and having it be brought into the room through the relationship with someone who's holding authentic space for you, authentic space for your process, authentic space for your art and for your life, and holding you holistically. I think that's the most, that's the most amazing thing about working with someone on a one-to-one level or in a small group setting with an expressive arts therapist or an art therapist, and then, yeah, like trickling out, like those layers of just participating in therapeutic art groups and just being in a container where you're seeing yourself through others and there's universality and maybe there's insights from other people's art that relate to you, and you leave a group setting, whether it's online or in person, and you say, wow, like I didn't think about that. And then, yeah, I guess number three give yourself an opportunity to make art.

Kayla Huszar: 26:21

Yeah, because we don't get enough of that no, no, we do not get enough of that. And so what is your, what's your go-to?

Ashleigh Gureckas: 26:34

kind of like real simple three-step process to get in the zone of seeing that opportunity and like grabbing onto it yeah, like if you're not able to create an experience when you're working one-to-one with a therapist or in a group, if it's on your own, I would say my go-to thing would be to get intentional about it. So, working out, we have to carve it out five minutes in the morning, like whilst you're having your coffee. You know like it has to be a double stack situation, so be it. That's sometimes what we have to do in our busy lives. And also finding inspiration. So maybe it's as simple as going to the dollar store and picking out a brand new pack of pens, a really nice brand new sharpie that you're excited to use. And, yeah, getting like closer to yourself through the self-compassion, so giving yourself compassion for whatever shows up and anytime that you create the art, whether it's good, bad, doodle you didn't make any art while you sat down having self-compassion, I think those are the biggest pieces there yeah, yeah, oh, amazing.

Kayla Huszar: 27:51

, I have loved this conversation and how we moved from how creativity can be just in as little as five minutes and doesn't require any artistic skill, and how these simple acts of creativity can regulate the nervous system and bring about that alpha brainwave state that you talked about. It's so similar to meditation and how that opportunity seeing the opportunity and maybe double stacking it around, the consistency and showing up just for a few minutes each day can really help people connect with themselves in a deeper way and, like you so generously labeled those ways that change the process when you're working one-on-one with someone professional, and that deeper emotional processing that can come from that experience and yourself with us today. And I really appreciate your time and everything you share in the online space and with your people one-on-one.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 28:58

Thank you so much. Yeah, what a pleasure to be here. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to speak on something I'm so passionate about and share this with folks who may just be diving in or maybe you're fully swimming in it, but it's great to just rejuvenate our all of our passion for this and our passion for well-being and bringing more joy and more goals to your life. And, yeah, like I invite folks to take five minutes today. You know maybe it's just four minutes. You don't even bring pressure on yourself that it's five minutes, but it's like an afternoon tea, like for one of I don't know like whatever you can fly four minutes, just take a moment to.

Ashleigh Gureckas: 29:37

You know, even just set, let's just notice your space, just notice the color, you just notice the shape. So we just start there and then see where that leads you with a visual arts or creative arts practice after that.