Recovering A Sense of Safety

My new contemplative The Artist’s Way book group | Week 1

Welcome back to The Artist’s Way group of my own dreams.

I missed posting our Week 1 book group post last week because all four of my children got sick, and eventually I succumbed to the bug too. It was a pretty awful week in all the ways, full of fevers, disrupted sleep, and the general intensity that comes with caring for sick children while also being unwell yourself. But here we are.

On to Week 1 of The Artist’s Way.

In this first chapter, Julia Cameron focuses heavily on healing the inner critic. I have to admit, Julia’s take on the inner critic feels a little dated. We have been talking about silencing, healing, banishing, or befriending the inner critic for decades now. Entire industries seem to exist around this idea.

And yet, despite all of that, I find myself asking a very simple question: how many of us have actually healed from harsh inner language?

I suspect many of you know exactly what I mean.

That running commentary in the background that tells us we are simply not doing life well enough… The voice that questions our choices, second-guesses our instincts, and makes even small mistakes feel like evidence of some deeper inadequacy…

Of course, this harsh inner dialogue did not come from nowhere.

When we were born, with our fresh little minds, we did not arrive already speaking to ourselves with shame or criticism. We learned these ways of thinking over time through relationship and through culture. As children, we absorbed the language, beliefs, and emotional patterns of the adults around us. We learned what brought approval and what brought disapproval. We learned that teachers preferred us to colour inside the lines. We learned that parents preferred paint on paper rather than on walls. We learned which emotions were welcome and which were inconvenient. We learned, often very early, that being fully expressed did not always feel safe.

We learned that teachers preferred us to colour inside the lines.

Over time, the voices around us became the voice within us.

One of the most radical things I have learned through the work of Marion Rose is that shame, judgement and guilt are not innate. These harsh ways of being are not a natural state of being. They are learned.

Marion speaks about what she calls the Disconnected Domination Culture, a culture rooted in judgement, shame, blame, coercion, punishment, and endless “should” thinking. We are taught, explicitly and implicitly, that human beings are not inherently trustworthy, loving, or cooperative, and therefore need to be controlled into goodness.

This conditioning begins early.

You should be good.

You should be polite.

You should be helpful.

You shouldn’t be angry.

You shouldn’t be selfish.

You shouldn’t be too loud, too emotional, too wild, too needy, too much.

As women, I think this runs particularly deep.

Centuries of patriarchy have trained women to distrust ourselves. We have been conditioned to look outside ourselves for authority, approval, and permission. Many women have become deeply skilled at monitoring the needs, emotions, preferences, and expectations of everyone around them while simultaneously losing touch with their own inner needs.

This is one of the reasons I believe The Artist’s Way is about far more than creativity.

Creative recovery is not simply about becoming more artistic or productive. At a deeper level, it asks us to recover a relationship with our own inner authority, to trust our own experience again, and to reclaim embodied ways of knowing. It asks us to remember that our intuition, desires, feelings, and inner sense of truth matter.

This is deeply personal work.

I mention Marion Rose’s work often around here because it has been profoundly transformative in my own healing journey, particularly around harsh inner judgement. One of the things I appreciate most about her work is that she does not suggest we can simply stop talking to ourselves harshly through sheer willpower.

It is almost impossible to just decide to stop being mean to yourself.

Instead, she teaches the cultivation of what she calls an Inner Loving Presence.

When harsh thoughts arise, rather than believing them or trying to suppress them, we learn to respond from a loving inner presence. This might take the form of an Inner Loving Mother, Father, Partner, Teacher, or Guide. In the context of this book, perhaps an Inner Loving Art Teacher or an Inner Loving Editor.

What would the most loving response be?

What would be the most healing thing to hear?

This kind of inner dialogue can be can be deeply healing because it offers something many of us did not consistently receive growing up: compassion in the face of struggle.

I was reminded while reading this chapter of something Tara Mohr writes in Playing Big:

“Liberating yourself from the influence of the inner critic depends on a very simple insight. You are not the critical voice. You are the person aware of the critical voice.”

You are not the critic.

You are the awareness noticing the critic.

I want to gently offer another possibility here, because I suspect many of us still carry a hidden belief that harsh self-talk is somehow useful. Perhaps you feel, as I once did, that guilt, shame, or self-criticism are necessary forces that compel us to do better and be better.

But I no longer believe this. In fact, I have come to believe the opposite.

Guilt, like shame, largely arises from culturally conditioned “should” thinking. I should. I must. I have to. I shouldn’t have. I’m supposed to. But guilt does not reliably make us more loving, compassionate, or effective. If anything, it tends to make us less emotionally available… less present… less connected.

This chapter also brought to mind Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem, The Journey, especially these lines:

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly recognized as your own

I find those lines breathtaking.

There was a new voice, which you slowly recognised as your own. To me, that feels like remembering who you were before all the shoulds, the criticism, and the conditioning.

This Week’s Invitation

As always, remember that this is not about perfection.

You do not need to complete every exercise perfectly or have profound breakthroughs this week. The invitation is simply to show up with honesty, curiosity, and compassion.

Continue with your two foundational practices:

1. Morning Pages

Write three handwritten pages every morning.

Keep going, even if they feel repetitive, boring, messy, or pointless.

2. Artist Date

Take yourself on one solo Artist Date this week.

Set aside at least an hour, preferably two, to do something that nourishes your inner artist.

3. Meet Your Creative Monsters

Julia asks us this week to begin identifying the voices that damaged our creative confidence.

Make a list of the people, experiences, or messages that made creativity feel unsafe.

Who criticised you?

Who dismissed your ideas?

Who made you feel silly, selfish, impractical, or too much?

Try to be specific.

Often these early messages still echo in the present.

4. Remember Your Creative Champions

Now make a second list.

Who encouraged your creativity?

Who saw something in you?

Who celebrated your ideas, imagination, sensitivity, or originality?

This list may be shorter.

That’s okay.

5. Imagine Five Other Lives

This is one of my favourite exercises from Week 1.

Julia invites us to list five alternate lives we might have lived.

If you had multiple lifetimes, what might you be?

A novelist?

A florist?

A marine biologist?

A midwife?

A musician?

A potter living in the mountains?

Let yourself play.

This exercise isn’t really about regret.

It’s about noticing desire.

Often the things we imagine in these alternate lives still contain clues about what wants expression in this one.

Reflection for the Week

I’d love for you to sit with these questions:

• What messages did I receive about creativity growing up?
• When did self-expression stop feeling safe?
• Whose voice does my inner critic sound like?
• What might change if I stopped believing that voice was me?

If you feel called, share in the comments.

How are Morning Pages going?

Have you taken your Artist Date yet?

What came up for you in Week 1?

I’d love to hear.

With love,