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Pineapples & Process w/ April Fitzpatrick
56 Plays9 months ago
Today’s guest, April Fitzpatrick (she/her), aka “The Pineapple Lady,” is an art therapist whose work centers art as a process that allows people, particularly those who’ve experienced racial trauma, to reclaim agency over their personal narratives.
April and I talk about the impressive symbolism of the pineapple for both the therapy process and the human development process, and a broad overview of what happens from a neuroscience perspective when we engage in creative acts. We also discuss the benefits of prioritizing the healing and creative processes rather than chasing after unrealistic performance culture standards.
In the midst of so much global grief and ongoing trauma, one thing I know for sure is the importance of having an inclusive mental health framework to help us all work toward healing.
You can learn more about April's work at pineappleswithpurpose.com or on Instagram at @pineappleswithpurpose. You can see some of her work featured in Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee International Airport, Canvas Rebel, Artful Infrastructure, Black Superwoman Chronicles, ArtPlace America, Black Minds Mag, Art Seen: The Curator’s Salon Magazine, and ART4EQUALITY x LIFE, LIBERTY, PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS Exhibition Catalog.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Ugly Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to The Ugly Podcast, the place where creatives are encouraged to make messy, ugly art and to redefine their relationship to their inner critic. Every other week, I am joined by creatives of all mediums and methods to discuss our creative processes and how we navigate the mental minefield of creativity. This podcast serves as a reminder that you and your art get to be whatever the hell you want to be, ugly and all.
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome back to the Ugly Podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Alexander. I use they them pronouns as you all know.
Meet April Fitzpatrick, the Pineapple Lady
00:00:40
Speaker
And I have a great guest for you all today. My guest is known as the Pineapple Lady and is a licensed mental health counselor, board certified art therapist, researcher, and multidisciplinary artist. She serves as the CEO of Pineapples with Purpose, a pioneering mobile health service introducing art therapy to communities affected by race-based traumatic stress.
00:01:05
Speaker
Some of her recent accomplishments include being an Arts in Medicine Fellow, Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, Culture of Art Leadership Institute Fellow, and the current artist in residence at the Ferrett House. Welcome to my guest. Hello. Would you please introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns, please?
April's Journey to Mobile Art Therapy
00:01:28
Speaker
Yes, my name is April Fitzpatrick, and I use she, her pronouns.
00:01:34
Speaker
Amazing. Welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. Version formats, can you tell me a little bit more about your mobile art therapy practice? That sounds just so truly amazing. Yeah, so I have a bit of a great history in traditional clinical practice, working across various settings, from schools to rehabilitation centers.
00:01:59
Speaker
psychiatric hospitals, outpatient facilities, and so juvenile justice centers. And so in all of these spaces, there was always a commonality or a type of grieving moment of like, what happens next? And so I became very, I was always kind of aware and interested in community work, but looking at how art therapy and mental health in general, the landscape and the language and the expectation
00:02:29
Speaker
can be transformed into community practice, which for me looks at the accessibility, the availability, the appropriateness. And so I thought about mobile mental health as a way to go into communities and reach communities to lessen all the barriers that sometimes prevent people from getting quality care and the continuation of it.
00:02:57
Speaker
taking advantage of passive experiences as well while challenging the traditional model of therapy. So it's rooted out of collaboration.
00:03:11
Speaker
So that's so good. Amazing.
Significance of Pineapples in Therapy
00:03:15
Speaker
And then pineapples are a big part of what you do both in your art and in your, and in your therapy practice. What is the, yeah, where did that idea come from? What does it symbolize for your work and for the people that you work with? Right. Right. Well, first I like to give you a gift. I know we're not a virtual.
00:03:39
Speaker
A virtual pineapple gift. Oh my gosh. If we were in person. I love it. But give me your address. I can always mail it. So can you describe what you just showed me? Oh, all right. So I make these kind of like, what size is this? Oh, it's very intimate, process-based, spin on the pineapple.
00:04:08
Speaker
And so I look at it in various ways and then, you know, manipulate them using watercolor and markings. And so it's heavily rooted in just process because I'm very much process over product. So it's two pineapple quarters, I guess, on the corners of a white sheet of paper filled with your typical colors of what you would think about the pineapple as well as
00:04:37
Speaker
other colors, um, if in fluorescent colors and purples and greens and oranges. I love it. Yeah. Um, so the pineapple first, the pineapple came to me just as a personal symbol, um, and just understanding myself because symbols have the power to like integrate the conscious world and the subconscious world. Um,
00:05:06
Speaker
And I think that in general, it just represented my life and narrative of like the spikes and this crown that grew in relation to things that were occurring, but me always knowing like the sweet and the core. But when I started to do therapy work, a large part of therapy is like relationship building and therapy to rapport. And so sometimes it's, it's spiky.
00:05:35
Speaker
Not everybody is willing to let you in as they should not be. And so it became a way to symbolically represent welcoming people into tough conversations, uncomfortable conversations. So that when things come up and we experience things across this mental health landscape, the pineapple grounds us back. And so what I will find is that no matter the conversation,
00:06:02
Speaker
whether it's stuck, it didn't, whether it was challenging or comforting, what people remember when they left was the pineapple. And that's all I really wanted to happen because it's the power of symbolism and giving somebody the agency to understand their own narrative through this symbolic thing. And the overall mood booster. And those are very simple steps that are required when we think about changing one's perspective.
00:06:32
Speaker
I love that. I love the idea of the spikes on the outside. They're not bad. They just are. So even when you have that kind of spiky exterior of protection, that's not bad. That's how you were formed to protect yourself, and that makes sense. Right. Yeah. How do we honor those things? Because we're so quick to call a thing a thing. It's like, oh, that's a defense mechanism. It's like, hmm.
00:07:02
Speaker
And also, there's so many reasons why there's the pineapple. So I mean, it was a personal thing. Then they activated, how can I use this to engage with people? And then I actually started to look at the symbolic facts of the pineapple. So the pineapple is made up of 200 flowers that form together to form the fruit. So I was like, mind blown, because I'm like, behind this spike is an extra flower. Yeah, I didn't realize that.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so then I want to have a rabbit hole. Yeah. I'm like, put me on jeopardy. Like anything category is pineapples. Right. I, I got you. Um, it takes three years to grow. It was just all these magnificent facts that truly aligned with, for me, human development and what it needs to thrive and to know. So.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, I started to use it as like a gaudy metaphor. I didn't realize that they took three years to grow. That works so well with a therapy model of whatever you are working on, whatever you're cultivating, it might take three years to grow. Exactly. It's not going to just sprout up overnight. Oh, God, that's so good. I mean, the therapeutic relationship, listen, can take up to a year itself before you truly feel like you are one with your therapist. And it has nothing to do with
00:08:33
Speaker
the skill training per se or the different uniqueness of personality is really like the process and the time it takes to be in relationship with someone. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So again, all right. Let's just talk about you. How has creativity moved throughout
Creativity and Schooling
00:08:51
Speaker
your life? Were you always super in touch with your creativity? I feel like I was, I feel like I was, I was a very creative child, very inquisitive, very,
00:09:01
Speaker
of multi-projects, what are we doing, very curious, you know, that probably became limited due to the structure of the household and school. So, but I've always considered myself a creative and can go back into early memories and being in art shows and really being invested in art lessons along the way.
00:09:30
Speaker
traditional academia kind of preceded that. And I think what happened is that my art was suppressed in one way and started to emerge in another way. So public speaking and dance became a part of my life for a while. But at the time I wasn't viewing it as like creativity. It was just, you know, me being on the dance team.
00:09:55
Speaker
Right. And yeah, so I found art again in college.
00:10:03
Speaker
Did you feel like school then was the thing that kind of suppressed the artist urge in the sense of drawing or using more physical, I mean, obviously not physical, you said you danced, but I guess the things that we typically associate with having an outcome or a piece that comes out of your creativity. Right.
00:10:32
Speaker
I mean, in some ways I do, because I mean, you could always choose art as an elective, right? But it wasn't an integral part of all the curriculums. And now we're at a space where we can find creativity in all fields and all disciplines. So I think there was a lot of binary and dichotomized thinking in traditional school settings where it had to be this right or wrong, either correct or incorrect.
00:11:01
Speaker
And I mean, I can attribute a few courses that allow like debate class or theories of knowledge where all we did was like question things. But again, those one-offs when they're not a part of like the everyday experience, then yes, I do think that, you know, it becomes limiting. It's supposed to press.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's this is the thing that like it gives me so much rage when it's like traditional school and like often like master's programs or like post post back programs that like are art focused and ends up like hurting people's actual creativity because they think that there is one way of doing things. And it breaks my heart. It makes me so mad.
00:11:47
Speaker
Or even when they're not prepared for the art that the person is creating. Yes, yes, absolutely. When it's in the traditional lens. It's like, wait, what? So it's not, it's just abnormal, like something's wrong with you. It's like, no, this is my experience of the world. Yeah.
00:12:06
Speaker
I just I did an episode with M. Eifler, who is a artist and disability advocate and does a lot of work with like their own disability in their art. And they did a master's program of art. And for their like final project, it was this this video game that you couldn't beat. And as you played it, the video game like deteriorated.
00:12:35
Speaker
And that was their art. And the people who were judging it, the teachers who were giving them the final grade were like, this isn't art. This is a social justice project or whatever. And they're like, how is this not art? What are you talking about? Absolutely insane.
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah. Your face right now. I love it. OK. Just OK. Just so over it. Right. All right. And it would expense to, you know, the advocating for yourself. Right. But it would expense that you put yourself. I don't know. It's just I don't know. This just speaks like trauma and re traumatizing. Right.
00:13:26
Speaker
because clearly your identity, your success in grade is wrapped up in this, right? To move to the next phase, right? Yeah. Mm-mm, no.
00:13:39
Speaker
Right. And speaking of our fury for society, as an art therapist, how do you see our societies drive for that product, that performance, that like one way of, you know, what is art? How do you see that inhibiting our health and our healing?
Societal Pressures on Creativity and Healing
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is in the way. It is definitely in the way because
00:14:10
Speaker
One, I mean, what it tells people is that, you know, who is invited, who's not invited, whose voice is worthy, whose voice is not worthy. I think there's a level, like a trickery of the mind of like moving the glass ceiling, right? Because who is holding like the performance culture
00:14:37
Speaker
the grind culture to like, you know, prove something, prove something, and you're pulling people further away from their intuitiveness, their trust within themselves, and just giving room for the inner critic to be louder, which for some people can turn into like an internal war, and for others a complete shutdown. Yeah. And so yeah, there's no
00:15:05
Speaker
there's no space to heal or just to have, or to even just be. Because we are all creatives, like we are reflections of nature, inward, turn outward. So it's just like, yeah, I don't think it's by having his hands, but it's definitely in the process because even neuroscience speaking, they talk about
00:15:34
Speaker
how much fear is such a like innate response that needs nothing. It just comes up like millions of thoughts that your brain has versus how hard it is to then integrate yourself into like positive thinking and positive self-talk. And a lot of questions like why is it harder, you know, to do the positive steps and why can't we wake up with just positive, you know, thinking.
00:16:04
Speaker
if in fact the world is further creating this experience, right? Of performance, like you're keeping people in that state because they're responding to something that's like out of fear or trying to fix or trying to accomplish rather than accepting that like you were made
00:16:31
Speaker
how you were made, and there's a lot of substance and wisdom and opportunity that can come out of it, and there's no need to extend outwardly for those answers or, you know, experience. So I definitely think it's in the way. Yeah. Anti-performance culture. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:55
Speaker
that turning away from our intuition, from our innate connection with nature and just existing, it turns us into little robots for the system that just go through the process and they know that we're afraid and they pray on that fear.
00:17:15
Speaker
And yeah, the less we actually lean on our own intuition, lean on each other in a humanness, the easier it is to just keep us manipulated and small and powerless. Yeah. Even when I'm in therapy and I sometimes can get, I mean, I see a kind of on a variety. So rather they are very like highly logical people in the product or they're
00:17:44
Speaker
highly emotive people, they want to test, like they, you know, I want to be like fixed. And I asked them, I was like, you know, I can give you all the worksheets in the world. I'm like, but are you completing these like, for performance reasons to show yourself that like you're working on something? Are you, you know, trying to look at the product, you know, to measure up against
00:18:10
Speaker
You know who you are, because if you are like that, that's not what there is. At least, you know, in my scope of practice and how it really works and you might do yourself more hinder, hindering and harm. Because what happens if you have a successful session and you complete the works and then something goes out and society happens or you wake up and still don't feel good the next day. You know, and I think that too inhibits the process of healing because we go in with this very rigid expectation.
00:18:39
Speaker
And by six months and by a year, I'm going to just like, well, life is going to keep happening. So we really don't know if something else may occur in six months. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like you're just speaking to me, right?
00:18:56
Speaker
Oops. This is something that I know about myself and I know I'm actively working on it right now because I've seen it so much, especially right now where
00:19:14
Speaker
My desire to just fix something and have it be done and away from me is feeling tortured right now because there is no way to fix what is going on in the world right now.
00:19:30
Speaker
like that. It's going to take time. It will probably take my lifetime to continue working for justice, for liberation, for all people. And my brain is like, we have to fix it now. It's like, you have to continue, like you have to get into the process. You cannot focus on the end product because you might not even be alive to see it.
00:19:55
Speaker
I hope I am. I like I so hope I am, but like you just don't know. Right. So, yeah, my and I mean, part of that so much just it seems like that's so much of the society that we live in of just like you get things now, you if something is broken, you throw it out, you get a new one. Right. We can't just throw out society right now. We have to like delve into it and delve into ourselves. Oh, yeah. I'm so glad you saw that.
00:20:27
Speaker
Because that is definitely what I'm struggling with right now. Yeah, yeah. And that was a large struggle when I came to this residency. Because like I said, I came straight from a psych hospital for two years. So it's just a different level of intensity.
00:20:47
Speaker
When I had the time to pause, I was like, why aren't you creating
Finding Joy in Everyday Life
00:20:50
Speaker
art? Like, why aren't you creating anything? Like, you need to be producing. And then three months had gone past, and I hadn't created anything. And I was freaking out. Like, oh my God. I only have nine more months left. And then I had to pause. I'm like, but you've literally been drinking more water. Like, you have been resting.
00:21:15
Speaker
You have been walking and exploring the new neighborhood you now live in. You've been watering plants. You've been cooking meals in a very intimate, slow pace, cannot think about the ingredients type of way. You've been able to call your grandfather and spend 15 minutes seeing chickens. And it just felt like how much we desensitized and become disconnected from the things that really matter.
00:21:44
Speaker
that's also gonna keep us healthy to fight the fight that we wanna fight. So yeah, yeah. I mean it too, I mean it with you as well. I'm so glad we're not alone.
Ugly Art 101 Course
00:22:03
Speaker
We have this idea that everything we do has to be good or have value. This belief leads us to burn out. It can hold us back from creating altogether. But in my Ugly Art 101 course, I break down these restrictive beliefs and lead you through exercises that intentionally subvert perfectionism and bring playfulness back into your creative process. You can get the first day absolutely free by going to my website, scribeandsunshine.com and signing up on the homepage. Join me in my weird ugly art revolution. Back to the show.
00:22:37
Speaker
Tell me a bit about the neuroscience of this.
Benefits of Art Therapy
00:22:41
Speaker
What actually happens in our brains when we surrender to the process of art? This is a loaded question. I will say there are multiple parts that can come up. Just for the record,
00:23:00
Speaker
I'm not a neurologist or a neuroscientist, but I'm very fascinated and spend a lot of time with the work, specifically arts role in it. In the works that I have researched and the observations I've been able to make with clients, the three parts of the brain that people tend to sit with is the broker region, which is one for language, the frontal lobe with the executive functioning,
00:23:29
Speaker
and our ability to problem solve and make decisions. The hippocampus, which is near the brainstem and the amygdala, which processes emotions. And so a lot of my work looks at the lens of people's lives through trauma. And what's said about trauma is that when you've been traumatized or experienced a traumatic event, something called your cortisol level hormones increase.
00:23:59
Speaker
Theoretically, after the event has happened, those are supposed to go back down, your body goes back to the home of your stasis and regulates itself. Well, when you look at prolonged trauma, and particularly my interest in race-based traumatic stress, is when your body has the inability to calm back down because every day you're always confronted with this. So these high cortisol levels are constantly at play in inhibiting
00:24:30
Speaker
the central nervous system functioning, right, that occurs. And so art comes into play because it has been shown to reduce cortisol levels. It has been shown to process, be able to process emotions in a way to externalize some of those traumatic events to where those emotions are no longer like trapped and associated with that memory.
00:24:59
Speaker
And so once they're externalized, clients have the agency or the autonomy to recreate memories and create new narratives around that emotion and experience the same situation differently. Because trauma can also put us in a place of feeling a loss of control. As far as language, trauma sometimes inhibits the ability to grab language or resource language and art
00:25:28
Speaker
can become a form to communicate for us through the sensory motor experience using a myriad of art materials. And so something that I found kind of astonishing, specifically in the psychiatric units, is that when individuals had trouble finding language and they would create these art pieces, we would use a phenomenological approach that questions the clients like, what do you see?
00:26:00
Speaker
And they just named what they saw or it was like, I see yellow or I see a round object. And over time we would reintroduce the same intervention and watch their language grow for not only the experience, but for the product that they created. As far as executive functioning, trauma can inhibit our ability to just
00:26:30
Speaker
have frustration tolerance, imagine and think forward and not be so impulsive in ways that can lead to self-sabotage or just harmful behavior. And moving through the art process in real time allows someone to do those things because often my clients are already in fear and judging themselves.
00:26:55
Speaker
I can't paint, I can't draw, I can't do these things. And what you see start to happen is their frustration happens. They may tear things up, they may throw it away, but they come back to it and you start to see them get more intimate with the work. You start to see them have more control of the materials. You start to see them take more risk in manipulation. And by the end, you start to see me kind of out of the entire process. And now I'm just an observer.
00:27:24
Speaker
and they're no longer asking me for assistance. They're kind of telling me, today I want to work with this. This is what I created type of thing. So yeah. I love that. I really recognized my own journey with art as you were talking, because I used to be such a perfectionist that I couldn't. I didn't make any art. And then I started intentionally making ugly art to just subvert that perfectionism.
00:27:53
Speaker
And slowly, yeah, like you said, it started off with me being like, yeah, this is trash. This is absolutely garbage, but it's OK, because I like that's the intention. I'm making it ugly anyway. But then slowly it became like, oh, I can feel myself making decisions about this art piece and I can feel myself having opinions about it that aren't just, oh, this is ugly. It's just like, oh, I would like this to go here. And then that I have the power to then do that. And then slowly have started like developing
00:28:24
Speaker
what feels like me as I create and it's a way to like get in touch with myself and find that like moment of healing and empowerment of being able to decide what happens on the page. So I really love that. And that process is sometimes referred to as neuroplasticity. So the ability to create new wiring that influences your perception. Yeah. So cool how our brains can just
00:28:50
Speaker
change. Like we're not static. We can change. We can train ourselves to do different things and experience new things and connect to ourselves in new ways. I love that. Um, which actually this was, I mean, my next question, we kind of, we may have already answered it, but like how art helps us make new neural pathways. Like is there something? Yeah. Like what are we connecting to when we,
00:29:20
Speaker
are doing this that allows us to make new neural pathways, I guess, in a way that we struggle with when we're just trying to change a habit or, yeah, I don't know. Well, I think it's a combination of the cross firing that happens across
00:29:45
Speaker
the different lobes, right? So there's like the whole sensory experience from the auditory, the gaze, and when you actually view art, view your own art, the touch, the sensory base. And a lot of this has been translated across various populations, from PTSD, veterans, from individuals who
00:30:14
Speaker
have a sensitivity to touch and things of that nature. Individuals who just have difficulty problem solving and have a more increased sensitivity to depression and anxiety. And so I think there's not one specific thing that happens in the brain from what I've discovered is that memory is being activated
00:30:43
Speaker
visual stimulation is being activated, auditory of how sensitivity to tone is happening, touch, body somatic. So I think it's an integral working of creating new experiences because those new experiences then give new wiring. And so they talk about it in a way of like,
00:31:10
Speaker
hormones. So like I said, like the decrease in cortisol levels, um, increase in dopamine. They talk about oxytocin that occurs when art then connects people to one another. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Lots going on. What's going on? Yeah, lots going on. Um, what role do you see art helping us heal ourselves and heal the world?
Art's Role in Public Health
00:31:39
Speaker
Hmm.
00:31:44
Speaker
art helping ourselves and heal the world. Yeah, I think there are so many possibilities, but what I'm most excited about is like the cross-discipline work that's happening. Because like you said, art traditionally or like for a long time is just like, oh, stereotypically in school, arts and crafts, we leave it there.
00:32:12
Speaker
But we're seeing art show up in hospitals, in the medical field. And I think I get most excited about that because public health and health disparities that are occurring across so many populations and challenges. And so just knowing that different fields and disciplines are getting to the point where we can move outside of who's right,
00:32:41
Speaker
and who presented the most profound research and really like come together and realize that like we all need one another. And if we can intersect from the mental health and public health perspective, especially on a policy level, then there's more invitation for arts to be reintroduced into the school.
00:33:08
Speaker
for more initiative for community art centers to exist, different language and calls for museum and galleries and their role that they have in responsibility to the community, because a lot of times they're in the heart of a community that's been disenfranchised. And so, you know, and to amplify
00:33:37
Speaker
or refire places that are already using the art. So I know like sometimes in the geriatric facilities or day centers, you know, they're doing art here and there, but with the science and mental health backing behind it, you can give your everyday person agency to kind of like speak. And this won't be just limited to scientists, professionals, like everyone can feel apart.
00:34:07
Speaker
of this conversation and then see their art as powerful and their art as a solution. I know what's really cool happening now is like barbershops and saloons are getting trained in mental health kit. And so even thinking about the style of art again, when it comes to hair and fashion and cooking, like it's just so much possibility that we can now rewire
00:34:37
Speaker
how we see the gifts that we're given to the world and see it beyond a moment in time, but an ability to actually heal and support someone and have the science to back what we already have been knowing or acting out. Yeah, absolutely. I love that tapestry that you wove there of all of these things coming together.
00:35:04
Speaker
and all being equally important. And especially that feeling of connection through art that isn't just like, oh, the people who make these very famous paintings that those are given the spotlight. It's like, no, just these community centers where people in the community can share their art and feel that importance, feel that connection together. I love that. Right. Right. Yeah.
00:35:35
Speaker
And with it, the accessibility is just kind of normalized. Yes. Where you can walk past a piece of chalk, and if you just feel drawn, just draw. I love that. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful world coming to us.
00:36:01
Speaker
Do you have any last thoughts on this time that we find ourselves in kind of this work that we have ahead
Personal Stories for Healing
00:36:12
Speaker
of us? And I mean, there's different kinds of work, you know, like my work in decolonizing my own brain and figuring out my role in liberation and connection is different than your role as a healer for race-based trauma.
00:36:29
Speaker
So I guess, yeah, any final thoughts on that? I just think art can help us navigate some of these things, these complex issues, these complex emotions, while also just humanizing, just humanizing us in our uniqueness. Conversation starters.
00:36:58
Speaker
Like I said, what I shared with you before of how like words can be so limiting. And it can just send people into a right, but I was like, well, I really didn't mean they should have used this word. And art just serves as a sense of like remaining inquisitive about people. Because it's just like, it's only so many words you can use about a lot of things. But with art, I mean, wow, you can just like,
00:37:28
Speaker
go from painting, to drawing, to clay, to cardboard, to flowers, to sand, to dirt. It's just endless on what you can use art with. So think about one person using or having the opportunity to use an endless amount of art and how much work you will get and how many different entry points you will get into that who that person is. It reduces the opportunity of judgment and just increases
00:37:58
Speaker
curiosity to really like understand the whole person. Um, so there's one thing, I think the last thing would be to just like encourage people to start with your story because all the times I get the question of like, you know, well, what can I do? Like, how can I, and I'm like, you know, I could tell you to go for a walk in nature. I can tell you to, you know, go to a museum or to take an art class, but often those things become moments. Um,
00:38:29
Speaker
because somewhere along the way, you have that gap that leads in judgment or that critic or their fear. And then now these are just moments in time and that person is going on to the next class or the next exhibition, but your story stays with you forever. And it's always walking with you, no matter what setting you're in, your story is with you. And so having more belief and confidence
00:38:57
Speaker
and what your own story has to tell, and finding ways in which you would dissect a particular experience, or you were reclaiming a particular emotion that you had happened, or how would you communicate this to your peers or your family? It's so much there. And I think we doubt how powerful our own narrative is. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely do. Yeah, that's so good.
00:39:28
Speaker
At the end of every episode, I like to ask my guests, what is something ugly you've made recently?
April's Culinary Adventures
00:39:34
Speaker
What is something ugly I've made? Interpretation of ugly. Yeah, however you want to interpret that. Right. What is something ugly I've made? Because these pineapple things are beautiful. I've just been creating those.
00:39:59
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, well, okay. My food is typically ugly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the idea is so beautiful in my head and it's like right off all of the recipe or not. Like what needs to be there is there, but the presentation
00:40:22
Speaker
It just be like, what? I'm like, what? Yes, I agree with this. It tastes so good. It never looks like the pictures ever. It never looks like the pictures. It doesn't look like. So I'm just like, what is missing here? So yeah, I've made some ugly food in the past couple of weeks. Does it still taste good though? It really is good. It is good. Confusing.
00:40:52
Speaker
and I'm eating it, but good. Good, good. I love that. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your knowledge with me and our listeners, my listeners.
Conclusion and Ways to Connect with April
00:41:06
Speaker
And yeah, where can people find you and how can they support your work? Yeah, I'm on Pineapples with purpose at Instagram, so just Pineapples with the S with purpose.
00:41:19
Speaker
My website is also pineappleswithpurpose.com. What else am I on? Is that it? Yeah, I think that's it. And my email is April at pineappleswithpurpose.com. How can you support my work? I do have...
00:41:47
Speaker
a website that in the next couple of weeks I'll be reopening of a purchase on France of my work. I think that's what comes to mind so far.
00:42:01
Speaker
Great. Amazing. And if you want to see some of April's work outside of Instagram in the show notes, I will have a list of other places where you can find some of her work. So definitely, definitely check out the show notes because April's done a lot of really cool stuff.
00:42:21
Speaker
All right. Thank you for having me. Yes. Thank you so much for being on here. And everybody, thank you for listening and keep doing the work. Keep healing yourself and keep it ugly.
00:42:34
Speaker
The Ugly podcast is created by me, Lauren Alexander of Scribe and Sunshine. It is produced and sort of edited, also by me, and written and directed by absolutely nobody. If you like the podcast, be sure to rate and leave a review on your preferred platform and share with the creative people in your life. If you're interested in learning more about what I do, head to scribeandsunshine.com to learn more about my Ugly Art 101 course, my perfectionism workshop, my editing services, and the Writer's Helm, which is an online community for writers, co-captain by myself and Gabby Goodlow. As always, keep it ugly.