The Artist’s Way was written by Julia Cameron 25 years ago. It created quite a revolution in terms of waking people up to their creativity and launched a lot of leaps in anticipation of the appearance of the net that she promised. While a leap of faith is required in most endeavors if your desire is to truly take your work to the next level, a lot of beings read that mantra to mean that they were to quit their 9 to 5 jobs to do their art full-time and that the Universe would support them. Despite Ms. Cameron’s cautions, a lot of us leapt and went splat on the pavement. There is a lot of nuance involved here that would be impossible to address for every individual.

Now, a quarter of a century later, I’m doing the Artist’s Way again. This time, with far more experience and awareness of that nuance that couldn’t have existed back then. This work holds up extremely well despite some old school “shoulding” regarding the implementation of weekly tasks. With my allowance for less rigidly held “rules“ about how to do it, I found a new level of blossoming and freedom in these weeks of re-discovering my divine child artist self. Eleven of Twelve weeks in, I have become jubilantly reacquainted with the part of myself that holds the keys to the magic.

For decades I’d paid a kind of half attention to this creative child-self of mine. Begrudgingly making commitments to Artist’s Dates and creative projects. Unfortunately, that “I’m showing up because I said I would“ energy bleeds through every time. Eventually, this child-self just stopped communicating with me. How could I blame her?

This time around, however, something’s shifted. I recognize the truth of the fact that this child part of me is the source of the spark, the light, the play. She got shut down pretty pretty early and never really had the freedom to stretch her wings and explore the expanse of possibilities she held.

I’m finally getting how essential it is to honor these young parts of ourselves. Often, they have taken on so much that never belonged to them. Unburdened of that weight, we can begin to soar.

This Divine Child-self’s trust of me is still a bit tenuous, but it is getting stronger. To her delight we took a horseback riding lesson this past week. She/we felt like we had landed in heaven.

Later in the week, I took a hike. Silently, I was calling out to her asking her where and how she was. And then I recognized in that moment, being on the earth, in a place that I loved, doing something that felt joyful, I was that seven year old. I was she. I am she.

Hmmm…

Two women on the trail commented about the joy I was radiating.

We’ve had a bounce and a smile ever since.