We were lucky to catch up with Gloria Herdt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Gloria, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Not many people know the details of how I went out on medical leave in 2024 and never returned to my high-pressure job as the director of teaching and learning at a real estate education company. A life-altering change that set me on the path of devotion to creativity and expression.

At the end of 2023, I took my third medical leave since being diagnosed with functional neurology disorder in 2020. I was stuck in a health crisis cycle. Always striving for perfection at work, pushing past my body’s limits until the brain fog and speech stutters turned into full-blown seizure episodes. At that point, I was barely able to walk or talk. I’d take another medical leave, but recovery was never easy. I used creativity and expression to support my body, however, fear of job security and not being seen as the ultimate overachiever kept me on edge and I’d rush back to work.

I went out on another leave somewhere between winter and spring. My face was spasming. My limbs shaking. I was stuttering, and I refused to let it get worse this time. I stood unwavering in the hallway of my husband’s office and told him, I can’t go back. I can’t keep putting my body through this. My husband agreed. He was the one who held me when I convulsed uncontrollably. But neither of us knew the path forward since my husband was searching for a new job and my income was supporting us.

I got cold feet. I didn’t email my boss a resignation, instead I tried to set better boundaries before I returned to work.

I didn’t want to lose our dream home—the 1930s Colonial we renovated into something truly beautiful. I didn’t want to leave our quaint neighborhood, acres of trails, our friends, our access to the best healthcare.

But if I couldn’t work, how would we be able to stay?

It was a question I didn’t get to answer because my boss emailed a week later and said he was letting me go. My face burned so hot it hurt. I knew I’d taken a risk in stating my needs and setting hard boundaries around the work load. But I couldn’t let myself go back to the way things had been. I couldn’t wait to set clear boundaries until we had financial stability. My body deserved better. I deserved better.

I filmed myself in a dance of sorrow and sweet release. Little did I know it was my first piece of movement art.

Summer brought warm weather and clarity. I wasn’t going to save our house or our life in Massachusetts by getting another job. I wasn’t going to take the familiar route and return to being a real estate agent (my career before FND). I was going to risk everything I’d built over the last 15 years and devote myself to my body—the physical nature and expressive potential.

My health care team was concerned my symptoms would get much worse from all the change and uncertainty. It freaked me out too. I loved control. Hated change. But I couldn’t stay stuck in that cycle of burnout and health crisis. Creativity was calling me to a richer human experience and I had to answer.

I focused on writing poetry, editing my novel, movement, and meditation. Once I let go of trying to control everything, my whole world changed in less than six months.

My husband landed a great job (however, we still couldn’t stay). We sold the house. I cried (a lot). I said goodbye to everything I knew and loved. I let go of the idea of ever returning to real estate. I shouted YES! to the creative life. We moved to Florida. I grieved for a while. Wrote poems about the pain. Created a movement art practice. Performed at my first spoken word contest. Took an unexpected trip to Las Vegas that sparked a poetry collection called Lover that I published this year. Became the guest poet for an open mic, then the co-host of the event. Fell in love with myself, my body, this creative life.

And while I still experience FND symptoms and flare-ups from time-to-time, I have a different relationship with my body—an unshakeable foundation for limitless creativity, bold confidence, and ecstasy in expression that grew into a coaching business for writers, poets, and creative entrepreneurs.

All because I took a risk (well, maybe a few).

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a writer, body poet, and movement artist, and creative coach. I live at the intersection of science and spirituality, obsessed with the body and expressive range.

My writing journey began with poetry. After my beloved Chocolate Labrador, Teddy Bear passed away in May 2020, I needed a way to express the heart-breaking pain. And so, I opened up a notebook and started writing my very first poems of love and loss.

In March of 2022, I wrote my memoir, The Way You Loved Me—the story of how my dog saved my life and inspired a journey of self-discovery and freedom. Within 51 days, I wrote my first draft and found the voice I never knew I had. I found joy again. I felt more confident and discovered that creative expression was a powerful tool for managing FND seizures and anxiety. Even though the book hasn’t been published yet, I still consider it a huge success. I fell in love with writing and learned to express myself in the most raw and vulnerable way on the page.

Since then, I’ve gone on to write a novel (coming out next year), short stories in anthologies, hundreds of poems (one of which won honorable mention out of thousands at the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition), compete in a spoken word poetry contest, start a Substack, and create countless movement art and poetry videos on Instagram.

My work is deeply rooted in the body and nature. My signature style is a combination of movement art and poetry. I’m devoted to exploring the depths of pain, pleasure, love and loss, and making sweet, sweet art out of as many life experiences as humanly possible.

Fun fact: poetry often wakes up between 1-3am (and I’m alright with that).

My love of movement art came much later. In fact, I didn’t even have a name for it until someone else called it that. I was just moving my body intuitively. Letting the beat of music and emotion speak through me. No choreography. No intention. Just full permission for my body to make the shapes it wanted to make.

The first few movement art pieces I made relied more on my dance background. But I had a break thru after a painful experience where I was called out in a dance class for my movement expression. I got small at first, afraid to be “wrong.” Left the class and never went back. The aftermath was powerful. I went through a PTSD flare up. My anxiety and FND symptoms peaked. I stopped writing. I didn’t know what to do with all the emotions—everything from shame to rage. I listened to an EDM song and the beat made me feel like I was on fire. All of a sudden, my body was moving. No thinking. Just expression. Powerful, intuitive movement. When I sensed my body was finished, I rested my hands on my heart and stayed with my breath. I knew I’d found some kind of magic.

Now, when I want to work through anger, grief, overwhelm, obsession, anxiety, I do it through the body. Movement art is my favorite way to get inspired (goodbye writer’s block!) So many poems have come to me after making a piece of movement art.

My daily movement art practice has given me so much confidence and energy (I don’t even need coffee). I’ve never felt sexier in my body! The people I’ve introduced to movement art, have said it’s one of the coolest experiences. That they’ve never felt such freedom of expression.

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I’m an artist and an entrepreneur, but I’m always going to be an artist first. This is one of the reasons my clients feel so seen in our work together. I get it. I’m making art, running a business, managing my home, my health, and my relationships. I live the creative life with all its pain and pleasure.

One of my clients said it best, you just seem to know what my heart needs to hear. It’s because I’m listening. Not just to what my clients say, but how their body says it and the energy that’s alive in the space (virtual or in person). I’m so in tune with my body that I can feel their body in real time, then offer up what they need in that moment.

If my art is a permission slip for truth, then my coaching is where we unveil that truth. What do you really want right now? How do you want to feel? What’s stopping you? As a client, I support you in getting clear on what you want and how to get it, whether on a personal or project level.

I’m not your average writing or business coach. I bring body awareness and intelligence into every conversation because ultimately this is where your magic lives. We dive deep into your creative work and unleash the real range of your self-expression, so you can make magnetic art that moves people.

Every creative project offers an opportunity for transformation. But it can’t be just about creativity and expression. You have to move that inspired energy into action if you want to actually write that book, publish that collection of poems, get your work noticed, or build a business. It’s even better when that action comes from the heart and yields high-quality progress. This is where my business expertise in operations and project management comes into play. When you work with me, you get a hype girl to cheer you on AND a fire queen who knows how to lead with precision. Sometimes this looks like giving a client a detailed roadmap for finishing their book on time. Other times it’s offering a strategy to write consistently or creating process documents for business launches. It’s always heart-led and body-focused, so there’s less chance of burnout and overwhelm.

You don’t have to sacrifice wellbeing for productivity. You get to be full of creative energy and take action in a way that honors your body. I know. I’ve done it. I’m a recovering perfectionist with a history of dissociation and burnout. But these days I live like a powerhouse pleasure artist, honoring my body every step of the way.

At the start of the year, I decided to self-publish my poetry collection, Lover, a collection on love, longing, and embodied pleasure and launch a coaching business at the same time. I knew the work load would be intense given that I wanted everything done by mid-February. But as committed as I was to my business and my book, I promised myself that I wouldn’t sacrifice my body for a timeline.

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What are you most proud of?

I’m so proud that I honored my body and my creativity. In just 7 weeks, I learned how to build my own Squarespace website and self-publish with Ingram Sparks and Amazon (neither of which I had any experience with). I went deep into branding and marketing copy, and developed skills to balance art and audience.

I’m proud of balancing my devotion to my creative work, my business, and my health— that I can be someone with multiple migraine conditions, Functional Neurology Disorder, Ehler’s Danlos, generalized anxiety disorder, and in PTSD recovery, yet still achieve extraordinary goals.

In February 2026, Lover made it out into the world in hardcover, paperback, and kindle. My coaching business soon followed. It was a time of fire and focus, but I did it all with intent and integrity in my body (no grind, no burnout).

I’m proud of self-publishing Lover for another reason too. I’m proud of saying yes to my fullest expression, letting go of chasing validation from the literary industry. I’m proud that I made an empowered decision, instead of waiting for the promise of a “big break” which may or may not come. I chose to define success on my terms. And the payoff was big. One reader said it inspired her to write again after months of feeling stuck. Another reader said she felt more sensual and open, connected her body in a way she hadn’t before. I’m so glad I didn’t wait to publish. The way these poems have moved readers has been all the proof I needed that my art belongs out in the world right now (and so does yours).

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that there are right decisions and wrong decisions. That if you use logic and reason, weigh the pros and cons appropriately, you’ll make the right decision. If you’re super impulsive or emotional—only caring about yourself—you’ll make the wrong decision.

The truth is there’s no right or wrong decision. Just decisions. Which are completely neutral. We’re the ones who make them right or wrong according to our perception or what others say after we’ve chosen. There’s no possible way for anyone to actually know whether a decision will work out expected (even if we have solid proof that is should). As powerful as the brain is, it doesn’t have access to infinite information. There’s no way to truly know for sure whether I would have been happier staying in my home in Massachusetts and returning to my real estate career or moving to Florida and becoming a published author and creative coach because I can’t experience all three realities simultaneously to compare (at least not with my limited human awareness :)

There is no perfection in decision-making. I’ve had to learn that the hard way, but removing the label of right and wrong gave me more freedom and ease in creating the life I truly desire. Now, love and creativity are at the center of my decision-making and I trust that however it works out, it’s all part of a rich human experience. I’m resilient. You are too. So, make the decision, flow with the momentum, learn, pivot, make another decision, grow with it. And above all else, make art out of the pain and pleasure.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was sitting cross-legged on the guest bed in my pink office. Over a hundred pages of poems strewn across the white comforter. My trusty sidekick, Coors the cattle dog, curled up beside me as I shuffled poems around trying to figure out the order of a collection I planned to self-publish at the start of 2026.

From the outside I looked like a productive artist—rearranging poems, making notes, and tentative decisions. But my vision kept coming in and out of focus. I felt distant from my body, like I was only living in the attic of my head.
I recorded voice memos to document the process and keep myself on track, but I wasn’t making any true progress with the collection. Just sitting down for hours, shuffling papers and making notes, and trying to organize the information in my brain.

At least, I’d finally decided on a name (after about 7 different iterations). Damned. The collection was about rediscovering my voice, my body, and identity after religious trauma and intense societal conditioning. I’d been adding poems for the last 2 years and after the move from Florida to Massachusetts, I decided it was time to stop writing more and publish the damned thing. But every time I talked to someone about the collection, I felt annoyed. Like it was a chore to discuss it and that got me thinking …

If I didn’t want to talk about the poetry collection, then maybe I didn’t want to publish it.

Oh boy did that freak me out! But the truth ringing inside of it was too loud to ignore. Tears pricked my eyes as I neatly stacked my papers to put them away for the night.

This wasn’t the collection I wanted to publish (at least right now).

And it made so much sense …

I’d just said goodbye to my beloved Massachusetts home—Teddy Bear’s house, the last place I’d held that beloved dog in my arms. I was still grieving HARD. Everything felt hard.

I wasn’t comfortable in our new house yet (I actually claimed I hated it—oh the drama!). But without Teddy Bear there, it felt weird. He’d moved with me to every place I’d ever lived before, yet this house wouldn’t be his. My health was precarious and I didn’t have a specialist, which made me more anxious. I missed my friends and my health care team up in Boston. The flat scrubby landscape of Florida didn’t infuse me with the same energy as the rich fertile soil and jagged rock faces of the Middlesex Fells where I used to hike with the dog every day. And here I was trying to publish a collection that also felt hard. Dark. Heavy. Serious. I dreaded having to create more of that on my social media page.

So, I stepped away.

Summer came and I gave myself permission to just be for a while. I wrote new poetry about finding my way around town, the split I felt between Massachusetts and Florida, the grief, the longing, but also the unexpected surprises like the Frangipane tree blooming in our front yard. I found an open mic poetry group that was eager to hear my poetry, which made me eager to write more. My pleasure bloomed under the Florida sun and I savored the moment, recognizing how far I’d come over the last few months.

A surprise Las Vegas trip amplified my desire to sink into sensual pleasure and when I got back to our house, I couldn’t stop writing! I scribbled like a madwoman in my notebook, on my laptop, waking up at three a.m. to feverishly type into my notes app. Every poem was dripping in pleasure, desire, love and I felt such a deep, reverence for my body throughout the entire writing process.

For the first time, I felt a true connection between my body and creativity.

The more I wrote about feeling sexy in my body or desiring my husband with intensity, the more alive I felt. Grief came and went. Pleasure made me more open to experiences, to sensation. Writing about pleasure calmed my nervous system and when it came time to move forward with publishing Lover, it was so much easier. I had greater capacity for navigating challenges and when it came time to share this collection with the world, I was so flipping excited! The marketing ideas came left, right, and center. There was this warm, buzzy energy that stayed with me throughout the creation and publication of Lover—the pure energy of pleasure leading the way. It was all so easy.

If you go to my Instagram page, you can see the influence that Lover still has in my life. The pleasure, the sexy bold desire, the love. It’s all right there. And it’s all because I took a chance and pivoted.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gloriaherdt.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gloria.herdt/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gloria.herdt
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaherdt/
• Other: Substack: https://gloriaherdt.substack.com/

Image Credits

Nico Nelson @lenslovingyou