Recovering a Sense of Creative Connection with The Lovers
Week Seven of the Tarot Artist's Way...
This summer, I’m guiding you through a tarot takeover of Julia Cameron’s 12 week creative recovery program, The Artist’s Way. Each Monday, I’ll pair a key theme from the book with a tarot archetype, and share fresh insights on The Artist’s Way’s message, through a tarot-lens. Today, we’re diving into Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Connection.
These brief Monday essays are free to read. To deepen your journey through access to live & recorded Sunday journaling sessions, original Morning Pages prompts, themed Artist Date suggestions, our community chat thread and more, consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Shuffle.
Week Seven of our tarot-informed journey through The Artist’s Way invites us to think about what creative connection really means from us, and how we can move beyond ourselves to form deeper creative connections with the world around us.
The Lovers supports on on this journey by reminding us of the power of partnership, and the creatively fertile choice to seek understanding beyond ourselves.
ICYMI, the replay recording of our latest Tarot Artist’s Way journaling session is here.
Julia Cameron’s approach to creative connection is, like most of The Artist’s Way, introspective. She unpacks connection, guiding us to:
listen to our own intuition
trust our creative instincts and take risks to fulfil them
overcome perfectionism
But coming into this chapter, I never really want more broad advice on listening to myself. Six weeks deep into the process, I’ve been doing that work — Morning pages and Artists Dates are acts of listening, overcoming perfectionism and risk-taking.
What I do always find myself craving more of this week is guidance for emerging from the isolation of the first half of the program. I want to see a hand extending toward me, inviting me out of the vacuum of my own creative recovery experience so I can begin to situate myself within the context of a rich, dynamic creative world.
I don’t just want a deeper connection to my own creativity, I want contact with the world. I want to be inspired and supported by others. I want to know I’m not alone.
The Lovers can remind us that we’re not alone, and we’re not built to be. It’s the first card in the Major Arcana sequence to feature multiple faces; it represents maturity, union, choice and consequence… all the glory and the pitfalls of being in community.
The Rider Waite Smith illustration depicts Adam and Eve communing with an angel… not a singular channel between human and the divine (or flow, or The Great Creator or whatever other alternative options Cameron offers), but two, emphasising the importance of shared experiences and partnership… the ways in which we complete, support, and challenge each other.
That Adam and Eve chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge speaks to the human need for connection, too: their desire for contact with the wider world around them — their curiosity and hunger for new experiences — turned them into seekers. They weren’t content to play out God’s vision — they chose connection over comfort, pursued the richness of everything beyond their safe, isolated garden.
I’ve recently been navigating a lot of disconnection in my own life: I live abroad in a small city, separated from the rich cultural and social opportunities I used to count on while living in London. I’m learning to operate in a second language where I often feel lost or misunderstood. As a writer with a public persona online, I sometimes get lost in what’s my art and what’s my business and what’s me — how do I navigate creating deep connections with peers and clients while remaining professional? I’m trying to cultivate relationships that go beyond convenience, transactionality and proximity, and it’s hard. I’ve been tempted to pull back entirely. To willfully disconnect rather than endure the discomfort of trying to find connections that feel meaningful to me.
I haven’t cracked the code, but I do know that the isolation I experience can’t be satisfied simply by minding my own business and tuning more deeply into myself. That’s a part of it, for sure — nurturing my inner artist, and listening to my own voice when I feel like no one else is, is a crucial act of self-care when I’m at my loneliest.
But without a sense of connection to what’s around me, I’m missing out on vital elements I need to keep myself creatively and mentally well. And so I have to do the hard, vulnerable work of showing up to other people. I have to remind myself that reaching out can also be a powerful way of reaching in. •
Join me live on Sunday, June 29th at 7pm UK / 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific for a tarot journaling event where we’ll reflect back over the past week and pull for deepening creative connections.
Below, full-access subscribers to The Shuffle can find:
Morning Pages prompts
Artist’s Date suggestions
What’s next
A discount code for my limited edition Inner Artist tarot letter