What if relief doesn’t come from fixing your thoughts, but from moving your body and putting words on the page? In this episode of The Spiritual Artist Podcast, CJ Miller sits down with poet Jodie Kennedy, an observer, mumbler, overthinker, and accidental creative writer from Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Jodie is the author of Clumsy Beauty, a debut poetry collection rooted in anxiety, attention, and the quiet work of noticing what it feels like to be alive.

Jodie shares how writing poetry helps her listen to herself again when anxiety pulls her into mental loops. For her, writing is not about performance or polish. It is a way of coming back into alignment, hearing her own voice, and seeing herself with fresh eyes. Alongside writing, she turns to simple physical tasks like scooping chicken poop, washing dishes, brushing her teeth, or working in the barn. Not intense focus. Not productivity. Just mindful movement.

CJ reflects on how the body itself can become a source of healing, especially when paired with creative expression. Writing poetry and engaging in gentle physical labor both bring attention out of the head and back into the present moment. Together, they explore how many of us drift away from ourselves as we grow older, turning outward to fit into the world, and how art can become a way home.

CJ reads from Jodie’s work, including a passage that wrestles with the fear of an unintended existence and the longing to live passionately. Jodie also shares how life disruptions, toxic work, illness in her family, and walking with someone through the dying process pushed her to write daily on Instagram, what she calls “mental illness in small squares.”

This conversation explores why good art doesn’t sort life into good or bad, why presence matters more than answers, and why Jodie believes we are living in a time that calls for what she names exquisite love.

Her book is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
Visit her at www.jkkennedywrites.com

Sometimes the way out of anxiety is not thinking harder.
It is writing honestly.
And doing the next small, ordinary thing with care.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

REWIND: After a conversation with Rabbi Rami Shapiro, CJ reflects on why spiritual independence matters—especially for those burned by religion. Drawing from the Gospel of Thomas, mystic traditions, and insights echoed by Eckhart Tolle, CJ explores the difference between belief and realization, form and essence, doing and being. When presence becomes primary and effort softens, coherence emerges—and the Field of Creative Intelligence reveals itself.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this wide-ranging and deeply human conversation, CJ sits down with Rabbi Rami Shapiro—award-winning author of more than three dozen books, longtime contributor to Spirituality & Health Magazine, and co-founder of the One River and One Foot Judaism Foundations.

Together, they explore what it truly means to live as a spiritually independent person—not as an idea or belief system, but as a way of being in the world.

Rabbi Rami speaks candidly about 12-Step spirituality, surrender, and the illusion of control, offering a liberating reframe: we don’t surrender to a greater power—we awaken to the fact that we are already part of it. From there, the conversation moves into the nature of the observer, the “Greater I,” and what happens when identity loosens and language begins to fall away.

Drawing from Zen, Judaism, mysticism, and lived experience, Rabbi Rami shares insights on active stillness, mantra practice (including Ein od milvado—“there is nothing else besides this”), and why struggling to feel connected only reinforces the false belief that we are separate.

CJ and Rabbi Rami also explore creativity as a spiritual practice—whether standing in front of an easel, writing without preconception, or drawing an Enso in a single embodied moment. Writing, art, and speech become portals for presence rather than acts of effort or control.

The conversation touches on necessary versus unnecessary suffering, the breakdown of ego through language, the role of laughter as spiritual liberation, and why mystics—ancient and contemporary—continue to point us beyond the madness of dogma and division.

This episode is an invitation to remember who you are.
To re-member yourself back into the whole.
And to live joyfully and ethically without needing certainty to hold it all together.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.