TAW: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Using reading as a source of collective healing

Oct 17, 2023

“We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.” - Susan Jeffers

In my previous post, I shared my favorite excerpts from the Introduction of The Artist’s Way (TAW). This week, I give you my thoughts on the first chapter of TAW, which is aptly called Recovering a Sense of Safety. While this chapter is about recovering a sense of safety for one’s inner artist, I couldn’t help but think of these tools and learnings as directly applicable to any healing practice - in effect, to recovering a sense of safety more generally. In the context of war, this need to recover a sense of safety is especially appropriate.

Since the surprise attack on October 7th, this Israel-Hamas war has subjected Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab communities to senseless and cruel violence.

Whether we find ourselves in the context of war or of a global pandemic, these life-altering and global-paradigm-altering events upend our sense of safety on multiple levels. This upsetting, up-earthing force ripples out from the center, with the highest intensity and the largest waves of destruction shaken at the center of the action. Those ripples reach outwards, lightening the affects as the waves reach the periphery, but even the periphery can still feel the wake of this wave - that the fragment of trust is broken, that the fragment of trust between the living is betrayed.

These conflicts and tragedies yield great questions - How can a nation be given a voice amid being attacked by its own neighbors? How can innocent people be saved from the terror within their own nation? How can their pain be held? How do we answer the call to compassion amid so much tragedy?

While the answers to these questions do not often come all at once, I believe that prayer brings awesome conclusions.

Whether you pray or not, I encourage you to consider these excerpts from the book in the context not only of healing the inner artist, but also in the context of healing personal traumas and healing the collective.

I pray for peace. I return to my purpose statement and the purpose of this Substack: To express love through writing and relationship. It is my sincerest hope that this creativity heals myself and others. It is my sincerest hope that these words will promote healing - and that our collective dreaming will create a healing ripple effect across space, time, and nations.

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Shadow Artists

Pg. 25 “There, caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, shadow artists are born… In order to move from the realm of shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle, deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child. Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.”

Between the dream of action and the fear of failure is a space of choice: choice to accept the status quo or to dream bigger. To imagine creative solutions. To imagine a better future. In the context of war, what sort of future are we imagining? Are we envisioning healing and reconciliation between all hurt and distressed parties?

By dreaming of a better future, we hold and support the vision. In action, we embody the energy of those dreams and make them into reality.

Thus, our best way forward comes when our actions are in energetic alignment with our dream life. Against all odds, against all shadows, we must keep the faith. We must hold and nurture the vision of the future that we desire.

Protecting the Artist Child Within

Pg. 29 “Masochism is an art form long ago mastered, perfected during the years of self reproach; this habit is the self hating bludgeon with which a shadow artist can beat himself right back into the shadows.”

Let’s choose not to rely on masochism for training and beating ourselves into discipline. Instead, rely on love for healing, growth, and self-discipline.

I once had an interaction with an acquaintance where she saw that I was picking at a scab on my knee and her reaction kind of told me that she thought in a sense - “Who raised you this way?”, or I could tell that the sentiment behind the look was, “Why would that be acceptable?” Ultimately it was a lesson for me on the differences of the families that we grow up in. I grew up in a family where we all pulled at our nails, tore at our skin, and this sort of self-destruction was normalized because we weren’t yet past that stage in our healing. This interaction was one of the final stages of my healing this tendency - because I learned that this is not an action I want to accept any more. This is not a way that I want to treat myself.

The antidote to self-abuse and self-destruction is self-love and extending that love to others. Fill your cup, so that your cup overflows with energy and love - in turn, you are more enabled to give that love and energy to others. 💗💗

Pg. 29 “In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly what we are after here is the healing of old wounds- not the creation of new ones... Progress, not perfection is what we should be asking of ourselves.”

It takes nurture to make an artist. It takes nurture to make a hurt person healed. It takes nurture to create harmony.

Perfectionism is the shadow of progress.

Seeking divine perfection is holding onto the dream, but being held back by perfectionism in everyday life is stalling action because of fear. Resistance is the shadow of the dream.

Your Enemy Within: Core Negative Beliefs

Pg. 30 “Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life, it is because we feel safer that way... much fear of our own creativity is the fear of the unknown.”
Pg. 32 “Stripped to their essence, our multiple negative beliefs reveal a central negative belief: we must trade one good, beloved dream for another. In other words, if being an artist seems too good to be true to you, you will devise a price tag for it that strikes you as un-payable. Hence, you remain blocked.
Most blocked creatives carry unacknowledged either/ or reasoning that stands between them and their work... it is possible, quite possible, to be both an artist and romantically fulfilled. It is quite possible to be an artist and financially successful.”

Your Ally Within: Affirmative Weapons

Pg. 34 “Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope... Try these and see if they don't sound hopelessly syrupy: ‘I deserve love. I deserve fair pay. I deserve a rewarding and creative life… I am competent and confident in my creative work.’”

In working with positive affirmations and the negative beliefs, or ‘blurts,’ as Cameron calls them, very often past injuries, pains, and monster figures can show up. Instead of ignoring them, if we list them, write with them, get to know them, and integrate these shadows and fears, we can heal. By turning each negative into an affirmative positive, we redirect our beliefs. Redirecting our beliefs can help guide our actions, thus shaping our habits, our routines, and ultimately our life.

“An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so.” -Shakti Gawain

Affirmations for Peace

There is peace and harmony on earth.
As we create and listen to divine guidance, we will be led.
As we seek healing, we will be healed.
There is a divine plan of goodness for us.

If this interests you, please share and leave a note in the comments, or use these as journal prompts: What positive affirmation would you like to add to this list? What does divine guidance mean to you? How does divine guidance guide your life? What are you grieving, what are you healing from? What are your prayers for collective healing?

A Lesson from my inner child: On emptiness as a soul experience

As a child, as a young girl, emotional upheavals felt like an emotional rollercoaster. I recall many times (though now, the many times blend into an archetypal image-memory I have of this pattern) - after a family argument, I’d go to my room. I’d pray at my desk or at the foot of my bed. I felt expansive in the dark, I felt the depths of my own despair and I was shrouded in a blanket, a space all my own. The air was electric with my wanting, my praying, my yearning, my crying out to God for help, for assistance. I was overwhelmed by my strong desire to repair things and my strong waves of emotions.

I know I prayed aloud some times. I know I prayed in my head as well. The energy and tension would build up into my throat until I felt like I was screaming, but I was not screaming. I was whispering. After perhaps an hour of this, a child in pitiable prayers, I would reach exhaustion.

(This is still the hardest part for me to reconcile with - knowing what this feels like, knowing that there are children out there going through this emotional upheaval, this sense of helplessness and despair - is an unbearable thought. It is an emphatic and empathetic pain. I can barely express my sentiments on it, though I can say that I wish for children to not experience this emotional upheaval. I pray for them to experience peace and joy.)

Though, if all was well and as I was physically safe, I would eventually feel an emptiness, a numbness which was ultimately calm.

(This is why we need to restore physical safety for children and those in distress. So that they can restore their emotional safety and spiritual well-being.)

I recently learned that this emptiness, this numbness is a soul experience. This pained emptiness marks our separation from divinity, it helps us find space for the divine to enter.

Even though I am no longer a child, this experience still feels so familiar. For younger Sophie, these experiences were a total upheaval - an earthquake of heart, mind, and soul. Lands tearing apart. An earthquake that I couldn’t reconcile - my parents’ divisive territories of the heart.

As an adult, knowing what I have learned, I can pass through these strong emotions in a shorter time frame, much calmer and smoother than when I was a child. It is no longer on an emotional rollercoaster, it's more like watching an emotional film. Rather than being roughly tossed in the emotional sea, I can be an observer to the feeling, a seamen coasting on the waves.

I know it because I have gone through that pattern many times - sadness, grief, and tears which turns to an empty hollowness. I know what it is like to reach the emptiness of my sadness, and I think that this is an experience which all humans share. I also know what it is like to reach a place of calm that feels divine - a physical, emotional, and spiritual calm.

I pray for an end to suffering. I pray that this sadness turn to physical healing and divine calm.

Thank you for reading and understanding the prayerful intent behind this writing.

Merci for reading.

sincerely,