2. I took myself to a walkabout in Barnes and Noble. What a feast for my eyes and my imagination, from magazines to cookbooks to journals and calendars. Oh my, my eyes smiled, and my heart fluttered.
3. Alexis, I, too, want to borrow your "I am worthy...." affirmation. Thanks for sharing.
4. Resistance? a little, always, but that is a signal something big is about to happen.
Thank you for sharing your post on the fire, Janice. And what a lovely way to engage in an artist's date! And resistance is absolutely a sign that something is about to happen. You are worthy, indeed.
Over a year ago, you invited us to adopt an affirmation in a chakra class you led at Claremont Yoga. Mine was "I am enough. I have enough. This is enough". It was very impactful,
but then, as way leads on to way,
I lost it.
This morning in my pages,
I found it again.
Dear Morning Pages,
I'm sorry I hate you so much because I think you might be good for me.
It’s not too late to complete Friday! Try maybe before bed? Also, great date! I’m going to save that to my list of potential date activities. I’m so sorry to hear about the fires. I hope you and your family are doing okay.
Hi Janice, I’ve been really concerned about the fires as well (I’m in Sacramento area, have friends in LA) and Wednesday it took me all day literally until midnight to complete three single sided pages and I did not stay and write evenly in the lines. I wrote really big over some of the several lines at once, so it was kind of a sad, symbolic effort, but I’m proud of myself, lol.
1. I enjoyed the morning pages and was able to complete them every day. It is a refreshing way to focus my mind in the morning and a great way to start the day.
2. I haven't completed my artist date yet, but will do so either this evening or tomorrow. I haven't decided what it will be yet, but there are a couple of options like the Pomona Art Walk or writing at a wine bar in Claremont.
3. I didn't practice an affirmation either.
4. No resistance, quite the opposite. I look forward to the writing and artist dates. I feel these times as opportunities for personal growth and a time for myself. I don't feel I get a lot of that these days.
5. Have not read my chapter for the week yet and have not completed any of the tasks. I have been without power due to the winds since Tuesday and am working remotely, so it's thrown my life off a bit.
Hi Barny, I wondered if some in our cohort might be affected by the fires- really hoping you’re doing ok despite the challenges.
I like this:
“I look forward to the writing and artist dates. I feel these times as opportunities for personal growth and a time for myself. I don't feel I get a lot of that these days.”
That feels good, it feels good to give oneself the gift of deep thinking, of introspection, of playing or meandering through one’s consciousness. I like to tell young writers who are still in school age that staring off into space is 80% of the work of writing poetry. You allow your mind, your consciousness, to wonder, to wander, and to extend into the universe and discover what’s interesting and what might be worth following up on. We learn nuance and strategize for survival as a species in this dissociated and pleasant staring, in my view.
Overall, my first week was a success. Below are my responses:
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
I am proud that I was able to complete the entire week, including today. The first few days felt easy, but by yesterday, I feel like I ran out of things to either complain about or list out. I will say it does help clear out the "mess" of my brain. I think especially as women, we are creatures with so many thoughts and feelings on what we need/should be doing. The pages were my way of combing through the mess of thoughts and anxieties.
How about your artist date? Will you share what you chose to do?
I love to paint, and I've never done one of those "Sip and Paints." So I decided to try one out. It seems like most people do these in a group of people they know, so I felt a little shy about doing it by myself, and I was the only one in the group by myself. We painted an artwork called, "Rainbow Skies." It is the view that is seen from the Oahu Country Club. In Hawaii, they really do have pink skies at sunset, and they contrast with lush greenery. We painted by the pool of the Marriot in Kapolei so there were a lot of people walking by, and looking at our work. We were right by the pool bar, and some of the guests would stop and talk to us. There were also a lot of local families enjoying the fire pit and food trucks. It is an area of Hawaii I would not have discovered if it weren't for the Artist Date, so I'm appreciative of that and will probably go back with family.
Did you practice a creative affirmation?
I practiced this in my morning pages and I just wrote the sentence, "I am worthy of ...." and insert everything wish/desire that I want for myself. I admittedly feel very cheesy with affirmations, and don't feel really genuine to me. However, after a few times of writing this sentence, it started to feel really cathartic.
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why?
I felt a little voice in my head that said, maybe you should just change your artist date and go to a movie by yourself or shopping by yourself. But I specifically booked this activity to try to challenge that awkwardness of doing things by myself in a traditional group setting.
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which ones? Any discoveries there? I haven't tackled any of the tasks this week, but its on my to do list to write about the imaginary lives. :)
This is such an exciting response! You are worthy of calling yourself an artist, for sure! Thank you for sharing your resistance. I relate. Keep up the good work!
How inspiring, your artist date! I appreciate your example of courage, deciding to go to the paint and sip event as a solo artist. You’re very brave. I hit some resistance this week too (but powered through) especially Wednesday and today lots of changes for me this time of year and lots of changes in society, socially, politically, and regarding the climate issues we face (ok especially the LA fires. Lots of creative friends in areas affected and neighboring, concerned & empathetic.) I’ve been blessed with a one week family vacation to Hawaii with my ex-in-laws, and fell in love with Mother Nature and the night sky all over again. What a richly sensual environment! Imagining you painting and sipping wine watching the sunset is a happy reverie! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the kind words Keely. I’m so sad to see the fires. Monday was also a tough day politically and I find myself having to avoid all the news and filter the information I get. I think the next 4 years will be tough for a lot of us. 😞
Agreed. I’m trying to keep up with all the shenanigans so I can try to prepare for how sweeping changes may affect my personal life, including the trajectory of my writing. But you can only watch news and be a buddha / bodhisaatva so many hours of the day. Naps, nature, finding happy ways to rest and be productive, all really help, along with limited news- but I’m so grateful for our relatively free press. I hope we are able to retain that but who knows with such lack of accountability in leadership? No limits on greed or corruption or force? Extremism is scary. 🫣
1) I completed the morning pages every day this week. Day 1 and 2 felt great as I was inspired and proud. As the week went on, some of the insecurities (“Can I really call myself an ‘artist’? Is that a pipe dream?”) started creeping in. The pages turned into a lament of how I am an imposter. Seems like that is pretty normal.
2) I took myself on an artist date where I looked through very old family photos while sipping on coffee and eating a breakfast sandwich at a local coffee shop. It was lovely.
3) I do not have a creative affirmation. I would benefit from this.
4) I have not felt resistance to the activities. I love a to-do list! My only resistance is to identifying myself as “artist.”
5) I completely forgot about the other tasks after I read the chapter. Oops. However, after I read the chapter I began to notice the ways in which my life is drawn to stories through my work, relationships, and habits, which may be my way of meeting the creative need within me. This became food for thought.
I actually had similar thoughts, but more specifically, I wrote - "Am I really a writer" and even thought, maybe I should just pick something else. It is hard when you've been away from the creative world for so long, to get back to having a connection, especially with how quickly life moves. Your artist date sounds lovely. Which coffee shop did you go to and what did you drink? Is there a fun memory your old photos sparked? I was looking at old photos with a cousin of mine, and we came across an old photo of us when we were about 8 or 9 (now we are in our 30's), and she was so upset that in the picture, my sister and I got to have "fair food" but her and her sisters could not eat the fried food. It made me laugh because it is a day and picture I don't even remember, but for her, it was the day she was denied a deep fried corn dog!
Hi Alexis - I am going to work on the affirmation. I believe in them, so I will say it until it feels true. I am playing around with the idea of creating something about my grandmother, and there is one photo that I have had my eye on for a while that has inspired that. Seeing other photos of her filled me with warmth. I love the memory you shared. Isn't it so interesting how to different people can have such different memories from looking at one photo? All about perspective.
I love that you are creating something about your grandmother. I was close with my grandmother and lost her in 2023, but it still feels like it was yesterday. I hope you share with us whatever you create. ❤️
I too loved the artist date, and it may inspire me to do something with the letters I inherited from my parents after their passing. Just sit somewhere, have a glass of wine, and read their story as told through their own words.
Hi Bree. Great job enjoying your MPs! It’s so good to hear you validate yourself for feeling inspired and proud, that’s inspiring in itself. The coffee & family photo book is a staple of the artists life in my experience and understanding- anywhere in the world. I miss it so- I’m too familiar with my local Panera & maybe this coming week I’ll go to a unique independent cafe and savor the smells and vibes. It’s occurred to me that perhaps being an artist is the most human thing about each of us. Perhaps we’re all artists before or anything else and we forget this as we grow up and forget how to play and make messes and free ourselves from social expectations and judgments that we take on as we mature. It takes so much courage to begin to recognize that every human being is a creator we create our lives. We create our world together. We create a path through time from birth to death. We create a story as we live. We weave our stories together and the blacks and whites and every shade in between and every hue get taken up and combined and recombined, and changed and transformed and played with and explored, and we create humanity together; we create life on our planet. We continue in one great wave from our first mother’s to rise from the Earth as we grow our bodies up and then we begin to get closer to the Earth and smaller as we age and then our bodies are returned to the Earth and that’s the trough, but another generation has started of humanity and the wave through time keeps growing and dying and changing. Perhaps it’s a childlike belief, but I believe Mother Earth would be lonely without us and you might imagine that I’m being narcissistic but why would we not imagine that a creature so alive as the Earth herself would love? Our existence and sustenance and everything we are comes from Mother Earth. We are like fetuses in the womb of her atmosphere. The earths crust is like a placenta, and she is a creator to us along with the heavens, the sky, space, the galaxies, the universe. How can you imagine that you’re not a creator? that you’re not born an artist and you merely haven’t yet noticed yet how beautifully you’re growing into your eternal self, your unique divine nature. I like to try to turn things around sometimes so that I can validate what already exist within me. And within all of us, if we choose to see it and recognize it or whatever we choose to see and recognize that tool of validation can help us grow the seeds that we want in our lives of the flowers that we want the fruits that we want in our lives and help us pluck out the seeds that we don’t want. Our choices map the dimensions of time and space like a canvas as we move forward in time. Our choices can follow the trajectories of other great examples whose lives we seek to emulate in some ways or we can imagine that we are merely ruled by others choices, and others influences. We are profoundly influenced by one another far more than we could consciously recognize I believe because I believe that we are one human organism like a family as a unit, like a body has cells and organs, and all of your organs are separate, but those cells know what to grow into. Oh I have to grow into a liver or a heart or a bone. Monarch butterflies take four generations to complete one migratory cycle between the Sierra Madre in Mexico and the forest and mountains of Canada. Three generations migrate north from Mexico to Canada and the fourth generation migrates from Canada back to Mexico. How does each monarch know which generation it belongs to and whether it should fly north or south? How did the butterflies communicate with one another so that they can keep track of their journey as a species moving forward in time? Do humans have similar energy patterns and structures that we have yet to discover scientifically? This is why I enjoy studying my genealogy and the genealogy of the human family. Generations of my people have yearned to be artists and recognize and validate that aspect of their human experience, but to survive and raise their families they’ve become coal miners and sharecroppers and seamstresses and doctors and engineers and managers and nurses and manufacturers and have sold candy at department stores. As a human family historically a lot of our ancestors endured great great suffering similar to what Michelle has gone through I think and many of others of us who’ve had difficult beginnings. I’m relatively poor and live in California, but I feel rich compared to most of history and most of the other members of the human race many of whom live on less than a dollar a day. Even in my relative poverty, I live like a queen; I have an education. People bring food to my door, etc. really glad for the dictate feature on my iPhone so I could leave this essay in your comments lol i’m sorry if this is too long I hope you don’t mind but I wasn’t feeling well today and then the idea to me that you’re not an artist or that people would invalidate that kind of just made me go off on a riff. Definitely you’re an artist and you are a creator and you have been all your life and you’re beginning to remember. Namaste 🙏🏼
Of course we are also destroyers on some level because sometimes you have to destroy, change or alter something before you can have the space you need to create. For instance, I destroy germs on my countertops before I bake. I destroy the “crunchies” on my floor with the vacuum before I can participate in a yoga practice. We eat and drink, we urinate and defecate, and we literally cannot physically survive without being able to do both. But there are social taboos on experiencing those things with equal mindfulness and attention, honoring our nature. Nature is such an interesting concept to explore metaphorically!
- I started the week inspired and read the whole chapter after the zoom meeting, jotting notes in a journal as I went through it, and answered some of the questions. Then I forgot to return for the rest of the questions later in the week. I also wrote out some affirmations and then promptly forgot about it. Ha! I encourage my clients to write affirmations on their mirrors or sticky notes in conspicuous places and did not do this myself.
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
- I did the pages every day, but never first thing in the morning. I think it only even happened in the morning once. I committed to doing it with my first free time because it was just unrealistic for me to cram one more thing into my morning routine and responsibilities and I am not willing to be sleep-deprived. I spent a lot of my pages making excuses about this. Ha ha! I became increasingly disillusioned with the process throughout the week, noting my inner resistance. My days are so full and I've been struggling already to find time to write, and now I feel like time I wanted to dedicate toward working on articles for private-ish (substack) or public (ie, NY Times, Vogue, etc) publication - my goal for this quarter of the year - has been impinged by this task. I am feeling decreasingly committed to staying with the program, to be honest. I see the value, and yet I question whether I have the space in my life during this current stage. And yes, we make time for what is important to us, but the other big things in my life are non-negotiably important to me, too, and I don't apologize for that. We'll see. Maybe I'll try for another week and see what happens.
How about your artist date? Will you share what you chose to do?
- I attended a lovely writer's retreat at the Maloof on Sunday. :)
Did you practice a creative affirmation?
- My affirmation (I had to look it up in my journal because I totally forgot about it!)
"I have a voice the world needs and wants to hear." (I don't feel entirely comfortable stating that. It feels narcissistic with so many voices clamoring for recognition.)
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why?
- yes. Partly as described above, partly because my inner rebellious child is getting ornery. ;)
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which ones? Any discoveries there?
- I wrote some lists:
1. Things that have caused me artistic fear / shrinking (8 diverse memories spanning childhood to last summer)
2. How my inner artist has been supported (9 items)
3. Created an affirmation
4. Exercise: write out these words 10x: I, Debbie, am a brilliant and prolific writer. Check.
5. Also wrote out my blocking, mostly-subconscious negative belief, that links back to my first list: "It's too costly to be a brilliant writer; I must stay small / boring."
6. Wrote out 10 of the positive cognitions from the book that I wish to claim. The one that I struggle with most, based on recent creative / relational trauma, and which I most want to believe, is: "My creativity always leads me to truth and love."
7. Time travel exercise / monster hall of fame: This included
- leader of a writer's group c. 2005, who told me in the feedback circle that my writing (memoir, though I didn't admit that) was "too dark. No one will want to read this."
- a writing contest judge when I was 12 years old, who wrote that my story set in a concentration camp was "not a child's story," and disqualified me. This story stemmed from my family history.
- my 2 closest siblings threatening to cut me off last summer, saying "if you write, we don't feel safe to be with you. Your writing is cruel and unkind and false."
This is sadly a downer of a place to leave off my post, as I did not return to the exercises. I see a lot of value in them for continuing to work with the Time Travel Exercise / monster hall of fame so I may end up spending more time in Week 1. And maybe less in "morning" pages to make space for it.
I admire the honesty with which you are approaching this program. Timing is so important, and while engaging in a task begrudgingly may open us up to something new it also has the possibility of leading to burnout. I support your process of discerning which it is for you.
I so appreciate the honesty of your reply. Your monster hall of fame also resonated with me! I posted a scene this week and the one comment I got back was: is this memoir? It feels like the girl is in danger and if so, I wouldn’t want to continue reading” 🙄🤦♀️🤫 Solidarity! I, and so many others I am sure, would gladly read your stories, however dark. Because showing the dark in life allows us to also see and appreciate the tiny places where the light gets through.
Thank you for these words! I agree; memoir is my favorite genre because when you hold the whole story, you see hope and beauty, resilience and inspiration. I love "the tiny places where the light gets through." :) And you know what, it's fine that it's not for everyone!
I write every morning for almost an hour to fill 3 pages. I told my family about this so they know my silence before I write. It took me a few days to settle into the pages. I use a stack of loose papers ripped from unused notebooks. The stack is placed in an old journal's pouch. I put the written pages in the back. and take out new pages from the front. I write on my dining table, the east-facing side of the table which also looks out to a window.
I am happy that I took my time to figure out how the morning pages can work for me, and let the idea come up to experiment with. When I bring out my journal pouch, I feel proud I made it from what I had at home, and excited to take the paper out to write. I reminded myself there's something I must do to start my day and this actually stopped the mind chattering upon waking up. I got up, hydrated, and let the pen roll.
P.S. One morning I thought I would use a pencil to write morning pages. My hand cramped at the 2nd page. The friction of lead caused a brain jam! Must hold on to finish the third page... There was a lot of rubbing and shaking of my right hand that morning.
Artist Date--
While in the meeting, I wrote down all other 12 fellow new artists' names. 12 names for 12 dates, I thought maybe I find some inspiration from their names. I started with Annalise, and thought about Star Anise, an Asian spice. I intended to use the seed pod as a stamp to print and decorate my notebook, but I ended up getting dizzy from the scent from robbing and holding the seed pods up close for too long. I left the date and came back the second day to do some sketching, but not too long. I wrote about this experience from not finding a "representative"-shaped pod, to finding each pod's individual uniqueness.
Tasks--
Imaginary lives: I came up with 5 imaginary lives, but didn't follow up with activities.
Affirmations: I got a bit impatient with affirmation. I wrote down some maybe enemies and had to think hard if they are really enemies. Time travel exercise got my thinking into a ditch.
First week--
My morning has become more regular. From this tiny bit of routine, I noticed I started including and excluding certain daily activities. My writing is a constructivity. (Why is constructivity not a word? I just put it in my dictionary!).
I like my morning pages. I am happy with how I show up and complete this ritual. I feel I have lay my foundation down.
Thank you Michelle! Thank you for your love, effort and time guiding this school of artists you brought together. I feel honored and so happy to participate.
I often don't know how to respond to your story. as if if I say something it's gonna weaken your words. After reading Defying Gravity, I have an image of you wearing a crown of thorns instead of a flower garland for a girl. My heart bleeds. I couldn't tell if that image is cruel or glory, too complicated to comprehend.
Hello Pauline, this is so wonderful to read, I love your writing and your terms of phrase and your balance in certain ways is really interesting and beautiful and the way you think is like neat. I love what you did with the notebook and then thinking about decorating it and going to all the trouble to make it your own. That’s so Arts and Crafts (the arts movement/architecture).
Thank you Keely. No trouble making things, just being myself, doing what feels right to settle me. Is it not that the arts and crafts movement started as to rebel the industrial revolution? Maybe there's a bit of that going against something in artist's way in all of us as well. Thank you for bring that up. I didn't think of that.
me too. It really spoke to me where I'm at today. And, I'm going to see Wicked at Pantages on Sunday with my son (or, at least, I have tickets... questioning whether they might cancel the show?!) so I'm looking forward to diving into the context more deeply. (I saw Wicked years ago, but it's been a minute!)
Defying Gravity is the best song of the play (in my opinion)! Truly one of the most powerful and memorable songs I've experienced in musical theatre. You definitely need to go when you have an opportunity!
1. I enjoyed and completed morning pages every day, but not always in the morning. This activity is important, but sometimes not the only important one (e.g., weather emergency - action required). I had to define “first thing” differently on different days; have ideas to help myself more reliable put writing pages first, although probably never 100% of the time - and that’s OK with me.
2. For this week‘s artist date I chose independent study of oak leaf identification (using publicly available online materials and oak leaves collected along the property line). It was fun, informative, stimulating, and “refilled the well” to the extent that people around me started feeling like they were getting wet. There were 11 different species of oaks among the leaves blown into our yard (in the mid-Atlantic region) - a healthy ecosystem.
3. No to affirmations.
4. No real resistance (to what I’ve done so far), except affirmations (somewhat allergic to affirmations).
5. Tasks 3, 6, 7 and 8: Thought about these tasks all day and know how I’ll complete them in abbreviated format later this evening.
Task 10: yes, brisk 20- (or 40-) minute solitary walks with myself are a longtime practice, valuable for sorting out no end of impediments. Took two earlier this week. Only recently read far enough to realize they count as “Tasks”.
It’s ok not to do affirmations if you don’t find them helpful or if they trigger you. I love, love, love your artist date. What an inspiring idea!!! Going to borrow it myself. And you’ve done so many tasks! Thank you so much for sharing!
Michelle, Thank you for responding. I’m glad you agree that oak leaf ID study counts as an acceptable Artist’s Date. Initially I had misgivings. Now it seems that anything goes as long as it is likely to “refill the well”.
MORE INFO ONLY IF YOU WANT IT
You mentioned interest in borrowing this leaf ID date idea. In case it is useful to you, here is my recent experience preparing for the date:
1) This turned out to be an awkward season to schedule this date because leaves have already fallen and snow is 6” deep on the ground now. However, in my compost bin I found leaves raked up before the snow, so I did have some to work with. A better time of year would have been fall, when leaves are starting to fall - so I could collect them and also see which trees they are falling from. Additionally, acorns are a good identification aid that is most visible in the summer and fall. (0 acorns found in the compost this week)
2) An initial internet investigation showed many available information sources, commercial and public, often put together for a local area/region or specific park by the State parks services, Scouts, naturalist organizations, and tree nurseries.
3) There were numerous simpler guides, but I started with the painfully complete, free, black and white - so easily downloadable, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2001 Field Guide to Native Oak Species of Eastern North America, FHTET-03-01, reprinted 2017. https://www.fs.usda.gov/foresthealth/technology/pdfs/fieldguide.pdf. I started there mainly because I’m in Virginia and heard that landscapers plant a lot of oak trees from other adjacent states here, so it seemed wise to cast a broad net.
4) It would have been helpful to start reviewing leaf anatomical terminology first - USDA used terms that were unfamiliar to me in a leaf context. If I had taken time to skim the whole USDA field guide before digging in, I would have found the glossary in the back much sooner.
Despite these seasonal challenges, but partly because oak leaves are so sturdy and digging in the compost yielded so many even in January, this was an awesome, fun, date!
Hi Deborah, like you I often walk with a neighbor, so I’m assuming that walking just with myself alone is not a daily requirement - at least that is how I read the task description. Enjoy your next outing!
Hi Whitney, wow, the weather in your area is wild too, huh? Stay safe! Like you I couldn’t always get to the morning pages right at the start and sometimes can’t do them without interruption, but it’s still worth it to me even if I finish it off before I drift off into sleep.
That is amazing that you have 11 different species of oaks in your yard. I’ve blown into your yard that is amazing. I love oak trees. I wrote a report in fifth grade and identified five different species of oak trees in our yard in California and I flattened out the leaves and taped them on pages and labeled them like a scientific thing and it was so fun and I’ve never forgotten it and I bonded with the oaks. Sounds like you definitely bonded with the oaks in your ecosystem. That’s wonderful. I love how Michelle talks about us being a mycelial network. That is so cool. I love that idea.
I didn’t realize it until I read your comments about affirmations, but the affirmations thing was actually triggering for me as well because it just reminded me of a couple of times earlier in my life when I was having a hard time and I used affirmations and I just became aware that I was a little triggered by the affirmation idea and went into resistance to that so thank you for helping me be more self-aware by sharing your experience.
I often go on walks. That’s my main form of exercise and I love walking outside in nature and down by the river and going on a little hikes and I love walking in parks and neighborhoods too alone or with other people. I definitely appreciate that. There’s some walkers in our cohort because I need the solidarity right now for my health. I need to be more active and when I’m out of touch with nature physically I don’t feel as safe or grounded even when my mind is clear. Thank you for sharing your journey.
PS, just to dispel any misconception (I’m factual), there is only one oak in our yard. The other 10 species must be near enough that their leaves blew into the yard on the day I put them in the compost bin. I’ll try to find them n the spring, when it is possible to match leaves to their source trees.
Thank you for connecting our right and left brain hemispheres. I've often observed the power of an artist who can think logically and linearly and a scientist who can think circularly and artistically. I'm grateful for our friendship.
Hi Keely, how surprised I felt hearing that my embarrassing admission (I’m allergic to affirmations), offered you some personal insight. Take it and run with it - or walk it down by your river, when you are ready. I’ll do the same.
(1) Managed to complete morning pages each day this week. I have been doing pages inconsistently for a number of months, so it felt good to have the accountability to write everyday.
(2) Artist Date was watching the sunset from the building roof yesterday, but it was rather uninspiring. However, I turned and noticed that the moonrise through the denuded trees was spectacular: https://www.instagram.com/p/DEoEh4ws4vu/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
(3) Did not practice an affirmation
(4) My only resistance was to morning pages; my schedule (and travel) make it difficult to keep a consistent practice, so pages were not always first thing in the AM. However, I tired to finish them before my day really started up.
(5) Did not intentionally do any of the tasks, but upon reading the chapter I reflected on my creative childhood. I did not note any particular demons or enemies to my creative expression, but rather remembered a lack of patience when I tried to learn guitar (at 7).
Love hearing responses to the first week of The Artist's Way! I'll had a few thoughts: I'm happy the accountability is working! Watching a sunset is a good artist date. Maybe add snacks or a picnic? Do you think you'd be stretched by doing the themed tasks, or writing an affirmation for yourself? It can be uncomfortable to stretch....
My affirmation for the week has been: I am willing to experience my creative energy.
Anyone want to share an affirmation that's helpful to you?
Love your description of the trees as “denuded”- that fits deciduous winter branches so well. Beautiful pics on ig! I enjoyed the accountability too for MPs & the date. It’s challenging for me to make time first thing, too, so I’m considering where I may want to nudge myself to get to bed earlier & wake up earlier to have more daytime for stuff. I’m curious whether you find it challenging to sit with yourself and be present for yourself while you fiddle around on a guitar now? 🎸 Have you been able to have compassion on your younger self? Love that guy! :)
Keely thank you for your warm and kind words; I love finding that singular word that concisely conveys my message.
I am particularly appreciative of your last question because it drove some deep reflection on my part (and was a good morning pages subject). Other than a random strum while moving my son's guitars (plural), I have not tried to play the guitar in 40+ years primarily because whatever the desire to learn to play was dormant. I never felt like I had abandoned some dream of being a musician likely because the 7 year old's dream was to be cool and not actually to create music. So I have a lot of compassion for that younger self, music takes patience and focus, and that was (and sometimes is) a challenge when your mind wants to sprint.
But as I think about the artist's way and reflect back on that first chapter, I can recognize that I have always loved music and would habitually state (with humor) that my musical talent begins and ends with Spotify/iTunes (or whatever the music format was). So maybe there is a latent aspiration to be a musician, and over the next 11 weeks, I hope to take that "cool" aspiring musician out for a date.
Thanks for sharing that photo! It reminds me of a Tim Burton scenery and almost doesn't look real! I noticed you photograph a lot of sunsets. What made you so interested in this a subject?
Thank you Alexis! Short answer is I find sunsets (and sunrises) beautiful.
Slightly longer answer is they (along with sunrises) represent endings and beginning yet there is beauty in both especially if you have the patience to allow them to develop and change at their own rate. Additionally, like much of nature, while there are patterns and similarities to them, no two are identical so you can appreciate the unique beauty of each.
Hi everyone, it was so fun to read through everyone's responses. I went to comment on a few, then over thought it and didn't!! I've been without power since Tuesday and I'm still without internet, it's amazing how much a creature of habit I am. I agree, having candle lit nights and a slower pace was nice, but I'm ready to resume a more structured existence.
Jumping right in...
1. I loved morning pages, but a few days it was afternoon pages. My brain was so open and creative in the morning the words just flowed, I didn't have to over think or find things to write. My handwriting got quite good too! BONUS. When I wrote in the afternoon I found I complained more, and it was a bit more 'woe is me' (so I hear ya). I enjoyed morning pages quite a bit, that surprised me.
2. Artist's date is/was more of a struggle. I felt as if I shouldn't take time this week to go somewhere 'frivolous' when my family and I were struggling without power, and gas, etc etc etc. Then I got tired of hearing myself complain so I went to my favorite bagel place in La Verne and sat and wrote and stared off into the void. I feel it was a bit of a cop out because I would do this anyway and it didn't take me out of my comfort zone. Next week I will make a plan and schedule my date in my calendar, if it goes into the calendar it's pretty set in stone.
3. Affirmations always have felt strange to me. I tell my kids all the time how awesome they are so I tried to channel that feeling, still didn't work. But I came up with something that felt nourishing but not hokey, so it worked for me.
~Everything I do, from getting dressed in the morning, to my yoga practice, to caring for my family is a creative process. I grow and thrive seeing creativity everywhere, including in myself, in the everyday things.
4. I felt the most resistance in the Artist's Date and in the tasks. Keep reading you'll see what I mean in the resistance to tasks.
5. #8 Task - this was fun, 5 lives you would lead
professional rock climber
ballerina
park ranger
illustrator
farm/animal worker
I felt like the world opened up to me and I COULD BE ANYTHING! I try and teach my kids that too, our lives are such a small part of this world that we have the power to be anything so anything. I think we just have to be able to think it.
#3 Task - old enemies, those naysayers
Lots of resistance. My Mom is my biggest fan and also my oldest frenemy. I love her and I'm tired of her being the blame all the time, but damn if she doesn't set something off in me. I can hear, verbatim, conversations we had when I was 12, 15 and I swear I think I'm crazy that I must have elaborated it as time has gone by. I don't want that to be my story anymore. She did the best she could and I'm going to leave that right there for now.
This whole experience has been amazong. I don't feel like I have to censoring myself, so excuse me if my grammar isn't great, but I'm not going to change it. I also am prone to cussing, so I hope that flies here because I might cuss if I have to talk more about my Mom. Thank you all for your vibes, I feel them as I finish this up. Sending out lots of love to you all. This is a very vulnerable spot and yet I feel very safe.
Four of us in this group have written together for over a year. One of my writing buddies sent me this poem and I have posted it on my SS Stories by Janus. Sending gratitude to Brianne Dewitt Goudelock.
I, like so many, have been derailed by smoke and brimstone of the apocalyptic skies and sorrows. My morning pages, my yoga practice, my sleep, my thinly tethered thread to my ever evasive sanity, my home, my personal hygiene and alas, my attention to preparing this post have all been neglected. I write to you now, from a cool and cloudy long awaited bath.
My heart though, is sitting pretty in silver lining. I had the luxury of hosting my sister and her young family of fire refugees. My nephews, Levi, 2 1/2 and Joah, 5, filled my home with giggles and sensational chaos. Batman, Minions, Mickeys and The Beatles coloring books took over my living room. Tiny shoes sat at the bottom of the stairs. Cartoons took over our television.
I fell in love all over again with my husband “Tio Michael” as he turned his inner child face forward winning the hearts of these sweet boys, yet again.
I’m going to say, while it was not a thought at the time, that making my “famous” lemon crinkle cookies with my nephews was an Artists date, if ever an Artist date there was. 2 step stools, two curl covered cabezas, twenty tiny fingers and I, made a sugary, sticky mess of my countertops as we stirred and rolled patted and plopped our cookies into the oven.
I remembered making cinnamon rolls with Mama and swallowed a sugar coated tear of childhood magic.
My sister and her family went home today.
A small plate of lemon crinkle cookies remains on my kitchen table and my heart is full.
I will do better next week, but it wont be as good.
Also, my pre existing affirmation is not to rush. I’m not in a hurry. Time stopped for me to be with my loved ones and to truly embrace the multifaceted moment. I feel lucky in so many ways.
I got off to a great start with the morning pages. Really enjoying the discipline. Then the fire came and we were evacuated.. Miraculously our house survived, though the neigborhood looks like a war zone. No water, no electricity, flames still burning, soot and smoke filling the air. It's gonna be a while till we can move back. So I missed a few days of writing while we got settled in a hotel in Pasadena. The last two days I wrote my morning pages. I think that keeping my routines will help bring some normalcy to my life. I also took a long walk through Pasadena'
Thinking of you and your wife in a hotel, hoping this routine, among your others, will bring peace to your life as you navigate so many changes in the next few months. These winds. Stay safe, Barry. We're thinking of you.
Barry, please keep us (me?) informed. What can we do? Seriously. What?
What are you going to do? Next? Amongst all the choices, all the things you should do, all the things you need to do, identify ways others can help.
Full disclosure: Barry and I were accountability partners this past fall when we met in Michelle's class at the Maloof Foundation. It was my first Morning Pages experience and a gentle introduction to this month's boot camp.
Barry, I am here for you and your family. Let us know. Even if it as simple as identifying your preferred charity/entity/shelter for us to support publicly. What organization or entity is out there giving appropriate support.
I feel as if whatever I do is a drop in the bucket, so I'm truly interested in appropriate support.
thank you for making yourself so vulnerable and sharing these tragic injuries that you’ve endured to your mind and your heart and your soul and your body and your identity and probably in other ways that we haven’t even conceived of yet. [possibly triggering description to follow:] When I was 3-4, I was in a group of children being sexually abused by a few adult adults and their teenage helpers, and I witnessed a girl of seven or eight years old, a blonde girl, being sexually assaulted by a man dressed as a Catholic cardinal. Her eyes were glazed over and she was very out of it, but she suffered a lot of pain too, but I was suffering too, and had to participate in difficult things so we had to just get through it. I hope that girl survived. I never knew who she was. A friend of my parents used to take me to these events, probably unbeknownst to my parents (although my father was sexually abusive).
Four of the men who abused me have died of old age and every time one passes it’s like a stone being lifted from my heart, and I feel free and safe in a way I’ve never experienced before, and I feel strong and wise in ways that make me wanna bless the whole earth and everyone on it and reduce suffering and benefit all beings like the Dalai Lama teaches us to. I’ve been watching a series called secrets of polygamy on Hulu about people who are escaping fundamentalist Mormon cults there, and I know that these cults and cultures are inter mixed with the mainstream Mormon culture because some families secretly practice these types of things even right under the nose of all the good people that also attend church.
I love forger because you find strength and blessing and benefit in this hard cold painful ground of your childhood and I’ve had to do a similar thing and I feel like after Covid my mind just opened up and I felt like God was telling me to be grateful just like extreme gratitude And I took this attitude of extreme gratitude. I know I was quoting Oprah probably but it really shifted my perspective about the pain of my past and my identity because of that pain in that trauma. What you endured at seven I similarly endured when my body was much more mature at 17. It broke my mind. It shattered my mind, but I do pretty good with the pieces and all my doctors and therapist and healers and massage therapists, and all the modalities of healing that I’ve explored all my life. Every single one has helped, but nothing has helped as much as reading other survivors words of truth about their own experience That has been the number one healing thing for me, along with my faith in a truly loving God/ess. I’m grateful that I’m not alone in trying to survive and make a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful SAFE (but equal and respectful- not controlling ) planet For future generations.
I did my morning pages every day this week except for today. I only got to half a page but the night is young. It is taking some discipline and I feel like I am integrating with my 25-year-old self and it’s really a trip to be in my head every day most days. I think I have jarred my brain into starting to chug through those blocks of resistance to prioritizing my creativity and validating self expression in direct opposition to what I know my father wants me to say, which is nothing to cover his abuses and manipulations. So even though it’s challenging, it feels really powerful, like beginning to tap into that route of creativity that we draw from the center of the planet in terms of our trajectory in the universe and things like that like gravity. Michelle, I like that you were talking about gravity and buoyancy and things - I think about these things a lot gravity and how it might be different in other places in the universe it’s fun to think about.
For my Artist date this week I wanted to go down to the river and hang out and walk around in the mud and the leaves in the shallows and take pictures with my new iPhone and bless myself with the water on my upper chakras and woke up on the bridge Nearby me in a park and overlook the river watching it flow like that song by Peter Gabriel called don’t give up where he talks about the river flowing that river flows and I love that song and it’s always been very healing for I think everyone who’s ever heard it. It’s such a beautiful song. However, I think the kind of intensity of my life in the last couple weeks and with the political changes going on and people adapting and keeping an eye on how people are acting and things is interesting right now, and the weather changes are concerning and so I have been feeling under the weather I think from stress. So instead of going to the river physically cause I definitely went there in my mind. I stayed in last night and made Ghirardelli brownies from my favorite brownie mix with the chocolate chips in them and I have been eating them ever since last night and they are astoundingly delicious to chocolate is like a blessing of earth in my mouth that heals me and I love the smell filling up the house and I lit my candles. I bought myself a special candle like a rose Yankee candle like a smaller one and a glass jar off Amazon and I had another candle by the same company that I lit and I lit both those on either side of the TV and I made the brownies and I really allowed myself to enjoy it and totally indulged in watching human trafficking research on YouTube because that’s how I relax and it’s educational and mildly terrifying but I think humanity has been like this all along And sometimes societies have better ideas and can pull it off and sometimes we hit challenges so we gotta figure out how to make changes for the good and the ways that we can each in our own sphere, I guess. I’m trying to adapt to this of the Gharkey or whatever it is and hoping all of my politically conservative friends are correct and good things are happening, but to me, it’s just not good (for a time.) storms, rage and storms, and some rains are gentle and some are harsh but if you make it through, you, rebuild your house on the beach. I think of the dwellings in a lot of Asia and Indonesia where island cultures in the tropical regions build houses on stilts and they’re sometimes swept away by storms and they rebuild them and probably have been doing so for tens of thousands of years. It doesn’t get much more zen than that imo.
I have not yet finished reading the first chapter of the book - Also, I was really stumped after Saturday. I couldn’t think of any ideas for Artist dates that seemed like they were enough that felt adequate. Everything seemed not important enough and not cool enough and not meaningful enough and like not efficient enough. I speed-read Julia Camryn‘s book 52 weeks of Artist dates ideas. I realized it doesn’t have to be a big fancy schmancy deal. It could just be a nice little thing you do with yourself.
What really helped me this week was having written out that contract with myself and how interesting it is to have a contract with myself instead of thinking of a contract as something like a transaction it’s more like a commitment. It’s more like a meaningful relationship. It’s more emotionally intimate than a routine or a schedule. It’s more sacred. It’s part of a sacred practice of becoming myself by listening to myself and listening to my own inner voice. It’s taken me, decades to begin to hear my own inner voice and to discern it from other spirits and influences and dissociated states and experiences and ideas and confusions and revelations.
So having written out that contract like on Saturday, I thought my agreement was with you, Michelle and with my cohort, and then Sunday, I watched some video interviews of Julia Cameron on YouTube one where she’s talking about her book the listening way and she shares some of her ideas for her own practice for different kinds of listening - spending a week with each different kind of listening- listening to the background noise in your environment, listening in conversations with curiosity and interest about what other people are saying- listening beyond the veil, and I love these nuances of the experience of listening. (I bought The Listening Way on Kindle but don’t expect to have much time to read it til like Feb).
So coming back to the Artist Way contract I realized on Sunday that really it’s a contract with myself. It just literally a contract with myself. It’s not with Michelle or Julia or even God or the Earth or the universe or my neighbor or anything. It’s with me.
It seemed like a Herculean effort to give myself that commitment. I’ve been feeling a little emotional the last few days since we started this practice. Feeling kind of discombobulated like I’m readjusting to my new internal headspace of self-awareness and reintegrated life experience. And like I’ll get like a sudden feeling of like this really kind of like beautiful kind of feeling of wanting to cry like like just grief and sadness like it would feel good to cry, but then when I go to like touch on it and allow the emotion in like it just shuts down again and it kind of runs away so I don’t know what that is. But it like feels good to get reconnected with this practice in my life in a way that is like healing me emotionally in some way that I can’t (ironically) verbalize.
If I’m overwhelming everyone with my too many words let me know. I apologize if it’s gruesome I can try to reign it in, but I’m really enjoying it so thank you for indulging me and allowing me to totally luxuriate in free thought and celebrate this shared space of radical artistry and internal artistic, gnosis and exploration with way way way too many words.
Thank you all for sharing this space and path together. Thank you so much for offering this so affordably, Michelle, what a truly priceless gift. 💝 Namaste 🙏🏼
Thank you for your kind words here, Keely, and for sharing more of your story. So grateful for you and your compassion and your wisdom. Yes, this is a contract with yourself and its a gift to recognize that instead of thinking of a contract as something like a transaction, it’s more like a commitment. And the commitment is to the beautiful, strong, courageous you.
1. I skipped morning pages twice: Wednesday and Friday, both due to thinking about and reacting to the fire
https://storiesbyjanus.substack.com/p/not-just-another-fire?r=28rbmj
I love the procedure. I'm all in.
2. I took myself to a walkabout in Barnes and Noble. What a feast for my eyes and my imagination, from magazines to cookbooks to journals and calendars. Oh my, my eyes smiled, and my heart fluttered.
3. Alexis, I, too, want to borrow your "I am worthy...." affirmation. Thanks for sharing.
4. Resistance? a little, always, but that is a signal something big is about to happen.
5. Tasks? next week!
Thank you for sharing your post on the fire, Janice. And what a lovely way to engage in an artist's date! And resistance is absolutely a sign that something is about to happen. You are worthy, indeed.
Over a year ago, you invited us to adopt an affirmation in a chakra class you led at Claremont Yoga. Mine was "I am enough. I have enough. This is enough". It was very impactful,
but then, as way leads on to way,
I lost it.
This morning in my pages,
I found it again.
Dear Morning Pages,
I'm sorry I hate you so much because I think you might be good for me.
Your reluctant friend,
Janice
It’s not too late to complete Friday! Try maybe before bed? Also, great date! I’m going to save that to my list of potential date activities. I’m so sorry to hear about the fires. I hope you and your family are doing okay.
There is not much better than walking through a bookstore or library. Inspiration all around.
For sure!
Hi Janice, I’ve been really concerned about the fires as well (I’m in Sacramento area, have friends in LA) and Wednesday it took me all day literally until midnight to complete three single sided pages and I did not stay and write evenly in the lines. I wrote really big over some of the several lines at once, so it was kind of a sad, symbolic effort, but I’m proud of myself, lol.
Symbolic effort is effort. You showed up!
I wrote a short piece that still has legs. https://storiesbyjanus.substack.com/p/not-just-another-fire?r=28rbmj
thanks for your concern.
More importantly, proud of you, my Fellow Artist 🧑🎨 for getting to and through. Stay safe!
Loved the Wicked quote!
Artist Way responses:
1. I enjoyed the morning pages and was able to complete them every day. It is a refreshing way to focus my mind in the morning and a great way to start the day.
2. I haven't completed my artist date yet, but will do so either this evening or tomorrow. I haven't decided what it will be yet, but there are a couple of options like the Pomona Art Walk or writing at a wine bar in Claremont.
3. I didn't practice an affirmation either.
4. No resistance, quite the opposite. I look forward to the writing and artist dates. I feel these times as opportunities for personal growth and a time for myself. I don't feel I get a lot of that these days.
5. Have not read my chapter for the week yet and have not completed any of the tasks. I have been without power due to the winds since Tuesday and am working remotely, so it's thrown my life off a bit.
Happy you're not experiencing resistance. Read the chapter when you can, or at least read two next week. Keep up the good work!
Barny -It sounds like you are really stepping into this practice as an opportunity for growth. Hope your power is restored soon.
Thank you Bree!
I vote wine bar in Claremont:) I miss Claremont. I hope you got your power back as well! It’s definitely been an awful week for California.
The electricity came back last night but you know, I enjoyed the quiet unplugged evenings and making coffee in a French press!
Hi Barny, I wondered if some in our cohort might be affected by the fires- really hoping you’re doing ok despite the challenges.
I like this:
“I look forward to the writing and artist dates. I feel these times as opportunities for personal growth and a time for myself. I don't feel I get a lot of that these days.”
That feels good, it feels good to give oneself the gift of deep thinking, of introspection, of playing or meandering through one’s consciousness. I like to tell young writers who are still in school age that staring off into space is 80% of the work of writing poetry. You allow your mind, your consciousness, to wonder, to wander, and to extend into the universe and discover what’s interesting and what might be worth following up on. We learn nuance and strategize for survival as a species in this dissociated and pleasant staring, in my view.
I think it is 80% of any intellectual / creative practice
Overall, my first week was a success. Below are my responses:
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
I am proud that I was able to complete the entire week, including today. The first few days felt easy, but by yesterday, I feel like I ran out of things to either complain about or list out. I will say it does help clear out the "mess" of my brain. I think especially as women, we are creatures with so many thoughts and feelings on what we need/should be doing. The pages were my way of combing through the mess of thoughts and anxieties.
How about your artist date? Will you share what you chose to do?
I love to paint, and I've never done one of those "Sip and Paints." So I decided to try one out. It seems like most people do these in a group of people they know, so I felt a little shy about doing it by myself, and I was the only one in the group by myself. We painted an artwork called, "Rainbow Skies." It is the view that is seen from the Oahu Country Club. In Hawaii, they really do have pink skies at sunset, and they contrast with lush greenery. We painted by the pool of the Marriot in Kapolei so there were a lot of people walking by, and looking at our work. We were right by the pool bar, and some of the guests would stop and talk to us. There were also a lot of local families enjoying the fire pit and food trucks. It is an area of Hawaii I would not have discovered if it weren't for the Artist Date, so I'm appreciative of that and will probably go back with family.
Did you practice a creative affirmation?
I practiced this in my morning pages and I just wrote the sentence, "I am worthy of ...." and insert everything wish/desire that I want for myself. I admittedly feel very cheesy with affirmations, and don't feel really genuine to me. However, after a few times of writing this sentence, it started to feel really cathartic.
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why?
I felt a little voice in my head that said, maybe you should just change your artist date and go to a movie by yourself or shopping by yourself. But I specifically booked this activity to try to challenge that awkwardness of doing things by myself in a traditional group setting.
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which ones? Any discoveries there? I haven't tackled any of the tasks this week, but its on my to do list to write about the imaginary lives. :)
This is such an exciting response! You are worthy of calling yourself an artist, for sure! Thank you for sharing your resistance. I relate. Keep up the good work!
Your artist date is inspiring and fun. You are brave!
I really loved how you shared the affirmation practice and how it transformed from cheesy to cathartic. I might have to try that this week.
How inspiring, your artist date! I appreciate your example of courage, deciding to go to the paint and sip event as a solo artist. You’re very brave. I hit some resistance this week too (but powered through) especially Wednesday and today lots of changes for me this time of year and lots of changes in society, socially, politically, and regarding the climate issues we face (ok especially the LA fires. Lots of creative friends in areas affected and neighboring, concerned & empathetic.) I’ve been blessed with a one week family vacation to Hawaii with my ex-in-laws, and fell in love with Mother Nature and the night sky all over again. What a richly sensual environment! Imagining you painting and sipping wine watching the sunset is a happy reverie! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the kind words Keely. I’m so sad to see the fires. Monday was also a tough day politically and I find myself having to avoid all the news and filter the information I get. I think the next 4 years will be tough for a lot of us. 😞
Agreed. I’m trying to keep up with all the shenanigans so I can try to prepare for how sweeping changes may affect my personal life, including the trajectory of my writing. But you can only watch news and be a buddha / bodhisaatva so many hours of the day. Naps, nature, finding happy ways to rest and be productive, all really help, along with limited news- but I’m so grateful for our relatively free press. I hope we are able to retain that but who knows with such lack of accountability in leadership? No limits on greed or corruption or force? Extremism is scary. 🫣
I like the sentence stem approach to an affirmation. I may borrow that. :)
Artist Way Response
1) I completed the morning pages every day this week. Day 1 and 2 felt great as I was inspired and proud. As the week went on, some of the insecurities (“Can I really call myself an ‘artist’? Is that a pipe dream?”) started creeping in. The pages turned into a lament of how I am an imposter. Seems like that is pretty normal.
2) I took myself on an artist date where I looked through very old family photos while sipping on coffee and eating a breakfast sandwich at a local coffee shop. It was lovely.
3) I do not have a creative affirmation. I would benefit from this.
4) I have not felt resistance to the activities. I love a to-do list! My only resistance is to identifying myself as “artist.”
5) I completely forgot about the other tasks after I read the chapter. Oops. However, after I read the chapter I began to notice the ways in which my life is drawn to stories through my work, relationships, and habits, which may be my way of meeting the creative need within me. This became food for thought.
You are an artist, Bree. I give yourself permission to call yourself one :) Can't wait to hear your affirmation!!!!!
Hi Bree,
I actually had similar thoughts, but more specifically, I wrote - "Am I really a writer" and even thought, maybe I should just pick something else. It is hard when you've been away from the creative world for so long, to get back to having a connection, especially with how quickly life moves. Your artist date sounds lovely. Which coffee shop did you go to and what did you drink? Is there a fun memory your old photos sparked? I was looking at old photos with a cousin of mine, and we came across an old photo of us when we were about 8 or 9 (now we are in our 30's), and she was so upset that in the picture, my sister and I got to have "fair food" but her and her sisters could not eat the fried food. It made me laugh because it is a day and picture I don't even remember, but for her, it was the day she was denied a deep fried corn dog!
Kindly,
Alexis
Hi Alexis - I am going to work on the affirmation. I believe in them, so I will say it until it feels true. I am playing around with the idea of creating something about my grandmother, and there is one photo that I have had my eye on for a while that has inspired that. Seeing other photos of her filled me with warmth. I love the memory you shared. Isn't it so interesting how to different people can have such different memories from looking at one photo? All about perspective.
I love that you are creating something about your grandmother. I was close with my grandmother and lost her in 2023, but it still feels like it was yesterday. I hope you share with us whatever you create. ❤️
I too loved the artist date, and it may inspire me to do something with the letters I inherited from my parents after their passing. Just sit somewhere, have a glass of wine, and read their story as told through their own words.
I love this idea!
Hi Bree. Great job enjoying your MPs! It’s so good to hear you validate yourself for feeling inspired and proud, that’s inspiring in itself. The coffee & family photo book is a staple of the artists life in my experience and understanding- anywhere in the world. I miss it so- I’m too familiar with my local Panera & maybe this coming week I’ll go to a unique independent cafe and savor the smells and vibes. It’s occurred to me that perhaps being an artist is the most human thing about each of us. Perhaps we’re all artists before or anything else and we forget this as we grow up and forget how to play and make messes and free ourselves from social expectations and judgments that we take on as we mature. It takes so much courage to begin to recognize that every human being is a creator we create our lives. We create our world together. We create a path through time from birth to death. We create a story as we live. We weave our stories together and the blacks and whites and every shade in between and every hue get taken up and combined and recombined, and changed and transformed and played with and explored, and we create humanity together; we create life on our planet. We continue in one great wave from our first mother’s to rise from the Earth as we grow our bodies up and then we begin to get closer to the Earth and smaller as we age and then our bodies are returned to the Earth and that’s the trough, but another generation has started of humanity and the wave through time keeps growing and dying and changing. Perhaps it’s a childlike belief, but I believe Mother Earth would be lonely without us and you might imagine that I’m being narcissistic but why would we not imagine that a creature so alive as the Earth herself would love? Our existence and sustenance and everything we are comes from Mother Earth. We are like fetuses in the womb of her atmosphere. The earths crust is like a placenta, and she is a creator to us along with the heavens, the sky, space, the galaxies, the universe. How can you imagine that you’re not a creator? that you’re not born an artist and you merely haven’t yet noticed yet how beautifully you’re growing into your eternal self, your unique divine nature. I like to try to turn things around sometimes so that I can validate what already exist within me. And within all of us, if we choose to see it and recognize it or whatever we choose to see and recognize that tool of validation can help us grow the seeds that we want in our lives of the flowers that we want the fruits that we want in our lives and help us pluck out the seeds that we don’t want. Our choices map the dimensions of time and space like a canvas as we move forward in time. Our choices can follow the trajectories of other great examples whose lives we seek to emulate in some ways or we can imagine that we are merely ruled by others choices, and others influences. We are profoundly influenced by one another far more than we could consciously recognize I believe because I believe that we are one human organism like a family as a unit, like a body has cells and organs, and all of your organs are separate, but those cells know what to grow into. Oh I have to grow into a liver or a heart or a bone. Monarch butterflies take four generations to complete one migratory cycle between the Sierra Madre in Mexico and the forest and mountains of Canada. Three generations migrate north from Mexico to Canada and the fourth generation migrates from Canada back to Mexico. How does each monarch know which generation it belongs to and whether it should fly north or south? How did the butterflies communicate with one another so that they can keep track of their journey as a species moving forward in time? Do humans have similar energy patterns and structures that we have yet to discover scientifically? This is why I enjoy studying my genealogy and the genealogy of the human family. Generations of my people have yearned to be artists and recognize and validate that aspect of their human experience, but to survive and raise their families they’ve become coal miners and sharecroppers and seamstresses and doctors and engineers and managers and nurses and manufacturers and have sold candy at department stores. As a human family historically a lot of our ancestors endured great great suffering similar to what Michelle has gone through I think and many of others of us who’ve had difficult beginnings. I’m relatively poor and live in California, but I feel rich compared to most of history and most of the other members of the human race many of whom live on less than a dollar a day. Even in my relative poverty, I live like a queen; I have an education. People bring food to my door, etc. really glad for the dictate feature on my iPhone so I could leave this essay in your comments lol i’m sorry if this is too long I hope you don’t mind but I wasn’t feeling well today and then the idea to me that you’re not an artist or that people would invalidate that kind of just made me go off on a riff. Definitely you’re an artist and you are a creator and you have been all your life and you’re beginning to remember. Namaste 🙏🏼
Keely - So many beautiful images in this response. And I appreciate your validation. I love the idea that we are always creating.
Of course we are also destroyers on some level because sometimes you have to destroy, change or alter something before you can have the space you need to create. For instance, I destroy germs on my countertops before I bake. I destroy the “crunchies” on my floor with the vacuum before I can participate in a yoga practice. We eat and drink, we urinate and defecate, and we literally cannot physically survive without being able to do both. But there are social taboos on experiencing those things with equal mindfulness and attention, honoring our nature. Nature is such an interesting concept to explore metaphorically!
+1 on this beautiful response and I too love the idea that we are born and live as creators.
Feel better soon!
How did it go for you this week?
- I started the week inspired and read the whole chapter after the zoom meeting, jotting notes in a journal as I went through it, and answered some of the questions. Then I forgot to return for the rest of the questions later in the week. I also wrote out some affirmations and then promptly forgot about it. Ha! I encourage my clients to write affirmations on their mirrors or sticky notes in conspicuous places and did not do this myself.
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
- I did the pages every day, but never first thing in the morning. I think it only even happened in the morning once. I committed to doing it with my first free time because it was just unrealistic for me to cram one more thing into my morning routine and responsibilities and I am not willing to be sleep-deprived. I spent a lot of my pages making excuses about this. Ha ha! I became increasingly disillusioned with the process throughout the week, noting my inner resistance. My days are so full and I've been struggling already to find time to write, and now I feel like time I wanted to dedicate toward working on articles for private-ish (substack) or public (ie, NY Times, Vogue, etc) publication - my goal for this quarter of the year - has been impinged by this task. I am feeling decreasingly committed to staying with the program, to be honest. I see the value, and yet I question whether I have the space in my life during this current stage. And yes, we make time for what is important to us, but the other big things in my life are non-negotiably important to me, too, and I don't apologize for that. We'll see. Maybe I'll try for another week and see what happens.
How about your artist date? Will you share what you chose to do?
- I attended a lovely writer's retreat at the Maloof on Sunday. :)
Did you practice a creative affirmation?
- My affirmation (I had to look it up in my journal because I totally forgot about it!)
"I have a voice the world needs and wants to hear." (I don't feel entirely comfortable stating that. It feels narcissistic with so many voices clamoring for recognition.)
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why?
- yes. Partly as described above, partly because my inner rebellious child is getting ornery. ;)
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which ones? Any discoveries there?
- I wrote some lists:
1. Things that have caused me artistic fear / shrinking (8 diverse memories spanning childhood to last summer)
2. How my inner artist has been supported (9 items)
3. Created an affirmation
4. Exercise: write out these words 10x: I, Debbie, am a brilliant and prolific writer. Check.
5. Also wrote out my blocking, mostly-subconscious negative belief, that links back to my first list: "It's too costly to be a brilliant writer; I must stay small / boring."
6. Wrote out 10 of the positive cognitions from the book that I wish to claim. The one that I struggle with most, based on recent creative / relational trauma, and which I most want to believe, is: "My creativity always leads me to truth and love."
7. Time travel exercise / monster hall of fame: This included
- leader of a writer's group c. 2005, who told me in the feedback circle that my writing (memoir, though I didn't admit that) was "too dark. No one will want to read this."
- a writing contest judge when I was 12 years old, who wrote that my story set in a concentration camp was "not a child's story," and disqualified me. This story stemmed from my family history.
- my 2 closest siblings threatening to cut me off last summer, saying "if you write, we don't feel safe to be with you. Your writing is cruel and unkind and false."
This is sadly a downer of a place to leave off my post, as I did not return to the exercises. I see a lot of value in them for continuing to work with the Time Travel Exercise / monster hall of fame so I may end up spending more time in Week 1. And maybe less in "morning" pages to make space for it.
Thanks for reading!
I admire the honesty with which you are approaching this program. Timing is so important, and while engaging in a task begrudgingly may open us up to something new it also has the possibility of leading to burnout. I support your process of discerning which it is for you.
Thanks, Bree!
I so appreciate the honesty of your reply. Your monster hall of fame also resonated with me! I posted a scene this week and the one comment I got back was: is this memoir? It feels like the girl is in danger and if so, I wouldn’t want to continue reading” 🙄🤦♀️🤫 Solidarity! I, and so many others I am sure, would gladly read your stories, however dark. Because showing the dark in life allows us to also see and appreciate the tiny places where the light gets through.
Thank you for these words! I agree; memoir is my favorite genre because when you hold the whole story, you see hope and beauty, resilience and inspiration. I love "the tiny places where the light gets through." :) And you know what, it's fine that it's not for everyone!
I'd love to read your scene!
I too admire the honesty and vulnerability of this post, and I can relate to that inner rebellious ornery child. :) Sending you compassionate support!
Thank you, Tom!
Hi, Artist Pauline checking in:
Morning Pages--
I write every morning for almost an hour to fill 3 pages. I told my family about this so they know my silence before I write. It took me a few days to settle into the pages. I use a stack of loose papers ripped from unused notebooks. The stack is placed in an old journal's pouch. I put the written pages in the back. and take out new pages from the front. I write on my dining table, the east-facing side of the table which also looks out to a window.
I am happy that I took my time to figure out how the morning pages can work for me, and let the idea come up to experiment with. When I bring out my journal pouch, I feel proud I made it from what I had at home, and excited to take the paper out to write. I reminded myself there's something I must do to start my day and this actually stopped the mind chattering upon waking up. I got up, hydrated, and let the pen roll.
P.S. One morning I thought I would use a pencil to write morning pages. My hand cramped at the 2nd page. The friction of lead caused a brain jam! Must hold on to finish the third page... There was a lot of rubbing and shaking of my right hand that morning.
Artist Date--
While in the meeting, I wrote down all other 12 fellow new artists' names. 12 names for 12 dates, I thought maybe I find some inspiration from their names. I started with Annalise, and thought about Star Anise, an Asian spice. I intended to use the seed pod as a stamp to print and decorate my notebook, but I ended up getting dizzy from the scent from robbing and holding the seed pods up close for too long. I left the date and came back the second day to do some sketching, but not too long. I wrote about this experience from not finding a "representative"-shaped pod, to finding each pod's individual uniqueness.
Tasks--
Imaginary lives: I came up with 5 imaginary lives, but didn't follow up with activities.
Affirmations: I got a bit impatient with affirmation. I wrote down some maybe enemies and had to think hard if they are really enemies. Time travel exercise got my thinking into a ditch.
First week--
My morning has become more regular. From this tiny bit of routine, I noticed I started including and excluding certain daily activities. My writing is a constructivity. (Why is constructivity not a word? I just put it in my dictionary!).
I like my morning pages. I am happy with how I show up and complete this ritual. I feel I have lay my foundation down.
Pauline! I love this so much! So much to think about. And such a creative way to do your pages. So meditative and unattached.
Thank you Michelle! Thank you for your love, effort and time guiding this school of artists you brought together. I feel honored and so happy to participate.
I often don't know how to respond to your story. as if if I say something it's gonna weaken your words. After reading Defying Gravity, I have an image of you wearing a crown of thorns instead of a flower garland for a girl. My heart bleeds. I couldn't tell if that image is cruel or glory, too complicated to comprehend.
what a creative idea, to use each name as inspiration! It feels so honoring. I look forward to reading what you do with each name!
I loved this idea as well. So beautiful.
Thank you Debbie. Thank you for reading.
Yeah, ditto!
Thank you for sharing about your week. I love reading a bit of your process. I especially appreciate your introduction as "Artist Pauline." Inspiring.
Since I call my cohort "fellow artists", I might as well call myself Artist. Ha!
I love it! Claim that truth!
Hello Pauline, this is so wonderful to read, I love your writing and your terms of phrase and your balance in certain ways is really interesting and beautiful and the way you think is like neat. I love what you did with the notebook and then thinking about decorating it and going to all the trouble to make it your own. That’s so Arts and Crafts (the arts movement/architecture).
Thank you Keely. No trouble making things, just being myself, doing what feels right to settle me. Is it not that the arts and crafts movement started as to rebel the industrial revolution? Maybe there's a bit of that going against something in artist's way in all of us as well. Thank you for bring that up. I didn't think of that.
Thank you for considering each of us.
I love the Wicked reference this week! "No Wizard that there is or was is ever going to bring us down!" ;)
Thank you!!!!
me too. It really spoke to me where I'm at today. And, I'm going to see Wicked at Pantages on Sunday with my son (or, at least, I have tickets... questioning whether they might cancel the show?!) so I'm looking forward to diving into the context more deeply. (I saw Wicked years ago, but it's been a minute!)
I've never seen it, but know the basics, I think. Looking forward to seeing it myself.
Defying Gravity is the best song of the play (in my opinion)! Truly one of the most powerful and memorable songs I've experienced in musical theatre. You definitely need to go when you have an opportunity!
1. I enjoyed and completed morning pages every day, but not always in the morning. This activity is important, but sometimes not the only important one (e.g., weather emergency - action required). I had to define “first thing” differently on different days; have ideas to help myself more reliable put writing pages first, although probably never 100% of the time - and that’s OK with me.
2. For this week‘s artist date I chose independent study of oak leaf identification (using publicly available online materials and oak leaves collected along the property line). It was fun, informative, stimulating, and “refilled the well” to the extent that people around me started feeling like they were getting wet. There were 11 different species of oaks among the leaves blown into our yard (in the mid-Atlantic region) - a healthy ecosystem.
3. No to affirmations.
4. No real resistance (to what I’ve done so far), except affirmations (somewhat allergic to affirmations).
5. Tasks 3, 6, 7 and 8: Thought about these tasks all day and know how I’ll complete them in abbreviated format later this evening.
Task 10: yes, brisk 20- (or 40-) minute solitary walks with myself are a longtime practice, valuable for sorting out no end of impediments. Took two earlier this week. Only recently read far enough to realize they count as “Tasks”.
It’s ok not to do affirmations if you don’t find them helpful or if they trigger you. I love, love, love your artist date. What an inspiring idea!!! Going to borrow it myself. And you’ve done so many tasks! Thank you so much for sharing!
Michelle, Thank you for responding. I’m glad you agree that oak leaf ID study counts as an acceptable Artist’s Date. Initially I had misgivings. Now it seems that anything goes as long as it is likely to “refill the well”.
MORE INFO ONLY IF YOU WANT IT
You mentioned interest in borrowing this leaf ID date idea. In case it is useful to you, here is my recent experience preparing for the date:
1) This turned out to be an awkward season to schedule this date because leaves have already fallen and snow is 6” deep on the ground now. However, in my compost bin I found leaves raked up before the snow, so I did have some to work with. A better time of year would have been fall, when leaves are starting to fall - so I could collect them and also see which trees they are falling from. Additionally, acorns are a good identification aid that is most visible in the summer and fall. (0 acorns found in the compost this week)
2) An initial internet investigation showed many available information sources, commercial and public, often put together for a local area/region or specific park by the State parks services, Scouts, naturalist organizations, and tree nurseries.
3) There were numerous simpler guides, but I started with the painfully complete, free, black and white - so easily downloadable, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2001 Field Guide to Native Oak Species of Eastern North America, FHTET-03-01, reprinted 2017. https://www.fs.usda.gov/foresthealth/technology/pdfs/fieldguide.pdf. I started there mainly because I’m in Virginia and heard that landscapers plant a lot of oak trees from other adjacent states here, so it seemed wise to cast a broad net.
4) It would have been helpful to start reviewing leaf anatomical terminology first - USDA used terms that were unfamiliar to me in a leaf context. If I had taken time to skim the whole USDA field guide before digging in, I would have found the glossary in the back much sooner.
Despite these seasonal challenges, but partly because oak leaves are so sturdy and digging in the compost yielded so many even in January, this was an awesome, fun, date!
I highly recommend it.
Whitney, you are my personal (ecologically perfect) leaf-blower.
Hi Deborah, like you I often walk with a neighbor, so I’m assuming that walking just with myself alone is not a daily requirement - at least that is how I read the task description. Enjoy your next outing!
Oh, I didn't notice that either. I also go for brisk walks every day, sometimes solo, sometimes not. Hooray for an easy and invigorating task!
Hi Whitney, wow, the weather in your area is wild too, huh? Stay safe! Like you I couldn’t always get to the morning pages right at the start and sometimes can’t do them without interruption, but it’s still worth it to me even if I finish it off before I drift off into sleep.
That is amazing that you have 11 different species of oaks in your yard. I’ve blown into your yard that is amazing. I love oak trees. I wrote a report in fifth grade and identified five different species of oak trees in our yard in California and I flattened out the leaves and taped them on pages and labeled them like a scientific thing and it was so fun and I’ve never forgotten it and I bonded with the oaks. Sounds like you definitely bonded with the oaks in your ecosystem. That’s wonderful. I love how Michelle talks about us being a mycelial network. That is so cool. I love that idea.
I didn’t realize it until I read your comments about affirmations, but the affirmations thing was actually triggering for me as well because it just reminded me of a couple of times earlier in my life when I was having a hard time and I used affirmations and I just became aware that I was a little triggered by the affirmation idea and went into resistance to that so thank you for helping me be more self-aware by sharing your experience.
I often go on walks. That’s my main form of exercise and I love walking outside in nature and down by the river and going on a little hikes and I love walking in parks and neighborhoods too alone or with other people. I definitely appreciate that. There’s some walkers in our cohort because I need the solidarity right now for my health. I need to be more active and when I’m out of touch with nature physically I don’t feel as safe or grounded even when my mind is clear. Thank you for sharing your journey.
PS, just to dispel any misconception (I’m factual), there is only one oak in our yard. The other 10 species must be near enough that their leaves blew into the yard on the day I put them in the compost bin. I’ll try to find them n the spring, when it is possible to match leaves to their source trees.
Thank you for connecting our right and left brain hemispheres. I've often observed the power of an artist who can think logically and linearly and a scientist who can think circularly and artistically. I'm grateful for our friendship.
Hi Keely, how surprised I felt hearing that my embarrassing admission (I’m allergic to affirmations), offered you some personal insight. Take it and run with it - or walk it down by your river, when you are ready. I’ll do the same.
Artist Way Responses:
(1) Managed to complete morning pages each day this week. I have been doing pages inconsistently for a number of months, so it felt good to have the accountability to write everyday.
(2) Artist Date was watching the sunset from the building roof yesterday, but it was rather uninspiring. However, I turned and noticed that the moonrise through the denuded trees was spectacular: https://www.instagram.com/p/DEoEh4ws4vu/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
(3) Did not practice an affirmation
(4) My only resistance was to morning pages; my schedule (and travel) make it difficult to keep a consistent practice, so pages were not always first thing in the AM. However, I tired to finish them before my day really started up.
(5) Did not intentionally do any of the tasks, but upon reading the chapter I reflected on my creative childhood. I did not note any particular demons or enemies to my creative expression, but rather remembered a lack of patience when I tried to learn guitar (at 7).
Love hearing responses to the first week of The Artist's Way! I'll had a few thoughts: I'm happy the accountability is working! Watching a sunset is a good artist date. Maybe add snacks or a picnic? Do you think you'd be stretched by doing the themed tasks, or writing an affirmation for yourself? It can be uncomfortable to stretch....
My affirmation for the week has been: I am willing to experience my creative energy.
Anyone want to share an affirmation that's helpful to you?
Love your description of the trees as “denuded”- that fits deciduous winter branches so well. Beautiful pics on ig! I enjoyed the accountability too for MPs & the date. It’s challenging for me to make time first thing, too, so I’m considering where I may want to nudge myself to get to bed earlier & wake up earlier to have more daytime for stuff. I’m curious whether you find it challenging to sit with yourself and be present for yourself while you fiddle around on a guitar now? 🎸 Have you been able to have compassion on your younger self? Love that guy! :)
Keely thank you for your warm and kind words; I love finding that singular word that concisely conveys my message.
I am particularly appreciative of your last question because it drove some deep reflection on my part (and was a good morning pages subject). Other than a random strum while moving my son's guitars (plural), I have not tried to play the guitar in 40+ years primarily because whatever the desire to learn to play was dormant. I never felt like I had abandoned some dream of being a musician likely because the 7 year old's dream was to be cool and not actually to create music. So I have a lot of compassion for that younger self, music takes patience and focus, and that was (and sometimes is) a challenge when your mind wants to sprint.
But as I think about the artist's way and reflect back on that first chapter, I can recognize that I have always loved music and would habitually state (with humor) that my musical talent begins and ends with Spotify/iTunes (or whatever the music format was). So maybe there is a latent aspiration to be a musician, and over the next 11 weeks, I hope to take that "cool" aspiring musician out for a date.
Thank you again!
Tom,
Thanks for sharing that photo! It reminds me of a Tim Burton scenery and almost doesn't look real! I noticed you photograph a lot of sunsets. What made you so interested in this a subject?
Thank you Alexis! Short answer is I find sunsets (and sunrises) beautiful.
Slightly longer answer is they (along with sunrises) represent endings and beginning yet there is beauty in both especially if you have the patience to allow them to develop and change at their own rate. Additionally, like much of nature, while there are patterns and similarities to them, no two are identical so you can appreciate the unique beauty of each.
That is so true; there is no identical sunset or sunrise. Beautiful and something I never thought of!
Well-stated.
Snacks or a picnic would make it more of a “date” which would be ideal.
I think I would be stretched themed task or an affirmation to write myself
lovely photo!
Not missing anyone was the closest I could imagine to freedom.
Poignant and powerful post today. Your strength, resiliency, and courage is inspirational.
Hi everyone, it was so fun to read through everyone's responses. I went to comment on a few, then over thought it and didn't!! I've been without power since Tuesday and I'm still without internet, it's amazing how much a creature of habit I am. I agree, having candle lit nights and a slower pace was nice, but I'm ready to resume a more structured existence.
Jumping right in...
1. I loved morning pages, but a few days it was afternoon pages. My brain was so open and creative in the morning the words just flowed, I didn't have to over think or find things to write. My handwriting got quite good too! BONUS. When I wrote in the afternoon I found I complained more, and it was a bit more 'woe is me' (so I hear ya). I enjoyed morning pages quite a bit, that surprised me.
2. Artist's date is/was more of a struggle. I felt as if I shouldn't take time this week to go somewhere 'frivolous' when my family and I were struggling without power, and gas, etc etc etc. Then I got tired of hearing myself complain so I went to my favorite bagel place in La Verne and sat and wrote and stared off into the void. I feel it was a bit of a cop out because I would do this anyway and it didn't take me out of my comfort zone. Next week I will make a plan and schedule my date in my calendar, if it goes into the calendar it's pretty set in stone.
3. Affirmations always have felt strange to me. I tell my kids all the time how awesome they are so I tried to channel that feeling, still didn't work. But I came up with something that felt nourishing but not hokey, so it worked for me.
~Everything I do, from getting dressed in the morning, to my yoga practice, to caring for my family is a creative process. I grow and thrive seeing creativity everywhere, including in myself, in the everyday things.
4. I felt the most resistance in the Artist's Date and in the tasks. Keep reading you'll see what I mean in the resistance to tasks.
5. #8 Task - this was fun, 5 lives you would lead
professional rock climber
ballerina
park ranger
illustrator
farm/animal worker
I felt like the world opened up to me and I COULD BE ANYTHING! I try and teach my kids that too, our lives are such a small part of this world that we have the power to be anything so anything. I think we just have to be able to think it.
#3 Task - old enemies, those naysayers
Lots of resistance. My Mom is my biggest fan and also my oldest frenemy. I love her and I'm tired of her being the blame all the time, but damn if she doesn't set something off in me. I can hear, verbatim, conversations we had when I was 12, 15 and I swear I think I'm crazy that I must have elaborated it as time has gone by. I don't want that to be my story anymore. She did the best she could and I'm going to leave that right there for now.
This whole experience has been amazong. I don't feel like I have to censoring myself, so excuse me if my grammar isn't great, but I'm not going to change it. I also am prone to cussing, so I hope that flies here because I might cuss if I have to talk more about my Mom. Thank you all for your vibes, I feel them as I finish this up. Sending out lots of love to you all. This is a very vulnerable spot and yet I feel very safe.
Brie, I love the creativity of what you are bringing into the world, the ways you are moving as an artist. So very proud of your work here.
Four of us in this group have written together for over a year. One of my writing buddies sent me this poem and I have posted it on my SS Stories by Janus. Sending gratitude to Brianne Dewitt Goudelock.
https://open.substack.com/pub/storiesbyjanus/p/the-world-is-on-fire-outside-my-door?r=28rbmj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Love, love, love!
That is an amazing poem. Thank you
Greetings Artists!
I, like so many, have been derailed by smoke and brimstone of the apocalyptic skies and sorrows. My morning pages, my yoga practice, my sleep, my thinly tethered thread to my ever evasive sanity, my home, my personal hygiene and alas, my attention to preparing this post have all been neglected. I write to you now, from a cool and cloudy long awaited bath.
My heart though, is sitting pretty in silver lining. I had the luxury of hosting my sister and her young family of fire refugees. My nephews, Levi, 2 1/2 and Joah, 5, filled my home with giggles and sensational chaos. Batman, Minions, Mickeys and The Beatles coloring books took over my living room. Tiny shoes sat at the bottom of the stairs. Cartoons took over our television.
I fell in love all over again with my husband “Tio Michael” as he turned his inner child face forward winning the hearts of these sweet boys, yet again.
I’m going to say, while it was not a thought at the time, that making my “famous” lemon crinkle cookies with my nephews was an Artists date, if ever an Artist date there was. 2 step stools, two curl covered cabezas, twenty tiny fingers and I, made a sugary, sticky mess of my countertops as we stirred and rolled patted and plopped our cookies into the oven.
I remembered making cinnamon rolls with Mama and swallowed a sugar coated tear of childhood magic.
My sister and her family went home today.
A small plate of lemon crinkle cookies remains on my kitchen table and my heart is full.
I will do better next week, but it wont be as good.
This is the most beautiful of artist's dates! What you described right here.
Also, my pre existing affirmation is not to rush. I’m not in a hurry. Time stopped for me to be with my loved ones and to truly embrace the multifaceted moment. I feel lucky in so many ways.
I got off to a great start with the morning pages. Really enjoying the discipline. Then the fire came and we were evacuated.. Miraculously our house survived, though the neigborhood looks like a war zone. No water, no electricity, flames still burning, soot and smoke filling the air. It's gonna be a while till we can move back. So I missed a few days of writing while we got settled in a hotel in Pasadena. The last two days I wrote my morning pages. I think that keeping my routines will help bring some normalcy to my life. I also took a long walk through Pasadena'
Thinking of you and your wife in a hotel, hoping this routine, among your others, will bring peace to your life as you navigate so many changes in the next few months. These winds. Stay safe, Barry. We're thinking of you.
Barry, please keep us (me?) informed. What can we do? Seriously. What?
What are you going to do? Next? Amongst all the choices, all the things you should do, all the things you need to do, identify ways others can help.
Full disclosure: Barry and I were accountability partners this past fall when we met in Michelle's class at the Maloof Foundation. It was my first Morning Pages experience and a gentle introduction to this month's boot camp.
Barry, I am here for you and your family. Let us know. Even if it as simple as identifying your preferred charity/entity/shelter for us to support publicly. What organization or entity is out there giving appropriate support.
I feel as if whatever I do is a drop in the bucket, so I'm truly interested in appropriate support.
Barry sending you support from afar, but I echo Janice in please let us know if there is anything you need
💗💗💗
Michelle,
thank you for making yourself so vulnerable and sharing these tragic injuries that you’ve endured to your mind and your heart and your soul and your body and your identity and probably in other ways that we haven’t even conceived of yet. [possibly triggering description to follow:] When I was 3-4, I was in a group of children being sexually abused by a few adult adults and their teenage helpers, and I witnessed a girl of seven or eight years old, a blonde girl, being sexually assaulted by a man dressed as a Catholic cardinal. Her eyes were glazed over and she was very out of it, but she suffered a lot of pain too, but I was suffering too, and had to participate in difficult things so we had to just get through it. I hope that girl survived. I never knew who she was. A friend of my parents used to take me to these events, probably unbeknownst to my parents (although my father was sexually abusive).
Four of the men who abused me have died of old age and every time one passes it’s like a stone being lifted from my heart, and I feel free and safe in a way I’ve never experienced before, and I feel strong and wise in ways that make me wanna bless the whole earth and everyone on it and reduce suffering and benefit all beings like the Dalai Lama teaches us to. I’ve been watching a series called secrets of polygamy on Hulu about people who are escaping fundamentalist Mormon cults there, and I know that these cults and cultures are inter mixed with the mainstream Mormon culture because some families secretly practice these types of things even right under the nose of all the good people that also attend church.
I love forger because you find strength and blessing and benefit in this hard cold painful ground of your childhood and I’ve had to do a similar thing and I feel like after Covid my mind just opened up and I felt like God was telling me to be grateful just like extreme gratitude And I took this attitude of extreme gratitude. I know I was quoting Oprah probably but it really shifted my perspective about the pain of my past and my identity because of that pain in that trauma. What you endured at seven I similarly endured when my body was much more mature at 17. It broke my mind. It shattered my mind, but I do pretty good with the pieces and all my doctors and therapist and healers and massage therapists, and all the modalities of healing that I’ve explored all my life. Every single one has helped, but nothing has helped as much as reading other survivors words of truth about their own experience That has been the number one healing thing for me, along with my faith in a truly loving God/ess. I’m grateful that I’m not alone in trying to survive and make a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful SAFE (but equal and respectful- not controlling ) planet For future generations.
I did my morning pages every day this week except for today. I only got to half a page but the night is young. It is taking some discipline and I feel like I am integrating with my 25-year-old self and it’s really a trip to be in my head every day most days. I think I have jarred my brain into starting to chug through those blocks of resistance to prioritizing my creativity and validating self expression in direct opposition to what I know my father wants me to say, which is nothing to cover his abuses and manipulations. So even though it’s challenging, it feels really powerful, like beginning to tap into that route of creativity that we draw from the center of the planet in terms of our trajectory in the universe and things like that like gravity. Michelle, I like that you were talking about gravity and buoyancy and things - I think about these things a lot gravity and how it might be different in other places in the universe it’s fun to think about.
For my Artist date this week I wanted to go down to the river and hang out and walk around in the mud and the leaves in the shallows and take pictures with my new iPhone and bless myself with the water on my upper chakras and woke up on the bridge Nearby me in a park and overlook the river watching it flow like that song by Peter Gabriel called don’t give up where he talks about the river flowing that river flows and I love that song and it’s always been very healing for I think everyone who’s ever heard it. It’s such a beautiful song. However, I think the kind of intensity of my life in the last couple weeks and with the political changes going on and people adapting and keeping an eye on how people are acting and things is interesting right now, and the weather changes are concerning and so I have been feeling under the weather I think from stress. So instead of going to the river physically cause I definitely went there in my mind. I stayed in last night and made Ghirardelli brownies from my favorite brownie mix with the chocolate chips in them and I have been eating them ever since last night and they are astoundingly delicious to chocolate is like a blessing of earth in my mouth that heals me and I love the smell filling up the house and I lit my candles. I bought myself a special candle like a rose Yankee candle like a smaller one and a glass jar off Amazon and I had another candle by the same company that I lit and I lit both those on either side of the TV and I made the brownies and I really allowed myself to enjoy it and totally indulged in watching human trafficking research on YouTube because that’s how I relax and it’s educational and mildly terrifying but I think humanity has been like this all along And sometimes societies have better ideas and can pull it off and sometimes we hit challenges so we gotta figure out how to make changes for the good and the ways that we can each in our own sphere, I guess. I’m trying to adapt to this of the Gharkey or whatever it is and hoping all of my politically conservative friends are correct and good things are happening, but to me, it’s just not good (for a time.) storms, rage and storms, and some rains are gentle and some are harsh but if you make it through, you, rebuild your house on the beach. I think of the dwellings in a lot of Asia and Indonesia where island cultures in the tropical regions build houses on stilts and they’re sometimes swept away by storms and they rebuild them and probably have been doing so for tens of thousands of years. It doesn’t get much more zen than that imo.
I have not yet finished reading the first chapter of the book - Also, I was really stumped after Saturday. I couldn’t think of any ideas for Artist dates that seemed like they were enough that felt adequate. Everything seemed not important enough and not cool enough and not meaningful enough and like not efficient enough. I speed-read Julia Camryn‘s book 52 weeks of Artist dates ideas. I realized it doesn’t have to be a big fancy schmancy deal. It could just be a nice little thing you do with yourself.
What really helped me this week was having written out that contract with myself and how interesting it is to have a contract with myself instead of thinking of a contract as something like a transaction it’s more like a commitment. It’s more like a meaningful relationship. It’s more emotionally intimate than a routine or a schedule. It’s more sacred. It’s part of a sacred practice of becoming myself by listening to myself and listening to my own inner voice. It’s taken me, decades to begin to hear my own inner voice and to discern it from other spirits and influences and dissociated states and experiences and ideas and confusions and revelations.
So having written out that contract like on Saturday, I thought my agreement was with you, Michelle and with my cohort, and then Sunday, I watched some video interviews of Julia Cameron on YouTube one where she’s talking about her book the listening way and she shares some of her ideas for her own practice for different kinds of listening - spending a week with each different kind of listening- listening to the background noise in your environment, listening in conversations with curiosity and interest about what other people are saying- listening beyond the veil, and I love these nuances of the experience of listening. (I bought The Listening Way on Kindle but don’t expect to have much time to read it til like Feb).
So coming back to the Artist Way contract I realized on Sunday that really it’s a contract with myself. It just literally a contract with myself. It’s not with Michelle or Julia or even God or the Earth or the universe or my neighbor or anything. It’s with me.
It seemed like a Herculean effort to give myself that commitment. I’ve been feeling a little emotional the last few days since we started this practice. Feeling kind of discombobulated like I’m readjusting to my new internal headspace of self-awareness and reintegrated life experience. And like I’ll get like a sudden feeling of like this really kind of like beautiful kind of feeling of wanting to cry like like just grief and sadness like it would feel good to cry, but then when I go to like touch on it and allow the emotion in like it just shuts down again and it kind of runs away so I don’t know what that is. But it like feels good to get reconnected with this practice in my life in a way that is like healing me emotionally in some way that I can’t (ironically) verbalize.
If I’m overwhelming everyone with my too many words let me know. I apologize if it’s gruesome I can try to reign it in, but I’m really enjoying it so thank you for indulging me and allowing me to totally luxuriate in free thought and celebrate this shared space of radical artistry and internal artistic, gnosis and exploration with way way way too many words.
Thank you all for sharing this space and path together. Thank you so much for offering this so affordably, Michelle, what a truly priceless gift. 💝 Namaste 🙏🏼
Thank you for your kind words here, Keely, and for sharing more of your story. So grateful for you and your compassion and your wisdom. Yes, this is a contract with yourself and its a gift to recognize that instead of thinking of a contract as something like a transaction, it’s more like a commitment. And the commitment is to the beautiful, strong, courageous you.
And I love the idea of baking as an artists date!
Your words are wonderful, and I appreciate that you share them. So much beauty and courage in them. Thank you!