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Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Does it Matter What Causes Your Block or Simply Get Over It? #5for5BrainDump

August 25, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife 1 Comment

For months – or over a year, rather, my neighbors have gotten in the way of my writing on my porch. It is a favored space for me to sit and write in the morning or broadcast or drink coffee and find peace while rocking in the oversized red rocking chair. The new neighbors with their questionable “friends” and other “accessories” have kept me inside, until lately.

For months – since May, I haven’t slept in my Virginia Woolf room I started creating well over a year ago. When Emma came home, I gave it to her as a temporary space until we juggled bedrooms and I took up residence on the couch. Yesterday, I slept beside the window and walk up this morning in the grey light, happy to find myself under the breeze from the gentle ceiling fan and the carefully picked out art showing me Virginia’s room.

It felt so good until my mind started scattering marbles all over the floor and I lost the deep peace – for a moment or twelve.

“One step at a time, one thing at a time, one solution at a time” are some of my favorite watch words lately to bring me back into presence.

They are soothing, another word which has become a frequent visitor in my lexicon.

The applause says time is up, which I’ll accept.

I did also want to honor my age old tradition of writing haiku on Friday. I sat on my porch this morning and wrote, even with my less than optimal neighbors bent over cars and having folks in and out before 7 am.

Haiku writing is healing: a simple poetry form, a sacred prayer form as well, here is a song suite from this morning that was born when I invited myself to say what needed and wanted to be written.

We heal one haiku at a time

 What I want to say

Yogurt calms rumbles

Ativan calms inner howls

Wait: tide will go out….

fake it til you make it

Sunrise through elm tree

Red rocking chair and coffee

Alta Vista peace

Worst strategy:

Please don’t nag at me

Each contact leaves a blister

Longer time to heal – 

Best strategy

I’m thinking of you –

Let’s create this together

Your work helps the world 

 

Prompt: Haiku is simply a seventeen syllable poem, a short work of art.

Some say it is like an inhalation and an exhalation.

I often start my haiku with what is in front of me, which can be seen in “fake it til you make it” above.

The worst strategy and best strategy are microcosm statements of what works well – and doesn’t work well – in communication with me. I realize it is helpful to be able to express these thoughts to people, especially when I am experiencing depression.

So start with something in front of you and write it in this micropoem container.

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______/_____/______

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______

Next, if you are an entrepreneur, see how you might fit your business story in a tiny haiku. For the artful entrepreneur, combining headline writing and copywriting with haiku adds another layer of creative play.

Set your timer for five minutes – and write as many haiku as you’re able!

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Business Artistry, Mixed Media Art, Storytelling, Writing Challenges & Play, Writing Prompt, Writing Tips Tagged With: #5for5BrainDump entrepreneur, haiku, Writing

Trust the Page to Hold Your Heart, Always

August 24, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

It is never a bad time to write.

Nearly everywhere you find yourself, in every situation, it is a good time to write.

Sometimes I write in my head, the inner narrative keeping me company when I’m alone. I may be observing the street scene in front of me or the memory behind me, yet I know this quiet contemplative “writing” soothes me, whether the leaves on the mulberry mask the sunshine or the fog covers my lawn with such density I can’t see the cars drive down the street, writing is my companion.

Its always been that way.

For some people it is a dog, a pet, a lover, a best friend, a workout, a walk, a drive, a shopping trip.

For me, it is words, strung together on a page or a document or even just in my mind.

Word-love – sometimes lust – attuned to the greatest good – it is never a bad time to write.

I’ve trained myself to focus and upon the light as I end my writing rather than any destructive elements that appear when we open our mind and heart onto the page. We process pain, grief and the elements of life some categorize as “less than” which I know to be, at times, filled with sacred bliss when one allows them space to move within.

Writing has helped me consistently to engage such experiences and heal, grow and morph through a partnership with love and gratitude amidst their experience rather than deny their experience.

It is never a bad time to write.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Business Artistry, Creative Process, Storytelling, Writing Prompt, Writing Tips

Discovering New Strength, Thoughts and Ooops, That Not-So-Surprising Surprise

August 23, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Preface:

It took me far too long to begin to write to this prompt. Multi-fold procrastination which I might describe as block which reminds me: most everything that looks like block is actually fear.

One of the reasons people do not do a writing practice on an ongoing nature is “fear of stirring up more than one may want to stir up.”

Mine is like a book with many chapters: I am afraid of failing, falling short of not living up to… whatever it is I daily don’t live up to and I am afraid of making people angry and I am afraid of finding myself all alone because of everything I have noted up until now.

(It took me a full five minutes to explain my procrastination so please grant me another five to write about today’s prompt:

Starting… now.

My renewed thoughts are….

This morning I looked outside and my heart literally felt like it enlarged in my chest: the garbage collectors had come by my home and taken my trash away. The trash can was no longer overflowing! It was ready to be rolled back to its place beside my house! I didn’t have to worry about it getting knocked over or making a bigger mess. It was gone, gone, gone and although I had a full day ahead with some not-so-pleasant tasks on the list, my heart was happy and in turn, my happiness has continued to expand.

And perhaps be a foundation for the more challenging prompt –

One risk my heart is longing to take….

I want to start over again after Samuel graduates from high school. I see myself being a vagabond, leading tours for people who are either writers or literary junkies or a combination of both.  I want to take people on explorations of self and literature while having a ridiculously good time. I want to help people find their guiding inner writers, their favorite quotes and deeply textured writing fairy god-mothers (and fathers, I would suppose)

I want to risk building bridges with people from “I can’t” to “I will” to productive, heartfelt creativity while adventuring, while exploring new and familiar spaces.

And then… applause is here. We have been heard.

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Creative Adventures, Creative Process Tagged With: #5for5BrainDump, braindump, Confidence, Courage, Strength, Writing

Build Momentum: Be Willing to Risk Writing Badly (again and again and again.)

August 22, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Eleanor Roosevelt reminded me “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” This blog post doesn’t have much of either content wise and yet there is strength, courage and even a few quiet chuckles in hitting the “publish” button.

Today’s thoughts come courtesy of a long ago writing prompt I wrote for writers who aspired increased boldness.

The original blog post is filled with prompts to make you consider risk-taking in your writing and strengthening yourself to be more mindfully bold. At the bottom of my 5 minute writing, I will share the link to the original post so that you may access all the prompts, too.

“To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.”

Margaret Atwood

I took a risk this weekend that seems so foolish I almost hesitate to claim it. Risks seem like such big things, like jumping out of an airplane or quitting one’s job and running off to the south of France to stomp grapes or something more consequential than rebranding a facebook group or announcing a new program.

Yet if there wasn’t inherent risk, why would I have procrastinated so long?

And why don’t we take more risks, why don’t we flex our courage muscle more regularly and with more panache.

Even in the writing of this, Katherine came into the room and it feels like a risk to continue writing and it feels like a risk to not continue writing.

It is a risk to continue writing when it feels like it is going so badly.

= = =

Take two, after delivering Samuel to school and going to the grocery store to get yogurt to calm my belly.

I had to stop and start again because the television was too loud (space sharing) and the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard with my headphones on is somehow more distracting than without. That is, my silenced headphones and now – we are back.

I took a risk by admitting my failure openly on the first round.

What if people never speak to me, leave my facebook group or point and laugh because I didn’t succeed using my own methods and prompts?

I hear my kinder gentler self: “You wouldn’t want to spend time with those sorts of people anyway, now would you?”

I get back on track and keep moving my fingers.

It is a risk to admit our failures and in our culture, for women, it is oftentimes a risk to tout our successes for fear of seeming a show-off or a braggart. I cringe when people tell me, as an actor, “You stole the show!”

No, I can’t steal the show, that isn’t nice!

I risk a lot when I disagree or don’t stand in total alignment with people I love. I’ve gotten the brunt of this in the last year with friends seeming to forget I exist and the invitations have diminished because I am not a “one-line” thinker, instead I risk believing what I believe and not allowing their opinions of those beliefs to get in my way.

I risk dying alone.

I laugh at that high drama, but sometimes it feels that way when we take risks.

It feels like it is too much to bear.

I risk publishing that high drama especially after failing at my own techniques just a moment ago.

I hear the applause and I cringe.

I didn’t fail this time. I got thoughts on the page – at least partially coherent. Useful for some form of content?

Perhaps.

Thinking I’ll swipe a line for a poem and see what more these risks want to tell me – and perhaps tell you – in the process.

Eeep. Next comes publish.

 – And here is the promised link to the original prompt – 

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Uncategorized Tagged With: Be willing to risk writing badly, writing badly, writing challenges, writing how-to, writing risks

Move Your Writing & Your Quality of Life Forward with Inspirational Quotes

August 22, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Eleanor Roosevelt reminded me of this today. New strength with the sunrise, even if it is invisible – with the new day I have a whole slate of new choices. With each week, a new clean crisp canvas.

Lots of other people complain about Mondays. I rejoice in Mondays and actively seek out fabulousness each other day of the week. Currently I’m working on incorporating a full day of rest at least once a month. Surprising how challenging this has become.

I don’t mean rest to smoosh in all the stuff I’ve missed out on from working – I mean rest to simply sit and be and have a completely open, quiet calendar. Intentionally. Weird. Wonderful.

I am going to repeat today’s quote each day this week for several reasons.

#1) I know is power in memorizing significant thought leaders wisdom. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

#2) I believe in the message it sends and it will both serve as a reminder and an attractor of new strength and new thoughts. Remember the tenet, “What we focus upon grows.”

#3) I feel empowered when I hear the quote aloud and feel my pencil write it. “With the new days comes new strength and new thoughts.” My face smiles automatically when I think about Eleanor Roosevelt. Smiles make us happier, instantly.

#4) I think this experiment will teach me, make me aware of new facets of living and writing I am not even vaguely aware of yet.

#5) I intend to have an enjoyable, deeply playful experience of momentum with my writing by repeating and integrating these thoughts more and more deeply via repetition as prayerful affirmation. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

I am ready. Are you ready for today’s story? Find a short quote from a favorite writer to use each day this week as I am using the one from Eleanor Roosevelt and experimentally play with the direction it leads you with your writing this week. Please let me know how it goes – –

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links above and below to follow her on your favorite social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

 

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Writing Challenges & Play, Writing Prompt Tagged With: . #5for5BraindDmp, Eleanor Roosevelt, inspirational quotes, Writing, writing prompt

Building Momentum This Monday: Questions to Guide Your Writing & Life Experience

August 21, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Momentum is based on movement which is difficult to conceptualize when one feels stuck. Movement – stuck. Stuck – movement. Two entirely different and also totally oppositional experiences.

Eleanor Roosevelt reminds me “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Today all bets have changed. My lack of movement yesterday (or many assembled yesterdays) may have become a practiced experience and yet they don’t need to define me. I am sitting here at my table, preparing for the week ahead.

That is movement. That is momentum.

Each word I stitch together is momentum.

Each time I take five minutes and declare my butt in chair and then move my fingers on the keyboard is an abundance of momentum. The crank is turning, the pencil is sharpening, the project getting closer to completion.

Writing prompts for Sunday Evening and Monday Morning:

What do I want to build momentum toward this week?

When Friday arrives, what will help me feel the most abundance around my accomplishments?

What momentum inducing practices/actions/allegiances will most likely get me from where I am right now to where I want to be on Friday?

What are the first three actions I will take?

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links in the header comments or below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Business Artistry, Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Uncategorized

Healing: One Mindful, Constructive, Forward Facing Action at a Time –

August 20, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Your First step: fill in the image blank: This is how we heal: One ____ at a time. This post is my #5for5BrainDump – I filled in the blank with “conversation” and didn’t necessarily stay on topic!

This is how we heal: one conversation at a time.

I have to confess, I felt pretty frustrated yesterday by a comment someone made and I don’t even want to talk about the comment don’t even want to talk about the context for fear of someone recognizing herself in my words and leap to conclusions about what I am thinking/feeling/choosing when I’m sorry, beloved-perhaps, you can’t know how I am thinking/feeling/choosing because we haven’t had a conversation on the topic lately.

One thing I will confess, though, was when I took an African Culture class my senior year at University of the Pacific. I was hungry for course work focused on Africa because as an International Relations major, I had fallen in love with the study of Africa.

I was an Anglo woman who had (and still hasn’t) visited Africa – and this class was offered under the Black Studies department. I was the only non person of color in the class and in fact, if we had said “person of color” it would have been seen as a racial insult.
One particularly tiring afternoon I said, “You know, I love you all and sometimes I feel like I have to spend every class period here apologizing for my ethnicity.”

In that moment my professor nearly jumped out of his feet with excitement.

“That’s it! Exactly! That’s the feeling!”

I wish I had a photo of my pale face scrunched up with my twenty-one-year-old confused blue eyes looking at him in a perpetual question mark to remind myself not getting it and not having “the” answer is a part of the beloved process.

I started to get it then and now I’m getting it more and more.

I loved that class. I loved my classmate who had transferred from a college from Chicago who said, “I hope someday I know as much as you do about Africa.” And my other friend, sophomore year in my Politics of Africa class who admitted to reading my ten-page single-spaced term paper on Ivory Coast (now known as Côte d’Ivoire) twice because she enjoyed it so much.

I love being an Africanist. I love engaging with my African friends and I love knowing where the African grocery store is in Bakersfield and I love engaging my curiosity and not accepting what people tell me vaguely as truth.

This took longer than five minutes. It took closer to seven.

And I still have so much more to say.

Which I see as a sign of a really good thing.

_ _ _

A few last words: Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) 
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper? 
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
– – – –
Now – your response would be adored.
 
If you take time to write for 5 minutes to it,  I may dance with joy – especially if you post a link:
 
“This is how we heal: one ______  at a time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

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Filed Under: #5for5BrainDump, Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Storytelling, Uncategorized Tagged With: Soul Conversations, Walt Whitman

Move in the Direction that Delights and Compels You Now –

August 18, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”
Albert Schweitzer

I sat on the big, red rocking chair on my porch this morning, reading Samuel’s English classroom rules. Simply stated, one step after another, one guideline and future assignment building upon the next.

I rocked a moment, looking toward the horizon over my neighbor’s roof and wondered about the day yet to fully arrive. I thought about myself, yet to fully arrive. I looked at the leaves on the mulberry tree who has faithfully offered me shade and more than enough arguments with my neighbors for more than twenty seven years now.

Now I look at the plants on my living room mantel, seeing one that was in the Virginia Woolf room where Emma has been living since she returned from the East Coast. Yesterday I noticed my plant, faded and dried up. “My plant,” I said, a whine in my voice.

“You didn’t tell me to water it,” Emma countered, with a voice even sadder than mine.

“It’s ok,” I whispered. “Just give it to me. I’ll water it, I’m sure it will be ok.”

As I prepared to begin writing, I looked up quotes about trees and found the one below from Joyce Meyer and I hesitated to use it because of her affiliations and worried she might be a part of the vociferous hate streaming out of the vitriol within the hearts of some of the people across my country.

My heart literally hurt at those thoughts.

What has become of us and what will become of us?

I overslept the tiniest bit this morning and didn’t move for too long of a time.

What shall I do first?

The thought came back. “One foot after another. Repeat.”

So this is what I have done, in attempt to keep the depression beasts in their pens and bring out any shred of evidence of all-rightness I can muster.

In trees leaves I hear God-sounds. That’s what Albert Schweitzer must have heard in the trembling of the leaf. He is one of my dead-man crushes so I know he wouldn’t lead me astray. A scientist philosopher, a close observer who reports evidence rather than tangential, second-hand thrice told tales.

I look at the mulberry tree outside the window where I type now for five minutes (and perhaps one extra one.) I see the light of sunrise filtering through her leaves. I see a volunteer bush pushing through my lavender and wonder how I may most effectively replant it.

I believe putting one foot in front of another in a forward moving direction will also move me and my life in the direction that compels and delights me. We can do this. Let’s.

“Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.”
Joyce Meyer

Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Aiming for “Almost Normal” is Sometimes the Best We May Do

August 17, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Vulnerability alert: for the next week or two, I will be modeling the #5for5BrainDump method through writing blog posts in 5 minutes, stream of consciousness style.  Sometimes these posts will be…. more transparent and real than I have been recently. I’m so grateful you are here, reading, even after I warned you.

Now, from this moment until I tell you the timer had stopped – was straight from my heart to my fingers. I had no idea what was coming next. Ready? Walk with me as together we focus on —

I was supposed to be writing something else, but I needed to write this instead so here I am and there you are and together, my prayer is we will find something.

I’ve been preparing for Katherine’s arrival: my precious daughter who I sometimes think of as the “normal” one from the Munster’s or The Addams Family. I feel embarrassed at times because she is so good and so not depressed and so… well, I always worry she will be disappointed in me.

This hasn’t been an easy year by any stretch of the imagination and my depression has been getting deeper and wider and it has been a near constant struggle to gain control. I don’t remember her seeing me “this bad” though because I am pretty practiced at hiding my real feelings, many don’t know how bad it has been.

It is only in the recent past I have reached out for help at all, only in the recent past I’ve told people “Hey, I’m struggling.”

This is after last Summer, when I told someone I thought was a dear friend how bad off I was and that person didn’t speak to me again for – I lost track of how long.

See, that’s the thing.

Those of us who struggle with depression and other invisible diseases often times struggle and try so hard to not let it show that  this particular action: putting a cloaking device over how we really are takes every ounce of effort we have so other stuff gets neglected.

I can’t remember how many times in the past year I’ve fallen asleep in a collapsed heap at the end of the day with the same clothes on, for example.

The only reason I can even write about this is because I’m starting to feel better. At least I think that’s it. I’ve woken up oddly optimistic for the last few days. I’m going to call it “feeling better” because it feels better even proclaiming it so yes, I’ll proclaim it.

My timer just went off saying my five minutes are up, so I will close with this:

There have been several tragic celebrity suicides lately.

There has been unrest in the country where I live because of people hating one another rather than loving one another.

There have been people forgetting the most important thing we can do is look beyond one another’s circumstances and look into one another’s hearts.

You may have someone who seems perfectly fine and then you hear they actually weren’t just fine.

Take time to have a conversation with someone today that goes beyond the surface. Take an extra moment to hold eye contact. Take an extra moment to remind them you are with them and that they are never a bother to you, ever.

To call you or write you or text you whenever the urge strikes. I know in my darkest days I have sat with my phone in my hand thinking there was not a soul out there who would take my call.

Be the one who will take your friend’s call and show up and help and smile and do what your friend or loved one asks for you to do. If they say they don’t know, give them multiple choices. “Do you want to go out for coffee or a walk or get a pedicure with me?”

We may not all be aiming for “normal” or at least “almost normal” whatever that means. I can guarantee each and all of us is aiming for better than feeling consistently not well.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below and above in the top margin to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

The River: My Restorative Friend & Forever Companion

August 17, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

Ann Voskamp

As a little girl, I fell in love with the Delaware River and the nameless creek which ran through my home town of Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

When I first moved to Bakersfield I didn’t pay much attention to the Kern River. I was aware there was a river in a mythical canyon I never visited. In Bakersfield itself, there were canals and dry riverbeds. It wasn’t until we had an exchange student named Sandra from the South of France that my children and I engaged with the river as it was actually flowing through town that summer. We discovered it was a fun place to play.

 

Eventually my visits to Bakersfield’s Hart Park’s pond expanded to the river that flows along the park’s border and then the river’s call invited me more deeply into the one-time mythical canyon. It was there I hiked and explored and contemplated the flow rather than stepping into the dangerous Kern River – except on a rare occasion when the call is strong and I was surrounded by people I loved and it seemed perfectly sane though perfectly freezing to climb into the river fully dressed for the just right photos.

I’ve been in a dry spell energetically and my visits to the river have become medicine for my spirit. She is restorative, my deep well of a friend when human friends aren’t spontaneously accessible.

I treasure her song which encourages my voice to return as it is here.

I’m grateful I moved beyond the boundaries of the streets and avenues and sidewalks and into the slightly off kilter lesser traveled roads that meander beside her. They remind me of myself.

Somehow when I am beside the river’s flow, I feel strength in knowing others are “with” me in creative spirit. The absence of my friends “with skin” is less lonely as I tune into my solitude rather than the aloneness.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson and my heart:

“And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired”

Beloved river, sacred medicine, thank you for who you are whether flowing or not flowing, you bring life to me.

 

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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Filed Under: Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Storytelling, Uncategorized Tagged With: Bakersfield, Hart Park, Kern Canyon, Kern River

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