Creating Space for Connection: How Love and Creativity Keep Us Growing

After 44 years together — and 41 and a half years of marriage — my husband Dan and I have learned that connection isn’t about being inseparable. It’s about creating space for each other to grow.

Last week on The Creative Connection Podcast, we sat down together to reflect on how music and storytelling have shaped our relationship. For Dan, music has always been the language of his soul — a way to express emotion and release what words can’t capture. For me, storytelling became my way home — the thread that helped me reconnect with my voice after seasons of silence.

We discovered, often through trial and error, that when we each have a creative outlet, our relationship thrives. When we don’t, it begins to feel smaller — like we’re asking the other to carry something that can only be tended from within.

🌿 The Space Between Notes

Early in our marriage, life was full — raising two boys, working, managing all the daily noise that comes with building a home and a future. Creativity often took a back seat to practicality. But after the birth of our second son, we both started to feel a quiet ache — the sense that something essential was missing.

It wasn’t that we weren’t happy. It was that we weren’t whole.

That’s when we realized: love grows best when both partners have space to return to themselves.

Music gave Dan that outlet. Storytelling gave me mine. And in honoring that creative space for each other — instead of competing for it — we found a deeper connection.

We learned that love, like art, requires rhythm.

Moments of harmony, yes — but also pauses, rests, and space for improvisation.

💜 Creativity as Connection

For us, creativity isn’t a luxury — it’s a language.

When Dan is in the orchestra pit for one of the shows I direct, I get to see him doing what he loves most: creating connection through sound. When we sing together at church, it’s another kind of presence — one that reminds us that the same spirit that moves through art also moves through love.

We’ve realized that creativity isn’t about performance or perfection. It’s about presence — showing up as yourself, alive and open to the moment.

In our conversation on the podcast, Dan said something that stayed with me:

“When you find your creative rhythm, you find your center. And when you find your center, connection becomes natural.”

That’s what I believe too — that the creative process and the relationship process are mirrors of one another. Both ask for listening, trust, surrender, and courage.

🌸 The Practice of Listening

Listening — truly listening — is where presence begins.

It’s easy, especially in long-term relationships, to assume we already know what the other person will say or how they’ll react. But connection happens when we stay curious. When we pause before responding. When we remember that the person beside us is still evolving — just like we are.

That’s what The Creative Connection is really about: learning to hear the quiet wisdom within us, and in the people we love.

🌿 Looking Ahead: The Creative Spirit that Heals

Next week, I’ll be joined by my friend and fellow creative Jacob Nordby, author, writing coach, and founder of Creativity UnBootcamp. Jacob’s work has inspired thousands of people to reconnect with their creative spark — not as a hobby, but as a sacred path to healing and self-discovery.

We’ll be talking about how the creative spirit helps us heal, find our voice, and rediscover our mission — how creativity itself becomes the bridge between meaning and joy, between what’s been and what’s next.

If the conversation with Dan was about the heart of relationship, next week’s will be about the soul of creativity — the energy that brings all of it to life.

💜 Rooted in You: Coming Home to Yourself

Before we can truly connect with others, we must reconnect with ourselves.

This the foundation of the Rooted In You Winter Circle, a six-week journey to pause, realign, and rediscover what matters most.

🌿 Begins January 3
💜 Early-bird $297 through November 15
✨ Includes two bonus 1:1 coaching calls with me

When we root back into our creative essence — our inner voice — everything else begins to flow more naturally: love, clarity, purpose, connection.

To find out more and save your seat in the circle of 12, follow this link:  Rooted in Your Winter Circle

Because love that lasts, like creativity that endures, is never static.
It’s alive, expanding, and always inviting us to listen more deeply.