Creative Journey Kaila Allen

Episode Notes

Kaila was on Vacation this week, so we spend some time getting to know the participants with some fun ice breaker questions and answers.

Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Recovering Our Power

Describe your childhood bedroom. If you wish, you may sketch this room. What was your favorite thing about it? What’s your favorite thing about your bedroom right now? Nothing? Well, get something you like in there—maybe something from that old childhood bedroom.
Tasks
 
Describe five traits you liked in yourself as a child. Next, write a little bit about why each one appeals to you And a treat: List five favorite childhood foods. Buy yourself one of them this week. Yes, Jell-O with bananas is okay
 
Habits: Take a look at your habits. Many of them may interfere with your self-nurturing and cause shame. Some of the oddest things are self- destructive. Do you have a habit of watching TV you don’t like? Do you have a habit of hanging out with a really boring friend and just killing time (there’s an expression!)? Some rotten habits are obvious, overt (drinking too much, smoking, eating instead of writing). List three obvious rotten habits. What’s the payoff in continuing them?
Some rotten habits are more subtle (no time to exercise, little time to pray, always helping others, not getting any self-nurturing, hanging out with people who belittle your dreams). List three of your subtle foes. What use do these forms of sabotage have? Be specific.
 
Make a list of friends who nurture you—that’s nurture (give you a sense of your own competency and possibility), not enable (give you the message that you will never get it straight without their help). There is a big difference between being helped and being treated as though we are helpless. Describe which of these friends’ traits, particularly, serve you well.
 
Call a friend who treats you like a really good and bright person who can accomplish things. Part of your recovery is reaching out for support. This support will be critical as you undertake new risks.
 
Inner Compass: Each of us has an inner compass. This is an instinct that points us toward health. It warns us when we are on dangerous ground, and it tells us when something is safe and good for us. Morning pages are one way to contact it. So are some other artist-brain activities—painting, driving, walking, scrubbing, running. This week, take an hour to follow your inner compass by doing an artist-brain activity and listening to what insights bubble up. Record them below.
 
List five people you admire whom you would feel safe praising publicly. Now list five people you secretly admire. What traits do these people have that you can cultivate further in yourself
 
List five people who are dead whom you wish you had met while they were alive. Now list five people who are dead whom you’d like to hang out with for a while in eternity. What traits do you find in these people that you can look for in your friends
 
Compare the two sets of lists. Take a look at what you really like and really admire—and a look at what you think you should like and admire. Your shoulds might tell you to admire Edison, while your heart belongs to Houdini. Go with the Houdini side of you for a while.


How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you? If you skipped a day, why did you skip it?
Did you do your artist’s date this week? (Yes, yes, and it was awful.) What did you do? How did it feel?
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
Check-In
 
Theresa Breeden
 
 
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Recovering a Sense of Identity

Where does your time go? List your five major activities this week. How much time did you give to each one? Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? How much of your time is spent helping others and ignoring your own desires? Have any of your blocked friends triggered doubts in you?
Draw a circle below. Inside this circle, place topics you need to protect. Place the names of those you find to be supportive. Outside the circle, place the names of those you must be self-protective around just now. Use this map to support your autonomy. Add names to the inner and outer spheres as appropriate: “Oh! Derek is somebody I shouldn’t talk to about this right now.
 
List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, riding a bike, riding a horse, playing catch, shooting baskets, going for a run, reading poetry, and so forth). When was the last time you let yourself do these things? Next to each entry, place a date. Don’t be surprised if it’s been years for some of your favorites. That will change. This list is an excellent resource for artist’s dates
 
From the preceding list, write down two favorite things that you’ve avoided that could be this week’s goals. These goals can be small: buy one roll of film and shoot it. Remember, we are trying to win you some autonomy with your time. Look for windows of time just for you, and use them in small creative acts. Get to the record store at lunch hour, even if only for fifteen minutes. Stop looking for big blocks of time when you will be free. Find small bits of time instead. Record below what you did and how you managed to fit it into
Your schedule.
 
Return to the list of imaginary lives from last week. List five more lives below. Now write down plans for doing bits and pieces of these lives in the one you are living now. If you have listed a dancer’s life, do you let yourself go dancing? If you have listed a monk’s life, are you ever allowed to go on a retreat? If you are a scuba diver, is there an aquarium shop you can visit? A day at the lake you could schedule
 
Life Pie: Draw a circle below. Divide it into six pieces of pie. Label one piece “spirituality,” another “exercise,” another “play,” and so on with “work,” “friends,” and “romance/adventure.” Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer rim indicates great; inner circle, not so great). Connect the dots. This will show you where you are lopsided.
As you begin the course, it is not uncommon for your life pie to look like a tarantula. As recovery progresses, your tarantula may become a mandala. Working with this tool, you will notice that there are areas of your life that feel impoverished and on which you spend little or no time. Use the time tidbits you are finding to alter this.
If your spiritual life is minimal, even a five-minute pit stop into a synagogue or cathedral can restore a sense of wonder. Many of us find that five minutes of drum music can put us in touch with our spiritual core. For others, it’s a trip to a greenhouse. The point is that even the slightest attention to our impoverished areas can nurture them. List three ways to make your circle less lopsided.
 
Ten Tiny Changes: List ten changes you’d like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa (“get new sheets so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice”). Do it this way:
As the morning pages nudge us increasingly into the present, where we pay attention to our current lives, a small shift like a newly painted kitchen can yield a luxuriously large sense of self-care.
 
Select one small item from the list of ten changes and make it a goal for this week. At week’s end, describe your results below.


How many days this week did you do your morning pages? (We’re hoping seven, remem

Monsters & Cheerleaders

Week one:
 
Set your alarm to wake up a half-hour earlier than usual every morning; get up and do three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness morning writing. Do not reread these pages or allow anyone else to read them. Ideally, stick them in a large manila envelope, or hide them somewhere. Welcome to the morning pages. They will change you.
 
List below a few creative affirmations from Week One that have particular significance for you. Also below, copy any “blurts” from your morning pages —those negative statements about yourself and your life that tend to crop up in each day’s morning pages. Convert these blurts into positive affirmations.
 
Take yourself on an artist’s date. You will do this every week for the duration of the course. A sample artist’s date: Take five dollars and go to your local dollar store. Buy silly things like gold stick-on stars, tiny dinosaurs, some postcards, sparkly sequins, glue, kid’s scissors, crayons. You might give yourself a gold star on your envelope each day you write. Just for fun. Record your experiences below.
 
Time Travel: Describe below three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Please be as specific as possible in doing this exercise. Your historic monsters are the building blocks of your core negative beliefs. (Yes, rotten Sister Ann Rita from fifth grade does count, and the rotten thing she said to you does matter. Put her in.) This is your monster hall of fame. More monsters will come to you as you work through your recovery. It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth.
 
Time Travel: Select and write out one horror story from your monster hall of fame. You do not need to write long or much, but do jot down whatever details come back to you—the room you were in, the way people looked at you, the way you felt, what people said or didn’t say when you told about it. Include whatever rankles you about the incident: “And then I remember she gave me this real fakey smile and patted my head... .”
 
Below, write a letter to the editor in your defense. Write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!” For added fun, copy this letter onto nice stationery and mail it to yourself
 
Time Travel: Below, list three old champions of your creative self-worth. This is your hall of champions, those who wish you and your creativity well. Also record (be specific) encouraging words they’ve said to you. Even if you disbelieve a compliment, record it. It may well be true.
 
If you are stuck for compliments, go back through your time-travel log and look for positive memories. When, where, and why did you feel good about yourself ? Who gave you affirmation?
 
Additionally, you may wish to write the compliment out and decorate it. Post it near where you do your morning pages or on the dashboard of your car. I put mine on the chassis of my computer to cheer me as I write
 
Time Travel: Select and write out one happy piece of encouragement below. Describe why this vote of confidence meant so much to you. Once you are done, write a thank-you letter to the person who gave you this encouragement —even if it was you. Mail it to yourself or to the long-lost mentor
 
In working with affirmations and blurts, very often injuries and monsters swim back to us. Write about them below as they occur to you. Next, work with each blurt individually. Turn each negative into an affirmative positive.
 
Take your artist for a walk, just the two of you. A brisk twenty-minute walk can dramatically alter consciousness. Below, record reflections you made on this walk.
 
 
1.How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Seven out of seven, we always hope. How was the experience for you?


Did you do your artist’s date this week? Yes, of course, we a

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