Transcript: Episode 19

Hey friend, and thank you for being here for today’s episode. I’m Mary, and I hope you’re doing well whenever and wherever you’re listening.

Whether you’re a new listener here in this virtual space, or whether you’re a regular visitor to this time-and-space-crossing circle… I want to start out by extending my gratitude to you for sharing your time and attention with me today. And I also want to let you know about a special resource I’ve made for members of the pod community – especially for those of us who tend to experience creative anxiety as part of our writing lives.

The Creative Rescue Kit is a set of three bite-sized but powerful tools to help us get out of the drafting doom spiral and back onto the path of actually writing our stories.

Everything in the Kit is designed to help you shift blocks and make the most of your creative time. It includes a quick guided audio practice to bypass anxiety blocks in the moment during a writing session. There’s also some low-pressure but deep-diving journal prompts to help shift your creative anxiety at the source. And to help you reclaim your writing practice for the long term, I’ve also created a streamlined digital writing session tracker to spot patterns in your writing life and discover which practices really increase your creative flow and fulfillment.

If you’d like to get access to the Creative Rescue Kit, just scroll down in the show notes wherever you’re listening and look for the link to become a newsletter subscriber.

And following on the subject of practices that support creative fulfillment… here is a semi-awkward segue into the topic for this month’s episode. A lot of what I delve into on this pod deals with our personal relationships to our writing, and ways we can rediscover and strengthen that creative connection. But this month, I’ve been thinking about the role that other people can play in our creative lives, through the act of helping us sustain and carry our creative dreams.

I’m borrowing this concept of “vision carrying” or “dream carrying” from a classic work of Jungian psychology by Jean Shinoda Bolen called Goddesses in Everywoman – this is a book that has been circulating in the spheres of psychology and spirituality since it was first published in 1984, so I’m sure some of you listening have come across it yourselves.

It’s one of those books that is both very much of its second-wave-feminist era, and also still very relevant in the way Bolen carves out space to talk about feminine mythological archetypes on their own terms, and not as flawed or weaker versions of masculine archetypes. I will say though that as a reader who identifies as queer and who leans into the nonbinary edge of the feminine… the book technically isn’t heteronormative, in that it does talk about specifically lesbian takes on the archetypes. But it is very retro in its framing of gender.

With that slight caveat aside – one of the ideas in the book that has really stuck with me since first reading it is the concept of vision carrying, which is really essentially just a brief aside that’s only mentioned on a couple pages.

Bolen introduces this concept in a chapter about Aphrodite. In addition to looking at the more commonly known angles of Aphrodite as the goddess of love and beauty, Bolen also talks a lot about Aphrodite as the driving force behind acts of artistic creation. Aphrodite isn’t just present in relationships between people – she is also present in the relationship between a practitioner of an artistic or aesthetic craft and their creations. So, in the terms of this podcast, the relationship between the storyteller and the story.

According to Bolen, Aphrodite as a goddess and as an archetype embodies a specific type of consciousness that is (quote) “focused, yet receptive; such consciousness both takes in what is attended to, and is affected by it.” (end quote)

This interactive type of conscious, fascinated attention is fueled both by deep empathy and by an eagerness to discover or co-create something new. And it leads to what Bolen calls “the alchemy of Aphrodite,” which she describes as “a reciprocal process… that facilitates change and growth.” This alchemy is the transformative force at play when we craft the raw, ordinary materials of our lives and our worlds into an outward expression of meaning – a work of art.

In this chapter on Aphrodite as the alchemical goddess, Bolen also talks about the importance of belief as a driving force to carry the artist through the work required to actually perform an act of creative alchemy. It’s difficult to seek out, nurture, and maintain that focused-yet-receptive, relational-and-transformative Aphrodite consciousness if you don’t believe it’s actually possible to bring your creative work to fruition.

Basically, you need to have a certain level of belief in both your own capacity and in the potential for your work to be realized and received in the world. Bolen says (quote) “Often it is essential that another significant person believe that the dream is possible: that person is a vision carrier, whose faith is often crucial.” (end quote)

It’s easier to tap into your Aphrodite consciousness, your creative alchemy, if someone else is extending their own empathetic and alchemical gaze onto you – a supportive gaze that can transform your ordinary self into someone capable of making artistic work with deep meaning.

Bolen describes some of the common forms this role of the vision carrier takes, especially in Western culture. In a twist that will probably not shock anyone here, it’s typically women who act as vision carriers for men (often to the extent that their own work is eclipsed or even devoured by the men whose visions they helped realize). Bolen gives two examples from the history of her own field of psychology: Lou Andreas-Salomé, who greatly influenced Freud; and Toni Wolff, who helped Jung develop and articulate many of the core ideas in Jungian analysis, but who is only credited for a few papers under her own name.

Bolen sums it up this way: “People speculate why there are so few famous women artists, or great chefs, or orchestra leaders, or noted philosophers – among the reasons given might be that women lack carriers of the Dream.”

This is one of the insights in Bolen’s work that is both very much of its era and also very much still relevant, despite the gains made in gender equality since 1984. And I would add to her observation to say that the further away your ordinary self is from what’s generally considered “ordinary,” the more you usually lack carriers for your Dream.

There’s this hugely useful word, “kyriarchy,” that basically encompasses all the ways in which oppressive hierarchies interact in society and maintain themselves – patriarchy, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, basically all the sociological terms you can no longer legally say in a Florida public school.

(And appropriately enough, the term “kyriarchy” was coined by theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza as part of her work to develop feminist interpretations of Catholic theology – including remembering and reclaiming a purposefully forgotten female leader of the early church, Saint Paul’s companion Thecla.)

So, to put my point as succinctly as possible: If your ordinary self is attempting to live and create at the fringes of the kyriarchy, it’s very likely you haven’t had enough vision carriers in your life.

It’s very likely that you’ve been trying to carry your own Dream, while also trying your damnedest to keep your Dream from being distorted into something more compatible with the supposed “norm.” And that can leave your alchemical, creative, Aphrodite consciousness stretched pretty thin.

So how do we change this state of affairs for ourselves, and access that crucial power of vision carrying?

One response to this is to try to seek out others who can become carriers of our dream, and whose dreams we can carry in return. This is, of course, sometimes easier said than done – it’s basically deciding you need to make some new friends, oh yeah and also they need to get your creative ideals and aesthetic aspirations on a deep, spiritual level. And also it would be great to meet them yesterday.

Just like attempting to intentionally make any kind of new friends… sometimes there’s just going to be effort and discomfort and time involved. But I think there are some things to bear in mind that can make the process less frustrating and more likely to succeed.

First, I think it can help to get clear with yourself on what’s going to help you grow the most with your current creative practice: increasing your skills, or increasing your capacity. And by “capacity” here, I mean your ability to have faith in your creative potential – to engage with your tangible creative practices with a sense of that alchemical, Aphrodite consciousness.

The reality is that insightful feedback on your creative skills and transformative support for your creative vision aren’t always going to be found in the same space. Ideally, you’ll eventually find both. But I think it’s very common that spaces focused on creative skill-building are naturally structured around critique and feedback and practical exercises. So even when the vibe of this kind of space is respectful and supportive, it’s just not designed to feed your inner alchemist so much as your outer artisan. It’s about the current state of your craft, not how you feel creating it.

Spaces that are explicitly focused on giving and receiving creative support, on the other hand, are far more likely to feed your inner alchemist. But in a support-focused space, you’re less likely to have some kind of technical a-ha! moment about outlining your book or balancing descriptive and active prose. It can certainly happen, but it’s not what the space is designed for.

Sometimes when we get stuck, we have a strong sense of what we need more of in our writing practice. But for those time that it feels a little murky, or when you’re having one of those days where you’re like “actually I can’t write descriptive language to save my life OR look at my current draft without rage-weeping, thankyouverymuch” – then ask yourself which of the creative obstacles on your list feels like the actual barrier.

Is the emotional response of stuck-ness being fueled by a lack of practical knowledge of how to carry on with the work? Or is the practical work being thwarted and short-circuited by the emotional response? There’s no right or wrong answer to this – you just want to identify which kind of next step feels the most engaging and gives you a sense of moving in a more hopeful direction.

When you are feeling like you’re more in need of some help carrying the dream than some help building new skills, I think the actions you take to find that support can be big or small, depending on your capacity and resources and what you have access to. Doing something small might not feel like it’s going to be as effective as doing some sort of fancy creative retreat or whatever. But sometimes doing the smaller things more regularly has a deeper impact than doing a big thing for a week or a month.

If you are looking at taking some sort of official class or joining a group that’s run through an organization, you ideally want to put your investment of time and money into something focused explicitly on creative process, not on any sort of workshop-style setting.

(I know this sounds pretty obvious stated out loud. But at least in my experience, when you start actually looking for something concrete to do, with other humans, it becomes really easy to drift into signing up for something that sounds cool but isn’t aligned with what you truly need. I think partly because when you’re in deep need of creative support, that can feel intimidating to seek out – it can be less scary to think about the skills side of the equation, and so you end up being drawn to that instead, maybe without realizing it.)

Another point to consider with classes and groups is the number of sessions. In my opinion, the real sweet spot for any kind of creative support, vision carrying experience is a class or group that’s going to meet a solid handful of times, rather than like a weekend workshop. Something like 4-8 sessions over a period of weeks or months. This gives the group a decent amount of time and space to build trust and rapport. And it gives you personally a decent amount of time to absorb and integrate that communal space of support – so even if you don’t end up building a long-term connection with a specific fellow writer, you can still carry that supportive energy forward more fully than if you just got a sort of single focused shot of creative comradery.

But let’s say you don’t have a lot of options available to you in terms of groups to join – you can find stuff for writers in your area and/or in your budget, but don’t have the luxury of a large range of offerings.

In that scenario, I think it can be really helpful to look at offerings that are open to writers of all genres. Even if there’s a feedback or critique component, it’s far less likely to get that competitive and critical energy that can creep into groups where everybody is writing the same genre. And participating in a multi-genre space can help you break out of being fixated on the product and form of your writing, so you can engage more with your creative process itself, in the company of others who are doing the same.

The minimum viable version of this sort of group experience could be as simple as finding a virtual or in-person co-working meetup for creatives (and this has the benefit of potentially being free or low-cost to do as well). It can be incredibly supportive to just be in a group space with other people who are actively making time for their art – and who don’t think it’s weird or silly or self-indulgent to be doing that in the first place.

And if you’ve really been lacking in support for your creativity, this is also a pretty gentle first step into sharing your dream with others, even if all you’re initially sharing is a time window to show up and do some creative work.

This leads me into another approach to take for finding support – cultivating carriers for your dream within your existing communities and relationships, by simply being more open about what you’re writing or making.

Depending on your circumstances, this can certainly have its own challenges and potential disappointments – but it also has the potential to connect you in new ways with people you already know and trust. And it has the additional benefit of making your creative life feel more like part of your quote-unquote “real life,” which helps bring your creativity out of the shadows.

Basically, the more people who know about the general outline of your creative work, the more likely you are to discover carriers for your dream – and the more likely you are to identify with a vision of yourself as a storyteller, not somebody who’s trying or pretending to be a storyteller, possibly in secret.

To use this podcast project as an example… I have not typically been someone who shares my creative work or my creative dream with the people around me, especially during the decade between my mid-twenties and my mid-thirties. My years of feeling shut down by creative anxiety left me in a spot where even if someone knew I was a writer and asked me in a friendly way about what I was working on, I couldn’t really talk about it. As in, I’d immediately get so deep in my anxiety brain that I literally couldn’t put words together to talk about it, like I was suddenly playing an unannounced, solo round of Taboo.

(You can imagine the intensely awkward conversational scenes this would occasionally lead to – including one memorable incident when somebody assumed I was trying to avoid clearly describing my novel because I was worried they were going to steal the premise of the story?? Which was such a weird assumption that even if I hadn’t been in the middle of an anxiety spiral, I still don’t think I would have known how to respond to it?)

Anyway, by the time I got around to starting this podcast, I had realized that I just couldn’t give myself the opportunity to feel weird and cagey and precious about it – I just had to tell the people in my life about it. And I’m not gonna lie, there were some disappointments: Not everybody I thought would listen or show support turned out to actually be interested in it (or if they did listen, I guess they felt it best to keep their opinion to themselves).

But I’ve also been lucky enough to receive positive support for this particular creative dream, and one writer friend in particular has become a steadfast and spirited vision carrier for the pod. And just as Jean Shinoda Bolen says, that faith has at times been crucial for keeping this labor of love going.

So if you’re in the habit of keeping your creative work and dreams hidden away… let this serve as a nudge to consider some ways to share what you’re carrying with others. I’m not going to say that it’s always easy. But it can lead to feeling less alone on the path. And even in those moments when it doesn’t turn out exactly as you’d like, I think it still serves a purpose.

Part of deepening your capacity for creative alchemy is becoming a better carrier of your own dream – regardless of how anybody else responds (or doesn’t respond) to your work. Sometimes there just isn’t anybody around in your life who gets it. So as much as you can, you have to be that person for yourself.

And to go back to that concept of the kyriarchy: For creatives who experience multiple layers of oppression and erasure in mainstream, dominant society, it can be especially important to carry your own dream with as much love and persistence as you can. When you’re often placed in a position of being an outsider or an “other” in a group, it just becomes harder to find groups and people that support your dream in the way you need.

It’s worth saying here that I can only speak as someone who sits in a pretty comfortable spot in the metaphorical kyriarchy pyramid in terms of class and race, even though I do hold some other outsider identities. So I’m not attempting to lift my personal experiences up as some kind of universal example. I’m just speaking from where I am, in hopes that acknowledging and talking about all this will be its own kind of support for those who need it.

When it comes to carrying your own Dream, I think one very helpful key practice is to honor the ways your vision is connected to the visions of other creatives you admire – essentially recruiting an inner or spiritual team of vision carriers, in addition to or instead of an external team. And as with a lot of the more woo-woo practices I suggest on this pod, you can take that as metaphorically or as literally as you like when it comes to applying it in your life.

The goal with recruiting this other kind of support team is basically to help you navigate a core paradox of the creative life – the tension between owning your individual creative expression and  accessing that relational, co-creative power that Bolen calls Aphrodite.

The role of any kind of dream carrier is to help you nurture and incubate your vision while also relieving you of the shadow side of deep creative gestation – the feeling that your vision is locked up inside you. That every creative session is either validating your dream or failing to make it real – and if you don’t get it right, your dream is going to die in the dark. The dream carrier is there to remind you that your vision is already seen and shared and held by something bigger than you.

I’ve talked before about the idea of honoring creative lineage and creative relationship instead of framing your work as an individualistic expression of creative mastery. (Episode 5 on genius gets specifically into that topic.) But I want to bring up this concept in a new way today and get a bit deeper into how to really create a felt sense of community and lineage for our creativity, beyond just an intellectual understanding.

In terms of the emotional or spiritual tech or how-to that I’ve found useful for this, there are really only two steps to take here: choose your team of vision carriers, and perform actions that connect you to that team. The power of this practice is not based on complexity – in fact, I think the more simple and repeatable you can make your actions, the better it actually works. The power is in feeling out what vision carriers speak most to your heart and not your ego, and in being willing to express that connection in a tangible way.

There are a lot of approaches to thinking about who your inner vision carriers might be. You can approach it through the lens of creative ancestry, honoring your connection to writers who created work that has moved you deeply or that has defined your most beloved genres. You can honor your actual ancestors who practiced creative crafts, or who supported your creativity in earlier stages of your life. You can honor characters from stories who have stuck with you in affirming and inspiring ways. You can even honor places as carriers for your dream – places that you can visit in real or imaginary life.

And this is just what’s coming immediately to mind as potential vision carriers. You can go in any direction you want with this, as long as it’s a connection you feel on a deep level.

I will make one small suggested caveat: When connecting with writers and creatives from elder generations as your inner vision carriers, I’d really recommend thinking about people you admire for their actual writing, and not for the careers they had, or even for their philosophy or politics.

There are plenty of literary elders I respect and honor, but who I wouldn’t attempt recruiting as inner vision carriers. I think the connection needs to be about the way their storytelling makes you feel, and not the acclaim their work receives or the influence that it has (no matter how well-deserved and admirable that influence may be).

It’s absolutely okay to dream of acclaim and influence – but that’s an ego dream, in both the Jungian, psycho-spiritual sense of the word and the more common definition. And I think vision carrying happens in the subconscious, gestational space before any sort of goal-oriented dreams. It’s a layer deeper than that. It’s about honoring your creative expression as a form of alchemy in and of itself.

I’ve actually never really gotten far with attempting to recruit actual literary elders onto my team of vision carriers. For me, it tends to foster unhelpful skill and style comparisons, no matter how much I try to focus on ways their work inspires my spirit. A lot of my inner vision carriers come from nature, or from mythology, folklore, and cultural history. And one of the actions I take to nurture and honor my connection to those dream carriers is talking about them on this podcast –Episode 9 on Hestia, Hermes, and Brigid is one example, as is Episode 17 about the Irish bardic tradition.

Your actions don’t need to be public, though. And like I mentioned earlier, they don’t need to complicated or showy. They don’t even necessarily need to be creative, in the sense of unique or artistically sophisticated.

Let’s say you want to embrace Bolen’s idea of creative alchemy by recruiting Aphrodite onto your team of vision carriers. (Although, Aphrodite being a goddess, maybe I should be using more mythological or reverent terms than “recruit for the team,” but you get what I’m saying here.) It would be pretty easy to get hung up on coming up with some sort of sufficiently creative or aesthetic or inventive gesture to try to connect Aphrodite to your writing practice – I mean, we’re talking about an ancient embodiment of creative alchemy, right, so shouldn’t it demand a truly, epically creative act to initiate that connection?

The thing about any kind of alchemy, though, is that it starts with base materials. It starts with seeing the transformative potential within even the most ordinary aspects of your life and your practices. It can start with something as simple and unsophisticated as tacking a postcard of “The Birth of Venus” next to your writing desk, or scheduling protected writing time on Fridays, which are ruled by Venus. It can start with anything simple, true, and repeatable that tells your heart that carrying the vision feels this way – like the grain of sand slowly but surely forming the pearl.

Whatever inner vision carriers you might choose, and however you connect with them, the magic of the transformation is the same. It’s the subtle but seismic shift that happens when you affirm, again and again, that your imaginative relationship to the world matters – and that making and claiming space for it to thrive is always the true core of the dream.

For this month’s newsletter tip, I’m sharing two lists to help you start connecting with potential new vision carriers – one is a list of some online communities for writers, and the other is a list of some additional simple rituals to connect with an inner vision carrier, to get your own brainstorm gears turning.

If you’re not yet a member of the newsletter circle and you’d like to join, just scroll down in the show notes to subscribe. You’ll get instant access to both this month’s tips and to the Creative Rescue Kit (which I hope can also help you on your ongoing path of carrying your creative dream).

That’s it from me this time, friends. As always, keep well, keep writing, and I’ll see you in the next episode.