Somewhere along the way, summer stopped being a season and started being a performance. There's pressure to travel, to be outside, to make memories, to say yes to every invitation and somehow have the best summer ever.

Emma Sullivan Ebley joins me for the third installment of our seasonal series on creative rituals to talk about what nature can teach us about doing summer differently. We get into why the season invites joy, play, and savoring instead of constant striving, how creativity helps keep us present, and why something as simple as drawing a tomato or chasing the memory of an ice cream truck might reconnect us with parts of ourselves that got left behind somewhere along the way.

Topics Covered:

• Why summer has "incredible PR" and how that quietly turns a season of rest into a performance.
• What nature's slow, staggered ripening has to teach about pacing instead of chasing the perfect summer.
• The difference between creative fire that energizes and creative fire that burns out.
• How play expands what the nervous system can actually hold, and why that doesn't stop mattering after childhood.
• A simple timed drawing practice for slowing down and really tasting what's in front of us.
• Why giving ourselves permission to play without making anything can feel so uncomfortable, and why that discomfort is normal.
• What the pattern across all three seasons of this series reveals about creativity as a companion, not a project.

Connect with Emma!
Grab the summer workbook (Summer Bounty: A Guided Art Journey for Nourishing Delight) https://emmasullivan.art/shop
Hop on my newsletter: https://emmasullivan.art/newsletter

Website: http://www.emmasullivan.art/
Expressive arts workbooks: https://emmasullivan.art/shop
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmasullivanart/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-sullivan-uebele/

______________________
Contact French Kissing Life Podcast

• DM us at @shawnnarstiver on Instagram or Facebook
• Connect with Shawnna Stiver on LinkedIn
• Email us at frenchkissinglifepodcast@gmail.com

Until next time, muah!

______________________

French Kissing Life is sponsored by Ampersand Copy and Content. Ready to convert browsers into buyers? If you want to master your messaging, stand out in a saturated market and become a crushed-on, go-to brand, contact us today!

Website: https://ampersandcopyandcontent.com/
Email: shawnna@ampersandcopyandcontent.com

Picture handing a kid a phone with a cord attached and watching pure confusion take over: turning it over, unsure which end even goes where, treating it like it just beamed in from another planet. That's not a hypothetical. It's happening in kitchens across the country right now, as parents start reintroducing landlines to kids who have never once seen one.

This month I'm loving that trend, and the surprisingly big movement behind it. It started with a sidewalk conversation outside a Seattle school and has since turned into an actual company, a hundred-family pod in Denver, and a meeting in Alabama that was supposed to draw a dozen people and drew sixty. I get into how it all started, why it's spreading so fast, and what it says about the rest of us too, because by the end, this stops being a story about kids at all.

Topics Covered:

• The Seattle sidewalk conversation that turned into a company building retro landline phones for kids
• The dumb phone movement spreading right alongside it, from a hundred family pod in Denver to 170 communities across the country
• The screen time numbers that make this whole trend impossible to ignore
• Why millennials have nicknamed themselves Generation Mute
• The surprising research on why a phone call feels so much better than expected, and what it actually does in the body
• What handwriting does for the brain that typing never will
• Four small challenges for anyone who wants a little more of this energy in real life

Mentioned in this episode:

Tin Can Phone: https://tincan.kids

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/well-hello-from-landlines-to-dumb-phones-these-startups-are-dialing-up-new-options-for-kids/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/parents-opt-kids-school-laptops-ask-pen-paper-rcna257158

CDC/NCHS Data Brief No. 513 (screen time, ages 12–17, anxiety/depression stats): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db513.htm

American Heart Association newsroom, on the JAHA study (screen time & cardiometabolic risk): https://newsroom.heart.org/news/excessive-screen-time-among-youth-may-pose-heart-health-risks

U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory (2023), official PDF: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

NPR coverage of the Surgeon General's Advisory (dementia risk, 15–24 age group's 70% drop in in-person time): https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementia-surgeon-general

Harvard Graduate School of Education / Making Caring Common: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it

Cigna — "Loneliness in America 2025" newsroom: https://newsroom.thecignagroup.com/loneliness-in-america

______________________
Contact French Kissing Life Podcast

• DM us at @shawnnarstiver on Instagram or Facebook
• Connect with Shawnna Stiver on LinkedIn
• Email us at frenchkissinglifepodcast@gmail.com

Until next time, muah!

______________________

French Kissing Life is sponsored by Ampersand Copy and Content. Ready to convert browsers into buyers? If you want to master your messaging, stand out in a saturated market and become a crushed-on, go-to brand, contact us today!

Website: https://ampersandcopyandcontent.com/
Email: shawnna@ampersandcopyandcontent.com

Picture this. You're thirty seconds into the talk you've been building toward for months, and your mind goes completely blank. You've forgotten your own story, live, on stage.

That's exactly what happened to today's guest, Ashley Bryant, founder of AB Strategy, where she helps mission-driven brands trade vague messaging for clear communication that builds trust and inspires action. But this conversation isn't about what Ashley writes for her clients. It's about the story she had to tell herself, and the imposter syndrome, endless rewrites, and uncomfortable realities she ran into once the person she was writing for was her.

Her talk, Don't Bitch Out, became more than a title. It became a philosophy for choosing courage over comfort, and we get into what that actually looked like, betting on herself before she felt ready, the identity shifts that come with refusing to play small, and why the most meaningful transformations often begin long before you ever step on a stage.

Topics Covered:

• Why saying yes to a TEDx felt like calling her own bluff.
• The moment her mind went blank in the middle of her own story.
• What it's like writing your own message when you built a career writing everyone else's.
• The identity shift that comes with refusing to shrink yourself down.
• What bravery actually felt like backstage, before, during, and after.
• Why she wrote a full thriller in seven days without meaning to.
• The everyday moments where bitching out shows up long after the stage lights go dark.

Connect with Ashley!
Website: https://www.ashleybryantstrategy.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleymbryant
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatsashleybryant
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thatsashleybryant
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thatsashleybryant

______________________
Contact French Kissing Life Podcast

• DM us at @shawnnarstiver on Instagram or Facebook
• Connect with Shawnna Stiver on LinkedIn
• Email us at frenchkissinglifepodcast@gmail.com

Until next time, muah!

______________________

French Kissing Life is sponsored by Ampersand Copy and Content. Ready to convert browsers into buyers? If you want to master your messaging, stand out in a saturated market and become a crushed-on, go-to brand, contact us today!

Website: https://ampersandcopyandcontent.com/
Email: shawnna@ampersandcopyandcontent.com