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This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life

This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life

By: Erica J. Schmidt
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Welcome to This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life! In this podcast, writer Erica J. Schmidt talks to people who may—or may not—have had the chance to transform their lives into spectacular TED talks. Cherished guests include Erica’s beloved grandmother, talented fringe performers, and more fascinating folks from across generations and communities. Discover new takes on creativity, morning routines, art, mental health, eating disorder recovery, perfectionism, and healing, plus a loving advice column segment in almost every episode. Oh, and sometimes there are tiny singsongs!

About the host: Erica J. Schmidt is a writer, translator, storyteller, and recovering gifted child living in Montréal. She is currently querying a novel about that time she fell in love with her eleventh therapist. To learn more, check out Erica’s generously personal essays at ericajschmidt.com/blog

Art Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • Luke Anderson Is One Cool Dude (Deep Thoughts on Grief, Healing, and Accessibility)

    Luke Anderson Is One Cool Dude (Deep Thoughts on Grief, Healing, and Accessibility)
    Aug 7 2025
    It was my honour to welcome Luke Anderson to This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life! Luke Anderson is a speaker, singer, dancer, harmonica player, accessibility advocate, and athlete of the body turned athlete of the spirit. He is relatively famous for co-founding the revolutionary StopGap Foundation, a registered charity that builds bright and beautiful ramps across Toronto and North America. StopGap’s mission is to “bring people together to take practical steps to make spaces more accessible.”I think about this interview every day. Please enjoy! Luke Anderson: “I’ve developed a way of life that recognizes the possibilities of what I have now. And the way that I’ve chosen to recognize my physical situation right now is that, at the time of my injury... I was experiencing a piece of the pie of life. That was my periphery, that was my field of view, a slice of the pie of life. And because of the pie of life. And because of my injury and it helping me broaden my perspective, I’m now able to see a new slice of that pie of life. So, that kind of speaks to what I was saying... to see that moment, that injury I sustained on October 27, 2002 as a gift. It gifted me an opportunity to see life through a new lens.” Links and ResourcesLuke Anderson on Instagram: @lukewanders_onThe StopGap Foundation: stopgap.ca@stopgapfoundationStopGap on HotDocs: Stop Gap MeasureStopGap, The Luke Anderson Story: Watch on YouTubeLuke's Harmonica Teacher Nico TysonErica on Instagram: @erica.j.schmidtErica's website: ericajschmidt.comErica's Interview with Luke Anderson00:00:00 Riveting clips from Luke Anderson’s Interview. Watch and understand immediately why you MUST listen to the end. 00:01:48 This Is Your Strange and Beautiful LifeTheme Song + Luke Anderson’s bio 00:04:55 Language in the world of disabilities. How to empower, connect, remove barriers, and create a sense of possibility? 00:12:13 Living with a high-level spinal cord injury. Luke’s physical experience and need for assistance 00:18:08 Athlete of the body turned athlete of the spirit. An afternoon of mountain biking that would become Luke’s Day of Rebirth 00:28:06 The inner knowing that came over Luke soon after the accident. How this mysterious calm would help him help his friend Johnny save his life. 00:31:48 Early days at the spinal rehab centre. Did Luke every imagine himself beating the odds and find the cure to spinal cord injuries? 00:35:39 Navigating grief after injury. Climbing the ladder of consciousness and growing skills of patience, acceptance, empathy, compassion. Learning to embrace the grief and sadness when it comes up. 00:41:43 Erica asks Luke for wisdom on emotional regulation, among her life’s greatest challenges 00:49:56 How to find meaning and purpose in the face of grief and loss.00:54:52 Friendships and dating when you have a disability. On being a serial online dater, navigating relationships new and old, and transcending rom-com stereotypes. 01:02:02 Dating with a disability continued. Whether to disclose your disability on the apps. People with specific preferences for dating people with disability. Feedback and insight from Luke’s past partners. 01:13:18 Meditation to feel more. And invigorating a fading life force. 01:20:16 Everything StopGap. Bulding ramps and perspective. Transforming despair and frustration into creativity: How the StopGap Foundation was born 01:30:33 Luke Anderson’s first spectacular TED TALK, stage fright, and what's on for Luke's TED talk 2.0 01:38:46 Record-breaking harmonica playing on This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life. Luke rewrites the theme song and it’s awesome. 01:43:29 Final credits and wrap-up.THANK YOU SO MUCH, LUKE ANDERSON! THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR LISTENING! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!And if you enjoyed this episode, you might also like: No Surrender with Hollis Peirce,How to Be a Writer with Kyle Stevenson, and Stories from L'Arche with Jimmy and IsabelleTo support this independent podcast, please consider purchasing a Lil and Bud dog greeting card at ericajschmidt.com/merch. You can also make a one-time donation here at The Donate Button.Feel free to get in touch for other sponsorship possibilities. My infinite thanks for all of this.More infinite thanks, as always, to Taes Leavitt (darling big sister, Big Heart Journey), Sherwin Tjia (technical and creative advisor, Sherwin’s Quirky Events,Episode 22) and my dearly departed aunt Eileen Gun, whose generous gift helped to fund my new podcast equipment. Stay tuned for more episodes extra soon. Don’t forget to followThis Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life on your favourite podcast platform. And if you enjoyed the episode, I would be immensely grateful if you could share it with a friend and/or leave a kind and enthusiastic rating and review.
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    1 hr and 45 mins
  • How to Be a Writer with Kyle Stevenson

    How to Be a Writer with Kyle Stevenson
    Jun 26 2025
    Today my guest is my super cool, ultra fit, deeply compassionate and hilarious friend and creative genius Kyle Stevenson. I met Kyle during my year one playwriting class in which he played the leading man, The Vegan Life Coach in the staged reading of my debut play, She Is Not Catholic, She Is Vegetarian. And he nailed it. For years, Kyle and I ate lentils and kale and piles of impossibly healthy food at The People’s Potato. Over multiple free lunches we discussed all our favourite topics, namely sex, anxiety, creativity, yoga cults, butt exercises, therapy, and how to make it as a writer. When we grew up, we would often convene in various playgrounds in Toronto to get caught up on the latest in Gay Husbands, deadlifting regimes, and what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives. Kyle is famous for founding the wildly successful online pandemic workout class, Cyber-Fit, also known as Push-up Class. He has been a devoted scriptwriter for decades and for years, he has been my dream guest. This episode is my longest one yet but totally worth it! You’ll be a different person at the end than you were at the beginning. That’s what happened to me and Kyle!Also, there’s a blog version of the listener question from Working to Live While My Boyfriend Works to the Point of Self-Destruction.Kyle says that blogs are making a comeback, so please check it out. You can read it here! Infinite thanks!Chapters(Full shownotes at www.ericajschmidt.com/podcast/how-to-be-a-writer-with-kyle-stevenson)(00:00:00) Intro + theme song + Kyle’s bio(00:02:36) How Kyle and Erica were anointed with the idea that we would transform our exquisite gifts and innate potential into a spectacular TED talk and the world would be totally delighted about it. (00:04:50) “Absolutely from a young age I was like, why would you not achieve your wild dreams and be recognized and lauded by the world by just doing super great things that everyone agrees is very very impressive. Nothing else made sense to me.”(Kyle thinks it is more embarrassing to have self-identified as this person of promise as opposed to Erica whose life great mythology was forever altered when she skipped grade two.)(00:07:48) Erica’s thoughts on Special Person Syndrome: “I always just thought that I was supposed to get the main part… like in the grade one Halloween concert, I was incensed if I didn’t get to be the head pumpkin. (00:08:55) Kyle’s first literary influence: Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is An Alien (grade four)“So then you read a lot. And then, just whatever you’re doing, you’re kind of like, well, what if I did that.” (00:10:00) How it was easier to be a star when we lived in villages of 75 humans. Kyle on finding your way to excel in a small group: “By middle school, my goal for an English essay was not an A, but I considered it a failure if our teacher didn’t use my essay as an example for the other class.”Erica: “Pressure!”(00:13:17) Why is it so hard to enjoy the things you are good at for their own sake?(00:14:51) Did Kyle start writing seriously in grade seven?Kyle: “I would dispute the term serious… The desire to write came pretty early. Like I started a lot of journals in elementary school… But I don’t know if that was about, oh I love to put the words down, at the time I think it was more, like my life is so big and my emotions are so powerful. And it’s more a way to document than to write a great lit novel. Like I’ve got to keep track of the incredible, the ins and outs of my life. Like this record will be useful one day. Which is so embarrassing! But I know I’m not alone, I know we’re just out there being narcissists…”(00:18:43) On being a loveable person with a big fan club. What is the role of people pleasing and conflict aversion in all this? Where is the model for an ability to make friends as integral to an important life?(00:25:00) Kyle’s early visions of creative success and what it means to have an important life“I imagined success to be an end to the wondering of like, do I matter, am I important. Maybe more than anything else, you’re like, I hope everyone agrees that I’m important and then I’ll have to stop wondering myself. And when that clicks into whatever you do, that’s when things get way less fun.”“At the end of your life, I can’t imagine you’ll wish, I wish I’d spent more time wondering if I mattered… I could have been doing something way more memorable… that mattered or not. I could have had one more ice cream cone, or went down the slide one more time. But of course the human mind, it cares not for what will matter later. It’s very pressed for what matters right now.”(00:26:52) Kyle’s educational path from linguistics and Old English to Creative Writing at Concordia University. He decides that writing is his dream and proceeds to move into a house with ten people, party hard, and work on his short stories. “I’ve never been good at ...
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    Less than 1 minute
  • True Stories to Save the World With Nisha Coleman

    True Stories to Save the World With Nisha Coleman
    Jun 12 2025
    An interview with Nisha Coleman—I have only been dreaming of this since I started the podcast. At long last, we welcome Nisha to This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life. Nisha is a superstar in the Montreal artist and storytelling community. We all know and love her as an accomplished author, actor, translator, storyteller, and master of the one-woman show.It all started on a swamp in rural Ontario. Born to hippie parents with minimal TV, Nisha learned how to make her own stories and games. Though she was a bashful child, Nisha grew up to discover the power of telling the truth.Secret teenage journals transformed into the magnificent storytelling performances she brings us today.As wars rage on our melting planet, it’s a hard time for sensitive creative souls. Nisha opens up about her struggles with mental health, her grief for our suffering earth, the genocide in Palestine, and the redemption she finds in art, learning, and community. But despite the heavy topics, our conversation is full of giggles and gentle wisdom. Listen to the end for Nisha’s coveted advice on learning a language, reigniting the creative spark, plus a pile of inspiring routines that sometimes involve vacuuming.Thank you so much, Nisha. This was as wonderful as I imagined.CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of mental health struggles, death fantasies, and suicidal ideation.Full shownotes at ericajschmidt.com/podcast/true-stories-to-save-the-world-with-nisha-colemanLinks and ResourcesFollow Nisha on Instagram @nishacolemanand check out her website at nishacoleman.com.Buy Nisha Coleman’s children’s book, Dear Humans: A Letter from the AnimalsNisha’s teenage journals on Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids: “Puberty has taken her!”Follow Erica on Facebook or Instagram or check out her website at ericajschmidt.com. You can also make her day by sending her a listener question to any of these places.If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy Chill Creative Flow With Jeff Gandell, Crochet for Peace with Montréal’s Most Adorable and Edgy Comedian (and Winner of Best Baby Face), Shosho Abotouk, and Painting Boundaries with Bean Nunnerley. Lydia Davis Daily Journalling Practice: Every day write down seven things you noticed, seven things you did, one thing you heard, plus a little doodle. Listener Question from Writer’s Block Survivor Actually Stuck This TimeDear Nisha and Erica,For the past six months, I’ve been in the worst creative rut of my life, and I don’t know how to get out of it. Back in the fall, I released my first album, but since then I’ve only managed to finish one song — maybe six minutes of music total — even though I’ve been working almost every day. I usually write slow, but this has been really discouraging.Not long after I launched my album, I lost a close friend, and I guess I kind of fell into a depression. While I’ve written through hard times before, this time it feels different. I keep generating little ideas, but they all seem terrible, and now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve just lost the spark. I was hoping to release another album by next year, but now I’m doubting whether I’ll ever get there, or if music composition is just over for me.Have you ever gone through a stretch like this, where the well just feels empty? If so, what helped you find your way back?Love, Writer’s Block Survivor Actually Stuck This Time.Thank you so much for listening! To support this independent podcast, please consider purchasing a Lil and Bud dog greeting card at ericajschmidt.com/merch. You can also make a one-time donation here at The Donate Button.Feel free to get in touch for other sponsorship possibilities. My infinite thanks for all of this.More infinite thanks, as always, to Taes Leavitt (darling big sister, Big Heart Journey), Sherwin Tjia (technical and creative advisor, Sherwin’s Quirky Events,Episode 22) and my dearly departed aunt Eileen Gun, whose generous gift helped to fund my new podcast equipment. And infinite thanks to you, my dear listeners! Stay tuned for more episodes extra soon. Don’t forget to followThis Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life on your favourite podcast platform. And if you enjoyed the episode, I would be immensely grateful if you could share it with a friend and/or leave a kind and enthusiastic rating and review.
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    1 hr and 22 mins
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