Create Anyway: How To Stewart Your Creative Gifts Even When You Feel with Ashlee Gadd

Hey there. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and I'm so glad you're here today. Today we're going to be talking to Ashley Gad, and we're going to be talking about how our guilt and our shame keeps us from growing in our God-given gifts. Ashley Gad is the author of Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood, and she's also the founder of Coffee and Crumbs, a beautiful online space where motherhood and storytelling intersect. As a writer and photographer, Ashley has spent her entire motherhood creating in the margins. When she's not writing or vacuuming Cheerios out of the carpet. She loves making friends on the internet, eating cereal for dinner, and rearranging bookshelves. She and her husband have 3 kids and live in Northern California. I'm really excited to have this conversation with Ashley. I'm really diving deep into shame and how it affects our life and how it affects our relationships. And so I am excited to talk about it. Listen in. Ashley, thank you so much for coming on today.

Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Good. You are in the tail end of all of your launch stuff, and so I know— I can imagine I will be there soon enough— that it must be really exhausting. So I'm so glad you took your time out of your busy schedule to, to, to hang out with us today.

Yes. Well, thank you. It is an honor. It's an honor always to be invited to have conversations with the other women. And so, yeah, it's, it's my privilege to be here. Thank you.

Yay. So I wanted to talk about your book. Can you tell my listener a little bit about your journey to writing this book? And then we're going to dive into all the deep topics. We're going to talk about shame and guilt and our need to be creative as women. But first, can you just tell us a little bit about your journey?

Sure. Yeah. So I'm a mother and a writer, and for as long as I have been a mother, I have been writing in the margins of motherhood. About a year and a half into becoming a mom, I actually launched a collaborative space online for mothers to write really honestly about motherhood together. That space is called Coffee and Crumbs, and we're coming up on 9 years this summer, which is kind of insane. This is officially the longest job I've ever had. But it has been so good and fulfilling in a multitude of ways. And Create Anyway, in a lot of, in a lot of ways, is sort of an overabundance, I think, of that experience of working to find the time and the space to use my creative gifts in the world, to champion other women to use their creative gifts in the world. I've been doing that for almost a decade now, and This book, Create Anyway, is sort of everything I've learned in the last decade of creating in the margins of my own motherhood.

I love that. You know, when I read the title and really the subtitle, it just kind of really got me as a creator. And it has been a fight for me to be able to call myself a creator because I never saw myself in that way at all. I saw myself as just, you know, an academic and a therapist. Because I didn't value the creative side of myself. I didn't value what I was doing in that area, my writing even. And so to have you write a whole book about the importance of pursuing your creativity, even in the midst of motherhood, was just really, really— it touched me. It was very important to me. And I know as a therapist, there are so many women that I work with who have passions, who have ideas, who have things that they need to create, that God put that in them, and they push it down and they minimize it and they say, Later, later, later, or I used to or not anymore. And so I just want to speak to that woman today. What do you, what do you see as the biggest barrier for most women in number one, being able to even admit maybe that they have something creative inside of them? And then number two, being able to, to act it out.

Yeah, that's such a great question. I think I think what so many women are desperate for and hungry for is permission.

Mm-hmm.

They just want someone to tell them that it's okay to not lose that part of yourself in motherhood. And I think that we have so many obstacles facing us as women, as mothers, you know, just even in the cultural messages that we are that we're privy to every day. And, you know, I, as much as I believe in the message of this book, I will be very honest and tell you, I still wrestle with living this out every day and believing again and again and again and again that the creative side of me matters and that it's not selfish to pursue it. And I think that a lot of women That's the lie that they have believed, that for them to hold on to a sense of themselves or to even, you know, sacrifice time and space from their family to pursue the creative giftings that God has instilled in them, they're facing this, this lie that that is selfish. And that is still something that I have to remind myself of constantly, you know, that a mother who makes space for her creativity to thrive is a healthy mother. You know, that's a form of health. That's a form of taking care of ourselves. It's a form of being a whole, flourishing person, and that's not selfish, you know. And I think that so many of us are waiting for someone to just say that out loud, you know, to, to cup their face in our hands and say, like, you have permission to to write, to play music, to whatever the thing is that lights you up, that makes you feel alive. It's okay for you to do that. And in actuality, the message I really kind of try to drill into and create anyway is that our family benefits in a positive way when we do that. So I'm really passionate about helping women kind of flip that narrative on its head. But it's hard. It's, it's hard.

It is. It's so hard. And, you know, I spoke at the Nashville Christian Entrepreneur Conference a couple of weeks ago, and my topic was really about the self-talk that we have, not just as women, but in general. And it was geared towards entrepreneurs, but I was sending the same message, especially to women, because women entrepreneurs, maybe it's not creativity in the same way as being artistic, but there's a passion, right? Mm-hmm. That women have for being an entrepreneur. So it's whatever you're doing in the world, We all have that sense of maybe I shouldn't do this, maybe I should wait, maybe it's not important, maybe it's selfish. And a lot of people will think, oh, well, when the kids are little, it's selfish and there's going to be time and energy. And I was just talking to somebody else that I was interviewing and she was like, well, my kids are little. When they're older— and I'm thinking, my kids are older. I have a 30s, my oldest. My youngest is 10. But my kids are older and they still need me. It's not like they hit 12 or 14 and all of a sudden now you're not a mother anymore. You're a mother forever. Totally. And so that sense of the guilt and the shame maybe that comes along with you pursuing your passions is not going to go away just because your kids get older. And so what you have to do is you have to determine and be intentional about setting it aside, about knowing it's there, And setting it aside. Because I think the lie we tell ourselves is that not in this season, maybe in another season.

Yeah. And I think the more and more we do that, the more and more we just put it on the shelf, put it on the shelf, put it on the shelf, the more we prolong using our creative gifts, the harder it gets. You know, I keep, um, what is that saying? Like, if you don't use it, you lose it. You know, there's almost— I don't wanna, I don't, I don't wanna promote a scarcity mindset in that way, but it does feel true that it gets harder and harder and harder to work up the courage, the energy, you know, all the things that we need to actually take a step forward. The longer we wait and the more that we push it off, we're actually just creating such a more daunting endeavor in front of us, you know. And I love to encourage moms with little kids especially. I mean, I— my kids right now are 11, 8, and 4. So not super old, but not super little, right? Right. I'm out of the baby spit-up toddler years. I'm past all of that. And yet I would still say, like you, my kids very much still need me. There are still a lot of demands in this season. But I'm so grateful that when my kids were little, I still was able in a small way to prioritize my creative efforts. And I think it's really important for moms who are in a season like that where they're stretched super thin, they're not sleeping, they've got like a baby attached to them like Velcro all day long. I mean, that is real. That is a real demanding, suffocating, exhausting season of life. And it's okay for us to name that and to call it that. But what can you do in that season? Do you have 5 minutes? Do you have 10 minutes? Do you have 20 minutes? Your season is not going to look like a mom whose kids are out of the house or whose kids are gone at school all day. But there's got to be something realistically that you could claim for yourself. And what is that? I can't answer that for every every woman, but I think it's a good question to ask ourselves even when we're in a season like that.

Right. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think it's a matter of if I should, but how I should.

Yeah.

How it should look in the different seasons of your mothering. And if we can kind of shift it to that, then we take away the question of should I do it? Should I not? Should I pursue? Should I not? Instead, it's just how— what, what could it look like? Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's talk about some steps for a woman who wants to learn how to get over that hump and create anyway. What would you suggest, maybe from your book, of ideas of how can we actually put this into practice? If someone's thinking, yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me, maybe I don't need to put my my passions aside, maybe I can start to act them out.

Yeah. To kind of add on what we were just talking about, I mean, I think step one is really assessing what is realistic in the season that you're in and having realistic expectations. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that is challenging. It is challenging for me to have realistic expectations. But I think just that constant reassessment of what is possible in every season, you know, You might be in the season where you are schlepping your kids around to swim team and soccer practice, and you practically live in your car, and you're just constantly sitting on the sidelines. You know, I totally get that. And so depending on what your creative effort is, your creative dream, the thing that you love to make, the thing you love to do, you know, if you are a writer, is that something where you can bring a notebook with you and you can just carve out a little bit of time and space right on the sidelines of soccer practice? I have a friend who loves to knit, and she brings all her knitting supplies to soccer practice, and she just sits on a blanket in the grass and knits while during soccer. I love that. You know, is there something— my, um, my friend Kelsey is a legit artist, and she keeps paint in her car. Wow. Um, she keeps a little pop-up easel and paint supplies in her car. And, you know, often she finds herself just waiting in like the school drop-off line, or, you know, these little minutes where she's just in her car, she's in between picking up kids and She paints in her car. I mean, these all sound so unglamorous, but when I think about what it's really like to create in the margins, that's kind of part of it. You know, you learn to— you learn to capitalize. And I almost don't want to use that word because it sounds a little bit icky, and I feel there's a little bit of a negative connotation with it. But, you know, we have to be efficient, and mothers are flexible and adaptable, and we know How to make things up on the fly. And so I think that's been one of the best parts of really leaning into this idea that I can create anyway, even when my kids are everywhere and life is busy and full and chaotic and loud. You know, I can still carve out these little pockets of time where anything is possible for me. And I, I think reassessing that kind of on an ongoing basis is a really great place to start because You don't know what is possible until you start trying to make things possible for yourself. So yeah.

I love that. For me, I carry my iPad everywhere. It comes with me. It's— I have a purse that it fits perfectly in. And whenever I get a minute, a moment, whether it's in a line or sitting, like you said, in the car, I am working on writing something usually. And, you know, I think For the woman who may be dealing with some guilt and some shame regarding spending that time, like I said, I spend all of my kind of crack time doing, you know, the work that, that I feel God put me on this earth to do in addition to being a mother and, and all the other nurturing roles that I have. Um, you know, I was talking to my son the other day about prioritizing. And there are things that we feel are important in our life. And then there is the urgent. There's the dishes and there's the phone call and there's this person needs something or your friends want to go out with you, things that need to be done like right this minute. But often the things that are actually our priority, number one, we don't put them on the calendar sometimes. And then number 2, they aren't urgent. So if you have a dream, if you have a passion, there's no urgency unless you have a contract and someone's saying it's due on Thursday, right? Then that creates emergency. But a lot of times for the things that we're doing, there isn't a deadline. And so it's so easy to just put it off, right?

Yeah.

And we often will then put off our priorities for the things that are urgent. And so what I just encourage my son to do is I said, write down your 3 top priorities. Write them down on a piece of paper. And when something urgent comes up, I want you to look at those and ask yourself, is this, is this something that I need, need, need, need to do, right? Or does this direct, does this direct me away from my priority?

Mm-hmm.

And you have to always keep those priorities. So if you have a passion and you've got the dishes, sometimes it's okay When you have a crack to let the dishes go and work on that other thing for 5 minutes, right? That's you honoring yourself and honoring your priorities. So I would encourage a woman to write those down. What are my priorities?

Yeah, sometimes— I mean, I work at home mostly, so I'm often working in my bedroom or working on the living room carpet or at the dining room table. But sometimes when I have a really good pocket that I want to use wisely, it's actually better for me to leave my house and go work at the coffee shop to get from the urgent dishes. Right. Because I believe in everything that you're saying so much, and there have been plenty of days when I've just been able to ignore the mess of the house, the dishes in the sink, whatever. But sometimes, man, it's really hard to ignore the urgent chores right in front of you. So sometimes it's nice to just not look at them anymore. That's a hack.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, just turning away is definitely helpful. So can you tell us about any other really major points that you made in this book? And I assume it's for the mother in particular. Maybe you can tell me about some things that people who have read your book have come to you and said that this was really helpful.

Yeah, I mean, I think just playing into the theme of our conversation today, just about guilt and shame, I think one of the key points That I try to revisit pretty often in the book is that it's really good for your kids to see you creating things. It's good for your kids to see you making things. And, you know, we talk so much about raising children in this world and all the things we want to teach them and model for them and show them and demonstrate for them. And for some reason, I feel like we don't often put our creative efforts in that same category, you know? There's all of these nitty-gritty things that we want our kids to learn about just how to be a human and how to communicate and how to be respectful and how to wash a dish and do your laundry and make your bed. And it's— the list goes on and on and on, right? About all these things that we want to instill in our children, character traits and just, you know, chores and different things we want to show them and teach them and we want to prepare them. Right, to eventually move out of our homes and live on their own and be a grown-up someday. And so I just, as you know, I've been talking about this book so much. I think that's kind of one of the core messages that I just keep coming back to, that I really hope that if anyone reads this, like, that's the thing that they grasp onto, right? Is that it's so good for us to teach this to our kids, to model this in front of our kids. I don't want my kids to think that I have 2 boys and a girl, so the conversation could go any which way. I don't want my kids to think this is what motherhood looks like, to be a mom who is just constantly doing the dishes and stressed out and vacuuming obsessively or burying herself in her laptop, in her work. I mean, I want my kids to see motherhood as a full-rounded—

Right.

Um, experience. And I want to model that for my daughter. You know, if she grows up to have children someday, I want her to see what it was like to be a mother who still had dreams and still had passions and didn't just let go of all of them or forsake them in the name of sacrificing all of myself to be a good— a quote, good mother. And I just think that's so important for our kids to watch us do, do this, you know, make things in the world, create things in the world, um, for us to notice beauty and seek out beauty. And I think what's really cool about, you know, some of the, um, some of the things I've learned about creating in the margins over the last decade is how much my own children really inspire my creative process. I mean, I'm constantly learning Just by watching them, watching their own curiosity, their own wonder, their own imagination, watching them make things in the world and create things without second-guessing themselves all the time and being filled with self-doubt and having such a harsh inner critic. You know, those are all things I struggle with. But when I watch my children create with freedom, really, it's so inspiring to me too. And so there's just this really beautiful It's like a cycle that just keeps going and going and going. You know, I love to think that my kids watch me create and that I inspire them to create, and then I watch my kids create and then they inspire me to create. And there's so many layers and lessons to be experienced within that beautiful cycle. And the key to keeping it going is to keep creating anyway, right? To, to keep yourself as part of the ecosystem and part of the cycle.

Exactly. I heard somewhere, probably on a podcast, and a woman was talking about all the things we instill in our daughters. She was talking specifically about daughters. And she said, we tell our daughters that they can do anything, and we raise them to follow their passions, and we want them to be strong women. And yet, are we modeling that for them? Or do we say— Is what we're doing showing them that, yeah, all that is great and important, we want that for you, but once you become a mother, all that goes away?

Totally.

Or are we modeling something different? And so, yeah, I think that your book points a lot to, no, we can model that that should be a lifestyle forever in all of your roles.

Yeah, I always come back to the word stewardship because I just think it fits so beautifully in both motherhood and creativity that Like, these are children that God has given me to steward, to steward their lives, to steward their care. And my creative gifts he's given me to steward and take care of and not bury them in the sand and not keep them hidden away in my closet, you know? And so at the end of my life, I mean, that's really what I want so desperately is to have been a good steward of everything God gave me, of my children, of my creative talents. of everything he gave me to take care of in this world. I want to be able to have done a good job of that, you know, and we don't have to give up one to do the other, you know. And I think that's a lie that I myself have battled, you know, time and time again. And I think it's still a cultural narrative that we, we still experience in the world.

Absolutely. Well, Ashley, thank you for coming on and having this conversation. How can people find you and find your book?

Yeah, my, my website is ashleygadd.com. I'm primarily writing at Substack right now, so that's probably the best way to keep up with my current writing. And you can find Create Anyway pretty much wherever books are sold, so Amazon, Target, Barnes& Noble, Christian bookshop. It's— I think it's out there in most of the places. So

what's next for you?

Next is going to be a period of much-needed rest, so I'm very excited to spend the summer just refilling my creative well. I'm going to be taking a little bit of time off work this summer to, yeah, just kind of rest and restore myself after 5 months of nonstop book launch marketing. Yeah, just, yeah, it sounds like a lame answer. I want to say a nap. A nap is what is next for me.

Well, a well-deserved nap. Any last word for a woman who is struggling to find that space in her life to create anyway?

I think I just want to tell her that her art and her creativity matter. They matter.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Ashley. Have a wonderful rest.

Thank you.