100 Liminal Days is an experimental project in which I intend to embrace my current liminal season by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self initiation experience in daily posts on my blog.

After exiting my business almost 6 months ago, I’ve been hellbent on discovering the answer to the “what’s next?” question, but nothing so far has emerged as THE thing. Dozens of ideas and bouts of excitement have kept my attitude positive, but the truth is, I’ve lost steam for all of these ideas/projects after a week or two.

I’ve spent the last couple of years disciplining myself to develop (mostly) healthy habits and am deeply committed to my daily practices and routines, but I still feel lost on what to dedicate my time, talent, and energy towards now that I am free to choose my “next.” I’ve read books teaching to prioritize quick action over thinking and planning, and I’ve also read the ones that help you zone in on your niche and launch with intention. I’ve spent a lot of time in the schools of YouTube and Audible. And I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on personal and professional development and coaching over the last five years. I have access to all of the resources I need, yet I’m still lost!

So, I’ve decided to try something new.

Through this process, I hope to explore my soul’s desires, take more steps toward alignment with who I truly am, and ignite my creativity to it’s full-sized flame. Here’s the plan.

By 11:59 pm on December 31, 2025, the list below is the evidence that I’ve completed this project.

• 100 new blog posts (counting this one) have been published to my website (amberlgray.com)
• At least 10 newsletters have been sent to my email list recapping the learnings from the week

The Structure

• I will time block at least 3 hours of dharma sprints every day (two 90-minute sprints or one 3-hour sprint) for private reflection in my journal, and to write and publish a public blog post sharing whatever wants to come out that day. Generally, my goal is to share what I am learning, thinking, and feeling as I step one more day into the liminal space.
• I will use The Artist’s Way book/course as the directional map for what to explore or do during those sprints each day. The program is broken into 12 weeks with assignments and prompts. There are also two key repeating practices:
  • Daily Morning Pages (stream of consciousness journaling; I currently write two handwritten full pages)
  • Weekly Artist’s Date (a 2-hour weekly block of time for nurturing my creative consciousness or inner artist; I’ve never done this)
• I will also use a friend’s new Notion journal template for additional self truth-telling prompts in the categories of Physical, Financial, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual to write through each day. The goal with this piece is to extract iterative behavior or a one-time action or tweak I can make to how I approach my day tomorrow.
• I’ll also track how consistently I stick to my five daily keystone habits.
  • Write Daily Pages
  • Meditate/Pray for 26 minutes
  • Practice qigong for 12 minutes
  • Workout for 30 minutes
  • Dharma Sprint for at least 3 hours

Okay, but why this? Why publicly?

Perhaps you are wondering why I would do this. The simple answer is that I want to gain a better sense of my unique, individual taste so I can create from the most authentic place within me.

I have spent most of my life working in roles where I thrived serving the needs of others. I love helping people. I want my work to impact the lives of others in a meaningful, tangible, positive way. And I have found my work in any of my past roles fulfilling – at least a good percentage of the time.

But truthfully, every past role I’ve ever had – including the one I created for myself as a CEO ten years ago – started from a desire to survive by “moving on” as quickly as possible. This urgency I created for myself was driven mostly by what I wanted to leave behind, not by my clear vision for where I was going.

My drive and focus on shortening the transition timeline squeezed out the liminal space where my authentic taste could ever emerge.

But this time I have the gift of a truly spacious liminal space, and I want to train myself to linger here instead of running toward the next idea. I believe that the liminal days of our lives are actually the ones that hold the most precious and life-altering moments.

What would it look like if I set up camp in this middle space for a bit?

I have always been one for grand gestures when I notice that change is necessary for my growth. For me, preparing for big life choices usually involves sharpening my discipline a little more and stepping out of my comfort zone. I also notice that my consistency in my commitments is nearly 100% when I have even a little bit of external accountability.

So, 100 Liminal Days is meant to make me uncomfortable. It’s meant to shake me up a little bit. I feel prepared to explore beyond the previous horizon because I have learned how to use some powerful tools to self-regulate when I feel triggered or overwhelmed. New tools like parts work (Internal Family Systems Therapy), dreamwork, and meditation will support me as I take a long, hard, honest look at myself throughout this process.

And lastly, I’m doing this to attract like-minded folks who may be in a similar cloud of uncertainty and ambiguity in this “in between”, looking for their community. If anyone is still here on my site reading Day 100, I’ll have a little crew of liminal-loving friends to connect with and learn from too.

So here’s to Day 1 of 100 Liminal Days. Sign up here for the weekly recaps via my newsletter or visit the blog daily for the full report.

Day 1/100 – Recovering a Sense of Safety

I spent the first 30 minutes of my 3-hour sprint reading the material in The Artist’s Way for Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety. I’ll work on tasks throughout the week.

Task #1: Affirmations

The first task is to write affirmations that inevitably will trigger negative beliefs about myself. She recommends repeatedly writing a phrase of affirmations to see what comes up. The goal is to bring them to the light and then convert them to positive, opposite affirmations that I will revisit each day. Cameron calls these negative beliefs blurts. So, let’s see what my blurts have to say.

I, Amber Gray, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, Amber Gray, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, Amber Gray, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, Amber Gray, am a brilliant and prolific writer…

My blurts:

1. Are you though? You use AI to write half the time. Even your book was drafted by a ghostwriter.
2. You are misrepresenting yourself again. Authentic my ass.
3. Less than 20 people read your writing on a regular basis. And you don’t even publish weekly. That’s far from prolific.

Positive Affirmations:

These are a few that were offered in the book and resonated with me. I’ve written them out on a bright green sticky note on my desk.

1. As I create and listen, I will be led.
2. Creativity is the Creator’s will for me.
3. My creativity heals myself and others.
4. There is a divine plan of goodness for me and my work.
5. I am willing to let God create through me.

Task #2: Plan this week’s Artist Date (when, what, where)

• Jerry’s Artarama – buy new blank cards to make more birthday cards
• Followed by Blanton Art Museum, all on Friday morning

Task #3: Time-Travel: List three old enemies of your creative self worth. Acknowledge your monsters – your creative injuries and grieve them. Don’t let these things be creative scar tissue blocking your growth.

Core Negative Belief: Artists are crazy.

I can’t recall the exact source of where this belief originated, but a core negative belief has been that artists are, at least to some degree, out of their minds.

The first artist that comes to mind is my beloved grandmother, Tita. Her full name was Billie Tonita Gray but she was known as Tonita and family called her Tita. She passed away in the summer of 2019. I still think about her almost every day. I wish she could know me now. I think she’d be proud of me and how I’ve grown over the last several years.

Tita was always doodling or creating something. From self-portraits on brown paper sacks to painting rocks or putting silly googly-eyed stickers on gourds to writing poetry that compared her aging body to that of an old car, she oozed creativity.

And, the other adults in my life growing up often talked about her being weird and a little off. She would often say racy things or flirt with my sister’s husband or comment on my girlfriend’s butt or how she thought she looked like Tony Little in the Gazelle elliptical commercials LOL I have many memories of just catching her staring at me and smiling. She would sometimes do this and never say what was on her mind. It was a little strange, but I never felt uncomfortable. She was always so fun. One of my favorite memories with her was in 2018 about a year before she died when I visited. We played with old clothes and wigs and her makeup and took selfies together.

My young mind connected Tita’s strongest characteristics – the artistic parts of her – with the weirdness and comments from other adults. I think this planted a belief seed that “artists are a little off their rocker.”

Then there was my ex, I’ll just call K. (The one that Tita thought looked like Tony Little!) My connection to her was clearly a shadow artist decision.

Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way says that so many of us are shadow artists – true artists who pushed their inner artist child to the back of their minds to starve. Shadow artists like to date or marry artists as a way to get close to the art without actually creating.

So, K is a beautiful soul who was dealt a tragic hand of abuse, neglect, mental disorders, and mind-blowing creative abilities. I wanted to support this artist even though I had already decided art was no longer for me. I paid for K to go to art school. And she dropped out and left me with the bill that took me a decade to pay off.

Her bipolar disorder was debilitating at times, but during the worst depressive episodes, she created like her life depended on it. She didn’t sleep much. She hardly ate. And she painted and sketched and scribbled words on anything from cardboard to recycled canvases. The work I witnessed her create during this time was a reflection of her dark state of mind, and it was moving.

And then other times – the manic phases – her art was playful. Childlike. Cartoon animals. And she would make voices for the characters she dreamed up, a whole family of characters I even felt like I got to know. Like trapped inner children, these characters represented parts of herself.

It was beautiful and sad. And living with an artist like this one further drilled in the belief that artists are crazy.

Core Negative Belief: Art is no way to make a living.

Another negative belief about artists I’ve carried for years is that art is no way to make a living. Art class was an elective in high school. So was theater. These were the goof-off classes, not serious opportunities for meaningful education. It’s a hobby at best. An outlet. Something we do in our free time. Which is why I stopped creating. Like everyone, my life became so busy there was no “free time.” I stopped drawing. I stopped writing except for work related content.

And that belief was strengthened by the fact that the people I knew who were braver than me, pursuing their art wholeheartedly seemed aloof and unfocused to me. I’m thinking of multiple friends who were MFA students in college. I would go to their shows and plays and cheer them on with enthusiasm. I wanted to see them succeed and I recognized the innate gifts and talents in them. And financially, they struggled. Even after college, some moved to NYC to pursue acting, only to move back across the country to teach instead. It was too hard to make it work financially as a pure artist.

Core Negative Belief: My art is too weird, personal, and gay to make or share.

And then there is the monster within. Simply being critical of my own art. It’s too weird. Too personal. Too amateur. Too…gay.

In my late teens and early twenties when I first lived on my own, I had pages and pages of sketches, drawings, and poetry written in decorative hand-drawn letters. I would use thumbtacks to hang scraps of paper on the walls around my bedroom in my first apartment. Abstract self portraits. Lyrics from songs that spoke to my soul.

I also saved a lot of my art from middle school. When I was 12 years old, I made a small booklet of drawings of Michael Jackson’s face with the curl of hair on his forehead, and drew his Grammys. I got my hands on a copy of LIFE Magazine in 1993 where MJ is sitting in a chair with two chimps in overalls, a pony, a llama, and a parrot perched around him, and I drew that cover and several of the featured images from the article.

Another pen and pencil drawing from middle school or high school was a big humpback whale jumping up and flopping back into the ocean. I kept them so long because I felt proud of my work – I did believe I was talented. And now I don’t know what happened to most of them.

Some were thrown away in the big dumpster at the church when I attempted to purge my life of all the gayness. Yeah, that is definitely a creative injury. Oh, that was a death in so many ways. I let go of my truest self that day. I attempted to wipe away history and start over under a new set of rules for myself.

My art did not survive this.

Task #4: Time-Travel: Select and write out one horror story from your monster hall of fame.

Hmm. It’s hard to choose just one. The first and the third monster have darkness shrouding them. The most personal one is the third. The dumpster. I have told this story so many times now. Conversion Therapy is what it’s known as now, so I use those words to set the tone. Then I tell the story.

I went to my church leaders for help because I desperately wanted to rid myself of the gay thorn in my side. They said it was possible and quite easy. They told me to bring anything and everything that “connected me to the lifestyle” and said that we would have a ceremonious burning of the items to symbolize a release of the old and to help me embark on a fresh, new start.

I sat in my apartment, looking around. What connects me to the lifestyle of being gay?

What here doesn’t connect to my lifestyle?

Everything I had spent my own earned money on was precious to me.

A Miles Davis CD box set – the Bitches Brew Sessions. I listened to this on repeat as I drew sexually charged images or soaked in a bath with candles lit around me while drinking rum and cokes alone. I was a melancholy artist.

Leather pants and a leather jacket my ex had bought for me. The pants definitely had to go – they were tight and I only wore these at the gay bar anyway. The jacket – damn, it was a gift from my ex. But I need it. I want it. It’s a nice jacket. I opt to keep the jacket but not the pants.

And then, pages and pages of journals. I wrote so honestly in these pages. It was often about sexual experiences or the internal wrestling of being gay while claiming to be Christian. The words were raw and it feels like these early writings were some of my greatest art.

Next, sketches and drawings of myself. Naked. Aroused. These were the most embarrassing. I would make sure they were buried deep in the pile so no one would see them during the burning ceremony.

Jewelry. Again, gifts from lovers and friends. Or pieces that made me feel like “me” when I wore them.

More clothes, more gifts, more memories. All thrown into a giant black, Hefty bag. I heaved the big trash bag into my car. When it was time for the ceremony, I pulled the bag out.

“Oh, that is a lot more than we expected. Maybe we shouldn’t burn it. Instead, take the bag and toss it in the dumpster behind the church. When you are done, come back inside and we’ll pray.”

I can’t remember myself tossing the bag in the dumpster. But I did it. And I went back inside and opened my Bible to the front flap and wrote something about how my life was new as of this day and I dated it. The church leaders prayed for me and sent me on my way.

This single experience is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me. And that says a lot because I’ve been sexually abused and taken advantage of as a teenager as well. But it’s this that hurt me the most. The weight of the regret that has stayed with me for decades now has been mostly about those journals and the artwork. Those are the things I miss the most. I want to remember who I was before that day. But I erased the evidence and my mind took care of erasing many of the memories.

Task #5: But here’s the next assignment: write a letter to the editor in your defense.

To whom it may concern:

The church leaders who advised young Amber to toss her life into a dumpster in the parking lot of the church were ignorant, legalistic, and masters at shaming others. Young Amber wanted so badly to be good. To please God, her parents, and the church leaders, too. She trusted these adults and they let her down. Young Amber and I know that the artwork and journals that were lost forever that day meant something. The loss was not just personal. The loss was great and expansive. Amber stopped creating that day. The world lost an artist for decades. A candle’s flame was extinguished, then placed on a dark shelf in the back corner of Amber’s soul. This candle once burned bright, and now it resembles an antique artifact. A thing of the past.

For this, I, Amber, am sorry. I killed my creativity that day. I devalued and deprioritized my creativity – whittling it down to a simple outlet for emotions to flow, only when I have free time and inspiration strikes. I’d tell myself it’s not necessary, it’s a luxury.

And I see now that I didn’t think I deserved that luxury. Or any other for that matter.

Productivity became my god in it’s place. I would work hard and be self-sustaining and show the world that I can still make something that others will appreciate and find useful. Practical. Not this artsy-fartsy stuff. It’s time to grow up, right?

Yes, I am sorry, but the truth is that I, like those church leaders, was ignorant, legalistic, and a master at shaming myself. But damn, it was taught to me and I learned it quickly!

Today, I release that. I forgive myself. I have so much love for that young version of myself. Look at her trying so hard. How did the adults not see it? The way they were breaking her soul?

[That last question broke me. I spent a few minutes wailing with tears in my studio, visualizing this young woman who no one could see was suffering so greatly.]

I think this is a good place to stop today. I’ll have more time to work through the other tasks later this week. Until next time.

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