Meet the Creative: Mariah from Heartbeats

Creativity, Motherhood, Grief and Poetry

Welcome back to The Stress Less Pencil’s “Meet the Creative”, where we get to meet amazing people who have made art and creativity a major part of their lives. Today we talk to Mariah who writes Heartbeats, where she explores the complexities of grief, creativity, new motherhood, and human connection.

Tell us a bit about your background. Who are you, where do you come from, what are you doing today and how did you get here?

Hi! I’m Mariah, a writer, new mama, and grieving daughter. My husband and I recently relocated to Chattanooga, TN with our one-year-old and black lab from Kansas City, MO. I’m passionate about finding the threads that connect us through storytelling (and listening); I believe we belong to each other.

I grew up in the Midwest in a small, rural town but traveling was always a big part of my childhood. My parents took my two sisters and I on countless road trips, and when I was just nine, we went to Germany to visit my grandparents who lived there at the time. Spending so much time outdoors playing in the woods yet also having the opportunity to see new people and places definitely informed my worldview.

In college, I studied Nursing and Spanish in the heart of Chicago. Going from being homeschooled in a small town to living in one of the biggest cities in the U.S. was its own education! It definitely inspired a deeper curiosity and desire to see more of the world- which I spent most of my twenties attempting to do! After almost four years working the night shift as a nurse in the I.C.U., I quit my job at 25 to spend a year backpacking around the world, staying with couch surfers and volunteering with Workaway.

I started my first blog, thebarefootbeat.com leading up to that trip as a way to capture those experiences and share them with my friends and family back home. That blog eventually turned into a book I’ve been writing for almost a decade! Making the decision to leave my job and travel without any concrete plans was probably one of the best things I’ve done for myself. The path since then has been winding and full of unexpected plot twists but knowing who I am and making choices in alignment with that instead of what makes sense to everyone else has been a huge game changer.

Today, I’m working on a variety of projects while chasing a toddler around! I’m still tweaking my book, The Pattern Shop, and getting ready to send out another round of query letters. My weekly newsletter Heartbeats is a place where I share personal reflections on motherhood, grief, and creativity. We’re building a lovely community of creative folks from all backgrounds with the belief that we thrive together. I also write poetry, read tarot, and try to spend as much time outside as possible. I can’t wait to discover new hiking trails in Chattanooga!

What role has creativity/creative hobbies played in your life as you grew up?

I think when we’re kids, we don’t really think in those terms of, “Oh, now I’m being creative.” We just play and discover and there’s not this pressure around it, you know? Looking back as a kid, I loved spending time with my grandmother in her home office, cutting out pictures from gardening magazines and making collages. I also loved making my own stationery and writing little notes to my sisters. I spent a lot of time baking and cooking, and inventing all sorts of little games playing outside.

As I became older, I grew more conscious of the idea that some people are “creative” and some people aren’t. I remember especially feeling embarrassed over my inability to be “good” at drawing and deciding that I wasn’t in the creative category. I compared myself a lot to the more accepted forms of creativity I saw others around me engaging in and convinced myself I just didn’t have that same capacity.

Reclaiming my creativity and allowing it to be more flexible is something I’ve begun working on in the last few years. It’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about helping others reconnect to their creativity as well- whether it’s the way you put on makeup, prepare dinner, or sing in the car— all of these are mini creative acts that make up the masterpiece of your life.

How did you get into writing? What is different about it than the other creative hobbies you've tried before?

That’s an interesting question! I think it was in 5th grade when I started my very first journal for school. Our teacher gave us maybe 20 minutes of class time each day to write. Honestly, I was going through a country music phase at the time so my first journal was mostly copied lyrics I liked and notes about my first crushes! Luckily, I never stopped journaling and eventually started writing my own songs- early forms of poetry written in gel pen!

I remember publishing a few articles in various church-related youth magazines and then in high school I had a Xanga, a very emo-style form of expression! I think being a writer is something so inherent to me that I really didn’t think about it being a “thing” until more recently. It’s a way for me to make sense of the world and to process my experience of being human. I couldn’t not do it if I tried. In fact, before smartphones, if I didn’t have a piece of paper handy, I’d write scraps of notes on napkins, paper towels, or the backs of receipts—there’s this urgency to capture something, to somehow make it all real.

How has your life changed since you discovered writing and poetry? Has it had a positive impact on your mental health?

I love the fluidity of poetry, the way it can act as a portal between language and that which we can’t really express. I’ve always appreciated poetry but I didn’t really start writing it, or recognizing what I was writing as poetry until I went through a really tough breakup. I’d been used to the blogging style of expression and suddenly what wanted to come through me just wouldn’t fit in that category.

Poetry can be a gift for the author as much as the reader, a way to step into that liminal space of heartache and let the language offer a way to carry it differently. I’m still working on a short collection of poems I’ve written since my Father passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2020 and those poems act as containers for the grief and longing of that loss.

As far as my mental health goes, I’m still working on being able to ground all of the creative ideas that want to flow through me. Sometimes allowing the full flow of inspiration can feel overwhelming- prioritizing and finding focus is something I still struggle with. It can cause me a lot of anxiety! Yet, there’s definitely this buzzing sort of aliveness that happens when working with creativity. The excitement and enthusiasm are such a rush!

Being able to harness that while following through on projects to completion is the delicate dance I’m engaged with now. Knowing that it’s impossible to act on all creative ideas and that’s okay. I think for me, finding my own creative rhythm (which also includes consistency and the discipline it takes to do the not-as-fun parts of my creative practice like editing, keeping track of my finances, or submitting work) is part of the journey. As an ideas person, balancing the rush with practices like walking outside, practicing yoga, or doing something with my hands to stay connected to my body is also important.

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to explore their creativity?

Stay curious! It’s so easy to compare yourself to others when you’re beginning anything new but I’d say try to put on blinders for a little while and just play. Perfectionism and procrastination are a creator’s worst enemies and you’ll do both if you’re paying attention to what everyone else is doing. Being okay with and celebrating the process is something else I’m trying to learn. Nobody becomes a master at anything overnight but often we only see the completed result of years of experience and lots of trial and error.

But yeah, just play and see what happens! Follow the bunny trail and find ways to keep having fun and exploring because that’s a lot more sustainable than creating for external validation or competition.

So what's next for you, where do you want to go from here?

I’d love to keep growing the Heartbeats community on Substack- there are so many amazing people engaging in a way that feels genuine. It's giving me a lot of hope for what we can accomplish together. I’d also like to self-publish my first poetry chapbook, start a podcast, and do more one-on-one tarot readings. But first, I really need to prioritize getting my book published. That’s a project I’d love to see out in the world, hopefully soon!

Thank you so much, Mariah! If people want to find out more about what you do, where can they find you online?

I write most consistently on Heartbeats, my Substack newsletter. I still post occasionally on TheBarefootBeat.com, and you can read a lot of my travel adventures there, I have over a decade of blogs on that site that I’m really proud of. I’m also on Instagram @thebarefootbeat and you can always send me an email and reach out personally to thebarefootbeat@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you and connect!

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