Chat #17 - Helen Nesburg
"It’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of motherhood"
Helen is an illustrator, writer, and muralist based in Portland, OR, where she lives with her partner and two wild, small humans. She writes and illustrates A Creative Frenzy, a humorous Substack newsletter for a neurodivergent audience of creatives, parents, and feral women. She is currently querying her first book, a middle-grade fantasy novel.
Discover more here:
03/12/2025, 20:02 - Finbarre:
Writer, illustrator and muralist, it’s Helen Nesburg! Welcome to Tarot DMs. How are you?
03/12/2025, 20:03 - Helen Nesburg:
Hi! I’m doing great, looking forward to having this chat. I think this is a really fun, unique way to do an interview.
03/12/2025, 20:03 - Finbarre:
You are very kind, especially as with this being the new month, we have The World as the theme. So that’s going to be your first card. We’ll come to that shortly. But it also means we’re using a new deck. And the deck we’re using tonight is Christina Ricci’s Cat Full of Spiders tarot deck, which is as peculiar as it sounds.
03/12/2025, 20:04 - Helen Nesburg:
That’s fantastic. Like a good 90s kid. I have always been obsessed with Christina Ricci. She is the epitome of perfect goth.
03/12/2025, 20:05 - Finbarre:
A little bird tells me, well, your Substack, A Creative Frenzy, tells me that today in your house, at this very minute, a seven-year-old with ADHD and a three-year-old with a thirst for destruction are plotting against you. Have they wreaked their vengeance yet? Or is this like the Sword of Damocles just waiting?
03/12/2025, 20:06 - Helen Nesburg: Ha! It’s a long game for those two
03/12/2025, 20:06 - Finbarre: Sticklebricks in your slippers? Nerf bullets EVERYWHERE?
03/12/2025, 20:08 - Helen Nesburg: No Nerf! I’m still trying to keep gun type stuff out of the house but they do have play swords and a bow and arrow. It’s more a midlevel type of danger.
03/12/2025, 20:09 - Finbarre:
My 14-year-old daughter has graduated from Goblincore to almost to be a full-on LARPer. She recently has been bought some archery gloves, you know those ones where you can actually fire a decently strung bow and not take your fingers off? She is really into that, plus she’s also got a little hand-cross bow and all manner of things. She’s going to be doing her black belt in jiu-jitsu. If I need a tiny bodyguard for the apocalypse, she’s perfect.
03/12/2025, 20:11 - Helen Nesburg:
That’s brilliant. I always wanted to LARP. I’ve never done it. Once my sister, who is also like me, a huge dork, found that you could do a Harry Potter style LARPing somewhere in the Netherlands. And that’s maybe a future life goal when we’re old ladies, we’ll go do that together.
03/12/2025, 20:12 - Finbarre:
I love the idea. You could go for sorceress or you could go for bog witch, depending on how you’re feeling on the day. Before we start with your cards, I need to ask you, what do the words feral mom mean to you?
03/12/2025, 20:13 - Finbarre:
Yeah, I know I’m British and I can’t quite make the mom sound, but you know what I mean.
03/12/2025, 20:14 - Helen Nesburg:
It’s a good question. I think in this case, what it means to me is the antithesis of the buttoned up, yoga’d, organized, know when the homework’s due, have the lunch, have a 10-point plan, can make it to work on time and can come back and cook dinner type mom.
It’s a fly by the seat of your pants. We’re probably late. We’ve missed, we’ve lost the books. We don’t know how to help with homework, but we can make a goddamn great diagram. The kids are loved, but they might still be a little unclean. So making it through together type mom.
03/12/2025, 20:16 - Finbarre:
I do love that approach of, are the kids breathing? Are they happy? Are they safe? Tick, tick, tick. Everything else will take care of itself.
Right. We need to get these cards looked at as time is a ticking! So the first one, as I say, is going to be the world. I’ll send you a picture in just a moment.
You mentioned you’re a 90s kid. Did you dabble in tarot back in the day? I don’t know, maybe after watching Charmed or Practical Magic?
03/12/2025, 20:18 - Helen Nesburg:
I definitely loved all that type of stuff. One of my favorite authors was Francesca Lea Block, who wrote this series that was very tarot heavy, all about kids getting into trouble in Los Angeles. Probably read it too early, a little too dark for my age at the time. But anything that was a little Wiccan, a little tarot-y, I really ate that stuff up when I was younger.
03/12/2025, 20:18 - Finbarre:
03/12/2025, 20:19 - Helen Nesburg: I love it!
03/12/2025, 20:19 - Finbarre:
Your first tarot question, based on the world, is if you imagine a life that feels deeply yours, not shaped by anything outside, no expectations, no presumptions, what does that world not include? So imagine everything is perfect, as far as it can be. What does that not include?
03/12/2025, 20:21 - Helen Nesburg: Smartphones, AI, so much of the recent technology that zaps creativity and makes me worried for my kids. I also used to work in tech so I’ve seen too much.
03/12/2025, 20:22 - Finbarre:
That’s an interesting thought and one I very much agree with. Imagine you’ve got a dial and you can turn that dial back technologically to a previous year. Approximately when do you think we had it right?
03/12/2025, 20:23 - Finbarre: Was it... the 90s! Maybe before?
03/12/2025, 20:24 - Helen Nesburg:
2005. I think we’re in a really great place with technology in 2005. You had mobile phones, you could take a picture, but none of these apps and all this craziness. You could still walk around. Nobody was documenting everything that you did. Nobody was really bullying folks online the way that they do now. And it was so hopeful. You could get news from across the world in an instant. Twitter was full of scientists and journalists, and it was just opening up the world in all new ways. So I think that that was really a golden period when technology felt super.
03/12/2025, 20:26 - Finbarre: Plus I present to you one of the finest mobile phones ever made *drum roll*
03/12/2025, 20:26 - Finbarre:
IT’S BEAUTIFUL
03/12/2025, 20:27 - Helen Nesburg: Pure perfection! Little did we know.
03/12/2025, 20:28 - Helen Nesburg: I love how the internet connects us, I just wish it went on a different path
03/12/2025, 20:29 - Finbarre:
Do you feel more creative now, actively fighting against those kind of distractions? Or do you think you were more so then?
03/12/2025, 20:31 - Helen Nesburg:
If you’d asked me that same question two years ago, I would have said absolutely more creative then. I was painting a lot, producing a lot of work, didn’t have a whole lot of outside influences other than the world around you and things you were choosing to research. But in the last even three years, I’ve really gone on a creative journey. I think the work that I’m producing now is more interesting and more creative than what I used to do.
03/12/2025, 20:33 - Finbarre:
I would love to explore more about that in your second card. So I have a stack of them here. I’ll send you a picture of the backs because they’re quite exquisite. And I’m going to be shuffling these. So I’d like you to say stop or type stop. Let’s see what you get.
03/12/2025, 20:33 - Finbarre:
03/12/2025, 20:33 - Helen Nesburg: Stop!
03/12/2025, 20:34 - Finbarre:
03/12/2025, 20:34 - Finbarre: The King of Swords there
03/12/2025, 20:35 - Helen Nesburg: I love her face, suspicious but unbothered
03/12/2025, 20:36 - Finbarre:
You may be peering at that thinking, oh God, what on earth was the King of Swords about? So it’s a pinnacle of intellect, reason and authority. It’s somebody who is a master strategist who leads with clarity and an integrity. It does represent an embodiment of truth and discipline, a situation where you can rise above emotions and rely on the head instead of the heart. So it’s about controlled power.
03/12/2025, 20:37 - Finbarre: Next tarot question - what bold truth or message do you communicate (perhaps unfiltered or urgent) through your work?
03/12/2025, 20:41 - Helen Nesburg: Unfiltered definitely fits the bill when it comes to my work on Substack. For many years I worked in polished professional jobs. I wrote a lot but without feeling or voice. It’s taken me time to reset, strip all of that away and let myself onto the page. But that’s exactly what Creative Frenzy is about, by naming it that I gave myself permission to be messy and real. Now I want that to me the message to readers, it’s ok to be weird and chaotic. That’s life, that’s what’s fun and interesting.
03/12/2025, 20:43 - Finbarre:
I was looking through your illustration work and you create this bouquet of fascinating forms. What visual artwork are you working on at the moment?
03/12/2025, 20:45 - Helen Nesburg:
I did an illustration of baboons for my last post and now I’m obsessed. Here’s one of the reference photos I used. Look at his hair and his peeved expression. He’s fabulous! I’ll probably do something to keep drawing them. Maybe a picture book?
03/12/2025, 20:46 - Helen Nesburg:
These are how the turned out for the posts. I love drawing things that make me laugh.
03/12/2025, 20:47 - Helen Nesburg: On that note I have wanted to do a picture book for a long time. I’ve dabbled with ideas but maybe next year I’ll make it happen.
03/12/2025, 20:47 - Finbarre:
I was glancing through your children’s illustrations and I spotted the, I want to say it’s a stoat, but it may be a weasel, a marten, a mink, not sure. But there’s some kind of, there’s a creature that’s pulling a cart full of apples and he’s got this little expression on his face as if to say, well, hi. He’s got such a friendliness that just made me grin straight away. Does he have a name?
03/12/2025, 20:49 - Helen Nesburg: Ah yes, he’s a weasel! Unnamed at the moment but I’m open to suggestions. He’s a character that passes through my middle grade novel. I’m in the process of querying the manuscript and I’ve done some early illustrations as well.
03/12/2025, 20:50 - Helen Nesburg:
03/12/2025, 20:50 - Finbarre: Look at that little face!
03/12/2025, 20:52 - Finbarre:
I need to put on my sensible voice now and not look at the screen. You’ve been given a Gift Card. This is the tarot card that’s been handed on from the last guest to yourself.
And this is from C.B. Lee, a New York Times bestselling author of young adult middle grade fiction.
And they have picked this card for you.
Now, as I just so happen to have the deck as well that C.B. Lee had in mind. We’re going to jump away from Christina Ricci’s Cat Full Of Spiders and take a look at this one.
03/12/2025, 20:52 - Finbarre:
03/12/2025, 20:52 - Finbarre: The Magician from the Modern Witch Tarot deck
03/12/2025, 20:52 - Finbarre: Last one, are you ready?
03/12/2025, 20:53 - Helen Nesburg: Let’s do it!
03/12/2025, 20:55 - Finbarre:
I’m taking a look at The Magician card and I can see she has everything laid out. And in her hand, she grips an object of power. Okay, so what is something that you once believed was beyond you? Whether it be emotional, creative, practical reality… but you now realize it’s part of your power and something that you wield?
03/12/2025, 20:57 - Helen Nesburg:
Absolutely. Writing. I’ve always loved writing, but I never in a million years would have called myself a writer. I have dyslexia, and so reading came hard to me. But then once I became a reader, that’s all I did. I was that kid who used to walk to school tripping over things with my nose in a book. But I still was never kind of a mantle, I guess, a hat I put on for myself until I just sat down and wrote this book.
It absolutely poured out of me in about three months, exactly this time last year. And I finished it and went, oh, holy shit, I wrote a book. It’s fabulous. And of course, it’s taken a lot more time to work on it and get the manuscript in a good place. But the idea that I could be a writer, that I am a writer, that’s still so new to me. I’ve always considered myself a visual artist.
And it just, it absolutely feels like a superpower that, I don’t know, I just got zapped by lightning and I’m still figuring out everything that I can do with it.
03/12/2025, 20:59 - Finbarre:
I’m delighting in this She-Ra style imagery (I much preferred the later version, the one that happened recently. Although the music of the earlier She-Ra was probably better!)
Anyway, I can picture you zapped by some kind of sky beam.
Out of interest, if there are people listening to this or reading who are in a position where they’ve yet to discover their creative talents in the way that you did, is there a piece of advice you could give them?
03/12/2025, 21:02 - Helen Nesburg: Play, give yourself room to play. I started so many things, wrote absolute garbage until I found the path back to my own voice. Also it’s really helpful to tap back into what you loved as a child. I think Therese something magical about whatever weird topic you loved at nine years old, there’s a thread there that’s worth following.
03/12/2025, 21:04 - Finbarre: That’s me needing to write about triceratops then!
03/12/2025, 21:04 - Helen Nesburg: Yes! Exactly
03/12/2025, 21:05 - Finbarre:
Although my second favourite dinosaur was the Iguanodon because it had razor-sharp thumbs. The idea that you could live in the Cretaceous or the Jurassic or wherever it’s from and defend yourself by basically giving people the thumbs up, I think is a testament to probably how badass that dinosaur was.
Okay, before we wrap up, I need you to either think of a tarot card or draw one if you have one in a deck for the next guest.
And also, could you tell me what your favourite dinosaur is? Now the question has been raised, it needs to be asked!
03/12/2025, 21:09 - Helen Nesburg:
My kids have this gorgeous Dino book and this is my favorite
03/12/2025, 21:09 - Helen Nesburg:
03/12/2025, 21:09 - Helen Nesburg: He’s just so goofy looking
03/12/2025, 21:09 - Finbarre:
03/12/2025, 21:09 - Helen Nesburg:
03/12/2025, 21:10 - Finbarre:
You completely missed that. There was this inhalation of breath. I just went *GASP* “it’s upside down!” but we’ll keep it that way. The Ace of Wands. Oh, that’s going to be a tricky one for someone, but it’ll provide an interesting story, I’m sure.
03/12/2025, 21:11 - Helen Nesburg: Oh dear, I’m a novice! I didn’t think about the upside down
03/12/2025, 21:11 - Finbarre: Gorgeous! Can I ask which cards you have chosen there?
03/12/2025, 21:12 - Helen Nesburg: The Moon Witch Deck
03/12/2025, 21:13 - Finbarre: The contrast of the writing against the black background would make it perfect for reading by candlelight, thank you for this (I may need to grab the deck for myself!)
03/12/2025, 21:14 - Helen Nesburg: My pleasure! A gift from my sister
03/12/2025, 21:15 - Finbarre:
She has magnificent taste. Helen Nesburg, thank you so much for joining me this evening on Tarot DMs and for helping make technology this wondrous way that I can talk to you across continents about tarot and nonsense and dinosaurs and ways of capturing that creative spark. It’s been so lovely speaking to you. And if your work has piqued the interest of anyone that’s listening to this or reading this, how can they best follow your creative adventures?
03/12/2025, 21:17 - Helen Nesburg:
Thank you. It’s been so fun. Nonsense is my absolute favorite topic. So I’m happy to talk nonsense for days. Best way to find me is probably by Substack. My name on it is Helen Nesburg.
A Creative Frenzy is my Substack publication. I’m on Instagram at Helen Nesburg. My website is Helen Nesburg. The benefit of making up your own last name is that nobody else has it and it makes it very easy to find you on the internet. I guess possibly a blessing and a curse. It was fun, thanks again!