Poetry – Creative Life Midwife

“I wake to listen” – How to Use Poetry to Meditate (Even if you don’t think you’re “good” at either)

May 12, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

In May, we are blending poetry and meditation to create, make and activate a more mindful, art-rich life. Welcome to that experience.

May is National Meditation Month. Field of Lavender and purple reflect the poetic nature of meditation we are using here in May. Welcome back or welcome for the first time!

Many of you have said, “Meditation and poetry – I am not good at either. And you use writing as meditation? Forget it. I can’t”

Stick around for a couple days so we may wash out those thoughts.

Here’s how this process goes for me – I invite you to try it this way and feel welcome to make modifications so it may work for you.

Whenever I read Plath, (link to the poem we meditated on today, Morning Song) I hear and feel a hush which may be why this line of her poem attracted me. This poem, “Morning Song” is about mothering a baby. Have you parented a baby?

I remember thinking when I had my son that I couldn’t have a boy. I didn’t know how to mother boys. It took me six weeks to actually agree this relationship as mom-to-boy would work and while it may still be rocky – he is an adolescent now – I know I wouldn’t trade the process for anything.

I invite you to think from your “beginner’s mind” place like I did as a new mom – with an open heart and without leaping inot judgment (like I find myself leaping more times than I would care to admit.)

Many of you have said, “Meditation and poetry – I am not good at either. And you use writing as meditation? Forget it. I can’t”

Stick around for a couple days so we may wash out those thoughts.

Here’s how this process goes for me – I invite you to try it this way and feel welcome to make modifications so it may work for you.

a lavender field at sunrise allows us to embrace and accept we may not be good at poetry or meditation now,. we may allow ourselves to come as a complete beginner to both. The sunrise is a metaphor for the new beginnings you may experience when you come from the beginners mindset.

1. First I read the poem to myself several times and choose one line or phrase as a centering line. On my live-streams I ask viewers to choose a line also and direct them to the Poetry Foundation website for the poems I read. All are published there and are easily accessible – which for some people makes it easier to choose a meaningful meditation line.

2. Deep breathe and sit quietly with the poem, sometimes briefly and sometimes – like this time, I meditated before sleep and as I fell off to sleep.

3. The next step has differed when I do it, but write for at least 5 minutes, free flow style, stream of consciousness. Sometimes before the live-streams though more often after. Sometimes I write the centering phrase over and over again. What I find it when I trust the process and breathe deeply as I write, other words begin to pop in – you may scoff at this and I invite you to try it.

4. Livestream first on Periscope, often a rougher version – but I enjoy picking up the twitter audience.I will share the livestream from Twitter so you may see it here as well. I pin the poetry/meditation streams daily with a link to the poem and the graphic (whenever I create it), often afterwards. Livestream second on Instagram live. Usually a smaller audience but often more engaged in the poem itself.

📬 Poetry & Meditation Live: “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath#NationalMeditationMonth #100DaysofEngagingVideo #Poetry https://t.co/oCJhFGDvrP
— Julie JordanScott – Fueling Creativity & Hope (@JulieJordanScot) May 12, 2020

5. Sometimes I post here, in my Creative Life Midwife blog – once I even created a second series based on what I wrote during my meditative writing and it blasted more helpful content. Whether or not I post elsewhere, I follow up with discovering the next poem.

In this case I’ve planned ahead and will next read Kim Adonizzio.

If you have a favorite poem or poet you would like to suggest please do so in the comments. .

The Perils of Being a Comma. Or a Dash, an ellipsis, a period.

May 3, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

What Punctuation Mark are You? Using a line from poetry to step into a deeper level of self discovery through meditative writing and a photo of a woman, writing, on a deck between two mountains. Purple and green.

Once upon a time I had a friend I liked a lot. I told this friend, “I am nothing more to you than an ecru comma.”

What a perilous way to be, an off white comma, a brief stop on the way to something better.

There is nothing worse than to be a comma.

A comma personified.

Ten plus years later, at times I feel like I remain a comma. Is there such a color as faded ecru? Aged ecru? Stained, torn, battered and bleeding ecru?

Let me rephrase that: I do not see myself as anything like that ten-year-plus presumed comma. I have been stained, torn, and scarred. I have bled and I have healed. I have devoted myself to presence and passion and moving forward.

Commas haven’t committed. They aren’t first or last, they are a hesitation.

As I wrote that last sentence, a meadowlark sang after she took a nibble from the mulberry tree in my front yard. Fully committed, she sang in joy and praise. Can a comma be that precise?

A comma isn’t as firm as a dash – that says – wait.

Almost a period, but not quite enough and we stand there almost falling over a comma is steady and filled with air. I imagine it is easily popped.

"Commas on her face --- a breath, a word" is a line from the poem "My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night" by Anthony Lawrence. The image is of letters made of wood or plastic scattered on a board, haphazardly. It is in greyish-toned black and white.

I believe I chose this line “Of commas on her face— a breath, a word … “from the poem “My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night” by Anthony Lawrence, to meditate with today because I know what it is to be lost to poetry when others are around. I probably seem to separate myself into an otherworldly place at times when poetry – my own and others, scoops me up and takes me away.

As an apology for losing myself into whatever non-human experience I was passionate about, I let go of getting lost to those loves and devoted myself instead to human tasks and helps, forgetting that I was worthy of both passions and an assist and a collaborative effort from time to time.

Sometimes it is lovely to be a comma, even an ecru comma.

Now that I think about it, a peaceful smile looks something like a comma. I will claim that, too.

Perhaps we, we humans, would be better off embracing our loves for what they turn to that isn’t us – as long as it isn’t a wall between us and them. I love poetry and theater and deep soul conversations and the occasional ridiculous television show and that doesn’t mean I want to separate myself from those I hold most dear or darling. Sometimes embracing the comma time as a place to meditate on love itself and on humanity herself would be a better choice than wall building.

In this musing I realize how much meditation is like a comma.

A breath, a word to center, a breath – more words… and then words disappear and there is breath… a comma.

A comma is a part of something bigger than herself. She is an important part of the overall story.

She is a bridge. She is a sign-post. She takes a stand for what she believes to be true.

I am proud to be a comma and more. I am proud to be a stained, shiny, torn, healed, scarred, fierce, frightened, passionately active, ecru and purple comma.

Julie JordanScott creates content to inspire creative people to lead more satisfying lives even during this pandemic. Walking and sitting at the Panorama Bluffs helps her feel centered.

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, bestselling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Join her for one of her upcoming #5for5BrainDump programs or an upcoming writing circle or writing for social media programs.

How to Write About Your Life in 5 Easy, Meditative Steps –

May 1, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 6 Comments

May is National Meditation Month: We will be blending poetry and meditation to create, make and activate a more mindful, art-filled life. — To read the complete poem on the Poetry Foundation Website, please visit here.

In May we are blending poetry & meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life. I will be sharing my writings that blossom from the meditations as well as videos, images and other helpful tools for you along the way. Today, we are sharing free-flow meditative writing followed by 5 Steps to Making Peace through Witnessing Your Life with Writing – and in doing so, we circle back to where we started – with poetry and the words under the words.

Lavender blossoms surround the words "May is National Meditation Month" and here we are blending poetry and meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life.

Yesterday afternoon during the #5for5BrainDump which may be used as a meditative writing practice, the words that flowed were these:

The words under my words are… optimistic most of the time. They are like the comic I saw today that my friend shared of the three views of the heart: the optimist a big red perfectly Hallmark heart, a dramatic broken heart to proclaim the pessimist and an image most like a human biological heart for the realist. I most often refer to my words as optimistic realism but they don’t feel like that right now, when I allow the space to roam about my chest and up and out my throat.

The words under my words are are battling for control. My words under my words are slightly scratchy, that annoying base of the throat tickle – feel like I might be getting sick but because I know what my nervous cough sound like, I recognize this. I recognize this. They feel like, might they be a virus? Are we still allowed to say that word except for as in “Novel” or “Corona” or “Covid”?

My words above, below and beneath my words at eye level feel crusty and stale, grumpy and stagnant. They’re old and scabbed and calcified. Tainted and negative and not good. Not good.

This morning, before I turn to another daily poem, I revisted yesterday’s words and add – The words under my words are just right as they are – crusty and stagnant and stinky are equally rich and valuable as the flowing and soft gentle breeze on a hill wearing a gorgeous white lace dress with perfect hair.

Today and my words in it will be – as I allow them to be.

It is when I don’t allow them to be and me to be and you to be and the emotions that pop to be that my shoulders become like earrings and my gut becomes a roller coaster.

I trust my words, today, and I trust the leaning tower of ancient historical words to be more of a cradle that gently rocks me than a car spiraling out of control on a roller coaster. The word-cradle is in my breath and my heartbeat, my pulse and my womb, my brokenness and my sometimes polished exterior.

No need to battle and pretend there is such a thing as control.

Your words – under your words – spend time holding them close, with love and grace. Hold space for joy amidst the not-so-joyful and the belly laughter amidst the tears of sadness.

Now: A simple 5 step process for you to witness your life in words – all of your life – from a meditative, mindful frame of mind.

Day 1: a vase of irises shares how the words under words will be made more peaceful when we make peace through witnessing "what is" , blending poetry and meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life.

We write from a place of peace: we don’t judge the writing as it falls off the tip of our pens or fingers on the keyboard or fingers on our screens. We allow the words to fall as they will without editing, judgment or forethought.

We are witnesses, not judges. We hold space for ourselves to enjoy the process regardless of what story our words are telling.

Step One has the irises in a vase and advises us to use clear, descriptive, sense based words. These words may be colors, flavors and other objective details rather than words like "amazing" or "nice" or "pleasant".

Write what you experience, not what your opinion is about what you experience. Instead of “It was good” or “I think it is pretty” write “The bright purple irises fill the glass vase with the twine tied in a bow.” “There was a hint of vanilla in the chocolate chip cookies” or “He was over six feet tall, which made my five foot four inch frame feel tiny.” Yes, there is some opinion in that final sentence, but see how it is supported in fact?

There is a beautiful shade of green, slightly mottled with purple on the other side of the vase of irises. Step 2 is "Write in snapshots or moments in time rather than large periods of time all at once. When you write in snapshots you capture the core of your story, of the "what happened."

You can practice this by taking actual photos of your life as it happens or looking at a photo from the past and writing about what was happening when the photo was taken. Immerse yourself back in that moment of with rich, sensory details. Once you master this, your writing will become increasingly magnetic and at the same time, connect you to your readers more and more deeply no matter what you are writing.

At the center of all good writing is a daily (or close to daily) writing practice. One way to stay in the witness is to make a list of what happened the day before during your writing practice time. When we do so, our subconscious mind will begin cataloguing details and your writing choices will become richer.

People often resist the idea of writing practice. It sounds like too much or a chore or something inherently unpleasant or without a purpose. When one tries and sustains this, it becomes deeply pleasurable and life changing in the most positive direction one might suspect. Try it for a small amount of time at first and see how it works. Experiment with different times of day and different methods of “containment” – I write in notebooks and other times on my phone and with my computer keyboard. Allow yourself to try different means and methods.

Step 4 invites us to lovingly lower our expectations. Rejoice in the perfectly imperfect and live outside the judgment zone when we are witnesses to our life.

Recognize what you write will not be perfect – part of the practice is to welcome the imperfect, the grammatical mistakes and the misspellings. Sometimes these are the most valuable parts of the growth experience. Enjoy the process for the sake of the process. Document the facts, not what you think of the facts. Begin to appreciate the imperfections with as much love and joy as the “perfections.”

Final Step: Revisit your daily (or whenever close to daily) free flow, meditative style writing once a week to glean life patterns, creative patterns and celebrate your growing awareness of witness.

Revisiting your writing is a deep pleasure as well as a method to note your progress. I can return to notebooks years later and wonder who this person was – while delighting in her moment-by-moment delight and discovery. Sometimes I long for her presence or find I have wandered off course and the past-me from my writing notebooks reminds me. The witnessing me of the past reaches out to the witnessing me of the future.

This is miraculous, just like you are miraculous.

You may follow along here on the blog as well as via social media. There will be different daily versions on different social media platforms. I suggest starting here on the blog and on Instagram for Instagram Live and IGTV episodes. You may see Facebook Live for 5 for 5 Brain Dump sessions at Writing Camp with JJS which may be accessed here.

Woman writing on the front porch of a brick home, — Write wherever you find yourself.

What are You Looking Forward to in May?

April 28, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 7 Comments

In a field of lavender, we begin our celebration of National Meditation Month. The banner states that claim and adds "blending poetry and meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, artfilled life."

I learned this morning May is National Meditation Month. Seeing how I had so much fun with April being National Poetry Month and March being Women’s History Month there must be something to woo my creative senses while at the same time connect me to something larger than me in the Virginia Woolf room pushing on letter keys to create some semblance of meaning during this strangely unfamiliar time we are living through right now.

In my world of no accidents, it makes perfect sense that May is for Meditation. My word of the month is Centering – that happened because I was reading a book about centering I had bought at a used book sale who knows when and the concept shouted “this is me!” and here I am, in the midst of being separate together with you and everyone else except my daughter.

Meditation and poetry is centering.

The planning me wonders, “How shall we optimize these wild synchronicities?”

The creative balanced with planning me says, “Well, naturally, you take poetry that you love by women which you are and you read a poem and allow the line that most centers you to be the focal point of wither a walking or sitting meditation every day in May!’

From Jane Huffman's poem comes the first line for meditation: "Like a pain, the truth is mine." It is from Ms. Huffman's poem. "The Rest" which you may find a link to in the article.

“Well, naturally” scoffs my “There must be a challenge facing me that I may gallantly solve!” or something like that and I realize I love this plan that for me sounds both a pure pleasure and a bit of stretch in daily commitment.

Tonight and until tomorrow I am focusing a line of poetry from “The Rest” by Jane Huffman, that goes like this: “Like a pain, the truth is mine.”

We will also be sharing videos like the one below, essays and poems and more written from the meditations and poetry.

The image is a picnic basket and the poem is a meditation itself - a villanelle written by Adrienne Su, who when hosting a party notices her guests were throwing away the "disposable" chop sticks she offered that were not, in her world, disposable at all.

Images will be posted daily on Instagram and on the Writing Camp with JJS Facebook page and in the Word-Love Poetry Community. Lots of support for you to grow and play and experience peace, calm as you create, make and life a more mindful, art-filled life in May.

That sounds like a heavenly way to spend May. Perhaps it does to you, too.

Tell me in the comments. How was your April? What do you look forward to in May?

Julie Jordan Scott sits on her porch drinking coffee from a Lowell Observatory mug

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, best selling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Join her for one of her upcoming #5for5BrainDump programs or an upcoming writing circle or writing for social media programs.

How Will You Look Back at “Times Like These?”

April 13, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 10 Comments

There are a lot of people who are writing poetry during National Poetry Month. This is something I do – and while I am not keeping up with producing a poem a day – it is more like a torrent of poems every few days – my reading of poetry is what is fueling me quite intensely as of late.

A tree listens in the image as does the quote from Adrienne Rich says, "Because in times like these to have you listen at all, it's necessary to talk about trees."

Who is listening to you with sacred, heart opened ears?

In bringing you into my poetry sanctuary – in quarantine times especially I feel more than a bit vulnerable. Speaking that aloud first makes me feel slightly more open to share with you this unfurling process this week as you may choose to step into it, too, to gain an understanding of both yourself, your loved ones and your world.

So far this morning I livestreamed Adrienne Rich’s poem, “What Kind of Times are These” twice, on Instagram and Periscope. Each time I read this poem aloud more turns of phrase and meaning slowly or not-so-slowly rise up to greet me.

Now, it is time to consider how the words of Adrienne Rich and the prompts I am providing may rise up to greet you in your creativity, in your contemplation and in your conversations.

Consider:

Where is your sacred space to listen and to be heard?

Where is your sacred space to listen during this time of quarantine?

Who are the people who will listen to you from their own place of sacred listening?

You may contemplate these questions, discuss them with your friends or on the pages of your notebook or journal. You may also watch the replay of the livestream video on twitter:

Poetry: Today from Adrienne Rich “What Kind of Times Are These” #NationalPoetryMonth #ReadAloud #inspire https://t.co/wRi8yVjplP
— Julie JordanScott – Fueling Creativity & Hope (@JulieJordanScot) April 13, 2020

Now, a writing prompt to take on your way, without concern for what poet Adrienne Rich had to say or not.

Consider and then reflectively write, free flowing style – to the prompt –

What kind of times are these? and/or

These are the times when…..

If you are not in the space to write, have a conversation with a friend or spend some time in contemplation.

In the future, these time will be a memory you will be asked to remember and talk about with others. These are the times you may still shape these next few weeks.

What will you do to shape these times with hope, light and inspiration?

Julie JordanScott is the Creative Life Midwife. She inspires people to live their life as an artform and take action towards their best results. During the 2020 Pandemic she is also leading daily Virtual Coffee Dates, Facilitating Intentional Conversation so people will feel less isolated during this time of social and physical distancing. Join the conversation by registering for free by clicking this link.

Word Lovers, Unite!

April 12, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 4 Comments

Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is in her Bakersfield, California living room wishing you word-love. She invites you to participate in this week of creative writing and joy. A full book shelf is behind her and she holds a notebook in her hands.

Word-love! Two words I blended together a few years ago to express how much I love words, love their sounds, their meanings and the deep connection they create between us and among us. I write prose, most often non-fiction essays and how-to’s along with the occasional advice. I have written plays and less often I write fiction.

Many people know me as a writing teacher and a writing coach.

Julie JordanScott writing poetry at a downtown Bakersfield flower shop.

One of my favorite and most active form of writing is poetry.

I am a poet who loves to surround herself in poetry.

April is National Poetry Month. As I often do, I find new ways to share poetry. This year I am livestreaming poetry almost daily via periscope and more often than not on Instagram Live. Usually the poems are picked in the moment as my time to broadcast arrives and I grab a poetry collection and turn to a page and read.

I have found some incredible rich poems this way from poets known and unknown to me that somehow seem to blend into an array of words that addresses exactly with what we are going through.

Yesterday I visited the Poetry Foundation website and found six different poems for next week. I decided I wanted to highlight the online home of Poetry Magazine, where people may read every single issue published since its founding in 1912.

This is poetry abundance at its best, isn’t it?

Again, the poems selected were a mix of synchronistic finds and others very intentional. Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” was a definite yes. I tried to pick a poem that refused to be copied so I went deeper and discovered a new-to-me poets, Emily Jungmin Yoon and Joanne Klink.

This week in my blog I will take a line from each poem I share that day and write an essay from it. I will post prompts for you to use to write, make or share in creative conversations with your friends or family or with yourself in your journal.

A pink circle surrounded by starts contains the words of Emily Dickinson, "The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."

My hope is you may fall in love or deeper in love with words. If you have not been a poetry fan, maybe you will open yourself to the beauty and love of poetry – it isn’t something to be misunderstood or understood like one of your teachers might have told you.

It is something to be loved, to be enjoyed, to be experienced like a fine glass of wine or a sunset or a long remembered and cherished birthday party.

Whether or not you visit here in the coming week, I invite you to experience this coming week as a time of joy, regardless of what is swirling around you.

A notebook on a table with an art journal with a variety of small paper works of art. One is a queenly figure, another is a triangle with a square that reads, "You are essential joy" from a poem by Hildegard de Bingen

As Hildegard de Bingen told us in a poem hundreds of years ago, “You are essential joy.” It is our choice to live those words even when we may not feel them initially.

Thank you for reading.

What Joy Will You Share Today? Prompts & Inspiration for Your Journey

March 10, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 3 Comments

Writing prompts, or prompts for creative reflection, make a big difference for people.,. These are about describing joyful moments. Try one!

This Anne Sexton quote reminds me of the gratitude quotes I cherish, the wise quotes which serve as reminders of how important it is to share what we are grateful for… which is something I think I mostly have down.

Mostly.

Gratitude and joy have the same “positive” root, yes, and I see gratitude as a state of being that is quiet and reflective – in my mind’s eye and my heart’s embrace I feel my friend Maria’s energy. Joy, on the other hand – is more like character in the movie, “Inside/Out”

Writing prompts may be used for creativity, converstion or contemplation. Describing joyful moments helps us remember and create new ones, for example.

Joy is a bit rambunctious and loud, definitely a physically energetic jubilant sort of space. JOY is me when I jump up and down and clap my hands because I do, actually, jump up and down and clap my hands.

It is not something I plan to do, it is something I do spontaneously.

What is your perspective?

PROMPT: Write for 5 minutes about a recent joyful moment.

Write for 5 minutes about a long ago joyful moment.

Write for 5 minutes about a future joyful moment –

Woman with brown hair and glasses sitting in a park, enjoying the blue sky and trees before she gives an inspiring talk.

This post is a part of the Women’s History Month Writing Quotes & Prompts series from Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, and her Word-Love Writing Community you may join for free on Facebook. During March, there will be daily discussions on the quotes and prompts we present here, too. Join the conversation and improve your writing at the same time!

How Writing Into Your Sense of Mystery Builds Trust:

March 2, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

How Not Knowing and Allowing the Energy of Wonder Will Make Your Writing Better: Writing Prompt inspired by Lucille Clifton

Sometimes writers create elaborate schemes and outlines and wildly detailed storyboards regarding where there unwritten story, novel, screenplay or poem will take their reader.

This is fine AND I question writers who are only willing to use this format become stifled by the format itself.

What if the writer instead allowed the magic of the process to carry them and their characters into unexpected places?

As a creative, we may stretch ourselves right into a creative downpour when we veer off-course, like the surprising sites when we take the two lane highway rather than the slightly faster interstate highway.

Today, let’s allow ourselves that special flavor of delight. Let’s invite mystery and wonder into our writing.

Whether you are writing fiction or are journaling or playing with dialogue in your screenplay or journaling: choose this prompt as a way to bring the mystery into the scene. Allow your character work to fill it with breath and light and surprise.

Prompt 1: The fear of being lost is real to me. I remember when I was lost in the…… (share the place where you or your character got lost. Take 5 – 10 minutes to tell the story of being lost – taking care to note each of your senses.)

Prompt 2: The moment it all became clear to me felt like nothing short of a miracle. After all, who would have thought….. (write for 5 -10 minutes about what happened next in your life or in your character’s life. Make it colorful and vivid.

Hello? The is Universe Calling –

January 24, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 6 Comments

Sometimes the Universe seems to send me assignments and without warning, the compulsion to dive in takes over my mind and heart. It seems to be without choice! There I am – fascinated by facts or happenstance or a new hobby or person or learning a new skill.

I can’t remember how this one started, but I was working on a speech for Toastmasters when a headline about “the Loneliness Epidemic” caught my eye and all of a sudden it became my primary hook for my speech.

Today I decided to follow up on that speech because I decided my next speech would be on the same topic with additional visuals using power point in my presentation. I searched my computer for notes and found absolutely nothing.

That’s when I remembered sitting in my car, scribbling out an outline in the last fifteen minutes before the meeting started. I was going through a rebellious phase in my Toastmasters experience because the last speech I spent a lot of time preparing was the most difficult I had done to date and the feedback I got from it was filled with negativity and some deeply cutting critique, not constructive at all but like slashes on my raw heart.

I decided I wouldn’t invest so much in my speeches in the future, “It isn’t worth the pain,” I thought.

I remember when I spoke, I got my outline mixed up and had to do what I had planned to do in the beginning at the end. I felt like I repeated myself but apparently on that day repetition was an effective strategy. Most importantly, I managed to remember the statistics on loneliness.

Here is some of what I said:

Scientific American reports 60% of Americans experience loneliness on a regular basis.

Americans are lonely in boardrooms, classrooms, restaurants, movie theaters: everywhere, people are lonely – even when surrounded by others.

Loneliness is one of those “untalkaboutables” people don’t bring up. Your shutting down may have looked like my shutting down when I told my closest friend I was feeling painfully lonely, but she didn’t understand. She believed that since I had children and a handful of friends I do activities with, it was impossible to be lonely.

She lobbed a healthy dose of shame in response to my confession.

I think I gave my original speech some time in November, close to two months ago. It has taken all this time for me to respond with a hearty “hell, yes” to the Universe.

My call is to work toward eradicating loneliness. My task is to continue the conversation, no matter how scary it is or how vulnerable I become in bringing it up.

I was surprised to find this poem on my old blog yesterday, a poem I don’t remember writing but still sounds much like the me-of-recently.

the only

real she knows is

loneliness

it would surprise

some to know. Some

like that

one friend who

was startled she

felt left out

and hurt and discouraged

arriving to an event

where the others had

gathered. perfectly content

without her.

so what is real?

her statement

“my feelings are

hurt. I’ll get over it.

I always do. for now

I prefer to sit here

alone.” again. as in

the other times.

she could trust

loneliness. even

find contentment

in loneliness.

unchanging. predictable.

Today isn’t the day for chirpy tips on how to not be lonely.

It is a day, instead, for contemplative reflection.

Take this prompts as a way to remember both loneliness and connection.

Tune into loneliness as a way to know it more clearly from a space of love.

Tune into connection so you may invite increased connection into your life experience and multiply connection out with and beside others.

Prompt: I remember feeling lonely, back when….(re-create a moment of loneliness in written, spoken (into your video camera) or in a piece of expressive visual art).

Prompt: I remember deep connection in the moment I.….(re-create a moment of deep connection in written, spoken (into your video camera) or in a piece of expressive visual art).

She didn’t simply come back to life, she came back to being fully alive.

January 4, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife 2 Comments

While texting is convenient and as much a part of our lives these days as breathing, lately I have found myself “forgetting” my phone at home when I go out.

This wasn’t the case when I was texting my friend Parker the other day. He was bordering on lecturing me via text, at least that is how it appeared to me from my screen. He thought I was roaming about in unsafe zones near my home where unsavory people might venture in the early morning.

I declared this in my text response “I refuse to be afraid. I’ve been afraid for too long when I stopped doing what I love to do most. If I die, I die. Not a big deal. We’ve had the dress rehearsal already. I won’t live by being afraid, I would be dead-while-alive. I won’t have it anymore.”

He thinks I am having some sort of post-near-death experience break down but actually, I am having a post-near-death experience breakthrough, one day at a time.

Alongside the Kern River as it runs through Bakersfield, new trees have sprouted in the last few years.

This morning I was walking alongside the Kern River in the same space where I went when I lost my brother. I went there before to howl with – and befriend coyotes with my friend Coryn. It was the place I found the courage to love the darkness. Today it was barely light as I took photos in newly minted day. No one else was around.

It is much less quiet these days: a new freeway buzzes over it to the east and from the last couple rainy years new, spindly trees have remarkably taken root. I am not sure if there are as many kit foxes and coyotes as there once were.

I didn’t spend much time there this morning, but each moment was precious. The top of my lungs felt tender and achy as they do when I overextend myself. That’s simply a component of healing and one I am more comfortable with – and can’t solve until my next pulmonology appointment.

This park is part of the Kern River Parkway - a lovely bike path experience stretches wide across the town - and makes getting from CSUB to Oildale and Bakersfield remarkably quick!

I laughed to myself because there was no one else there to hear. How marvelous to be this alone in such rich, poignant solitude.

Mary Oliver sprang to mind. She would know this feeling. Her words whisper-shout

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”

She has been ever present in my mind as we are coming up on the anniversary of her death. What an honor to hold onto her words.

I looked into the sun, rising up above the trees and imagined wings sprouting from my back.

This is what it feels like to be alive in the early morning.