“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
August Wilson
I’ve had some huge breakthroughs for the, well, the last week has been exceptional but really since the new year started.
I have been practicing taking a stand for myself in ways I never would before and now…. it really is like that old affirmation I would say (and not believe) says “Every day in every way, better and better and better” in the past I would have said “except for me”.
The same spirits who encouraged me to pursue theater just nudged me to say “especially me.” I normally would 
not have confessed this post script. It sounds pitiful and sophomoric.
Who am I to decide pitiful and sophomoric are destructive (negative, bad)?
Yesterday was February 9. The first day I was aware of every moment and was content, every moment. I was reflective and contemplative and not excrutiatingly sad.
This almost feels too good to be true.
This almost feels impossible.
And it is possible. And it is good. I ate chocolate cake with Emma as a stand in birthday cake and when the coffee was too hot to enjoy with my cake, I left a full cup there without blinking.
This feeling of contentment is quite a contrast to the more familiar sensations when I have felt sad and broken and unworthy.
I was sad and broken and I would have argued and offered evidence as to my unworthiness, offered proof given to me repeatedly by those in the know of what it means to be devalued, unwanted. For me the worst feeling of all was unblessed, passed over, one the others have given up on or left behind.
Marlena didn’t die because I deserved to be punished, she just died. The facts are the umbilical cord which was designed to bring her life at some point got tangled up and stopped offering her life.
I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t deserve to be flogged or diminished. There was nothing I could do to change this and even though I could say this in the early aftermath, in the years later I myself got tangled into the web of “Well, if it wasn’t me than why did it have to happen to me?”
Sometime between January 1 and now I have been able to surrender my perceived punishment as well as this idea of Marlena’s death happening “to me.”
It happened. It is tragic. It is epic. It has influenced nearly everything in my life in some way since then. I have been successful at some tasks and projects since then and I’ve had some failures. Other people right here in this world have the same track record with completely different circumstances.
Yesterday, my daughter who never lived outside my womb was able to release her blessing to me because I finally opened my arms fully to receive it.
Her life, even lived only in my womb, was and is and will continue to be significant.
I have been so angry with myself, so unwilling to forgive myself for something I couldn’t impact. It was like feeling the need to take responsibility for my blue eyes or responsibility for my nose being the shape it is.
I wasn’t able to speak the anger for a variety of reasons – being afraid of anger, not knowing how to be constructive with anger, distrusting anger, not knowing the language of anger – and more.
The thing is – in working to rewrite my narrative and reframe my life experiences not into positives but into meaning that goes beyond good and bad or positive and negative – my life feels better. More aligned, more awake and alive – better than it was before “this crash” or “that crisis” or “that great celebration” or what any labels call it forth.
This transformation is in that “it is” category and it is more than that. More. It is more like “it is love.”
This is why I am going to devote myself to the daily spiritual practice of writing and “reporting in” because I know there is great value in that, both for me and for those of you seeking to rewrite your narratives, too, and fall back in love with your lives.
One paragraph, one photo-taken, one sketch, one poem read, one play experienced, one conversation, one new place discovered at a time we fall back in love with our lives.
I’m so grateful you are here.
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 soon!
Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
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 soon!
Hello, February!
Writing Prompt: This post was written by simply setting my timer to 5 minutes and free flow writing. I didn’t overthink or even really think at all, I simply wrote. Before I hit “publish” I briefly eye balled the text but that’s it. What is more important than the outcome is the process and the revisiting, daily, as we settle into February.
This is not a blank page. This is a cure to the blank page. This is saying no to block, this is a singing declaration of “I have your back creative process and we are moving and grooving.”
Here is the first take: a window into process that includes falling (and getting up) and veering more than slightly off course.
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 soon!
Is this action moving me toward my goal?
Why yes, beloveds, these actions are! What about you?
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 soon!
Have you ever made a commitment to yourself and yourself alone and then found yourself saying it out loud and then realized the people you said it aloud with would hold you accountable even if your knees were knocking and you did and really didn’t want to do what you just committed to do? 
Long ago to comfort myself I declared God must have really wanted me to be born because he made sure I came into existence. After all, my parents were using birth control effectively and I was conceived, anyway.
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!
One of my weaknesses is borne from one of my strengths.
It wasn’t a big. dramatic stop with brake marks from my tires left on the road, it was just quietly not continuing because… perhaps the coffee finished brewing or a child made a request or I got a notification from Instagram or who knows what but I got distracted.
I wish to have a sense of peace that comes from abundance, from prosperity of the tangible kind – like my wish to have cash flow in and out, out and in, from multiple sources. My specific wish for a long, long time has been $25,000 dollars in and out, out and in, coming in from purchases of my products and services, flowing out to invest in making the world a better place and continually, infinitely repeating this joyful, deliberate practice.
“Every kind of creative work demands solitude, and being alone, constructively alone, is a prerequisite for every phase of the creative process.” 
I had surgery and received a lovely reminder of my cancer via the scar on my face. I spent time creating art and writing about it. There is a link to a post on my old blog about it I can’t even remember writing but in retrospect had some insightful, caring writing that deserves to be read again.
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 
I tried something different today with my five minute writing free writing/brain dumping time. I took an essay I wrote ten years ago and had a conversation with my past self.
Sometimes I think I pour too much of myself into my art. I get concerned that somehow the dark corners of my being will “pollute” the art itself.
It is especially joyful when we join hands to experience (metaphoric) creative tandem bungee jumping. I love feeling the wind whip through my hair and the whooping and hollering in my heart as we careen towards the earth and then get swooped back into the loving arms of the Divine.