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Let's Talk: Passion & Purpose with Nicole Thomas: EP 21 - Healing Through Creativity | Jacquese Armstrong | writer, poet, mental health advocate

February 19, 2026·49 min·4 clips

Jacquese Armstrong performs 'Walking Blues Song,' a raw poem about ancestral trauma and searching for reality through a storm of personal anguish.

Community is not just scenery here. Nicole asks what community has meant in Armstrong's life as a writer, and the answer moves through virtual rooms in Jackson, New York, and beyond. Distance opens the circle. Armstrong says those scattered communities bring in perspectives from across the United States, instead of leaving her with one narrow view. The pandemic changed what the room could be. What isolation once kept small became part of a wider world of expressive arts, social emotional art, and shared mental health work. She started from need. Therapists were not reaching what hurt, so she made art because she needed another way to heal. That part still feels a little surprising. What began as something private and organic later connected with formal disciplines, certificates, and advanced study. Nicole keeps the pace gentle. She asks how the certificate process changed Armstrong as a creative person, and the answer stays personal before it turns practical. Armstrong names a difficult season plainly. She was detoxing from medication while taking an online certificate course in 2023 through Arts and Healing Initiative in California. The course gave shape to what she had already been doing by instinct. It also put her around people from across the country who were learning similar tools for expression, wellness, and care. The conversation feels intimate but grounded. Armstrong's work is not treated as performance first. It is a way to educate, inspire, motivate, and survive where other people can see it. Nicole lets the story breathe. By the end, Armstrong has brought the conversation back to joy, love, pain, and the choice not to let suffering tell the whole story.

As heard by us

A grounded conversation about creative expression, healing, and community care.

Jacquees Armstrong comes through as a writer, poet, and mental health advocate, and the conversation stays grounded in how creative work can support healing and wellness in the African-American community.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a candid story about using art as a tool for healing.

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