We were lucky to catch up with Kristina Ambrosia recently and have shared our conversation below.
Kristina , appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Currently, I am working on my first book. I can’t believe how long and hard the process is, and also how exhilarating and healing.
I’ve always been an ardent lover of words. Of the arts. Of people. Of places. Of ideas.
And because I find myself so passionate about so many things completing a project that demands this level of long-term commitment and patience has not been easy for me.
But I am more determined now than ever to finish the manuscript.
I’m nearly halfway done with the first draft and am working on polishing up my proposal to shop for an agent. (I thought my proposal was ready months ago – it wasn’t!)
Few things feel better than actualizing a dream when you are wide awake.
Kristina , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Sometimes I close my eyes really tight and just hope for the best when pulling into a tight parking spot. I fall in love too quickly and too often. I use the eek emoji with the teeth a LOT. I swing wildly between the worlds of daydreams and lifemares.
When I lost my job, my marriage, and my home, I found myself approaching forty as a single mother with little know-how and a whole lot of self-limiting beliefs. I had to learn about letting go – of the life I thought I would have, the societal prescriptions of who I was supposed to be, and the constant need to control everything.
And so let go I did – long enough to listen to my longings, my intuition, and my Muse. And then, when I felt ready – sustained enough to start the journey once again – and vowing to adopt a spirit of gleeful abandon along the way, I rebuilt my life in a way that prioritized my creativity, my craft, and my own unique call to adventure.
I was (still am in many ways) a bona fide hot mess and yet I’ve managed to expand in ways I didn’t even have language for just a few years ago.
I think it is my dharma to share.
And so I do, by offering various workshops, retreats, trainings, and classes that help people find their way back to their natural creative states. I have a knack for introducing new people into a scene, and a talent for integrating ideas and actions to deepen relationships with self, others, and the world at large. Basically, I AM the rose-colored glasses.
Middle-aged, divorced, tarot-loving, fire-walking author, innovator, and solopreneur. That’s me! I’m obsessed with how words are arranged to invoke emotion, the way images are composed on a canvas, and how the avant-garde is brought to life by all manner of brilliant artists.
My talent resides in my ability to mix mediums and mash-up ideas to spearhead new projects and birth creative endeavors such as the book I’m writing that pulls from the teaching and wellness work I’ve been doing for years.
I want everybody to embody their story as the masterwork it is and to see themselves as the hero/heroine that they are so they can love better, forgive easier, and recognize that endings are never definitive and are far more than just happy.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Two books that I revisit when I need a creative nudge or gentle reminder of why I bother at any of it – life, art, love – are Jen Sincero’s You Are a Bad Ass and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic.
Sincero gives our ‘small selves’ a “quit your whining,” no-nonsense, up by your bootstraps talking to.
She becomes that outspoken girlfriend who refuses to allow you to wallow any longer in sweatpants, a bowl of Snickers, and self-pity.
She reminds us “You can’t become a Badass with wishful thinking. You won’t become a Badass by hoping one day a Badass mentor shows up at your door. You’re not going to become a Badass until you decide for yourself that THAT is who you want to be—and you work your Badass ass off to make it a reality.”
Gilbert is just as funny as Sincero, but her delivery is softer as she coaxes us out of fear and into creation. While Sincero dumps the bowl of Snickers in the trash, Gilbert gently takes it from our hands. When creative work and life go astray she offers this wisdom, “Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t rage at the gods above. All that is nothing but distraction, and the last thing you need is further distraction. Grieve if you must, but grieve efficiently.” She reminds us that it is a gift, after all, to court creativity saying,”What you produce is not necessarily always sacred…just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spent working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
In spite of what feels like some creative success, I still have a really really hard time not taking rejection personally. Every nonacceptance of my writing, every thanks but no thanks response to a workshop pitch, every uninterested glance or pursed lip in the audience at an open mic makes me feel awful – like crying actually.
However, a blog written by artist Alexandra Jamieson has helped me ‘game’ my relationship with rejection leaving me feeling a lot less sad as of late.
A few years ago Jamieson made it her goal to get rejected by 50 art galleries. She said, “I figured if I set out to get rejected a lot, which was sure to happen more often than not, I wouldn’t lose heart every time I got a ‘thank you, but’ rejection email.” What a perfect reframe of failure! To reward yourself for it, and thus by design continue to put your most scared self out there. Because you can’t, after all, get rejected if you don’t try. Genius backdoor trickery!
Like Jamieson, I’ve decided to keep an Excel sheet of all the places where I expect to come up short, picking five things a month to try to fail at.
In Month 1, I failed at all five! In Month 3, I failed at only one! Eight months in and I’m still failing more than I’m succeeding but the wins that I HAVE scored have been HUGE and I would have never had the chance to enjoy them had I quit because of all the other losses.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kristinaambrosia.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/k_ambrosia5/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristina.ambrosia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-ambrosia-conn-6a842629/
Image Credits
@dawned_images @ryanbassettphoto