Following Julia Cameron

There is something magical about Julia Cameron. She is the godmother of creativity, a force of nature in her 70s who urges us to write our morning pages.

You might know her as the author of “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.” She was hailed by the New York Times as "The Queen of Change." She once said, “Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts.”

And because Julia is credited with starting a movement in 1992 that brought creativity into the mainstream conversation — into the arts, business, and everyday life — we have a lot to learn from her.

Let's start with those morning pages.

I resisted this practice for 20 years. The thought of getting up and writing for writing's sake was unappealing. Write three pages, handwritten, freeform.

Let it flow. To what end? To what benefit? Yeah, no.

Lordy, I was wrong. I began writing each morning in 2018, and those pages changed my life. They, in fact, saved me.

I was fully entrenched in a verbally and emotionally abusive marriage. Me. So invincible, so therapized. But after years of drama, trauma-bonding, future-baiting, gaslighting and fighting, I shut down. It was the best way I knew to keep the peace. My heart raced all the time, even when I was still. I dissociated.

I'd shut down my voice. Not a word to stand on.

That's when I started getting up early, before the sun came up. I curled up on the couch with my narrow-lined notepad and pen, and got to it. Every day I wrote three pages and they were pure dreck. Sometimes all the jumbled words I’d been perseverating on came pouring out and I could start making sense of them. Sometimes, I’d just write out a grocery list. 

Diffuse thinking gave way to clearer thinking. And over the next few weeks, the most amazing thing happened. I started to look forward to those blank pages, that pen, this couch. The words began to build a foundation. Themes arose. Characters developed. My voice, so muddied, became clearer. So many mornings, I thought, “There you are. I hear you. I’ve missed you.”

I saw my brokenness and didn’t harangue myself for it. I saw the brokenness around me and determined what was solvable and what wasn’t. By 2020, my marriage was over. The pall in our home lifted. And I continued to write. 

So yeah, I'd follow this woman to the ends of the earth, notepad and pen in hand.