What happens when a lifetime of being told "no" finally meets the one voice that says "yes, do it anyway"? In this conversation, Rich Wright sits down with author, book coach, and creativity mentor Amy L. Bernstein for a deeply honest and soulfully resonant exchange that every creative who has ever doubted their right to create needs to hear.

Amy is the author of Wrangling the Doubt Monster, a widely praised guide for creatives and professionals navigating self-doubt, the critically acclaimed speculative thriller Be Real, the award-winning YA novel Fran the Second Time Around, and the forthcoming family saga Tent City. She is also a book coach, workshop facilitator, and Substack writer whose platform Doubt Monster has become a gathering place for creatives who are done hiding.
In this episode, Amy tells the truth about the journey. The drama kid who moved states and lost her creative community. The college application she fought for by advocating for herself when her father said no. The publishing internship that ended before it began. The man who sat her down and told her women could not write for a publication like the Village Voice. The morning on the train platform when she stood moments away from walking out of her own life. All of it unfiltered, all of it real.

Amy and Rich explore the seeds of self-doubt planted in childhood and how they live quietly inside creatives for decades. They dig into the difference between allies and adversaries in the creative journey, and why the people who love us most are often the ones who fear our risks the most. They talk about the psychic cost of making art, the long game of gradual reinvention, and why permission, not talent, is the thing that most creative people are actually missing.
Amy's tagline says it all: "I write stories that let readers feel while asking them to think."
Whether you are a writer, visual artist, musician, designer, or any kind of maker who has been told to be practical, this episode is the permission slip you have been waiting for.

Connect with Amy:
Website: https://amywrites.live/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amylbernstein/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/AmyLBernsteinAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amylbernstein
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCscYRJs-r3aeNLu_2Qmg_3w

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#CreativeSelfDoubt #OvercomingSelfDoubt #CreativeRecovery #ArtistRecoveryPodcast #WranglingTheDoubtMonster #AmyBernsteinAuthor #BookCoachForWriters #SelfAdvocacyForCreatives #CreativeBurnout #SelfDoubtAsACreative #WritingThroughSelfDoubt #PermissionToCreate #CreativeResilience #SensitiveCreatives #HealingThroughCreativity #ArtistMentalHealth #FindingYourCreativeVoice #MentoringCreatives #CreativeLifeTruth #CreativeReinvention #CreativeJourneyPodcast #ArtistPodcast #HowToStartCreatingAgain #CreativeConfidence #DoubtAsACreative #richwrightartist #richwrightunlimited #richwrightunltd #beaguest #podmatchguest @PodMatch_com ​

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Always remember, Listen to your Heart and Be Kind to Your Mind! -Rich Wright

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What happens when the thing they punish you for turns out to be the very thing that saves you?
Kirsten Rudberg: author, screenwriter, producer, and host of the Bite-Sized Blessings podcast has lived most of her life outrunning a label she didn't yet have: artist. Born in Illinois, raised across continents of Guyana, Pakistan, and the American Midwest, Kirsten grew up navigating worlds that didn't share the same rules, the same language, or the same idea of who she was supposed to be. That early exposure to multicultural landscapes, hand-embroidered pillowcases, and the vivid chaos of Lahore's streets wired her for something.

In eighth grade, school officials banned her from the library. She'd been reading 94 books a year and winning competitions. They were worried she wasn't developing socially. The girl who graduated class bookworm would graduate high school four years later as class clown and not in spite of being forced out of her sanctuary, but because of it. That's the kind of story Kirsten tells. The kind where the wound and the gift are the same thing.

This episode follows her through decades of invisible creative laboring the ideas that percolated while wiping tables and busing dishes in Portland, the corporate Jumbotron moment that sent her packing her entire life into a U-Haul bound for Bellingham, Washington, the 700-question seminary personality test that finally named her an artist and gave her permission to become one. And then the pandemic arrived, the muses sat on her shoulders, and everything she'd been holding for twenty years started pouring out.
Rich and Kirsten go deep on hyper-vigilance as a childhood survival tool turned creative superpower, the Catholic concept of charism: the sacred gift you're born to bring into the world, the liminal space between what science calls real and what the rest of humanity has always known, and why art, at its core, is always about becoming.

Topics covered:
~Growing up across continents: Guyana, Pakistan, and the American Midwest
~Cultural identity, belonging, and learning to "speak the language" to survive
~Being banned from the library — and why it changed everything
~Creativity suppressed by trauma, survival, and the 9-to-5
~The seminary personality test that finally said: you're an artist
~The pandemic as a creative awakening
~Charism — your sacred gift and your only real job
~Hypervigilance, highly sensitive creatives, and complex PTSD
~Why art dies when you take it too seriously?

Connect with Kirsten:
Website: https://bytesizedblessings.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-rudberg-2021361ba
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edisonsucks1

#ArtistRecovery #CreativeJourney #ArtistLife #podmatchguest #MultidisciplinaryArtist #CreativeResilience #Becoming #Charism #HigblySensitivePerson #SoulForward #LongFormPodcast #IndependentArtist #CreativeRecovery #Polymath #ArtistPodcast #richwrightartist #richwrightunlimited #richwrightunltd #beaguest ⁨@PodMatch_com⁩

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Always remember, Listen to your Heart and Be Kind to Your Mind! -Rich Wright

Follow us here: https://www.theartistrecovery.com
Join the Community: https://www,artrecroom.com

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What does it look like when a creative keeps building while quietly carrying the weight of imposter syndrome, a fractured family foundation, and a soul still figuring out if it wants to stay?
Paul Delaurier has spent decades answering that question through his work.
A strategic designer and creative technologist born and raised in Detroit, Paul built his career from the ground up — literally starting in a basement office, pitching nail salons and pager stores in suits, cold.

From those early hustle days co-founding Eclipse Productions with mutual friend Dennis Leigghio, to leading brand work with Harley Davidson, The Black Keys, and Hickory Farms, to senior product design roles at NerdWallet and GTB Detroit — Paul's creative journey is a masterclass in quiet resilience.
But behind the portfolio was a story he hadn't told.
In this raw and deeply human conversation, Paul and host Rich Wright — who've known each other since the Eclipse days — finally pull back the curtain. Rich shares his own suicide attempt for the first time with Paul, and what unfolds is one of the most honest exchanges the Artist Recovery Podcast has produced. Two creatives from the same orbit, carrying invisible weight the other never knew about.

Paul opens up about:
Growing up in Warren, MI and how his parents' divorce at age 8 quietly installed a lifelong fear of failure disguised as ambition
✦ Mad Magazine as his first portal into graphic design thinking — and why that fold-out back cover literally rewired his brain
✦ Building Eclipse Layout Services with Dennis Leigghio in a basement, wearing suits to pitch pager stores
✦ The chaos of living, working, and trying to grow up all in the same condo
✦ Navigating imposter syndrome through agency work, startup pivots, and a commute he hated ✦ How a nearly empty gym in a Detroit apartment building changed his body, his mind, and his entire relationship with himself
✦ Why it took until 2020 — and his wife's courage — to finally walk into a therapy room
✦ What he discovered when he stopped pretending everything was fine
This episode is for the creative who shows up to the work while quietly wrestling with something no one else can see.
Because the design on the screen and the story behind the hands that made it — they're never the same thing.

Connect with Paul:
Website: https://www.pauldelaurier.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldelaurier
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulmdelaurier
Dribble: https://dribbble.com/pauldelaurier

#ArtistRecoveryPodcast #CreativeMentalHealth #ImposterSyndrome #GraphicDesignCareer #UXDesign #DetroitCreatives #PaulDelaurier #MentalHealthForMen #HealingThroughCreativity #CreativeEntrepreneur #NerdWallet #HarleyDavidsonBranding #EclipseDesign #CreativeCommunity #ArtistBurnout #CouplesTherapy #VulnerabilityMen #CreativeResilience #DesignCareer #SeniorProductDesigner #DetroitMichigan #HealingJourney #BrandStrategy #ArtistLife #CreativeWellness #richwrightartist #richwrightunlimited #richwrightunltd

Support the show

Always remember, Listen to your Heart and Be Kind to Your Mind! -Rich Wright

Follow us here: https://www.theartistrecovery.com
Join the Community: https://www,artrecroom.com

Listen Weekly at: https://www.artistrecoverypodcast.com

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