I was falling apart. I’d kept it together for the first year of the pandemic, but then I began to unravel. To distract and numb myself from all the troubles of the world, I’d become a workaholic. My laptop was so worn out, the characters on the keyboard faded. Often working until midnight, I barely noticed my marriage was deteriorating.
“Goooo to bedddddd!” I’d roar when my 5-year-old daughter woke up in need of comfort; in my defense, she interrupted me nightly, just as I was falling asleep. “You cannot do this to me. I have back-to-back calls in the morning!” I’d yell through her tears, as if my logic and reasoning made any sense to a little girl with her own sleep issues.
Undaunted, I became so used to fast-paced, high-pressured roles that I normalized mistreating my family and ultimately myself. I developed panic attacks, insomnia, eczema, and migraines as part of my daily life. There were times I was so stressed, my body started overproducing cortisol, the fight-or-flight hormone that pumps our bodies with adrenaline to help us stay alert. It’s natural caffeine with dire consequences: I started experiencing excessive hair loss.
I was setting myself up for more serious health issues until a book called The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity saved my life. A dear friend of more than 20 years had raved about it on multiple occasions. She first mentioned it when I took a break from tech six years ago to become my daughter’s primary caregiver, a time when I foolishly thought I’d be able to pursue my writing dreams. It didn’t work out. Fears about finances made me run back to the corporate world by the time my baby turned 2. I didn’t read the book, but I did make peace with the fact that I would not have a creative career at all.
That friend persisted and gave me the book when my daughter turned 4. Still, it sat on my bookshelf for a couple more years until 12 months into the pandemic. I was turning 40, assessing my life choices, and trying to understand the miserable woman I had become. I was sitting in our living room feeling hollow inside. A rainbow from one of the crystal prisms that hung on our window refracted. Out of all the books on my bookshelf, it was Julia Cameron’s 30-year-old bestseller that the light landed right on. Rainbows are a sign of hope. It was time to read this book.
Understanding the premise
Cameron was in a major rut when she created the program that would eventually turn into her best-selling book. She had just divorced film director Martin Scorsese, whom she shared a child with, after discovering his affair with Liza Minnelli. Heartbroken, while working as a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and poet, she could not function without cocaine and alcohol. She knew she needed to get sober, or her lifestyle would eventually kill her.
Inspired by the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program, Cameron created her own 12-week model. In it, you sign a contract with yourself to get “adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering for the duration of the course.” And you must commit to weekly readings, exercises, and her signature cures: Morning Pages and Artist Dates.
Morning Pages: By stream-of-consciousness journaling three pages each morning, Cameron believes “we begin to excavate our buried dreams.” Those pages are non-negotiable, no matter how busy or tired we may be, because, Cameron says, “all that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.” Further, she says, “this stuff [the petty thoughts] eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days.”
Artist Dates: Cameron also suggests at least two hours of alone time each week to nurture our inner artist through fun excursions. Think: playdates in nature, visits to the museum, painting, playing an instrument, cooking, baking, watching films and documentaries — really anything to nurture the creative child in each of us. Cameron believes that filling our inspiration cup, by our lonesome, helps open us to insight and guidance. Whereas the Morning Pages allow us to identify and shed problems, Artist Dates are meant to inspire solutions.
By putting herself through the program, Cameron worked through her insecurities and began to produce great work completely sober. She healed her soul and used her own tools to save her life. Today, The Artist’s Way has been translated into 40 languages with five million copies sold. The lessons are so timeless that her publisher says the book’s sales have grown more than 40 percent in the last four years. Cameron regularly receives “you changed my life” letters from strangers and has gained a celebrity cult following from the likes of Alicia Keys, Bella Hadid, Russell Brand, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who says, “Without The Artist’s Way, there would be no Eat Pray Love.”
Starting my rehabilitation
Within the first two weeks of beginning the program, I excavated my buried dreams. In one of Cameron’s prompts, I was asked: “If you had five other lives to lead, what would you be?” On March 28, 2021, almost two years ago, I wrote: yoga teacher, journalist, crystal shop owner, healer, and writer.
This was all out of reach, but I was amused. There was no way I was going to walk away from my lucrative career, which I had spent almost two decades building in New York and Silicon Valley. However, little did I know that by doing The Artist’s Way exercises, I was beginning to receive what Cameron calls “spiritual chiropractic,” which is when we “achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe.”
For my Artist Dates, I found joy watching other creative people work, like Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast in Hamilton. (Yes, I was probably the last person on Earth to watch the musical, but because of Artist Dates, I finally gave myself permission.) As a teenager, I used to lock myself up in my room, writing rhymes and rapping to beats, so I felt a deep appreciation for Miranda’s talent. As I bopped my head to the song “My Shot,” tears started flowing down my face.
With my creativity well filled with inspiration, I began making my own art. Before each workday, I woke up at 5 a.m. to write stories about alternative healing techniques I used to help cope with stress. When my writing felt dry and pedantic, I signed up for writing workshops at Stanford Continuing Studies.
To my daughter’s delight, I started playing the piano again and relearned my favorite classical pieces. I danced with my reflection. Music was my medicine. I bought a sewing machine and made my daughter a summer dress from scratch using a pattern, YouTube lessons, and a lot of prayers to Mommy Lola, my late grandmother, a seamstress and designer in the Philippines. “You must really love me,” my daughter gushed, “to make me a dress.”
Without focusing specifically on our marriage, I saw that it started to improve. My husband and I bickered less and loved more. I wasn’t as critical of myself, those hurtful voices turning supportive and kind. “Corporate life has an expiration date,” I declared in my journal, “and it feels more imminent now that I’m working towards my soul’s goals.”
Moving forward
It took me five months, not three, to finish the program due to juggling work and family. But I stuck with it, not missing a single day of Morning Pages for two years. The results are cumulative. “Take a small step in the direction of a dream,” Cameron says, “and watch the synchronous doors flying open.”
I left tech six months ago to pursue my writing career. Within two months of leaving, a friend hired me as a corporate freelancer. My stories are being published by reputable, national publications. While owning a crystal shop doesn’t appear to be in the cards any time soon, I have been using my reiki master certification to heal myself and my family. Most surprising of all, I am doing yoga teacher training, a 10-year-old dream that has suddenly become my reality.
All this growth and realization of dreams has made itself evident not just in my spiritual self but in my physical one too. My hair is growing back fuller, thicker, and stronger. I sleep better — and so does my daughter.
Alyssa Lauren Stone is a Bay Area-based writer, reiki master, and yoga teacher. Follow her on Instagram at @alyssalaurenstone.
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