Journaling Your Way to Grace

45 Days of Grace Journal

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

A dear friend of mine gave me the journal 45 Days of Grace. When she first gave it to me I wasn't quite ready to write in it. It has prompts for each day and I wasn't sure I wanted to write from a prompt. I usually like to write freely about what is currently circling around in my mind. So I waited a few months before I began it. Beginning it and working through it was miraculous. It is amazing the clarity you can get to through writing. So often our minds are caught up in the secondary issue or a superficial issue. Somehow with writing you can begin to peel back layers and get to the core problems which leads to depth, understanding and in the end: Grace.

The journal is divided into three sections: Mind, Body and Spirit. Here are some examples of some of the prompts:

"What conversations or continuous loops do you play over and over when your mind is filled with noise? ("My mind on the hamster wheel...")

"I'd love to learn..."

"I'm puzzled by..."

"What activates the juices of your mind..."

"I am nourished by..."

"My heart aches..."

"Wrestling with God..."

There were honestly days when I resisted writing if the prompt was perhaps too painful and I felt I was doing well that day and didn't want to dig up anything painful. But everyday that I wrote I left feeling an immense sense of peace. And on almost every page I gained some kind of insight or wisdom. Something I hadn't seen before. Something different than just me complaining of an overwhelming list of things to do. Sometimes I diverged for a minute on the page and them came back to the topic. Sometimes I had so much to write that I inserted extra blank pages to finish writing.

In the end I loved it so much that I won't finish it. I have three days left and I don't want it to be over. Isn't that crazy. I talked with my friend who also did the book and she and her sister did it together and neither of them wanted it to end either. I am going to go back and finish those last three pages and I know when I will be ready. I'm just going to make them linger--perhaps writing only one a month for the next three months.

In the meantime I have started another journal. This journal is more of The Morning Pages recommended in The Artist's Way. I was given The Artist's Way years ago and never touched it. I didn't really consider myself an artist so I didn't really think it was for me. Of course I wasn't realizing there are so many forms of art from writing to cooking to singing to painting to gardening to the traditional forms of art painting and sculpting. I feel like the book should be called Healing Your Life and Finding Happiness or Making Your Brain Come Alive or just WOW! It is an understatement to express what a positive book it is and how it gets your mind flowing with possibility and excitement. It is the Power of Positive Thinking come true and the people who have had success in their own form of art after completing it is astounding.

I could quote the entire book it is that wonderful. It helps you get to the CORE of your feelings and your potential. It eliminates the negativity/censors/judgement in your mind and even explains why some people feel "safe" in their negativity. The author first recommends skimming the book. Skipping around and reading parts of it and kind of skimming through it before actually beginning it.

So often we complain/vent about the superficial when there is something deeper underlying the way we feel. The Artist's Way actually gives you steps and tools for uncovering all sorts of emotional blocks. It truly helps you "break-through" to discover your true emotions and lead you to your greatest potential. It helps conquer fears and all sorts of things and the way she writes is as the safest most encouraging friend. So you feel safe and good while you unlock the best parts of you.

"'This marriage is not working for me,' the morning pages say. And then 'I wonder about couples therapy?' and then, 'I wonder if I'm not just bored with me.'"

"I have outgrown this job," may appear in the morning pages. At first, it is a troubling perception. Over time, it becomes a call for action and then an action plan." p.81

It truly is so hard to start picking out quotes and passages because I want to copy down the entire book. If I had to pick another favorite part it is near the end about the Sacred Circles. We tend to have this illusion that only one person can succeed. That only one person can be "the best." It is far from true. Cameron writes this so beautifully there is no point in me paraphrasing. I will just write her words:

"Success occurs in clusters. Drawing a Sacred Circle creates a sphere of safety and a center of attraction for our good.

The Sacred Circle is built on respect and trust. The image is of a garden. Each plant has its name and its place. There is no flower that cancels the need for another. Each bloom has its unique and irreplaceable beauty.

Let our gardening hands be gentle ones. Let us not root up one another's ideas before they have time to bloom. Let us bear with the process of growth, dormancy, cyclicality, fruition and reseeding. Let us never be hasty to judge, reckless in our urgency to force unnatural growth. Let there be, always, a place for the artist toddler to try, to falter, to fail, to try again. Let us remember that in nature's world every loss has meaning. The same is true for us. Turned to good use, a creative failure may be the compost that nourishes next season's creative success. Remember, we are in this for the long haul, the ripening and harvest, not the quick fix." -Julia Cameron.

I can give you thousands of examples of success and this kind of determination. From JK Rowling's 12 rejections of Harry Potter to Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, who was rejected 60 times! (You can get the links to these stories of rejection and triumph if you click on the author's names.) JK Rowling's Commencement speech at Harvard was called The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination. The Diary of Ann Frank was in the trash pile and rescued by Judith Jones. Julia Child's cookbook was rejected 6 times. Failure, disappointment, rejection and mistakes are all a part of of life. And they are often opportunities to stretch, grow and move in a new direction.

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies." --JK Rowling

What I have learned from all of this in this miraculous year of growth and transformation is that we all make mistakes and we are all struggling with some kind of challenge whether large or small. Let me say that again: WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. And it is so important to forgive yourself and go forward. Sometimes I feel I'm in the movie Groundhog Day and I make the mistake again and again until I get it right. But then a lightbulb goes on when you realize what does and doesn't work in your life, in your relationships and in your daily happiness. For instance being patient and kind with your children instead of yelling at them when you are tired and frustrated is a BIG lesson for me. Maya Angelou wrote:

"what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn" -Maya Angelou

As you may be able to tell quotes and words INSPIRE me. My journals are filled with my favorite quotes. They can be a spark as well as a comfort.

You may think I'm crazy but I also have a gratitude journal. I don't write in it everyday because I often drive around thinking about what I would write in my gratitude journal and what I am thankful for. So it has the same positive effect. And my girls and I have started this practice of each saying two things we are grateful for every night. It is amazing how happy you are when you go to bed, even giddy sometimes, when you talk about the parts of your day that you are grateful for. I love hearing theirs and they love hearing mine. So if the other two journals don't seem like they would work for you then perhaps a gratitude journal is something you will enjoy.

In my journals I repeatedly came upon recurring themes; perhaps the biggest being that "Kindness Matters." The other thing that surfaced over and over again was my greatest weakness: Patience. (Patience I could write about for pages and I already wrote a blog post devoted to Patience alone.) Over and over again Patience, Compassion, Understanding, Kindness and Prayer kept surfacing. I'm a better mother, a better friend and a better person now. I can still stumble but for the most part I have this sense of Peace and Grace that I carry with me most of the time. I can feel the times when I get anxious or stressed but mostly I can pray through those and if those prayers come in the form of writing in a journal they are even more powerful. The result is a sense of calm and belief in the goodness in the world. A delight in the possibilities that exist and the Blessings we are showered with daily. Peace and Grace to all of you.