Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Best Tasks to Assign to ChatGPT or Other AI for Writers & Bloggers

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I get stuck with writing effective titles more often than I care to admit.

I still get tangled up in wanting to be the just right level of attractive, engaging and “Will this intrigue a newcomer to my writing to want to read more?”

On Monday’s blog post, I was in my usual quandary of not knowing what to write for my title so I asked both ChatGPT and Canva’s Magic Write to share with me their best titles.

Now it is your turn to choose which title is most likely to stir your interest enough to continue reading:

ChatGPT titles: “The Seedlings of Self-Discovery: Uncovering Hidden Strengths”

  1. “Growing Through Struggle: Nurturing the Seedlings of Healing”
  2. “Finding the Medicine Within: Harnessing the Power of Self-Discovery”
  3. “The Journey Within: Cultivating the Seedlings of Personal Growth”
  4. “Nourishing the Seedlings of Change: A Guide to Overcoming Inner Struggles”

Canva Magic Write titles:

  1. The Power of Love: A Journey of Resistance and Growth
  2. Nurturing Our Seedlings: How Love Overcomes Resistance
  3. The Invisible Force of Resistance: Love as the Key for Growth
  4. What Does Love Mean? Exploring the Meaning of Love in the Context of Resistance
  5. Planting the Seeds of Love: Overcoming Resistance to Encourage Growth

If you are curious about the original blog post these bots helped me to title, you may find it here. Do you think I made the right choice?

Yesterday, my blog post was almost 100% AI generated. To see how that turned out, you may see “Is Artificial Intelligence for Blogging the Right Choice for You?” here.

Please share in the comments your thoughts – especially about which title resonates the most with you – and if you think Artificial Intelligence will help or harm your writing in the future.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Is AI for Blogging Your Right Choice?

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Experimenting with ChatGPT and Canva’s Magic Write

A woman cheering surrounded by chat boxes to illustrate her excitement to use ChatGPT for her blogging needs

A few weeks ago I used artificial intelligence as a writing tool by using Canva’s tool, Magic Write. While it isn’t perfect, immediately I was using it to do things like write lists for social media posts, taking longer bits of writing and turning them into twitter threads, creating top 10 lists to then turn into reels or short form video.

I love writing, but there is some writing I don’t like – such as coming up with titles.

Today I used it to generate titles for yesterday’s blog post. In that instance, I had both ChatAI and Canva’s Magic Write generate titles.

Ways I Have Used ChapGPT & Magic Write

If you read saw my blog post yesterday, you saw me use the title “PLANTING THE SEEDS OF LOVE: OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO ENCOURAGE GROWTH”. In tomorrow’s blog post, I will show you what other titles these two artificial intelligence writing companions suggested.

Finally, this is straight from the ChatGPT bot wrote when I requested “Write a 500 word or less blog post including 3 bullet points about how ChatGPT may help bloggers, please”:

As a blogger, you’re constantly on the lookout for ways to streamline your workflow and improve the quality of your content. One tool that can help you do both of these things is ChatGPT, a powerful language generation model developed by OpenAI. In this post, we’ll explore three key ways that ChatGPT can help bloggers to improve their craft.

  1. Generating high-quality content: ChatGPT is capable of generating text that is indistinguishable from text written by a human. This means that it can help you to produce high-quality content that is engaging, informative, and well-written. Whether you’re a blogger who struggles with writer’s block or simply wants to improve the quality of your content, ChatGPT can be a valuable tool to help you achieve your goals.
  2. Streamlining your workflow: ChatGPT can help you to streamline your workflow by automating the process of generating text. This means that you can spend more time focusing on other important aspects of your blog, such as sourcing images and promoting your content. Additionally, you can use ChatGPT to generate text for multiple blog posts at once, which can help you to be more productive and efficient.
  3. Improving your SEO: ChatGPT can also help you to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by generating text that is rich in keywords and phrases relevant to your niche. With the help of ChatGPT, you can ensure that your blog posts are optimized for search engines, which will make it easier for your target audience to find your content.

In conclusion, ChatGPT is a powerful language generation model that can help bloggers to improve their craft in multiple ways. Whether you’re looking to generate high-quality content, streamline your workflow, or improve your SEO efforts, ChatGPT can help you to achieve your goals. As long as you use it responsibly and cross-reference the contents with facts, ChatGPT can be a valuable addition to your blogging toolkit.

What ChatGPT wrote isn’t bad, but it also doesn’t sound like me.

Of all of the AI I have used in writing social media posts, I have edited slightly to make the words sound more like my voice.

Have you thought of using ChatGPT, Magic Write or other AI tools in your blogging?

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Planting the Seeds of Love: Overcoming Resistance to Encourage Growth

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Hands touching rich, dark soil and a young seedling showing a nurturing energy

Early in the day, everyday, I start with writing practice. Today, it led to something rather extraordinary.

I was reminded as a theater director and writing teacher, facilitator and coach, how much I value process work. Sometimes that is where the gold is found even more so than the final product.

Today, I am going to be transparent and bold, sharing with you my process of drafting wrestling with my thoughts through words. What you will read is the question I asked at the end of the “Mining for Writing Gold” process I created and use.

I always end with asking a question of myself and then free flow writing for five minutes. This time, it was longer than five minutes because I knew there was more there for me to explore.

My hope is you find value in witnessing the process. I’m also wondering if you ever enter into loving, open-hearted conversations with yourself? Maybe you view your inner conversations differently. I would love to hear more, hopefully after you gain some gold nuggets from my process.

What are the seedlings – the sprouts – to overcome my struggles that seem so inherently cooked into me?  I can’t see or taste or notice them in me and yet they are there, like a virus or allergen that makes me sick at times.

I find myself wanting to go elsewhere. I want to look up quotes or google something. I don’t want to just sit with the imagery and the question I carefully crafted. I will stay. I will ask myself the question again.

What are the seedlings, bravely pushing through the rocky soil of resistance – the invisible destructive force, not the airy, gracious force I also say is there yet I don’t always act as if that is the case. I stay in the unripened state, the inert, filled with great question that sits in the core of the seed, not yet initiated into the seedling stage.

It is the potent question and the belief there is healing medicine within the answering of the question, the living the question where the seedling grows.

Giving space for the answer to rise – the seedling then, is the question + space + light + nourishment + belief – 

I take my hands away from the keyboard. I am onto something.

I am going to pause for a few moments and re-read, allowing the seedling I have just managed to create to bring more to us, right here right now,

The seedling grows when it is surrounded in love: the air it breathes, the water that brings it nourishment, the space around it is drenched in love. 

Once a coaching client asked me, “What does love mean?” and I had no idea what to answer.

From the perspective of the seedling:

Love is staying with me, not turning away frustrated when you don’t understand what I am trying so hard to tell you.

Love is bringing me your innermost secrets, your uniqueness – not holding back. How can you be afraid of me, a little seedling, when all I want to do is make this world a better place – just like you.

Love is witnessing the people we meet not at the surface, but at their core. Love is seeing the uniqueness of each one and the similarities we share. Honoring the uniqueness and delighting in the connections.

Love is being willing to set down the rushing agenda to be with the mindful agenda where we both find value in mutual restoration.

Second part: how to nourish the medicine within the seedlings as they grow and become stronger?

I went longer than five minutes. 

The second part may come up later. We’ll see.

Woman (Julie Jordan Scott Julie JordanScott) seeming to burst through a broken wall on an abandoned home.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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How to Take One Prompt to Create Multiple Forms of Content

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Woman's profile in a dry, desert setting. Quote from Terry Tempest Williams: "When one woman doesn't speak, other women get hurt."

Writing Prompts help us practice taking the best action, even if it feels risky at first. Practice facing the next similar situation by courageously remembering and in effect rewriting “What happened next.”

Prompt: Have you had a time when you wish you spoke but didn’t and someone got hurt? Share the story.

Two examples:

One friend, I’ll call her Maureen, got fired from a job. Another friend, Frank,  got promoted to Maureen’s job. No one in our friend’s group said anything to Maureen about Frank being promoted after she called Frank.

She called me to ask if I knew Frank got the job. I could hear her disappointment that I didn’t speak up. She was incredulous, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

The most common response was we didn’t want to hurt Maureen’s feelings. None of us thought, “Well, maybe Maureen will find out, anyway – and she will discover we didn’t care enough about her to let her know.”

Put the Other Person’s Desire Above Your Discomfort

More than a year later, Frank had more good luck career-wise. I took a deep breath and called Maureen. “I just wanted you to know… in case. I remember the last time…”

Maureen wasn’t upset by Frank’s success and she was grateful I remembered and acted differently than I had in the past. It was worth my discomfort and risk-taking.

New Scenario, Familiar Trauma and Trigger

Last week, my coaching client Sharon had a moment when her heart leaped into her throat and wouldn’t let go. 

She unexpectedly stumbled upon was a disagreement between family members – or rather one family member was mad at another and attempted to drag Sharon in it via a posting on social media.

Internal triggers and memories of years of loneliness and disconnection pulsed each moment Sharon did nothing. The drumming in her ears increased with each moment she did nothing.

Creating a new way out of her panic, she reached out to her closest family member to warn her what she would find the next time she opened her social media account.

“I didn’t want you to be hurt by what was said or how I was implicated in the posting.”

It was risky. It was scary. Yet Sharon felt instinctively it was better to reach out first. The swollen block in her throat diminished, even though for the next day or so she didn’t feel quite right. “How would I feel if I saw that, unprepared for it?”

Terry Tempest Williams wrote, “When one woman doesn’t speak, other women get hurt.”

Be devoted to being the one to prevent other women from getting hurt.

More Writing Prompt Variations to Use:

“When one woman doesn’t speak, other women get hurt.”

Terry Tempest Williams

To create a neutral gender phrasing, simply insert “person” and “people”

Questions:

  1. Have you had a time when you wish you spoke but didn’t and someone got hurt? Share the story.
  2. Have you been hurt when someone didn’t speak up for you when you couldn’t? Tell the story.
  3. What are some things you can do in your life now to build community between yourself and other people?
  4. Lists: Make a list of 1 to 10 things you would like to be forgiven for by someone else.
  5. Make a list of 1 to 10 things for which you would like to forgive other people.
  6. Bonus: Take action. Write a note of forgiveness to one of the people you want to forgive. Write a note of apology and request permission from those you have hurt.

Traditional Writing Prompts:

I remember when I spoke up and….

I remember when I didn’t speak up and….

 # #  # #There are no rights and wrongs as to following the prompts here. There is only showing up for your life and your creativity and using what inspires you to fulfill your dreams, passion and purpose.

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Beyond Emotional Groundhog Day: Surrender to Empowered Yes

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Last year was supposed to be a year of living my dream life, focusing on fulfilling many dreams I had set aside for decades, moving to a manse in Northwest New Jersey and instead – very little of that came to fruition.

Almost but Not Quite: Again and Again and Again

In April and the first week of May, I felt closer to my dream life than I had in decades and then circumstances imploded which resulted in me surrendering to what was right in front of me and staying on the West Coast from May through mid-September.  

I remember in Mid-May, spinning my wheels and desperately reaching for different results everywhere I went. The single worst moment was telling my son he ought not come home on the days between his Spring Semester and Summer School. The silence on his end of the phone line followed by “ok, if you don’t want me to come home….” and then to explain to him the chaotic circumstances would not be a restful or enjoyable time for him. 

I came up with an alternative plan so I could visit him for dinner in Las Vegas and race back home. This was literally an 18 hour turn around because of that heartbreaking phone call. The ping-pong ball effect was in full force during May and June and into early July.

In June of 2022 I wrote: “I am notoriously slow at processing tough information. I usually go mute at first, perhaps out of a sense (a wish?) of denial.”

Surrender is NOT giving up, it is Being Real.

It was on an exhausted day in early July I chose to wave the metaphorical white flag and said, “I am all in. I am all in to do whatever needs to get done here in Bakersfield in order to ensure things here with my family in California will flourish when I return to the East Coast.”

I created parameters and avenues for mini-adventures like going to San Francisco and going to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix on the way to Las Vegas after the moments when my son did visit. This quick tour combined creating sweet memories and inviting better futures to be made into form.

These challenges have morphed in ways that shifted my ideas about what it means to say an empowered YES as well as the power of surrender, which is a different sort of yes.

Stepping into an Empowered Yes

Stepping into the empowered YES with love, joy, fear, regret (both accepting what has happened, even the unpleasant and prevention of future regret), sorrow and the hint of possibility. 

Life is lived in staying whole whether in bliss or sorrow. We keep our eyes on the horizon, looking for the openings, standing in and for grace. This allows us to look back and say “Thank goodness I went all in for that horrible scenario because… the celebration of overcoming and healing and transformation would not be here otherwise.”

I no longer cry when I recount last Summer. The tears did their healing work. Tears teach us “my body recognizes the magnitude of this sharing and honors it by releasing salt water, like depths of the oceans.”

I’ll take it. I’ll take a more restful form of discovery for the next time. 

Now I will continue writing from the heart, hugging trees and having meaningful conversations as I create this manse-life back in Northwest New Jersey. 

What will you continue to do this month? What will you continue doing this season and this year?

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Messy Still-Life: A Writer’s Life

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A messy writer's desk in early January. A tea cup, pens, collections of nothingness.

I woke up this morning with my alarm greeting me like this:

“It’s a bright sparkly new day”

Since I had a tough time falling asleep it was quite generous of my alarm to remind me it is a bright sparkly day even though it is foggy outside, the day is still ripening and will be sparkly no matter how much of the sun shines through.

Even with a second alarm telling me “You are a miracle!” and I had an hour of joyful writing somewhere around 10:30 I lost my steam. 

I was co-working and committed to optimism so I found and read a poem and brewed some coffee to see if I might settle into a productive groove.

It is four days into the New Year and I consider this stanza of “Poem for the New Year” from WS Merwin. He wrote,

“our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible”

On the first day of this year, I stood in an empty field and gazed lovingly at sunrise. I was visited by unknown, strange-to-me birds and serenaded by a flock of geese who swooped close by the tops of the trees.

Hope stirred my chest and laughter spilled from hope’s seeds within me.

The thing is, when there has been much sadness and not much sustained hope made into form over the recent seasons, maintaining those feelings from the dawn of the new year isn’t as easy as it might have been in past years.

And it is a sparkly new (about five hours in now) day. I am a miracle, still. As are you, sitting here, reading.

“Cozy jazz” is spilling through the speaker beside me.

Suddenly the fog outside my window no longer feels like an oppressive cage and a smile is now firmly rooted on my face.

A messy still life: a tea cup and saucer filled with coffee, pens, a well used ancient keyboard… notebooks. Suddenly that’s perfectly fine, too. They remind me of Merwin’s poem with my slight revision  “our hopes (and our writing lives) such as they are invisible before us (until we choose to be content with our perfectly imperfect selves)untouched and still possible” (as the words drip from our fingers to the keyboard to the page.)

Woman (Julie Jordan Scott Julie JordanScott) seeming to burst through a broken wall on an abandoned home.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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How Do You Nourish Your Creativity?

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Torn white paper and blue background encourages the viewer to know they are able to nourish and nurture their creativity.

What does it mean to nourish creativity?

Like food for the body provides nourishment, food for the writer’s life nurtures us so that our creative output not only increases, we also feel more satisfied and fulfilled in the process. I was under stress yesterday – much of it self imposed – and I ate a hunk of chocolate.

It wasn’t even good chocolate. It definitely left me feeling empty and the opposite of nurtured.

I didn’t feel nourished at all, I felt pretty dumpy. This morning, I prepared nourishing snacks in case I happen to get stressed out again I may have a much more satisfying afternoon sweet – with cranberries and oranges rather than processed fluff of temporary feel good and crash.

I use creative, spiritual practices to nourish my creativity. I have had a daily writing practice for more than two decades now and while I am not perfect at it, I show up at the page not to create the next chapter or be instantly brilliant, but because the page calls and this daily “writing to stretch like a runner stretches or a singer warms up her vocal chords” makes everything in my life run more smoothly – NOT only my writing.

Most recently adding meditation allows me to be calmly focused and again, life flows better when I add these two together.

Since my near death experience in 2019, I have been almost chronically at the ready for the next crisis – and as many have come, this is to be expected. Meditation is incredibly helpful for writers in a variety of iterations. You may choose writing meditation, art meditation, walking meditation or the old-school meditation practice I have going now all nourish my creativity in different ways.

For example, nourishing creativity might look like this:

✨First and foremost, continuing my daily creative and spiritual practices, partnered together. Writing Practice and Meditation practice. Both will be done in the first hour of waking. This starts my day focused and keeps me open to ideas, insights and wisdom beyond my own.

🌟Secondly, I will focus on honoring my planning practices and implementation with a focus on follow through and follow up.

💝 Finally I will utilize healthy doses of personal kindness, forgiveness and grace as I seek to improve and am bound to fail. Failure is a welcome creative teacher.

🎭 Also on my mind is I will be beginning a local theatre project, my first in New Jersey since I was 11 years old. My intention is to build community and mindfully study how the script, the writing and the art of theater intersects with my anchor art of writing. My role is a fun, supporting character role – the character development has begun – looking forward to read-through tomorrow.

You may nourish your creativity with experimentation

🙋🏻‍♀️❓How are you nourishing your creativity? How is that working?

In this New Year, perhaps it is time to try some new activities to nourish and nurture your creativity.

Three ways to nourish your creativity in 2023

  • Take time to explore new things – try something new each month or maybe more often depending on your schedule or what is most inspiring to you. , like taking an art class, visiting a new museum, exploring a local park, attending a live improv show.
  • Connect with others – attend events, join a club, or collaborate with other creatives. Talking with others can help you find new perspectives, collaborate on ideas, and stay inspired. Open the door for possibilities and follow through with other creatives you resonate with the most.
  • Set aside time for creative thinking – dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to brainstorming, daydreaming, and exploring new ideas. Allowing yourself to be open to whatever comes to mind can help you come up with new and innovative concepts.

💝 📚📒

💡 Your presence here makes me feel grateful. 

✍🏻 I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.

🎯My aim is to create content here that inspires and instructs – if there is ever a topic you would like for me to explore, please reach out and tell me. My ultimate goal is to create posts, videos and more that speak to your desires as well as mine because where these two intersect, our collaborative, joyful energy ignites into a fire of love, light and passionate creativity.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Tradition: Every Sunrise a New Beginning

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Morning sunrise photo from Northwest New Jersey

My tradition of watching sunrise on New Year’s Day began twenty years ago today. 

On that day it seemed sort of extreme: Mom of little children, cavorting in the earliest light of the sun. Now my babies have (for the most part) flown the coop and sunrise, on New Year’s day, remains.

This was also my first New Year’s Morning in New Jersey since the 1970’s. 

To say sunrise 2023 was phenomenal is an understatement.

This morning I chose to watch sunrise on an open field two miles from where I live in. The field is just east of the intersection of Possum Glen Road and Unionville Avenue in Wantage, NJ.

Tradition calls me to spend at least 20 minutes with the sunrise, admiring the light and walking around the field. I have spent some sunrises in my car, some out and about – but right now, I knew I wanted to be “with” the sunrise, close to it.

2021 New Year’s Image

Dawn is such a beautiful time and as often happens, I wanted to use the experience to coax both my soulful and my creative spirit into creative play. I didn’t remember to bring a notebook, so I decided to take photos and listen and put what I was experience into memory.

At first I basked in birdsong: birdsong I did not recognize. I listened to a bird duet. One would sing and then the other seemed to sing back. I smiled and looked up at my invisible companions.

Far away, I could hear my geese friends but none were visible.

My geese friends have been known to fly by my bedroom window in the early parts of the day, before the roads get busier and the minor hustle and bustle of rural New Jersey begins.

I enjoyed watching as the dark sky got brighter and the sun crested the mountain in front of me.

Sussex Borough is in high country, so there are lots of hills and different heights for the sun to reach up and over. It was a glorious view. I decided to walk to see what I could of the cemetery. At first I didn’t notice there was a path that would lead me there – but once I did, those of you who know me well knew I had to get a closer look. This is not a currently-in-use cemetery, it is a falling apart cemetery I love, deeply.

I walked back toward the field and I noticed tall grasses/flowers past their prime and decided to take a quick video, but at first it was blurry, which lead to more questions.

I wondered how to make the video more clear which lead to a simple experiment.

I poked the screen and immediately there was a clear screen. I laughed and thought about the ephemeral nature of hopes and wishes. Unspoken, I thought, without our breath and intention, clarity stays out of focus. 

I kept hearing the geese but there were none nearby. I wished I could take a video of them, flying but, oh well. I decided I wanted to type what I had noticed into my phone while I stayed in the field with the sun and the weeds and the small invisible birds. 

Naturally as I was halfway through the second sentence of writing into my phone I heard the geese, very close and they kindly gave me enough time to notice and even get my video camera ready to take the video.

I started filming before I could even see them.

Oh, my heart – my heart was beyond words thrilled. I didn’t bubble over in laughter because I was so in shock at the wonder of the view.

“Happy New Year, Goose Friends!” my heart said as they flew in a circle, playfully, no “eeyore thanks for noticing” energy, instead purposeful, connected, “Happy New Year” flock of geese laughter energy. To see the moment, a link to my Instagram Reel:

What a phenomenal New Year’s Morning. So much better than staying in bed, late.

This eccentric tradition directed me to start the morning and the year on my feet, outdoors, blissful, aware, appreciation overflowing. Looking back I wonder if this sunrise love on New Years Day inadvertently spilled into watching so many more sunrises – and even inspired the beginning of my 377 Projects.

Back at the keyboard now, later in the day, my hands are literally buzzing in excitement of the several hours old memory.

Two questions for you to respond in the comments: do you have any unusual traditions?

How did you begin 2023?

May your year be blessed, abundantly.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Grief: The Inevitable Meeting

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Meeting Grief, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul is not something we go into with excitement or joyful anticipation. It is a door we enter grudgingly. For those of us who have experienced more than what feels fair, we may be more open to greet others in the early moments of grief. 

When CS Lewis described his early experiences of grief it is almost like he was walking around both in my head and in my body: 

“There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

I know The invisible blanket intimately. There are times when there is an ongoing desire to have other people around but not wanting them to engage with me.  Presence. 

I used to ask people if they could please “breathe with me” at moments where this need became so great. Lewis said grief was like fear: in the other studies I have done – and in my personal experience – grief also feels like anxiety and depression.

In these 30+ years since I first experienced severe grief, I’ve never heard words describing experiences so closely to the sensations I had during these such painful times in mylife.

In preparing for today’s Instagram live broadcast, I literally crawled back into the time immediately after my brother John’s death. 

Ironically, today, when I was lead to the CS Lewis quote on the anniversary of the night I came close to death myself. It was on that night my soul left my body in the intensive care unit and found myself in the all too familiar tunnel which to me felt like an umbilical cord to the sky.

There are no accidents.

I am grateful for your presence as we explore grief together.

If you have questions or comments, please be brave and write them or send me a private message or text. I would love to hear from you.

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

To watch the Instagram Live Video that inspired this blog post, please visit the link below:

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Invite Your Buried Dreams to Return to the Open

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A question mark and some faces below the question "Why are you waiting? Invite Your Buried Dreams to Come Into the Open."

“I feel like I’m cheating,” I said to the other women in my mastermind group, “because I’m a performer.”

We were talking about going live on a social media platform: Facebook live, instragram live,

YouTube, LinkedIn or whatever places one may go live. The women were collectively complimenting me but I wasn’t receiving their compliments, I was shaking my head in denial of my gifts.

Maybe it is because I have done live theater for many years now and have been horrible on stage at times and have done some pretty embarrassing and frightening things like making sound effects I certainly wouldn’t want my parents or siblings to hear, wearing a bathing suit on stage – if you know me you would figure why that horrified me.  I also clearly remember what it felt like to be typing away on stage left when the chair I was sitting in broke. 

These are just a few live theater failures I have experienced in front of paying audiences. That doesn’t even begin to say the missed lines,cues or near misses on wardrobe malfunctions. 

What most people now don’t know is there was a thirty year gap in my stage experience. I stopped acting because I was an eleven-year-old with the role of (to that point) lifetime that got rave reviews except for the person I most wanted to impress. 

Thirty years later, I took an acting class not because I wanted to because I was never, ever going to go on stage. Theater and performance weren’t my thing. 

My interest was in improving my voice because of my radio show.

My voice was paramount but the class got canceled. I was offered a chance to take the acting class, instead.

Remember, I never wanted to do theater. My kids did theater, not me.

I had a lightbulb moment. I realized I could take the acting class to practice my voice until the voice class was offered again.

I figured what the hell. Why not?

I was aggravated about playing Improv games. How annoying, I thought. My acting teacher decided to be secretive about it and whispered a scenario to my scene partner,  a teenage girl. 

He looked at me and said, “Your job is to say no to whatever her request is. Keep it as realistic as possible.”

I can follow instructions, even if I had no idea what I was supposed to be saying no to at first.

In less than a minute I discovered I was supposed to say YES to taking my daughter off life support? My acting teacher did not realize he had touched a very deep scar in my spirit.

My scene partner was pushing and pushing and pushing and I was escalating and escalating and escalating. I remember my hands were rising and my shoulder was holding on and holding on and holding on.

At the time, I thought angels had surrounded me whispering, “let go, Julie, you can so this, just let go… drop your hands and let go…”

I took their advice and crashed through the present moment into a transcendent moment. When I came back up for air, I knew the art  I had abandoned thirty years ago wanted me back.

This dream, this love, was buried so deep inside me I wouldn’t allow myself to hear it. 

When I go live, however, that side of me has been known to come roaring back – sometimes because of synchronicity due to the subject matter. Recently on Instagram Live I have been doing improv topics combined with storytelling.

Rather than telling you what happened, I will share the video clip.

I wonder if you have something you do really well that is a sign you have a dream buried inside, asking to be heard and experienced again?

Any inklings?

I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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