The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Safety (week 1)

I'm excited to get started! (& some tips on Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates)

Mar 04, 2025

Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. Today we’re kicking off The Artist’s Way, a community exploration of the intersection of creativity and recovery.

When I was daydreaming about hosting The Artist’s Way for the Life after Trauma community back in January, my fear was that no-one would show up. But over the last while, dozens of you have decided to embark on this adventure. I’m feeling (very!) excited and enthusiastic today, though I know it’ll be difficult to maintain that energy over the next few months. My goal is to be consistent but imperfect. I'll show up and do my best each week, and I won't be too hard on myself if it doesn't work out the way I hoped. I hope you’ll be gentle with yourself through this process too. This isn’t about doing The Artist’s Way “perfectly”, or having the time to complete every single activity. Our goal is to explore our creativity in a gentle, low commitment way and to show up each week to cheer each other on.

How will it work?

Each week, we’ll read a chapter of The Artist’s Way and do our best to write our Morning Pages and schedule an Artist’s Date. On Tuesdays, I’ll share my reflections on that week’s chapter and on Fridays, there will be a thread to discuss how we’re getting on. I’ll be sharing my experiences in the comments, and really encourage you to do the same.

In order to make this process a little more sustainable, we’re taking a rest week after every three chapters. Here’s our schedule for March:

Before we get into this week’s chapter, I think it’d be nice to introduce ourselves.

In the comments below, please share:

your name and pronouns,
where in the world you are,
and what you’re hoping to get out of The Artist’s Way.
If you have a newsletter (or another creative project), feel free to include the link so we can follow along with your progress
Leave a comment

✍️ Writing my morning pages (I did them after my run which is the only reason I’m not wearing my PJs!)

The Artist’s Way Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety

This week’s chapter is about shadow artist’s, core negative beliefs and creative affirmations, which to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of. (More on this later!)

It was lovely to pick up the book again on Sunday, and to re-read the first chapter. Since we lost Budino in January, I’ve felt weighed down by a tremendous, bottomless sadness. Some of the initial shock has worn off, but it’s still so strange not to see his food dish in its usual spot. I’m hoping that this creative process will start to loosen the heaviness of my grief. I’ll miss Budino forever. He will always be a much loved and missed part of our family. But I also want to make some space to remember the joy he brought to our lives rather than lingering only in the devastation of his loss.

The cornerstones of The Artist’s Way are Morning Pages and Artist Dates1. In the book, they’re described as Spiritual Electricity. They help to create some space for creativity to blossom. As we enter Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ve felt my own creative energy start to return.

Morning Pages:

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing that are written shortly after you wake up in the morning. (Or whenever you like. Feel free to make this process your own!) The goal is to “map your own interior”. They should be associative and free-wheeling. You should strive to “accumulate pages, not judgements”. The goal is to develop an ability to ignore the internal censor and keep writing.

The first time I encountered this idea, I resented it. I didn’t remember that but my past self left a note in the pages:

The suggestion that I find time for creative play when my life was crumbling around me felt completely unrealistic. But, it’s also true that Morning Pages are a big part of how I found my way through that horror. In my experience, Morning Pages often feel both silly and profoundly useful. Being consistent with them helped me to develop a relationship with the page that continues to sustain my writing life.

They are especially effective when I write by hand. Studies have found that writing by hand enhances brain connectivity and boosts our emotional health. For a few months when I was working long hours in a ~~challenging~~ traumatic job, I typed my Morning Pages rather than hand-writing them. My logic was that because I’m a faster typist than handwriter, I’d save myself a few minutes everyday. That may be true, but the process wasn’t nearly as useful. Interacting with the computer first thing in the morning tended to make me disassociate. While writing by hand grounded me in the present and helped me to feel rooted in the world2. For me, morning pages have a kind of meditative quality. They allow me to see what gunk is floating around in my mind and body, and to chart a path through my day.

Artist’s Date:

“As artists, we need to learn to be self-nourishing” - Julia Cameron

The second cornerstone practice is a weekly Artist Date. Artist’s Dates are about replenishing the well, about building and maintaining a rich artistic ecosystem. Artist’s Dates don’t need to be complicated or elaborate. They don’t need to take a lot of time or money. They are an opportunity for us to cultivate a relationship with our creativity.

Here are some Artist Date ideas I’m considering:

Make an elaborate soup
Play with collage
Try forest bathing again (Last time, I got nature stoned!)
Plant some seeds (Nothing elaborate, just a few herbs)
Dance parties in the living room
Experiment with restorative yoga, especially before bed

I think it’s equally important to leave aside the Artist Date ideas that just don’t feel possible right now. I’m not going to be knitting cardigans or painting canvases or making my own wedding cake. Instead, I’m focused on small, sustainable weekly commitments.

One thing I learned from my past experience with The Artist’s Way was the importance of bringing some intentionality to my Artist Dates. It’s more effective to decide in advance what your Artist’s Date will be, rather than retrospectively deciding “oh I went for a walk in nature. That was my Artist Date”. In this (as in most things in life), intentionality matters.

But also, life happens. For me, it usually looks something like: “aaaaaaahhhhhh, this week was so busy. I haven’t had a moment to be creative. I guess that nice shower I had on Tuesday was an Artist Date?!” If When that happens, let yourself off the hook. The only thing that matters is that you keep going.

Also, consider artist dates that activate several of your five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. I’m going to brainstorm a few more tactile/sensual ideas to add to my list.

Reflections and favourite lines from Chapter One:

“One of our chief needs as creative beings is support. Unfortunately, this can be hard to come by”

The opening line of this chapter which I quoted above, hit me right in the chest. Survivors are a community who know a lot about what it means to keep going without adequate support.

I really resonated with the section on shadow artists, aka people who support other people to do their creative work rather than becoming an artist themselves. It reminded me of the earlier part of my career. The first career I ever dreamed of was to be a journalist. For a variety of reasons, I couldn’t pursue it and became a communications manager in the non-profit sector instead. Part of my job was to help journalists do their jobs better. It was my responsibility to provide them with information and access to tell the stories that I wished I could tell myself. If that’s not the definition of a shadow career, I don’t know what is!

“As a rule of thumb, shadow artists judge themselves harshly, beating themselves for years over the fact that they have not acted on their dreams” - I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so seen by a single sentence!

“Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse” - I’m gonna put this on a post-it!

“Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope,” Cameron writes on page 34. Personally, I don’t like affirmations. When I try to persuade myself that I don’t believe what I believe, I start to feel insane. Affirmations often fit into the well-worn grooves left by gaslighting and interpersonal abuse. I don’t want to talk myself out of feeling the way I feel. I believe those feelings are valid. They may not be true, but they are real and trying to talk myself out of believing them leaves me feeling shitty. I’ve found it more useful to acknowledge my negative beliefs, and try to dig underneath them to see if I can make some room for an alternative perspective.

I find the God language difficult. As I’ve written about, religion is often been the pretext for enormous suffering, and my instinctive response to it is to recoil from it. Usually, I say Creator or Universe but that doesn’t always work. If you struggle with the God of it all, please know you're not the only one!

“Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist” I’m sure we all know less talented successful people, and folks with deep talent who linger in obscurity.

“Saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do” - Yes! This might seem obvious, but I appreciated the reminder.

Tasks:

At the end of each chapter of The Artist’s Way, there’s a list of tasks to explore in the coming week. The author suggests that we do the tasks we’re drawn to and the ones we feel strongly adverse to. This feels like good advice to me, though I think we should also be mindful about not choosing anything that could be too triggering. I remember one task was to draw your childhood bedroom, which could be horribly upsetting for some people. Another was to track your spending for a week, which could trigger all kinds of money stuff for those of us who’ve experienced financial abuse. My suggestion is that you trust your own judgement. Some days it might feel good to gently reach outside your comfort zone. Other days, it might feel better to stay within your current capacity. Our goal here is creative sustainability, so please don’t push yourself too much.

Here are the tasks I’m going to prioritise this week:

Read the basic principles every day. I’m a visual learner so I made a graphic of them and saved it as my desktop image. Here’s the image if you’d like to do the same:

Create a Monster Hall Of Fame. List three old enemies of your creative work, and put them and whatever shitty things they said/did in your Monster Hall of Fame. The goal is to acknowledge and grieve creative injuries so they don’t impede your progress. I dunno about you but I have a lot more than three people in mind…

For balance, I’m going to list three champions of my creative work. I’m a little ahead on this one; I’ve been building a “nice things people have said about my writing” file for the last few years, and often return to it in difficult moments. This week, I’m gonna make some time to poke around in it and see what I find. If you don’t have one of these files, I really hope you’ll start one. If you’re planning to, please leave a comment below and I’ll read your work and share some encouraging words to get you started!
Leave a comment

Imaginary lives: if you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I’m curious to discover what other possibilities I could dream up for my one wild and precious life.

Take a brisk walk and connect with my inner artist. No distractions. No agenda. Just check in and see what happens.

Best of luck with The Artist’s Way this week.

If you’re tight on time and need to prioritise things, I’d suggest making time to read the chapter, write some morning pages (it doesn’t need to be every day) and maybe a brief 20 minute date with your artist. Doodling in your notebook during a boring meeting counts! We’ll gather on Friday to share our wins, grieve our stumbles and cheer each other on.

One last thing…

Some folks have also asked if we’ll be meeting (virtually) to talk about our experiences. I think it’d be lovely to get together. Would you like to come along? I made a quick poll to gauge your interest:

If you would like to meet, it’d be great if you could leave a comment letting me know what timezone you’re in and which times/days of the week work best for you.