Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Writer’s Affirmation: Your Words Matter: Our Words Matter: The World Is Waiting….

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Say it with me now. Put your hand over your heart and speak it aloud: “My words matter.”

If you are in a space where saying it aloud feels foolish, say it aloud in your mind, “My words matter.” Allow yourself to take a few quiet breaths in silence. If other thoughts come in repeat it again, “My words matter.”

My words matter: do you believe this? Do you live it? Do you write and share and share and write and broadcast and say it? Again and again?

I do and I don’t. I falter. I stop. I backtrack. I get lost in my worry and fear and concern about what other people think and consistently need to remind myself of this very important affirmation: my words matter.

When I am tired, my words matter because someone out there needs to hear precisely what words are saying.

My words matter because sometimes I am the one who needs to hear and writing helps get me through the rubble covering me. Words become my flashlight into clarity. When I sit to write, the fog clears.

My words matter. Whether you are a writer or an accountant or a parent or a single person who drives for Uber and Lyft, your words matter. Are you listening? Your words matter because you are the only one who can say them precisely the way you do.

Sure people have said “My words matter, your words matter” and similar messages. Naturally. And yet – the fact I am saying this and you are hearing it right now is absolutely no accident at all.

Your word matter. YOUR words matter. Your words MATTER!

It took me only three minutes to write these words and my guess is this: me saying these words to you shifted something. These words shifted something important. All because I believed, repeated and took action.

My words matter and your words matter. Our words matter. Let’s keep writing them.

 

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.

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Playful Attraction for Your Motivation Pick Me Up, Guaranteed

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This may be exactly what you are looking for when your motivation lags.

When my motivation takes a hike farther and farther away from where it is most productive,  here’s a game I play:

I take my lack centric statement and change it to the most positive, law of attraction drenched statement possible. Whether or not you believe in the law of attraction or not, switching up a cranky, needy, life sucks statement into something positive and still factual becomes a laugh inducer and a mood-shifter– at least for me.

Isn’t it worth a try?

Here is my most recent example – I would love to hear yours, too, whenever you are ready to tell me.

This morning I was considering my opportunity to drive random people around Bakersfield in exchange for green energy. I was trying not to feel bothered by the thought. I was simultaneously faced with the reality it is school vacation, both my children are home and may being a variety of people into my home when the #moreofthatplease I am seeking is a quiet bubble in a solitary space with – ideally – a beloved person delivering sustenance while I peacefully churn out words, contemplative art – that sort of thing.
I didn’t want to say “I need to drive to make some cash today right away, I’m feeling financially nervous today… “ or something to that effect.

So instead I texted Christine and said, “Why is this glorious reality of money manifestation a continual practice?”

I actually didn’t say practice in my text, I just added it now and BINGO! I’m onto something.

Practice, a la a spiritual practice – a step above a habit and alongside ritual or maybe slightly liturgical. That’s what I’m looking for, that’s what my heart seeks, that’s the playground where my soul climbs on the swing and feels her legs stretch and her hair fly behind her in the sky, separate from her body yet also attached and ever beautiful and wondrous when she is allowed to be.

It only took a few moments to retrieve what might have been hours of lament, frowning, kvetching and more than likely a bit of bickering as sauce poured over everything in a gooey mess.

To tease out the process into a how-to or recipe card file it might look like this:

  1. Take a moment and  write it like I did, as you truthfully feel in all your gooey, mucky glory.
  2. Take a few deep breaths and rewrite a part of it. Be ready to feel like what you are writing is ridiculous. It may be.
  3. Share with a friend who understands your process. If you don’t have anyone who fits this, comment your rewrite here, on this blog post. I promise I will get you –  I will understand. It’s no accident you are here, reading these words. Trust!
  4. Look at both phases of your writing. Be prepared to laugh and poke fun of yourself. Take a deep breath.
  5. Look again, this time for what is really true. Allow what is really true to find you, underneath the clutter-thought-rubble of worry, beyond the shards of broken promises and missteps into dreams that haven’t come true yet.
  6. Insert deep breaths where they fit (and even where it feels snug at first).
  7. Write again. No opinions this time, no rant or drama or hyperbole. Enjoy, no matter the outcome.

    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.

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You or Someone You Know Needs to Read This: Forgiveness & Reconciliation

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2009:

I wrote about having a falling out with a friend and finding my way back to forgiveness.

In forgiveness, we find the pain of the shattered glass is remembered by the scars it leaves, but the strength gained from those scars makes them both worth the pain and strikingly beautiful as well.

2017:

I write about having a falling out with myself and finding my way back to understanding.

It is the 5 am hour and I am writing. I lit a candle, the coffee is brewing it is quiet except for my fingers tapping and the heater making the room comfortable for me. A soft pink blanket is covering my feet. This feels almost idyllic.

Next week at this time there will be a Christmas tree in front of me.

Fifteen minutes ago I discovered the toilet had overflowed sometime after I went to sleep and this morning I plunged it, matter-of-factly, when I noticed the hem of my pants and warm socks were inexplicably saturated in water.

Not idyllic.

This week the Christmas tree isn’t in its spot and I wonder why I feel content and satisfied. Aren’t things supposed to be perfect, like an Instagram photo of the clutter free living room, everything in enviable feng shui order, cookie cutter offspring leading successful satisfied lives and me with a huge bank account, an adoring partner and a vast array of assorted friends who unwaveringly support every choice I make with a chorus of hurrahs?

That would be satisfaction of a slightly different sort. Perhaps that is a goal for six months from now.

Progress is the new perfection.

Julie Jordan Scott is enjoying writing without her glasses on so she can barely make out what the words say as she writes. She has been revisiting her past writings in order to gain perspective and to learn from the wise one who once wrote from these very same fingers yet have been forgotten, somehow, even in the words’ inherent value.

Interested in working with Julie? Getting to know her? Use the social media links on the side here or text her at 661.444.2735. its the most direct method of contact. She loves hearing from you, even when it feels awkward to write in the expected third person.

 

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Love for Systems and Structures: The Artist’s Dream Companion for Success

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“What sorts of systems and structures may I put into place that will support me and not feel like a noose around my neck?”

What makes a system?

What makes a structure?

What makes me think of them as a negative or something I don’t want?

I love mission statements, I enjoy guidelines, what makes me feel like I’m being strangled is this:

The first time I was witness and a victim of a “according to procedure 467.3” mentality I had recently lost Marlena. I had taken on a job as a Program Manager at a home for the developmentally disabled. It was the start of my getting underpaid for my work because I was holding on by a thread and needed to keep holding on and it felt like the best I could do.

This man (The one speaking about procedures and repeatedly parroting them back to me) was a bumbling bureaucrat, former state employee. He had worked at the dreaded state hospital my mind always told “avoid, avoid, avoid” and then he did the droning on about numbers and “the state the state the state” was something of a God at that place I worked and that was a natural turn off and fear inducer for me.

I remember being sick over that stupid, didn’t pay enough job.

I remember when I was stressing out about something and Katherine jerked in my belly and I freaked out more. I was literally in a chronic state of fear, a chronic state of “I am risking the worst pain in my life in order to have something really great but damn I feel like I myself am on the verge of death all the time!”

He was tall, on the edge of portly and was losing his hair.

He wore glasses. He bent his neck when he looked down at me and droned on about whatever whatchamacallit he was worshipping.
I wonder how many times my subconscious mind said, “I will never be like that blow hard, I will never, ever EVER be like that blow hard.”

He was a caricature of a small time good ol’ boy and therefore to be avoided at all costs.

I saw him as systems and structures personified.

Note to self: this bumbling bureaucrat was NOT systems and structures personified, he was a buffoon.

  • Let go of him as a representation of systems and structures – which are in place to support you – and start recreating your relationship with systems and structures which will keep your vision alive:
  • spiritual practices (Gratitude, Art, Meditation, Prayer)
  • timed writing daily
  • a calendar to keep track of appointments and tasks for long, medium and short term
  • a daily list of 5 passionate possibilities written the day prior.

These are systems that nurture and nourish.

These are structures upon which you may build your sustainable transformed life.

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I’m ready…. to sing with the soul-voice… to create the new choir

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“To sing means to use the soul-voice… to breathe soul over the thing that is ailing or in need of restoration.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Before I returned to acting after thirty years, I took a voice class where I got to sing, intentionally and with great heart – and the longing and pure joy was so strong in that first class, I cried.

It was a teen and adult voice class and I was the only participant who was over sixteen-years-old. These young women were in musical theater in their high schools, I never intended to do any theater at all.

If you’re a long time follower of mine, that might make you laugh. Countless plays, awards for acting and directing, music videos and films later I obviously found my acting voice but it wasn’t until I gave myself over to singing, learning an aria, hitting notes I didn’t know I could hit, performing in a recital, that I knew I could indeed sing and dance and be comfortable on stage.

I re-discovered my soul-voice.

For ten years, nothing could take me away from the stage. This year, I intentionally took a respite from theater performance. I made one film – it was an absolute blast and only took a couple weeks of my time and attention.
This week I have been decluttering in earnest, reclaiming lost space, and I have a week left of my self-imposed exile from stage. It is time for me to discern if and when and what circumstances will bring me back to theater.
It has been a lonely year.

It was a year of dynamic self reflection and transformation.

I have read more books. I have cried more tears. I have traveled but not as I had expected or hoped.

I spent a lot of time treading water, much more than is healthy.

I am much more clear about my hopes, dreams, ambitions and where my place in this world is one of mutuality, love and collaboration.

I have heard myself spontaneously singing again, humming, free styling as I work.

The restoration process isn’t complete and it is much closer than when the year started.

I am standing at the edge of the bridge into 2018. There is a misty fog here, rising up.

I have become more courageous and more sure of my footing.

I am ready. Are you?

(Vide0 – during a day of poetry writing I spontaneously went for a walk and sang – lyric free singing, I video taped it… and there is still something speaking to me of that brief 1 minute 18 second video adventure. Watch with me here)

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Oh, to Be Mysterious: a 5 Minute Writing Session Earned By Decluttering

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Have you ever seen the movie, “West Side Story?”

There is a scene when Tony is singing about a girl named Maria and he is so entranced with her he has to inexplicably brake into song. Well, I know how Tony feels because I found a word to write about today that was so powerful I made myself declutter before I used up all my energy lusting after a…. word. I know it sounds strange.

Here I was investigating cures for writer’s block when I was hit by a words so strongly it nearly knocked me off my feet. Insert “Sibylline” for Maria and you’ll get how I feel. And after the clip are the words I wrote after a garage decluttering session.

Your tip? Be open to a word that will make YOU want to sing. And then sing. Or borrow this tune from West Side Story and sing along.

I’m investigating Wrier’s Block today: its causes and more importantly its cures.

I was all tangled up in other stuff rather than writing when this new word flew off twitter and dove headlong into my heart: sibylline. It means mysterious.

I saw the word and it was instant lust. Originally I called it love, but no. To be truthful it was all about lust for who I wish I could be and never was.

The guilty pleasure wished for word: sibylline.

I was under its spell. Oh, to be mysterious. How I would love to be mystery personified.

I closest I could claim is when a suitor (does anyone use that word anymore, even in 1983 when it happened) described me as an enigma.

The man in question happened to be 19 but if anyone was mysterious it was he. After all, he is the one who went on to be an internationally known business man. I’m the one who became a mother-of-three in Bakersfield listening to music that is supposed to keep her focused on writing and is now more than slightly mortified to be writing in the third person.

If you put this now internationally well-known business man’s Facebook photo and my Facebook photo side-by-side he would hands on get more votes for sibylline.

I’m not sure what adjective people would use by my smiley face selfie taken by the river last Sunday morning but certainly it wouldn’t be the longed for sibylline.

I’ve always been an “open book” and “heart on the sleeve” sort of person who could have won Girl Scout badges for Transparency if there was such a thing probably because I wanted people to engage me in deep conversation even as a middle-school-aged-child.
If I were more sibylline, people with glasses in really cool frames would speak to me and assume I had a wide vocabulary and varied interests and expertise in random subjects.

When I think about it a moment, I do have varied interests and expertise in random subjects and it sort of bothers me when people can’t recognize this immediately.

Sibylline: teach me how to express your presence in my life.

A very excited aspect of my life, probably a freshman in college me or a before-fifth-grade-me leaped to the forefront of my brain and quipped, “I know, a poem! Write a poem with the writer’s voice being named Sibylline!” she takes a pause, “or get a new cat and name her Sibylline, or write a character with a cat named Sibylline!”

The headset which is playing a binaural beats playlist in my mind gets to the part that sounds like the El in Chicago during the Risky Business sound track and I realize my timer has gone off and I have effectively used up the writing credit I earned while cleaning the clutter in my garage.

Time for me to go back to being perfectly ordinary and decidedly anti-sibylline. For now, anyway.

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There are Many of Us with Writing Wounds: Let’s Heal Together Now

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Fifth grade was a rough year for me. I had my first taste of mean girls when my long term girl gang dumped me in one of those horrid pre-pubescent moments when the other girls decided I didn’t measure up to their checklist of cool-ness, my family was being tossed and turned by transitions and shifts, and I started middle school.

In those first weeks – perhaps the very first week of middle school – I got pulled aside in my English class with a group of 6 or 7 other students who hadn’t done well on our first writing assignment.

(The wound still hurts, I discover, so I will shift into third person for a moment).

Little Julie, who always excelled in writing, was set aside as someone who writes badly.

She who had been scribing before she was literate – dictated to her Mommy, sat in the back seat of the turquoise country squire because  and wrote cursive e’s in row after row after row because she knew she had something important to say  and she wasn’t going to let the fact that  she didn’t know how to read or write stop her.

She knew she had to write.

(Now that Little Julie had her moment, back to Now Julie).

By the time Mrs. Wilson got to me to review my bad writing, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. Here was the one thing I knew I was good at being marked the equivalent of a “D” with all the requisite red marks across my carefully planned words.

David and Perry were there and only one other girl. I was singled out with the low achievers and only one other girl who I didn’t know and I further embarrassed myself by crying as I explained, “But I always write well….”

I can step back outside myself and witness this as an adult and I see Mrs. Wilson’s horrified at herself face for “making this little girl cry” (perhaps sparking her own memory) and before the end of that session, my paper had been remarked “Excellent” and I went on to have a great year in that particular classroom.

It even became a refuge for me amidst other not-so-great stuff which may be why the call to write and broadcast about writing woundedness is so strong.

On my periscope broadcast today one of my beloveds spoke of her writing wounds and how writing with us in #5for5BrainDump changed things for her. So I cried again today, live, and now recorded, for anyone in the world to see. And now I am not even embarrassed. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of authenticity – no apologies.

I’ve been trying to find something written about the woundedness many feel around writing – perhaps the biggest cause of writer’s block and I can’t find a thing about it.

Strange, because this is oftentimes the reason people show up in my programs, classes and livestreams: they’ve gotten the word I create a safe environment for people who want to write: a place where we write together, allowing our pencils and pens to flow freely without worry of judgment or a big thick red pen marking out our most of the time carefully chosen words.

Harsh criticism – delivered without considering the person whose hand brought those words to the page – is something that has long troubled me. I have many examples from my past I’ve managed to write around which is somewhat surprising given my sensitive nature.

People have stories to tell, YOU have stories tell that the world is waiting to hear – a specific audience member, a distinctive listener or reader waiting for you to become brave enough to move your pencil across the page and say what needs to be said, what is waiting to be said as only you can say it.

With you.

The world is waiting for your words.

Let’s bring them to the page now.

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Note to Self (and to YOU, reading.) Continue: When All Else is…..

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Note to self and to you: when all else feels like it is failing, all I need to do is this:

Right now, as a vibrant member of the human community I choose to….continue. To grow, to feel, to express, to love, to seek understanding and compassion. Reminding oneself, daily, of wonder right in front of us.

Here is what happened when I reviewed a line of Diane Ackerman’s poem, SCHOOL PRAYER and used it as a writing prompt. The actual visual prompt is beneath my writing for YOU to use. Also below is a video I created as a result of this writing.

I offer myself as a messenger of wonder –

How do I do this?

I open my mouth.

I open my mouth and I speak what is in front of me.

I open my mouth and I speak the details of what is in front of me – the lines, the light, the way the lines and light reach back to me and fill my hand with energy that ignites my muse and makes my fingers push the keys that become these words and further the process in an infinite loop de loop when someone else lifts her or his or their chin and sees… oh, the plug.. oh the chord into the plug that makes the light turn on. The switch. I hear the click, I see the light turn on and suddenly I notice…

And the a-ha’s flow because people say “I never saw it like that, I never thought of it like that, I never… until now and suddenly the plug becomes an object of wonder and curiosity and we appreciate those who created the plug and the lamp and our heartbeat joins their heartbeat and the collective heartbeat and….

In what ways am I currently a messenger of wonder?

Here. Now. This. You. Look. Listen. Translate. Taste. Touch. Cry when you feel it, laugh when you feel it. Feel free and stand with it, allow yourself to hold onto that fearful moment with the same gentle tenderness as you hold onto a first kiss or a first bite of the most incredible taste ever (pesto, dark chocolate, pear brandy come to mind) and then….. recognize the divinity of that moment and….

How would I like to further my message of wonder in the world?

Increase the people I interact with and who appreciate what I am up to… invite them in. Cherish their them-ness. Reflect this beauty of humanity so the static will be silence and the pure breath and tone and light and harmony and dissonance and choking and relaxing back into presence flows….

Right now, as a message of wonder in my world I choose to….continue.

And now it is your turn: write about being a messenger of wonder in your unique way. Splash words and images freely on the page. Ready? Here’s your prompt:

 

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Tweaking No, No, No Into Yes, Naturally, Ofcourse!

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I humbly offer myself as a healer of misery… and the first thing that pops up is… oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.

Yet today on a livestream broadcast the vote from all who knew me was unanimous: the work I do is healing. Who I am in the world is healer.

I carefully outlined some of the ways I have healed this week and if I am honest, pretty much so anyway at least 50% of me just being me in the world is healing so if one side of me is saying “oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.” well… let’s just say the disconnect is looming, thunder-cloud-like, eclipse right in the middle of the darkness.

I may have stumbled upon something.

Think of my worst misery:

Grief. Out of alignment with purpose… not expressing my gifts. Listening to the advice of people who don’t have a clue (I almost edited that before I typed it but “have a clue” is more accurate than “aren’t clear on what I am doing.” No, they don’t have a clue and I have put much more emphasis on their opinions than my own wisdom.

It is my fear, after all, that shouts with the “oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.”

I’ve been thinking of making a puppet like when I was a little girl and talking to myself through her. Getting really really real with her, and in doing so, getting real with me and you and whomever and in doing THAT allowing others to get real, really real, too.
Yes, I have it in me. Yes, I can and I do, regularly.

I am not only up to it, I am pretty close to mastery in most places.

In fact, I am remembering a woman once who came to me completely flustered and said, “Julie, I don’t know what it is you do but I need it right now!”

I had no idea what she was talking about so I simply said, “Yes, yes, let’s do this.”

I took her hands and looked deeply into her eyes and said “Breathe with me.”

We bnreathed together, in unison.

I said, “Close your eyes and see yourself feeling better as you continue to breathe with me.” She did.

“After adequate time passed I said, “In silence, we will continue to breathe together now…” and we did.

Thirty seconds later, I smiled at her and said, “So be it, Amen.”

Instantly feeling better. She hugged me for a long hug and thanked me for being so generous with instant work with her.
She left the room and I looked at the other woman and I said, “I have no idea what just happened but, it happened and all is well, so… it’s all good, right?”

The next prompt in this “series” I wll write on either later today or tomorrow is….. (because of my own block I am working through on this content is…)

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Writer’s Affirmation – It is Your Time to Write, Right Now

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It is your time to write, right now.

It is your turn for your voice to be heard, to have an echo – for people to hear you, to see your words on the page and allow those words to rain into their skin, their spirit, their psyche – people want to access your words hours, days, weeks, months, years later and say “I remember, I know, I trust, I love…”

Say it aloud, now, write it:

“It is my time to write, right now.”

It isn’t too late. You are exactly at the just right starting place for you now.

When I lift my fingers from the keyboard and shut my eyes, I can hear your pencil scratching across the page. The sound of my fingers tapping the keyboard is replaced by the sound of your fingers dancing on your keyboard.

I feel a smile cross my face.

In my mind’s eye I see other writers across time smiling with me, with you, as they hear, as they see you finally understanding your way into action. It is your time to write, right now.

Write this phrase,

“It is my time to write, right now. It is my time to write, right now. It is my time to write, right now.” And write it over and over again until other words speak up your arm and out your fingers.

There are phrases waiting – they’ve been waiting. There are people listening who don’t even know they are listening for precisely what you have to say.

No one else can say it like you do.

You are unique. Your message is yours alone to share. Even if your writing right now is completely private. Even if you shut your file when someone gets close to your computer. Even if you hide your notebook or journal under last year’s sweaters – the process of getting them out of your body and onto the page matters. It matters a lot. Your words matter. A lot.

It is your time to write, right now.

 

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