Hello, gathering room friends. I am off gallivanting on a summer break. So while I'm doing that,

I hope you enjoy the best of the gathering room gathering pod coming right up. Welcome to the

gathering pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

How are you, everybody?

How are the peoples?

It's so good to see you.

I have been having so much fun and so much anguish lately, but not anguish of any kind you should worry about.

I'll tell you all about it. So I'm writing

a book about how to reduce anxiety. Yes? Part of reducing anxiety is that you activate creativity.

In order to be in integrity, see my last book, I feel that I have to live the things that I, you know, suggest for other people. So I've been,

I've been doing creativity. And I decided that I would get up every day and I would draw or paint

for a while because as a kid, I drew and painted, I drew and painted. I had a bit of a fear.

I have to tell you. That's a very useful phrase, by the way.

In our family, if you get a fear, you say, wait, I have a fear.

And the fear could be anything.

I'm afraid that when you smile that way, you're really just trying to tell me I'm not good enough or whatever it is.

Anyway, I had a fear.

And the fear was that if I started drawing and painting it would be like opening pandora's box

because there was something that made me paint and draw and it wasn't like demons but it's very

very intense for me as a kid so I had stopped drawing as a responsible adult, except when I wanted to

like put something on the wall or do something for a special project. But I decided I was going to

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