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Angie joined Momma on December 15, 2025 for a live Q&A via Twitch and YouTube to talk about Unmasking Without Spontaneously Combusting
About Angie
Angie Dixon is a profoundly creative troublemaker in the best possible way—an author, artist, lifelong multipassionate, and the original human behind The Leonardo Trait, a concept she coined nearly twenty years ago to describe people whose minds refuse to sit quietly in one box. (Her brain didn’t just refuse; it climbed out the window, scaled the gutters, and started planting a rooftop garden.)
After decades of believing she was “too much”—too curious, too scattered, too intense—Angie eventually discovered that everything she’d been told to tone down was actually the engine of her genius. A later-in-life autism diagnosis finally connected the dots: the way she thinks isn’t a flaw. It’s a creative superpower with a mischievous twinkle.
That revelation sparked the brand-new, fully reimagined 4th edition of The Leonardo Trait: Profound Creativity in a Chaotic World—a fiercely honest, funny, and liberating guide for every neurodivergent soul who’s ever been told to “focus,” “finish,” or otherwise behave like a beige file folder. Angie brings all of herself to this edition: the disability journey that changed her life, the workaholism recovery that saved it, the decades of creative detours, and the stubborn hope that people like her aren’t broken—they’re brilliant.
When she’s not writing or painting tiny works of abstract art, Angie is probably in bed with earbuds, plotting her next project, redesigning half her website, or lovingly harassing Ziggy, her AI assistant, into becoming a more civilized creature. She lives in Arkansas with her husband of 33 years, her grown kids who still make her laugh, and an assortment of cats who absolutely do not respect personal boundaries.
Her mission—whether in books, art, summits, or stray bursts of unexpected wisdom—is simple: Help profoundly creative people finally feel at home in their own minds. Because once you stop trying to “fix” yourself, you can finally start creating the life you were meant to live.
Socials / Links for Guest Connection
Website - https://profoundcreativity.com/
Newsletter signup - https://profoundcreativity.com/spiral
References / Things Mentioned During the Stream
True Crime Fascination - Murdaugh Murders
Book Recommendation - Welcome to AuDHD: How to Survive (and Thrive) as an Adult with Autism and ADHD by Megan Griffith
Movie Recommendations - Weekend at Bernie's and Hot Tub Time Machine
Favorite Poem - Stepping Backward by Adrienne Rich
Life Hack Recommendation - Sleep With Me Podcast
Stepping Backward
Adrienne Rich
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.
You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They're luckiest who know they're not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.
And when we come into each other's rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers--
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers--
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.
It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.
Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation--
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.
So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize--
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.