Conversation 02 · Ep. 30 · 42 min · August 4, 2026
Marit Appeldoorn
Therapist, writer, and play therapy expert
“Why does play matter far beyond childhood?”
The question at the center of the conversation
Who they are
Marit Appeldoorn is a therapist, writer, and play therapy expert. The conversation explores how play helps people process emotion, build trust, reconnect with themselves, and approach experiences too difficult to face directly.
Watch on Spotify →What we talk about
- 01
What children understand that adults forget
How children move through emotion, and what adults lose when they decide they have outgrown it.
- 02
Thinking is not always enough
Why reasoning your way through a problem can stall, and what play and relationship do that analysis cannot.
- 03
Relationships as part of healing
How trust, presence, and connection become active ingredients rather than background.
- 04
Burnout, perfectionism, productivity
The pressure to always be producing, and what it costs the people who carry it.
- 05
Caring without losing yourself
What it means to look after other people without disappearing in the process.
The one idea carried out of the room
Play is not an escape from serious life. It may be one of the tools that helps us move through it.
Why it belongs in the Atlas
The Health pillar is the human foundation under everything else in the Atlas. This conversation is its counterweight to protocols and discipline: a reminder that the nervous system also needs play, trust, and rest.
Episodes this conversation echoes
Next conversation
Keep the tape rolling.
3 conversations so far, filed by pillar and cross-linked into the Atlas.
Cherizza Lundy
Chief of staff turned team builder, co-building the SF Signal
How do you build something that helps people become capable of more than they imagined?
From the tribe of mentors
