Happiness is a renewable resource. So is courage.
Creativity is how we get there. And we get there together.
— Judith-Kate Friedman
Welcome to Aliveness Through Arts.
In times like ours, making art in all forms is more crucial than ever. In Spring life pushed through its insistent beauty from the earth even as snowflakes fell. And now, Summer bathes and bakes us ripening all that’s on our inner and outer garden vines. What helps us sustain our strength and use our passions for good amidst such heat? How can we both welcome yet temper fury within and without, living with paradox and in community, finding our voices and courage upwelling from love and its kindred companion: justice.
What is calling forth your creative voice? (And what’s interrupting it?)
Where could you use a hand in strengthening your own resilience
and turning whatever struggle into a portal toward generative healing?
These are some of the questions I’m addressing in my work, and some of the issues
I’m working with colleagues and clients to address.
On these pages you’ll find links to my music, poetry, social practice projects
and ways to work together in creative coaching sessions, classes and longer-term arcs of transformation (offered beginning July 21, early bird rates July 5-15.)
If I can serve you or your loved ones in any creative way, I look forward to hearing from you.
And hope to see or speak with you soon!
With love, gratitude, story, and song,
Judith-Kate Friedman
Some additional links to explore:
I offer song and poetry commissions, composed for or with you or a loved one.
Portals to Myth: Mandorla Rising
Multi-modal explorations in kinship with the Living World
Browse past coaching offerings here and here. Invitations to creative cohorts for Summer and Fall 2026 coming soon.
Learn more about the work of two charitable organizations I founded and steward:
Songwritingworks.org - catalyzing joy, hope, and vitality, in community through story and song
Mythsingerlegacy.org - restoring the wisdom of myth to culture and community
Recent Anthologies! » I’m honored to be included in BOTH the 2025-26 and the 2024-25 volumes of the Stafford Challenge anthology.
A Celtic tale:
The God Lugh sought to enter into Tara, dwelling place of the Gods.
At the gates into the Other World, Tara’s denizens would say yes only to those whose talents they truly needed.
Lugh approached and beseeched, naming one of his many skills:
Smith, harper, poet, magician, metal-worker, historian, physician….
Each time, he was told “We already have one. We don’t need anymore.”
Yet, Lugh was unstoppable.
Again, and again he offered a different aspect of himself with no luck.
Then one day, exasperated, he proclaimed his true fullness:
“I am all this!”
Swiftly the Gates opened granting Lugh access to longed-for, long-guarded, unforeseen realms.
And so it is with us, too.
Creativity opens our hearts and opens the hearts of others.
Claiming all of who we are restores us to wholeness
and we become our true selves: wondrous and unstoppable.
It’s when we claim our unique combination of skills, talents, gifts, and imperfections—when we acknowledge that indeed, there is no one else on earth quite like us—that doors open.
Let’s move through the gates of what once seemed impossible–together.
I look forward to hearing from you and to supporting your thriving.
—Judith-Kate
Tale adapted from the telling and teaching of Daniel ‘3D’ Deardorff from his book, The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, and Psyche (Inner Traditions, 2022).
Judith-Kate Friedman is an award-winning composer, producer, and multi-modal artist and author.
Tapestry, Deer Park, Olympic Mountains, WA —Judith-Kate Friedman