 from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter. We're being hosted by Think Tech Hawaii, a streaming network series. I am your host, Phyllis Bleece. Joining me today is our guest, Dr. Susie McDaniel. Susie has been a corporate trainer and teacher and educator for over 40 years. She has recently retired as a senior lecturer at Loyola Marymont University, where her area of specialty is interpersonal and family communication. She created a signature senior course on family systems where students examine their own family history, such as family narratives and rituals and most recently, processing individual and family grief. So I asked Susie to join us today to explore some themes around family history to understand what the theme of our show is, and that is creativity is biography. We've asked her to help us explore some of the sources for our own creativity through exploring deeply our own biography. We're asking Susie to guide us as she does her students in excavating every bit of the landscape of our biography to draw upon for every bit of creativity we may need in our lives. I should add, referring to landscapes and excavation, that Susie is also a master gardener. So with that introduction, Susie, welcome and aloha to Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you so much for having me, Phyllis. You're welcome. Well, I just defined creativity as biography and biography being your specialty. We wanna tie that into this notion of creativity and I just said that our creativity comes from our biography. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that notion of creativity and its intersection with our biography. Absolutely. So I grew up in a family of really creative people and I always identified as the uncreative one in my family. Both of my parents were educators. I have an older sister recently deceased but then two younger sisters as well and they are so creative with everything they've ever done but I self-identified as the one who was not creative all my life. Part of that was because I had a sense of creativity being something that you had to do when you were still. So needlework or cooking or whatever and I was a wild and crazy active kid. So that was the complete kiss of death for me to think, oh my goodness, I have to be still to be creative. So I disowned that notion. That was part of just how I identified myself. And then something changed in my life as an adult. 10 years ago, my only child, my beautiful 19 year old daughter, Shailie, died. And the process of navigating and negotiating that grief journey brought me to the most familiar place for me and that was the soil. So I started digging in my garden, trying to make sense of things and how this massive loss in my life could help me regain some sort of identity since that important identity of a mom was essentially lost or transformed. And as I did that, I observed this exquisite beauty and uniqueness of nature. I've always been a nature kid but I really took a moment, Phyllis, to just dig right into just looking at one flower or considering how something would grow after it seemed dead and you planted the seed and then watching it come through the soil. What occurred in that process was that I decided to create for my daughter a memory garden because I wanted to honor her creativity. She was crazy, crazy created with the beauty of the creativity of nature. And when I finally accomplished that, I was able to take a step back. And again, this was in the process of trying to figure out the different stages of grief and other kinds of ways of coming to terms with the loss like that. And I thought, oh my gosh, I did that. And it's creative. And so for the first time in my life, I was able to kind of apprehend that notion of creativity. And then the intersection of that experience of building that creative memory garden for my daughter was that I started to reflect on my life as we often do when these kinds of landmark changes happen. And I started thinking about my life story. And then I started thinking about my ancestors and all the different ways I have identified all of them as creative. And I realized I come from generations of Midwestern farmers and teachers. And I started reframing the notion of that hard work as really creative work. And so that's where this idea of my own biography at helping me to create a notion of my own creativity really came into being. Let me reflect on what you just said for the process of getting access to our creativity through our biography. What I'm hearing is that, and if I explained when I introduced you, for 40 years you've been working on family systems, teaching students how to access the different aspects and prisms of being in a family system to help them communicate and have a healthy, well-rounded life. And so today we're taking the lead that that's the very stuff from which we can reach our new ahas. That's the primordial soup, our own biography and what we've been exposed to to draw upon in a moment when we're having a crisis or we're needing to manage grief or loss or something as mundane as a family menu or the next vacation. We don't wanna do same old, we wanna do something new, something creative to keep growing because that's so human and creativity is nothing if not so human. What I'm hearing is that even though you had been teaching family systems all your life, in your own life, you reached into this recent biography, the recent loss of your child and saw out of that biographical moment and experience a lot of new connections that you were making as to who you are, how creative you are and what you were capable of. You're pushing through areas that you maybe had never tried before like in a garden. And I think I would love to have, now that you've even experienced the creative process of coming into direct contact with your own biography, maybe what we'll do today on the show is invite you to then bring in some of your tried and true methodology for us really excavating, recording and then having access to our biography in a new way, at least in a tangible way, so that in the moment when we need to draw on something, really, we're just gonna draw on who we are, be creative isn't out there, being creative as you said, it's in you and there you were doing it. And now you're just, what we want is that methodology if you could. So I think you've got some slides for us. I don't think we called up slide one so, but maybe you're ready to move into a little bit of what you've prepared for us as students of Susan McDaniel. Absolutely, absolutely. Let's pull up slide two. So one of the interesting things that occurred in the process of my teaching, simultaneously to the loss of my daughter was beginning this signature course that I taught I taught for 10 years at Loyola Mary Mountain University. And the course was simply titled Family Communication. Part of that course was designed, well, really the majority of it, was designed to help students access all the different processes in their family life. So everything from family rules, family rules, family power dynamics, conflict, how the families function across the life cycle with all these different, what we call family processes. And it occurred to me, having had this experience with my own sort of reflection across my life, that a really useful tool for them to apprehend the concepts, but pull it together in, as you say, Phyllis a very tangible way, was to write a family narrative. And so one of the key assignments in this course was asking the students to find a family story or oftentimes it was pretty accessible to them, but find the person who tells that family story. So this is the kind of thing that comes up at holiday celebrations or during family reunions. And it's told over and over and over again, but the vast majority of my students didn't know why it was told, didn't know where it came from. And in that way, didn't really have a sense of the full meaningfulness of that story. So I said, find that story, go to the person if they're still alive, whose story that is or who is the storyteller, and then record them with you interviewing them and getting the story down in their words. And then I have the students transcribe the story and analyze it for these different concepts. And it was very revealing for them. Talking about your writing your story, frame a little bit that slide too, and what are some of the themes and rituals that might come up for you as you think about family stories to choose one. And then the area is that they will really come into new contact with their own family story or sort of listed there, their identity, their roles, power dynamics, rules, and then even family stresses. There's a very famous man in the creative world, his name is Sir Edward De Bono. And he came up with the idea of seven thinking caps. And for those of us in creativity, he's even come to our conferences before he passed away. And he would say one way, because being creative isn't like magic, there are really just simple steps that you can do to force new connections for yourself like in your biography. You can just cry on new things to force you to see things in a new way. And he called it the seven thinking caps. And you would put a cap on, let's say from your slide, you would look at your family story with a cap on of your family identity. And then just be with that and then change the cap to what your role and what, you know, mother, sister, daughter, a cousin, all of those roles, and you come up with new connections and then change your hat to what are the power dynamics? Do you have any? What are the family rules? And then changing your hat to what the stresses have been across your life cycle. Right. With your slide four on these family processes, those in the audience can take a little time with this. We'd like to give you this methodology. And then getting into this family interview model, I don't know if you're ready for it, but there's another slide we're coming into and you're taking us to this one method, is this family interview. So can you, can I pitch it back to you right now? Is that right where you were? Right. And one of the things I just wanted to add, Phyllis, is that these different processes that we mentioned, learning about your family identity, learning about the roles in your family and how we learn who does what and why that's important and power and all these different things. The thing that's so important about creativity in this process is that it is really fundamental to families successfully navigating all those processes. And one of the ways we discover our creativity in looking at, oh, let's say in a conflict situation is to reflect back, and we can do this easily by stories, on times when we have managed that same kind of conflict situation well. And then draw upon that resource, whatever that creative thing was we did before and apply it or change it, modify it so that it's, it works in this kind of situation. So this notion of creativity is always present in terms of family functioning and family interaction. So I just wanted to make that point. And that's, again, one of the reasons why I think there's such an intimate connection between creativity and our biographies. Well, let me riff on that because when we were talking before the show about a definition of creativity, you started out saying, I never self-identified as being creative. And then when we discuss the fact that everything a human being does is unique to that human being, anything they do, their song, their walk, their reaction to stress, and every moment they're creating a unique response to what's happening. And then you said, well, then really Phyllis, creativity is fundamental to our identity. Exactly. You don't go out and do it by showing up and authentically and not parroting what you see and you do, but showing up as you by definition is being creative. And I think that is a breakthrough concept. That's an aha concept. But everybody watching the show today will understand that this isn't rocket science. This is you being you and every minute the unique you is responding to anything at all. Your response, if it's authentic, is creative by definition. Right. So I got that in this discussion with you and I, because you kept saying, this is creative and that is creative and I just wanna emphasize for the audience that because we're defining as everything you do is unique. So that's why it's creative. People might say, well, that isn't me, that isn't me. Yes, it's quintessentially you whenever you show up as you and not role play. Right, exactly. I agree with you. Another methodology that I've used besides this family narrative assignment, which I wanna talk a little bit more about because I've incorporated StoryCorps and Recording and archiving their story, which is something all of us can do. It's really easy to do. But another assignment I've used before in our psychology class was for students to write their own autobiography. Tell me the story of your life. And these have been massive projects, but again, that's just filled with different examples of their creative experiences, their creative solutions all throughout their life. So again, there it is, the creativity is biography. So just another thing that your audience can do. So let me talk about this StoryCorps process. Just a frame. This is when people are listening to NPR and then Sunday morning when you're driving home and then the cool music comes on. And so the StoryCorps is a non-profit organization that NPR has made most visible in our lives. And I was kind of thrilled that you've had your students producing their NIP stories, their interviews on StoryCorps. And I never realized that just, I didn't know how, I thought you got chosen. So for those of us waiting to hear more about it, you've put your students right in the position to be StoryCorps contributors. So please, I'm looking for it. Right, so StoryCorps is our national storytelling project, the nation's storytelling project. And I think it was started in, I don't know, 2013 or 11 or something or perhaps it's older than that. But here's the really good news. It used to be Phyllis that you did have to essentially have a reservation for the StoryCorps trailer, which I'll talk about and be selected to do that. But because so many people want to share their stories and record them, they've created a process where you can do it yourselves through your phone or through your computer. So as it says here in slide number five, you can record with someone on your phone. There's a downloadable StoryCorps mobile app. Just look in the app store for the StoryCorps logo and you download that, they give you and you create an account, they give you every single bit of structure and advice you need to use your phone to interview someone telling a story and then how to upload it into the StoryCorps archives. And it's very slick, it works very well. You can also do that with your computer and have a family member. So for example, a lot of my students would interview their grandparents who were miles away on the other side of the country or at least not close. And so you can do it through your web browser as well. And there's a whole set of very simple instructions for you to follow to do that. There are two other ways you can actually have a story recorded at StoryCorps. One is through their traveling StoryCorps Airstream trailer that you may see parked in different cities. You can go on the StoryCorps website and I've offered a couple of resources there on the slides for you to check that will tell you where the trailer is gonna be and then you just, you go online, you try to get an appointment, they fill up very fast. So you wanna, if you know it's coming to your town, you wanna be aware of that. And then the final way, if you're in the area or going through Atlanta is to go directly to the Atlanta School Center, exactly. And the other really lovely thing that happens with this StoryCorps support is that they give you, there are all kinds of tips on their website for, and this would be the next slide, tips for having a good conversation and how to actually begin the interview process. And so for example, they offer you these 10 best questions to get a story going or get an interview going and 10 different tips for how to make it happen well. And it's just, it's really so easy. And I cannot tell you how many of my students over the years have said, oh my goodness, I mentioned to Phyllis, I think yesterday, one of my students interviewed her grandmother about a family story. She didn't really feel very close to her grandmother. And they had this great conversation. It went on for several hours. She felt so lovely about it and her grandmother died two weeks later. But she had this experience. They had the story recorded. They sent it to StoryCorps. And what wonderful legacy, what a beautiful gift for generations to follow. So I can't recommend it highly enough. And then as I say, it's there. You can access it over and over again. You can hear other family stories. That's another thing that the website offers. And that will give you ideas of what kinds of interviews to have as well. And it's just a really lovely way to capture those stories again to review the creative energy that has been part of your family of origin as well as your ancestors prior to your immediate family. Well, you know, and let's add because some of us are adopted and some of us, you know, were brought up in and you know, on the other side of the world from where they might have been born, that really it's however you want to recreate your origin story on whatever basis that your relationships are. We're defining the word family as very loosely, to whoever showed up in your life, it could have been a neighbor or a teacher or if you weren't in school, you know, just somebody who was a mentor or present coexisting with you at the time that you were growing. And then, so what I'd love to do, Susie, is because this is your, you have spent years focusing on it, is going back to slide four. What now we have this interview and we have this process. I was wondering if there are some, you talked a lot about themes, what the family's theme, how that could have impacted you. And what, you know, I feel like these are jewels, these are, truly it's a gig. And once you bring them up, you know what, I took a course and it's a course on what the 12 step program does. And maybe we should mention that because the course on the 12 step is they do take you through your family of origin. There are, I think there are steps that you go through to unpack your family of origin. And when you do that, it can reveal what triggers you or what, you know, like you were talking about family's themes. And what we want to do is to just exponentially increase each person's own gemstone or landscape or field that they're digging up here, record it so that you can touch it and have it help you come up with your own new ahas. Exactly. So some of these roles, identities, if you could talk to anyone or more of them, we've got about, oh, we've got three minutes. Okay. Any two minutes? Yes. One of the things we talk about, I had my students discover their family themes, which is like a family motto or their family images, which is like a family metaphor. So my family's like a garden, my family's like a plate of spaghetti, my family's like a boxing ring. And the motto is everything from we are survivors, we are public servants, you can always do better. You know, it's just, and those, those mottos guide so much of family functioning. And again, many of my students thought, gosh, I don't know what that means, so they'd have to go back to their families and talk about it. They're just loads and loads of different ways to access your family function. And I will also say, again, if you check on the StoryCorps website, there are so many lovely stories of chosen family, which is what you were speaking about, Phyllis, when it's not our family of procreation. And all of those significant relationships absolutely help us come to terms with our own creativity and spark a growth in that creativity by unlocking in us, again, that ability for us to label ourselves as creative instead of, gee, I'm not the creative one. Well, or, and not or, and to label ourselves as unique. And our story, our unique story, by definition, we're putting a stake in the ground right now on the show that by definition, you are creative in every cell of your body in your uniqueness. And Robert Thurman said, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. But what the world needs is people who have come alive. So thank you, Susie, in closing, we'll have to, I'm sorry I took the last, I had the last, sort of the last word there, but we'll leave it there for today. You've been watching The Creative Life on Thinkpec Hawaii. And today I've been discussing with Dr. Susie McDaniel how creativity is biography. And mahalo Susie for joining us, mahalo to our viewers. And I'm Phyllis Bleece. We will be back in two weeks with another episode of The Creative Life. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Thinkpec Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.