Living a creative life, you were told, was about freedom. You built the thing you wanted. You showed up. You protected the time. And then one morning you woke up and realized you’d turned your dream into an identity you couldn’t afford to question.

It isn’t failure. It’s the particular weight of knowing you should be at your desk, knowing the work is waiting, and still choosing the email, the task, the easier thing. Women Among Monuments names that weight and asks what it would mean to treat your creative life the way you’d treat something you actually believed deserved protecting.

Permission doesn’t arrive. You stop waiting for it. The creative life worth having is the one you build in the ordinary hours, not the ones set aside by history or honoured by monuments made of stone.

Topics: creative life, female genius, imposter syndrome, creative permission, women artists

GUEST: Kasia Van Schaik | @‌kasia_writes

Originally aired on2026-03-04