The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Abundance (Week 6)

Let's talk about money 💰 (& I'd love your feedback!)

Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. We’re in Week 6 of The Artist’s Way, a community exploration of the intersection of creativity and recovery.

You know the drill: each week, we read a new chapter of The Artist’s Way and do our best to write our Morning Pages and schedule an Artist’s Date. On Tuesdays, I share my reflections on that week’s theme and on Fridays, we gather to share our experiences in the weekly thread. Next week, we’ll be taking a rest & integration week. We’ll return for Chapter 7 on April 27th.

Here’s an overview of our schedule:

Sunflowers represent both abundance and joyful creativity ( 📸 Jordan Cormack on Unsplash)

It’s hard to believe, but we’re half way through the programme. I hope you’re proud to have made it this far. If you’re planning to join in during the later weeks of The Artist’s Way, you might find it useful to start experimenting with Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates. This process gathers momentum as we work our way through it, and returning to those foundational practices might help you get into the flow of it.

At this halfway point, I’d also like to ask for your feedback.

I’ve made a short, 5 question survey which you can complete here. One thing I’m reflecting on is the sustainability of my work into the future. Rest assured that this process will remain free through to the end! But it is an enormous amount of work, and I know it’s not sustainable for me to lead these community intensives for free into the future. It’s 7.35am on Saturday morning when I’m writing these words, squeezing it in before going to a (paid) work event later today! It’s a balance though, because I don’t want to make this community inaccessible to folks who might need it. Right now, I’m still figuring out what a solution might be, and I really welcome your input.

The Artist’s Way Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

Week 6 is about money and creative abundance. I remember this as a chapter that brought up a lot for me when I first read it. I returned to it determined to be open. I wanted to take what’s useful and ignore the rest, but I found myself getting riled up a few times. More than any other chapter in the book so far, I think this one is deeply flawed. That said, I would really like to revise my ideas about money and creativity. I might never be someone who can create without having a firm sense of security. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to loosen the grip that financial anxiety has over me.

Cameron believes that we need to work on our money issues in order to fully recover our creativity. I’m not sure I agree. I have a lot of money issues, but I’m still pretty fulfilled by my creative work. It’s true that money is often a block to creativity, but I don’t think it’s as binary as Cameron presents it. It’s OK to want and need money in order to feel safe. For many of us, that feeling of safety is a precursor to good creative work. Minimising that deeply human need for safety serves no-one.

Cameron writes:

“All too often, we become blocked and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block. The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care”

I don’t agree that poverty isn’t an authentic block. Sometimes a lack of money squelches all creative possibility, but maybe not as often as we might think. When I look back on my broke years, I wish I’d been kinder to myself. I wish I’d let myself live a little more, rather than being so beholden to a savings plan. There are writers I admire who have prioritised their art and published beautiful books, though they still live very precariously. I haven’t published any books, but I have achieved a degree of financial stability. Part of me wishes I hadn’t postponed my creative dreams. But I also know it was the right choice for me. I always took the sensible job and skipped holidays to save money. I still wrote everyday. I still dreamed about being a writer but I didn’t take small steps toward that goal. I didn’t play with my creativity. I didn’t prioritise having fun with it and seeing where it might take me. I wasn’t attuned to the world, hunting for snippets of life to capture on the page. Looking back, I can see that I let a lack of money block me more completely than it needed to.

Cameron draws an analogy between recovering addicts in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and recovering artists. She encourages both groups to surrender to God and allow Him to take control of their lives. It reminded me of

Holly Whitaker

’s paradigm shifting essay in The New York Times about how AA isn’t always effective for addicts who aren’t men.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The truth is, A.A. may be the foundation of global recovery, but it wasn’t made with everyone in mind. It’s a framework created in the 1930s by upper-middle-class white Protestant men to help people like them overcome addiction. Its founders believed the root of alcoholism was a mammoth ego resulting from an entitled sense of unquestioned authority…This program, which was designed to break down white male privilege, made sense for the original members: It reminded them that they were not God and encouraged them to humble themselves, to admit their weaknesses, to shut up and listen. Perhaps these were much-needed messages when it came to the program’s original intended audience. But today’s women don’t need to be broken down or told to be quiet. We need the opposite. I worry that any program that tells us to renounce power that we have never had poses the threat of making us sicker”

There is enormous value in finding acceptance for the circumstances of our lives. But most world religions are still profoundly patriarchal institutions. Artistic surrender to a higher power might help some recovering creatives. But it won’t be my path.

“For many blocked creatives, it takes a little work to even imagine ourselves having luxury”

This chapter encourages us to “pamper ourselves with authentic luxuries”. It was hard to read that without rolling my eyes. After many years of being broke, I learned not to want nice things. When I go to a restaurant, I still gravitate towards the cheapest thing on the menu, maybe the second cheapest if I’m feeling flush. Cameron talks about another artist who indulges in a weekly punnet of raspberries. It only costs a few dollars a week but to her “it’s just more than I thought I was worth”. Even today, some part of me still thinks that nice things are wasted on me.

One of the most controversial activities in this chapter is to track our spending in order to see where our money goes. I don’t need to do this exercise though, because I already track every penny I spend. For me, it’s a hangover from that time in my life when I had to stretch every euro as far as I possibly could. I’ll never forget totting up bills on the back of an envelope a few weeks after my mother died. I had to pay for groceries, the funeral bill, the utility bills, legal fees.. I jotted down each figure on the back of an envelope and saw just how impossible it was going to be for me to pay it. It was in the thousands, and I had only a few hundred¹.

For some people, tracking your spending could be a useful exercise. It might help you see where your money is going and that information can be a form of power. But it can also be a tool for self-flagellation. It can fuel our most restrictive thoughts about money, safety and what we deserve. During my lean years, I struggled to buy myself things like a warm Winter coat or enough protein to sustain my body. The security of a safety net was worth more to me than those day-to-day necessities. Cameron encourages us to stay in observation mode, rather than self-flagellation mode while tracking your spending. It’s good advice but for those of us who struggle to believe that we deserve to survive, it can be really hard to follow.

Other thoughts & reflections from Chapter Six:

• ❄️ “Snowflakes are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee”

• “Remember you are the cheapskate, not god. As you expect god to be more generous, god will be able to be more generous with you” This felt like ‘The Secret’, which I saw it on Oprah soon after my mother died and bought almost immediately. It’s hard to convey how deeply unhelpful that book was. Not only was my life shit, but it was my fault that it was shit. It was my fault because I didn't believe that I deserved better. I felt like the shit on somebody’s shoe. Sexual abuse will do that to you. But that wasn’t my fault either.

• 🤦‍♀️ Anyone else struck by the moment Julia Cameron bought herself a horse? I’m happy for you Julia, but a lot of us can’t buy dinner not to mind recreational animals that are notoriously expensive to care for.

• “All artists are vulnerable to the shaming ‘I should be working’ side of themselves that discourages creative pleasures” Glad it’s not just me! That exact sentence (“I should be working”) has echoed through my mind for so many years.

• “Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play”

• “Art is born in expansion” This feels true to me, though I wish Cameron also acknowledged how much creativity can flow from limitations. Having limited time and money isn’t always a barrier to creative work. Personally, I often find it easier to create while working within constraints.

• “Many of us equate difficulty with virtue - and art with fooling around. Hard work is good. A terrible job must be building our moral fiber.” I’d really like to challenge this misconception in my own mind!

Tasks

• “This week, in your morning pages, write about the god you do believe in and the god you would like to believe in” This is another idea from the chapter itself, rather than the tasks section. Worthwhile to explore

• I’ve been reflecting on last week’s task where I listed the things I wish I owned. I didn’t come up with much but looking back on it, I think I was too modest in my ambition. I think a visual deep dive might help get my creative juices flowing, so I’m going to prioritise making a vision board this week.

• I’m going to complete the ‘Money Madness’ exercise from this chapter. Just reading through the list of prompts made my breathing shallow, so I’ll need to approach it gently. (It includes things like: In my family, money caused ___. Being broke tells me ____. I’m afraid that if I had money I would ____. 😱)

• Clearing: Make some changes in your home environment. I think my office needs a bit of a refresh - nothing major, but perhaps a deep clean, move the desk, swap out the art.

• Practice saying yes to freebies. I don’t need much practice with this. I love a free thing! But I want to include a nice, easy task on this list of more challenging ones.

• Consider scheduling two Artist Dates. I’m in a nice rhythm of Artist Dates, but I liked the suggestion of scheduling a second. My life is still quite busy (see: working on a Saturday morning!), but I like the idea of having two weekly appointments with my artist child. I’m going to try to squeeze in two this week!

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

It’s not to late to get involved! Every week, more people sign up to explore The Artist’s Way through this community. Some are planning to jump in during later weeks. Others are re-doing the program to see how it might resonate differently for them now. You are always welcome to join us!

If you’ve struggled this week, please know you’re not alone. The material can be heavy, and it’s OK to take your time with it. Be kind to yourself, and reach out for support when you need or want it! 💕

Thanks so much for taking part in this experience. It’s always an honour to be in community with you.

📅 Our next virtual gathering will be at 1pm Dublin time on Sunday, May 4th. Please leave a comment below if you’d like to attend and I’ll forward the meeting details.

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1. In the end, I got a bereavement grant to pay for my mother’s funeral. It’s a state support I didn’t know existed, but I’m really glad it did.