68. Nathalie Holmes on Breaking Up with Show Business, Training Teen Crisis Counselors, and Why Creativity Is the Best Therapy Tool

This one felt like catching up with a best friend who also happens to have the most fascinating brain you've ever encountered. Nathalie Holmes is a creative-turned-mental-health-professional — actress, comedian, writer, former magician's assistant — who pivoted into crisis work during the pandemic after realizing her own experiences had given her something rare: the tools to hold space for others. She now trains teens to support their peers through a youth-led crisis hotline, brings expressive arts into therapy, and is in the final stretch of grad school pursuing her LMFT and LPCC.

We get into what it really means to break up with the creative career you always thought would define you, the grief of an identity shift, and how to let your dream evolve without losing yourself. We also talk about mask-making as therapy, what teens are actually carrying, the gap between being taught a craft and being taught a career, and why the most healing thing you can do might be a really long walk. Nathalie is warm, hilarious, and deeply wise — this one is a permission slip to honor every version of yourself.

In This Episode:

• Breaking up with show business and the identity grief that follows
• The ocean metaphor: same human condition, different wave
• Mask work, grief postcards, and expressive arts as a therapeutic entry point
• Artfelt Collective — using pop culture and nostalgia to make mental health accessible
• What acting school and grad school both forgot to teach (the business of your craft)
• Being the jazz musician in a music theory class
• When confidence and doubt show up at the same time — and what to do
• All the Natalies in the car: a framework for your inner child and past selves
• "You can't go through a life-changing event without your life changing"
• The fear she's still sitting with: returning to being seen, neurospicy self-discovery, and showing up for her own ideas
• Rapid fire: the messiest thing about Nathalie

✨ Connect with Nathalie ✨

Instagram: @prettyfunnynat

✨Connect with Maddie✨

Explore Maddie's Website | @messywithmaddie