Painting Peace Leads to Finding a Voice with Jaime Townzen

Creative pursuits helped my guest, Jaime Townzen, to overcome years of grief and caregiving stress to complete and publish her first novel, but it's not all about writing!

In episode 138 of the Creativity Found podcast I chatted with Jaime Townzen, an author and watercolour artist who shares a powerful story of reclaiming her creative voice after years of living for others and navigating profound grief.

The 180-Degree Pivot

As a young adult, Jaime was a "people pleaser" who followed the rules and excelled academically. This path led her to become a pre-med student at UCLA, a choice driven more by the approval of others than her own passions.

Everything changed during a freshman literature course when a professor pulled her aside and noted, "I don’t understand why my roll sheet says that you’re a bio major. You’re clearly not... you love this". This pivotal moment gave Jaime the permission she needed to pursue her own interests, leading her to change majors to focus on writing and art.

Loss and the Creative Hiatus

After college, Jaime utilized her storytelling skills in marketing and advertising for nonprofit organizations. However, life soon brought overwhelming challenges. Between 2014 and 2020, Jaime faced a "heart-wrenching" period where she lost eight loved ones in just six years, including her father, stepfather, and maternal grandmother. The demands of caregiving and the "constant shake of stress" caused her to lose her creative way for a long time.

Finding "Physiological Peace" Through Watercolour

The 2020 lockdown became an unexpected turning point. While "doom scrolling," Jaime found an ad for free watercolour lessons and began painting in her garage to stay occupied – in the company of a new puppy. This practice shifted her mindset toward "process over product" – the idea that the act of creating is more important than the final result. This simple shift allowed her to find a "physiological peace" that nothing else had provided during her years of grief. By 2021, her brain was "firing on all cylinders" again, leading her to enroll in a Master’s program where she began her debut novel.

Writing Absorbed and the Creative Sandbox

Jaime’s novel, Absorbed, is set in the 1990s and follows a young lifeguard who is "drowning in bad decisions".

To build her characters and world, Jaime filled a physical scrapbook with 90s nostalgia, photos, and music that sparked excitement in her – this became the ‘creative sandbox’ she visited to ‘play’ with her characters.

Beyond nostalgia, the book addresses the "blurry lines of consent," a theme that has sparked vital dialogues in book clubs around the importance of hearing a verbal "yes".

Authenticity and Advice

Jaime chose to self-publish her novel to maintain "full authority" over the graphic design and narration, ensuring the final product felt authentic to her vision.

Today, Jaime maintains daily practices of journalling and watercolour to sharpen her descriptive writing and protect her "creative soul".

Her advice to anyone looking to refind their creativity is simple: "Follow the spark". Identify the small things that excite you – a song, a flower, or a memory – and feed that fire.

Listen to episode 138 of Creativity Found to hear more of Jaime’s inspiring journey.