Transform Your Life: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The twelve week program that became a five month support system through a very dark period of time.
In January, I completed the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The full program is 12 weeks long and each week has a different theme/framework to adopt and explore about yourself. Staple tools to utilize throughout the program are 1) Morning Pages (journaling) and 2) weekly Artist’s Dates (solo creative sessions or experiences).
If done correctly, the result is complete transformation.
Although the program is focused on creativity, the principles that you learn and practice during it are meant to transform how you think and how you approach life to bring you in line with your most authentic self.
The program addresses the aspects of life that block creativity and throw us out of alignment of our authentic selves — toxic friends, limiting beliefs and mindset, escapism (like workaholism, drinking, etc.), and our relationship with fear.
I began this program at the beginning of September and completed it mid-January. It took me roughly 7 additional weeks to complete.
Weeks 5 (Sense of Possibility) and 6 (Sense of Abundance) each stretched on for weeks on end, respectively, as the 10/7 attack and resulting siege of and genocide in Gaza became my focus and priority.
I kept up my Morning Pages during these stretched out weeks; they became a safe place for me to express my disbelief, sadness, anger, and heartbreak in the initial months of the siege.
This program ended up carrying me through the darkest months I’ve experienced in a long time — since the end of my marriage. It supported me through the complete emotional upheaval I experienced in October and November in which I questioned the morality of the world, its governments, my government, leaders of industry, and the people around me. And my own place within systems and structures that I no longer had any trust or faith in.
I do believe in divine timing and believe that I was meant to do this program at a time I would end up questioning everything in the world and everyone in my life.
Most importantly, I’m really clear on my priorities and boundaries and what I am and am not willing to accept from people, no matter who they are. It’s really easy to lose your authentic self and boundaries in politics, but then you just end up losing yourself and nothing ends up changing. Looking around at our world today, understanding that sad truth explains so much.
As a result, I became much more clear on my business during this time, and honed my services to be exactly what I needed them to be.
I am a writer and I produced more passion project writing over the course of my Artist’s Way months (5 months of calendar time) than I had in the 5 years prior.
During the program, I published my first op-ed on Muslim & Jewish safety in San Francisco as a co-author in the initial weeks of the Gaza siege; I turned my essays on occupation & apartheid in Palestine into videos; and leaned into content creation for the cause.
Since the end of the program, I have been creating A LOT — I published my first solo op-ed on how the toxic culture of SF politics enables abuse, and created a 30 day video series that served as a ‘Ramadan 101’ and ‘Islam 101’ to combat the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment that we are currently seeing here in the U.S.
I highly recommend the Artist’s Way. If any of this resonates with you, I recommend you give the program a try. It will change your life — guaranteed.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Artist’s Way highlight in my Instagram profile.
