On the Podcast

Creating Normal is a podcast about the intersection of creativity and mental illness. Hosted by James Prescott and Teresa Colón, who each live with mental illnesses, we get real about the creative process and how mental illness impacts that experience positively (and negatively).

One thing we both know is that mental illness doesn’t have to hold us back from expressing our creative selves. Indeed, sometimes our disorders are critical to our ability to expressing our experiences. And for some of us, our experiences with mental illness drive us to creative genius.

This is a podcast for all creatives, whether you are a professional or a hobbyist. We invite you to join us in the conversation on Twitter and Facebook!

Hi! I’m Teresa and I’m a writer, speaker, and mental health advocate at this point in my life. Expressing myself creatively through language is something I’ve done through most of my life, but I never had a good focus for it. Additionally, pursuing a creative path was always laid out as a starving-artist ideal: nice to see others do, but inappropriate for me. As a result, I spent the first 20 years of my career in various corporate and “acceptable” business pursuits that ultimately left me feeling unfulfilled. My creativity, desperate for an outlet, expressed itself in the form of creating org charts and business processes.

In 2016, after the deepest depression I’ve experienced in my life, I received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, type 2. That diagnosis unlocked an entirely new world for me and set me on a path to express myself for who I reall am: a creative, emotional being. I’ve learned much on my life journey so far and I’m thrilled with where my creative journey is leading me today. Creating Normal, for me, reflects my everyday experiences in creating a new version of normal that accommodates my disorder and the role that creativity plays withins it. I’m excited to have you with James and I as we share our experiences on the podcast.

I also invite you to follow me on social media or read some of my writing at either Wounded Birds Ministry or on Medium.