July 1, 2025 • 12 mins
In her debut episode, new host Ravina Wadhwani gets real about a struggle many creatives face: standing in our own way. With warmth and vulnerability, she reflects on impostor syndrome, self-sabotage, and the pressure to succeed even when we’ve already achieved so much. This episode is a compassionate reminder that your magic deserves room to breathe, and you are not alone in this work.
Visit thepoetrylab.com to find the Show Notes for this episode. The Poetry Lab Podcast is produced by Lori Walker and Danielle Mitchell. Hosted by Danielle Mitchell and Lori Walker, with special guest hosts bridgette bianca, Leonora Simonovis and Ravina Wadhwani.
Theme song: "Simply Upbeat" by Christian Telford, Kenneth Edward Belcher, and Saki Furuya.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(00:00):
Get comfortable, y'all, because I'm about to
get real vulnerable.
I'm here to talk about a topic that's
honestly very near and dear to my heart,
and maybe yours too.
And that is the topic of standing in our
own way as creatives or humans,
otherwise known as
being our own worst enemy.
(00:22):
And to be quite frank, I really feel like
we could just magically zap this feeling
away, but alas, here we are.
accolades and endeavors later still being
the roadblock to our own paths despite our
accomplishments.
See you, my dear friend and listener,
have zero time for that.
You are too magical to let this virus
(00:43):
plague you.
So welcome to the Poetry Lab Podcast.
This episode, we'll talk about this very
common thing that artists and non-artists
alike indulge in often,
and how we can work on this whole being
your own worst enemy thing for good,
not just for ourselves, but for greater
humanity.
(01:05):
Welcome to the Poetry Lab Podcast.
The Poetry Lab started 11 years ago to help
dedicated, self-taught, and formally
trained writers find a place in their
community to write,
read,
learn,
(01:25):
and collaborate.
We help writers tap into their craft with
radical self-compassion,
unlike anything you've ever seen in a
creative writing classroom before.
If you're a creative person trying to
establish a writing practice in the real world,
This podcast is designed to help you carve
out the time,
(01:46):
the courage,
and the inspiration to keep riding your new shit.
Are you ready, poet?
Let's get into it.
Hey, hey, y'all.
I'm Raveena Wadhwani.
a spoken word poet,
(02:06):
published author, licensed therapist, and
founder of
Writing as Healing Los Angeles.
As a South Asian writer from the U.S.
Virgin Islands, I grew up with no one that
was as weird and artsy as I am.
Or at least I didn't find them.
Yeah, I was that kid, volunteering for
community service gigs,
(02:27):
ushering in folks to sit at the musical
theater performances,
enjoying the behind the scenes of stage and
production,
and writing poems in locked diaries instead
of parting with friends or being social
with the jocks and cheerleaders. See,
I thought I was just too weird and
sensitive and a bit too in my head to ever
(02:47):
fit around the cool kids.
But no one was really ever saying that to
my face.
I was undoubtedly giving in to this
narrative that girls like me
weren't meant to be the trendy ones.
That perhaps I was too round, too brown,
too quiet, too strange, and
way too much of A cultural mix to relate to
anyone.
(03:08):
So,
I isolated myself in my room often,
wrote, painted, drew, spilled out journal
entries that only made sense to me. I
was artsy in every way, shape, and form.
I buried myself in books,
I kept to myself and my family, and that
was pretty much it. Now,
I don't want to pull the full blame on my
(03:30):
wee little self. See,
I'm a first generation kiddo who paved her
own way because I figured out what I didn't
want to do
to figure out what I did.
I was told what not to do before I was told
what to do,
and then I was told to fly high and pursue
your dreams. So
of course the world felt more limited and
confusing than it did feel open range.
(03:53):
But
I really just think little Rav
Maybe I needed someone to tell her that
being artsy and unique and weird was kind of cool
and that it could get you somewhere
and that there was this outlet
that could really help all along.
That having
multiple interests was a flex and it didn't
mean that I was indecisive.
(04:14):
Maybe I just didn't have access to those
outlets.
I wish I knew that not fitting into a box
was also acceptable, which brings me to
this point.
Representation is everything.
now that I'm older, with
way too many gray hairs on my head to
fathom for my ripe age of 31,
(04:34):
I see so many of us.
Poets, writers, therapists like me, even
plenty of brown artists.
But now,
my battle is trying to figure out
how to be me and hone in on my unique voice
and confidence,
which is what I feel the world and myself
is asking of me.
(04:55):
When I moved to the East Coast and then the
West Coast,
I gathered with me poems along the way that
I authored.
And I decided to expand the reach of my voice.
I fell in love with connecting through open
mics and the poetry community.
I found myself dealing with a very common
enemy, though--
imposter syndrome.
(05:15):
Finally, this thing I craved my whole life,
a place of acceptance, a space to feel
included,
an outlet for my words,
being inclusive of all my multitudes,
access to diverse communities,
I felt like I still had an anxiety landmine
in my heart and my mind.
Wait a minute, Ravina, you're saying that
(05:36):
you didn't take advantage of this thing or
this space that you wanted after not
finding it for your whole life?
Absolutely.
See,
sometimes
being in the right place feels so
unfamiliar, like a too good to be true kind
of thing.
When my organization, Writing is Healing,
started taking off, when I got licensed as
(05:57):
a therapist,
when I got inducted into Long Beach.
should never speak to perform all over the world,
it was imposter syndrome that was on my
shoulder.
And I can't tell you how many times that
imposter syndrome
made best friends with my self-doubt.
When I got my first book published,
it was imposter syndrome that was up at all
(06:17):
hours, asking me to cuddle with it and
telling me
that this was unreal.
And that's where I find that we often get
in our own way.
by allowing imposter syndrome to continue
to drive in the front seat.
There's this infamous quote to kind of sum
this all up that you may or may not have
heard by Marianne Williamson, and she says,
(06:39):
our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful
beyond measure.
It is our light,
not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous,
talented, or fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?
(07:01):
End quote.
And folks,
this became my inner work
to actually listen to my loved ones, my
community. I mean,
who was I to immediately refute their words
when they took their time out of their day
to love and compliment on my craft
as if it was their own?
Who was I to deny that people really wanted
(07:21):
to collaborate and wanted to make magic
happen?
It was through those around me that I saw a
mirror in myself.
And slowly but surely, month after month,
feature after feature, year
after year,
I realized that that person inside of me,
little Ravina,
deserved this because she wanted it.
(07:43):
After all,
we all carry within us our younger selves
just asking to be loved and heard.
So
what do we do with all of this, right?
I get it.
We don't celebrate ourselves enough, but
where do we go from there?
My challenge to you
is to visualize that version of yourself
(08:03):
that is currently standing in the road of
your own life.
This is that critical voice,
that stubborn part of ourselves that we
develop that we think is going to motivate
us to work harder
and to get more achievements under our belt.
But then that criticism can turn so easily
into self-judgment. And we,
I have no place for that, my friends.
(08:25):
Instead, I ask that you extend that
visualization exercise.
And now imagine your younger you,
exactly who they are. I mean,
you can pull out childhood photos, engage
with them,
stamp that in your memory, because they're
still in you, I promise.
Instead of seeing yourself standing in your
own way,
(08:45):
I invite you to visualize your younger self
standing hand in hand with you
but also in the middle of your current self
and the version of you that you're stepping into.
Walk with you, not against you.
You were given a gift of art, empathy,
humanity, whatever it may be, for a reason.
(09:06):
If no one's told you,
you deserve more than the self-sabotage.
You are more than your habits, your
procrastination.
You are more than the detrimental impact of
perfectionism.
and that strive to always work to be
better.
Give yourself a little pat on the back.
I promise you,
it's probably what little you would have
(09:28):
wanted.
And for my writers out there,
write like no one is watching, not even
your imposter syndrome.
For further inspiration, I definitely
suggest writing to a specific prompt or a
set of prompts
that encourages and celebrates your
authenticity.
(09:49):
In a lot of writing workshops, it's common
to hear the prompt, I am.
But what if you defined yourself by the
things you are not?
Thus,
the prompt might be on themes of shedding
or a completion of this phrase,
I am not.
For that is our goal when we step into our
authentic selves.
(10:09):
It's this shedding, this undoing, this
unlearning, this harvesting of your
authentic self that deserves time and
intention through letting go.
I also recognize that for a lot of us,
being our worst enemy can be a frequent
occurrence, especially when we are in
environments or circles
where competition is louder than
(10:30):
celebration.
It's a hard road to let go of that.
But I personally love the phrase, go where
you are celebrated.
And if not, my friends,
at least
the courage to walk away from where you are
not celebrated.
The greater good depends on artists and
(10:50):
humans with empathy.
It depends on kindness.
It depends on that embrace of self. And so
as we naturally gravitate towards
celebrating and uplifting others easier
than we do with ourselves,
starting today,
I invite you to change that narrative and
spice it up.
You are more than your personified
roadblock.
Your heart and voice are actually the real
(11:12):
mediums and the lights on that path
that will allow you to connect to others.
to flourish in your own light
and inspire others
to do the same.
With that being said, my friends,
I'm Ravina and I'm signing off,
but you will hear us back again on the
Poetry Lab podcast.
(11:33):
You can find me at @ravina.340, that's
spelled
R-A-V-I-N-A.340,
Or you can also find me at
writingashealing.la.
For your next upcoming workshop or
offering,
feel free to stay connected.
I'd love to see you
(11:54):
beyond this wavelength.
(00:00):
Get comfortable, y'all, because I'm about to
get real vulnerable.
I'm here to talk about a topic that's
honestly very near and dear to my heart,
and maybe yours too.
And that is the topic of standing in our
own way as creatives or humans,
otherwise known as
being our own worst enemy.
(00:22):
And to be quite frank, I really feel like
we could just magically zap this feeling
away, but alas, here we are.
accolades and endeavors later still being
the roadblock to our own paths despite our
accomplishments.
See you, my dear friend and listener,
have zero time for that.
You are too magical to let this virus
(00:43):
plague you.
So welcome to the Poetry Lab Podcast.
This episode, we'll talk about this very
common thing that artists and non-artists
alike indulge in often,
and how we can work on this whole being
your own worst enemy thing for good,
not just for ourselves, but for greater
humanity.
(01:05):
Welcome to the Poetry Lab Podcast.
The Poetry Lab started 11 years ago to help
dedicated, self-taught, and formally
trained writers find a place in their
community to write,
read,
learn,
(01:25):
and collaborate.
We help writers tap into their craft with
radical self-compassion,
unlike anything you've ever seen in a
creative writing classroom before.
If you're a creative person trying to
establish a writing practice in the real world,
This podcast is designed to help you carve
out the time,
(01:46):
the courage,
and the inspiration to keep riding your new shit.
Are you ready, poet?
Let's get into it.
Hey, hey, y'all.
I'm Raveena Wadhwani.
a spoken word poet,
(02:06):
published author, licensed therapist, and
founder of
Writing as Healing Los Angeles.
As a South Asian writer from the U.S.
Virgin Islands, I grew up with no one that
was as weird and artsy as I am.
Or at least I didn't find them.
Yeah, I was that kid, volunteering for
community service gigs,
(02:27):
ushering in folks to sit at the musical
theater performances,
enjoying the behind the scenes of stage and
production,
and writing poems in locked diaries instead
of parting with friends or being social
with the jocks and cheerleaders. See,
I thought I was just too weird and
sensitive and a bit too in my head to ever
(02:47):
fit around the cool kids.
But no one was really ever saying that to
my face.
I was undoubtedly giving in to this
narrative that girls like me
weren't meant to be the trendy ones.
That perhaps I was too round, too brown,
too quiet, too strange, and
way too much of A cultural mix to relate to
anyone.
(03:08):
So,
I isolated myself in my room often,
wrote, painted, drew, spilled out journal
entries that only made sense to me. I
was artsy in every way, shape, and form.
I buried myself in books,
I kept to myself and my family, and that
was pretty much it. Now,
I don't want to pull the full blame on my
(03:30):
wee little self. See,
I'm a first generation kiddo who paved her
own way because I figured out what I didn't
want to do
to figure out what I did.
I was told what not to do before I was told
what to do,
and then I was told to fly high and pursue
your dreams. So
of course the world felt more limited and
confusing than it did feel open range.
(03:53):
But
I really just think little Rav
Maybe I needed someone to tell her that
being artsy and unique and weird was kind of cool
and that it could get you somewhere
and that there was this outlet
that could really help all along.
That having
multiple interests was a flex and it didn't
mean that I was indecisive.
(04:14):
Maybe I just didn't have access to those
outlets.
I wish I knew that not fitting into a box
was also acceptable, which brings me to
this point.
Representation is everything.
now that I'm older, with
way too many gray hairs on my head to
fathom for my ripe age of 31,
(04:34):
I see so many of us.
Poets, writers, therapists like me, even
plenty of brown artists.
But now,
my battle is trying to figure out
how to be me and hone in on my unique voice
and confidence,
which is what I feel the world and myself
is asking of me.
(04:55):
When I moved to the East Coast and then the
West Coast,
I gathered with me poems along the way that
I authored.
And I decided to expand the reach of my voice.
I fell in love with connecting through open
mics and the poetry community.
I found myself dealing with a very common
enemy, though--
imposter syndrome.
(05:15):
Finally, this thing I craved my whole life,
a place of acceptance, a space to feel
included,
an outlet for my words,
being inclusive of all my multitudes,
access to diverse communities,
I felt like I still had an anxiety landmine
in my heart and my mind.
Wait a minute, Ravina, you're saying that
(05:36):
you didn't take advantage of this thing or
this space that you wanted after not
finding it for your whole life?
Absolutely.
See,
sometimes
being in the right place feels so
unfamiliar, like a too good to be true kind
of thing.
When my organization, Writing is Healing,
started taking off, when I got licensed as
(05:57):
a therapist,
when I got inducted into Long Beach.
should never speak to perform all over the world,
it was imposter syndrome that was on my
shoulder.
And I can't tell you how many times that
imposter syndrome
made best friends with my self-doubt.
When I got my first book published,
it was imposter syndrome that was up at all
(06:17):
hours, asking me to cuddle with it and
telling me
that this was unreal.
And that's where I find that we often get
in our own way.
by allowing imposter syndrome to continue
to drive in the front seat.
There's this infamous quote to kind of sum
this all up that you may or may not have
heard by Marianne Williamson, and she says,
(06:39):
our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful
beyond measure.
It is our light,
not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous,
talented, or fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?
(07:01):
End quote.
And folks,
this became my inner work
to actually listen to my loved ones, my
community. I mean,
who was I to immediately refute their words
when they took their time out of their day
to love and compliment on my craft
as if it was their own?
Who was I to deny that people really wanted
(07:21):
to collaborate and wanted to make magic
happen?
It was through those around me that I saw a
mirror in myself.
And slowly but surely, month after month,
feature after feature, year
after year,
I realized that that person inside of me,
little Ravina,
deserved this because she wanted it.
(07:43):
After all,
we all carry within us our younger selves
just asking to be loved and heard.
So
what do we do with all of this, right?
I get it.
We don't celebrate ourselves enough, but
where do we go from there?
My challenge to you
is to visualize that version of yourself
(08:03):
that is currently standing in the road of
your own life.
This is that critical voice,
that stubborn part of ourselves that we
develop that we think is going to motivate
us to work harder
and to get more achievements under our belt.
But then that criticism can turn so easily
into self-judgment. And we,
I have no place for that, my friends.
(08:25):
Instead, I ask that you extend that
visualization exercise.
And now imagine your younger you,
exactly who they are. I mean,
you can pull out childhood photos, engage
with them,
stamp that in your memory, because they're
still in you, I promise.
Instead of seeing yourself standing in your
own way,
(08:45):
I invite you to visualize your younger self
standing hand in hand with you
but also in the middle of your current self
and the version of you that you're stepping into.
Walk with you, not against you.
You were given a gift of art, empathy,
humanity, whatever it may be, for a reason.
(09:06):
If no one's told you,
you deserve more than the self-sabotage.
You are more than your habits, your
procrastination.
You are more than the detrimental impact of
perfectionism.
and that strive to always work to be
better.
Give yourself a little pat on the back.
I promise you,
it's probably what little you would have
(09:28):
wanted.
And for my writers out there,
write like no one is watching, not even
your imposter syndrome.
For further inspiration, I definitely
suggest writing to a specific prompt or a
set of prompts
that encourages and celebrates your
authenticity.
(09:49):
In a lot of writing workshops, it's common
to hear the prompt, I am.
But what if you defined yourself by the
things you are not?
Thus,
the prompt might be on themes of shedding
or a completion of this phrase,
I am not.
For that is our goal when we step into our
authentic selves.
(10:09):
It's this shedding, this undoing, this
unlearning, this harvesting of your
authentic self that deserves time and
intention through letting go.
I also recognize that for a lot of us,
being our worst enemy can be a frequent
occurrence, especially when we are in
environments or circles
where competition is louder than
(10:30):
celebration.
It's a hard road to let go of that.
But I personally love the phrase, go where
you are celebrated.
And if not, my friends,
at least
the courage to walk away from where you are
not celebrated.
The greater good depends on artists and
(10:50):
humans with empathy.
It depends on kindness.
It depends on that embrace of self. And so
as we naturally gravitate towards
celebrating and uplifting others easier
than we do with ourselves,
starting today,
I invite you to change that narrative and
spice it up.
You are more than your personified
roadblock.
Your heart and voice are actually the real
(11:12):
mediums and the lights on that path
that will allow you to connect to others.
to flourish in your own light
and inspire others
to do the same.
With that being said, my friends,
I'm Ravina and I'm signing off,
but you will hear us back again on the
Poetry Lab podcast.
(11:33):
You can find me at @ravina.340, that's
spelled
R-A-V-I-N-A.340,
Or you can also find me at
writingashealing.la.
For your next upcoming workshop or
offering,
feel free to stay connected.
I'd love to see you
(11:54):
beyond this wavelength.
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