Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Goal Playing: Let’s Make Reaching Our Goals More Fun (and Productive!)

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There is a tendency to forget we have the capacity to make nearly anything and everything fun. Note to self: remember to make this fun and share that giddy, goofy, get-it-done energy with others.

I realized somewhere along my journey of today that I create and reach towards goals much like a child bounces a ball against
the school yard pavement or a child-artist moves her paintbrush freely on a canvas.

I create goals and step into goals because I find it to be great fun.

In my life coaching work I have often suggested to my clients, “Ahh, just throw some spaghetti against the wall. Go ahead, try that out – it isn’t going to hurt anything! And besides, the process itself can be darn funny. Try it… shush, stop your hesitating and just
throw spaghetti!”

This has been so much a part of me that I didn’t even see the uniqueness in my approach.

I like setting wacky goals alongside my serious, world changing goals. You know. just for fun, not for anything else but the sheer joy of creating them and then inviting other “kids” to play along.

I can easily get into the zone when I am being childlike.

Am I possessed or obsessed? No, I am playful.

I am being the otter, sliding around the water, barking and clapping my hands.

I am the monkey, swinging from the branches, hopping over to my friend and running my hands through her fur coat, inviting her to swing with me.

I am the preschooler, carrying toy kitchen accessories around the room, delegating roles, “I am the Mommy, you are the daddy, you are the sister, the brother, the other sister, and you are the puppy” and when the other sister would rather be the Aunt Millie, I shrug, and smile and ok and when the puppy gets bored and wants to build with blocks, I smile and wave her away to go have fun doing something else.

No attachment, no worry, no hurt feelings, no drama or added meaning.

To me my goals provide crystal clear, joy-filled play.

Here’s a surprise – for some of you.

Our world changing, deeply serious goals may be brought into reality more quickly and effectively if we play with them first.

Seriously play.

Natalie Angier wrote “along with love and a good joke, playfulness seems like something that should not be explained, a brilliant splash of animated joy so sheerly pleasurable to watch and engage in that it is its own justification.”

To me, goal creation, goal reaching, goal tweaking and goal realization fit those words perfectly.

How about you – want to come along with me? Want to wrap yourself up in a costume of choice as we create something engaging and fun?

Come on, you know you do.

I can see that shy or sly grin crossing your face. See my ball, bouncing its way towards you?

Reach for it – your goal, my goal – unattached, joy-filled, possible, passionate.

So glad you are here, playing, creating, being with me right now.

Listen for a little while longer for the specific steps to make the biggest difference for you.

It would be so easy to stick our fingers in our ears and sing so we wouldn’t “hear” the prompting of goals, to-do’sa. What if we were deaf to the forward movement required to bring to life our intentions, dreams, vision, mission, whatever-title-you-choose-to-name-that-‘thing’-that-pulls-you-forward.

This may be a day when you have several “must-do’s” on your agenda, like my friend Shirley did when other people’s request piled up and fun didn’t feel at all possible.

This is a good chance to invoke the Heart/Mind/Goal Game Drizzle.

Even when Shirley was babysitting her grandson at 9 for a couple hours or so, meeting her friends for a play at 6:30ish depending upon the needs of the rest of her family she could make it fun and productive with minimal effort.

Why? Because none of these tasks interfered with her brain/heart drizzle, a fun companion activity to stir up that day or any day.
One of the grand things about this plan is I don’t have to complete it today and if I somehow slip up, I can return at any time on any day and claim a do-over and simply begin again. I can’t think of anything that soothes me more to know right now.

Here’s how the Drizzle Works:

1. Close your eyes and put your right hand over your heart.

2. Take a couple nice deep breaths, focused on clearing out any traces of negativity you may be feeling.

3. With your eyes closed and your negativity cleared, ask yourself silently, “What would be the best choices for me to make this month in order to reach my goals (be a good mother, make the world a better place, contribute to my community, get into better shape, put whichever fits the best for you here.)?

4. Allow yourself to continue to breathe in silence for even just 15 seconds.

5. Go about your day and when you think of it, repeat the question either silently or aloud.

6. Be aware of any thoughts that come into your awareness throughout the day that relate back to your initial question. To make this step extra fun, I’ve been known to actually shout-out “Thank you!” which made my children laugh when they were little. Now it makes me laugh with me.

7. At night, sit with your notebook or a big sheet of paper and write or doodle whatever comes up without pre-thinking or forcing it, just ask the question again and let yourself go onto the paper.

8. Let the continued questioning and heart opening and playful energy drizzle your loving, playful plan into being without effort, without angst and with heaps of joyful celebration.

9. Repeat these steps for up to three days to create a firm foundation for your goals (or whatever you want to name them) for your next week, month or quarter.

Shirley devised a life changing plan the last time she took on the Heart-Mind-Drizzle Goal Play. Now it’s your turn.

I help people – mostly creative entrepreneurs or those who hope to become creative entrepreuneurs, like Shirley and life you – to end writers blocks and barriers to communication by providing methods and means to allow their words to flow, finally, freely and without judgment.

We then take that they’ve written by using the #5for5BrainDump method I created – writing a mere five minutes a day for five days a week – to become a “something” tangible. It might be an article or blog post or a poem or a chapter of a book or a screenplay or a sales letter. It might be a Ted Talk or a way to start a conversation with a lover or a business partner. It might just be what it is – a stream of consciousness ramble that eventually morphs into a bridge to that place the writer has always dreamed of being but she didn’t know ever existed so she was unable to put it into words until… she did.

We continue to build on this “something” together either with me one-on-one or in a larger community of creative entrepreneurs – and in time, a new Creative Life is born.

The people who work with me, these creative entrepreneurs, discover a place where they fit in and are appreciated. It is so fun to watch the smiles spread across their faces and their words to rain in gusty storms like monsoons and sometimes just a slow, sweet mist… and at times… the sunshine takes over and we rest and bask in it.

Sometimes what we start with is not at all what we eventually create, but this new Creative Life – and the way it feels, remains strong and firm and delectable.

Each one uniquely quirky, each one jagged and smooth, whole hearted and angry – content, happy-sad, morbid and silly.

Light and dark and back and forth again.

All of this written from a prompt from a blog post I wrote in 2007 in a time of deep sadness:

“In order for the moonflower to completely open, it has to bathe in darkness. I am not a big fan of the dark. It scares me. Still. Yet I can not walk by this flower without bowing to it, without putting my face close to its opened-by-the-dark heart.”

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.

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

  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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End Writer’s Block by Promising Myself Rewards? (Is it working well?)

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Today I am earning a cup of coffee by writing about what I don’t want to write about.

Perhaps this is the little known secret for ending writer’s block: withhold coffee (or chocolate, or sex, or whatever a person likes best) until the first 750 words are written.

What do you think?

I could easily follow this tangent.and.I.won’t.because. I am supposed to be writing:

  • About walking down 19th St with Josh last night about the early days before and after Samuel’s diagnosis.
  • About seeing an educrat last night who long ago insisted it was bad mothering causing Samuel’s behaviors (which were so obviously spectrum anyone with any ounce of knowledge should have known.)
  • Putting myself back in my 2007 shoes – finding the gap of July 31 to October 23 without a blog post. Unheard of in that era. Most eras of my life actually.

My last blog words on July 31, 2007 were “In order for the moonflower to completely open, it has to bathe in darkness. I am not a big fan of the dark. It scares me. Still. Yet I can not walk by this flower without bowing to it, without putting my face close to its opened-by-the-dark heart.”

I must have had the notion the darkness was behind me: my brother had died and I was doing ok with that – only light on the horizon, right?

Blog Silence for all of August. All of September. All of.

Darkness. I bow to it, putting my face closer to the flower that is poison and only opens in the dark.

(My timer goes off. My five minutes are up. I am angry. Now I get to drink my coffee. All will be ok.)

= = =

To review my history in words, visit:

My final blog post before Samuel’s diagnosis:

My nebulous return, including a country western tune for good measure.

 

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. 

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Sometimes There are Topics You Just Don’t Feel Like Talking About. Thank you. No, not that please.

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This 5 minute brain dump… was like the veins in my arm is to a needle. My veins roll and don’t want to submit to the needle. These finicky veins protect me from bleeding AND are problematic.

As always, when I just hold tight to the topic while simultaneously releasing attachment to writing in any particular way, the flow started. Sort of. I’ll be back AND for now, thought it was more important to show the process than worry about perfection.

There is something parents with special needs children often refrain from discussing.

(Can you feel the tightness in my language there? The holding-close of my words? The self-protection?

Grief is not something people usually seek out. It is not like the new car everyone wants or the fancy new phone from Apple or even a new outfit or daytrip.

Grief, in fact, is something we avoid at all costs, so when your child is diagnosed with autism or spina bifida or a learning disability, we would rather pretend we didn’t hear what we were told. We would rather pretend we never noticed anything different about our little one, the one whose life is indelibly connected to ours.

Years ago I worked for county mental health, primarily with people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other severe diagnoses. What many don’t know is the onset of these illnesses is usually somewhere in late adolescence or early adulthood so the individual is “normal” for childhood and high school and then – suddenly, they are not.

I wondered what it would be like to think you have a perfect child only to discover your perfect child has a disease you can’t fix – you may treat it, but you can’t fix it with all your best Mama-Love juju. It won’t seem to matter.

At the times after Samuel’s diagnosis with autism when he was six-years-old I felt some of what I had contemplated although he was much younger.

Even writing this causes me to hesitate. In these first five minutes, I can’t break that barrier in not wanting to talk about “it” – feels like a combination of betrayal, not wanting to step back into those now too tight “shoes” and worry I will somehow offend someone with my thoughts or observations.

If I was my creativity coaching client, I would give myself a time out. “Set your writing aside and come back soon. Don’t leave it completely. Leave it open and come back soon.”

So that’s what I’ll do today.

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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Writing Prompt inspired by Jack Kerouac: Your Memories + Awe = #5for5BrainDump Magic

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Jack Kerouac said, “Write in recollection and amazement of yourself.” This is a territory ripe for self reflection.

Let’s do this.

First, make a list of 5 times in your life when your actions surprised you.

Scan your list to consider and ultimately choose the one time that is the most appealing for you to write about today. Set your timer for five minutes and write, starting with the prompt, “I remember….”

Note: if that first attempt falls flat and your words don’t flow, try a different memory.

Oftentimes there is something in the way of writing from the first memory and the simple act of completing your writing from another memory will ignite writing flow for both.

Bonus: Share your writing experience with at least one other person today.

NOTE: if you would like to participate in a Writing Community, I would love to invite you to be a part of the Word-Love Writing Community I facilitate on Facebook.

 

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

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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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Trust the Page to Hold Your Heart, Always

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

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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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The River: My Restorative Friend & Forever Companion

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“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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Right Before School Starts: When It is Over, Then It Will Be Easier –

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It is the weekend before school starts.

Ten years ago during the weekend before school started Samuel ran away from me, four blocks, in extreme fear insisting he would be in kindergarten not first grade. He ran, I now know, because he didn’t have the language abilities to communicate what was going on in his head.

Samuel – August, 2007

I have tried to imagine what that scrambled language feeling must be like, especially for one so intelligent.\\

It was four months after the death of my brother and I had no idea the amount of crisis after crisis I would soon be facing. I remember chasing Samuel down F street in downtown Bakersfield, not even sure if he knew to stop at red lights, calling to him as he ignored me, running with all his six-year-old might, me running with my tired forty-five year old frame, praying through every footstep.

It was Emma’s birthday and we were at a church luncheon where the children would be visiting their new Sunday school classes. Samuel escaped when I was picking up the mess prior to visiting his new classroom upstairs.  I didn’t cry when I caught up with him and he was completely resigned to checking out the new  Sunday School rooms I was so enthusiastic about.

Yesterday I revisited my notes from that day, to calm my nerves and see the facts as they took place instead of my worry about what took place and the cobwebs surrounding the memory.

After I caught up with him and we both caught our breath, we visited his new room and he declared he was starting first grade. I felt a glimmer of hope I had forgotten and later that night his father took him and his sisters to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate Emma’s birthday. Samuel screamed when the cook at the fancy Japanese restaurant lit the food and fire and he and I they did the celebratory fire. He and I left the restaurant.

We sat in the car, both nervous and upset, both unable to verbalize what we were feeling and thinking.
I wrote in my journal that night,

I am in that weird state of wanting to cry and not being able to cry, not being willing to feel the deep feelings required to squeeze them out, plus it is Emma’s birthday and I still need to get through the cake part.

Emma doesn’t remember it being uncomfortable or unfortunate. It was just Samuel being Samuel and I was just Mommy being Mommy and she was just Emma being Emma.

This year I haven’t gone to school to collect Samuel’s schedule. I haven’t been up for the fight I predict will happen even though last year started without a hitch. The ending was a bit rocky and there was a lot of wonderfulness in between but unfortunately my nerves veer between swaying towers of what actually did happen and what might have happened and might still happen.

I wonder what parents go through whose children don’t have special needs?

I don’t remember my mother ever being nervous at the start of the school year.

I have two more first days of school and then, I’ll be done with K – 12 grade. Four students through high school, three so far started college, one has a master’s degree and one is still attending.

Ten years ago I knew it might be difficult, but I wasn’t prepared for the storm that would hit me and continue to loop back at the start of every school years with several spurts of thunderstorms in between.
This year I question whether I have the advocate dancing in my veins anymore. I’m tired. I’m disillusioned. I’m on the verge of feeling defeated.

Normally I would close an essay with a ra-ra tune of “and everything turned out…” and yet that optimism has been slowly dribbling out of me month by week by day by hour.

Forty-eight hours from now Samuel’s Junior Year in high school will have started.

We will get through whatever needs to get through and I am going to hope, pray, act and believe in the best.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops,

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

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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Tales of a Gratitude Convert: How Writing A Love Letter to My Eyeglasses Caused a HUGE shift

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There was a time when I would describe myself as a “Gratitude Convert”. I had been wayyyy over the top cynical about what I called the whole “phoneys with their attitude of gratitude nonsense!” yet several years ago all that shifted.

I am now a proponent of gratitude from the first hand knowledge of its power in my life. Period.

My practice isn’t what it used to be, though.  I can’t even explain why.  Yesterday and today, I “got” gratitude even more deeply, even as a long time gratitude practitioner. I am thinking I will Re-Start my practice by doing exactly what I did yesterday. Read on to see what I mean:

I read a prompt yesterday when I was in a moment of “I want to write but I just don’t feel inspired by anything!” and voila, my purple eyeglasses caught my attention.  I wrote for sixty seconds. I didn’t come up with anything particularly brilliant, but it – and they – helped me to see into gratitude a bit more deeply.

You know, feeling meaningful gratitude for those every day, mundane items in our lives that we would function less well if we didn’t have them.

I decided to pull the prompt out and write a thank you/love letter to my eyeglasses. Before you read my love letter, find something of yours that is right there, within an arm length. Set it beside or in front of you as you read my love letter.

If you want to feel even more deeply, read my love letter aloud.

Beloved Eyeglasses,

You tirelessly sit on the bridge of my nose, asking for nothing but the occasional cleaning. You help me to see things I could not see without you. Even now, as I get more mature and take you off and leave you places carelessly, you don’t complain.

You never get up and leave me. It is I who consistently leave you.

I feel your generous smile when I put you back up there, straddling my nose, aligning with my ears, fulfilling your sole purpose: to help me see.

Oh, beloved Italian purple eyeglasses, Katherine keeps telling me to get a new pair, that you don’t work as well as you once did for me, that I shouldn’t have to take you off all the time but… I can’t bring myself to switch to a different pair.

Sure, there have been others. My first pair fell into the Delaware River when I was canoeing after my mother warned me, “Don’t go canoeing with your glasses on!” and 

then, there was the time when we sat at the optometrist and I, in a brief moment of prepubescent rebellion told my Mom to just shut up about my going to camp by myself and how brave it was – “Shut up with your praise, Mom!”

You must understand, Purple pair of eyeglasses, this was the back-then equivalent of saying “the “F” word you, Mom…” My glasses have all made me feel braver, I suppose, because with you, I can see.

Without you, everything is blurry.

I remember one spiritual friend of mine insisting glasses are not a real need, that I could use my mind as a visual corrector instead.

I didn’t argue as I don’t usually. I nodded and listened and knew when I have you in my life, my life is simply better.

Oh, beloved purple eyeglasses.

It took this moment for me to see what is right here, in front of my face.

I love you dearly.

Thank you.

Your now even more grateful owner,

Julie

 My eyeglasses are my friend, nearly lifelong friend. Eyeglasses have been a part of my profile since I was in sixth grade and could no longer see the chalk board. I didn’t always wear the same purple pair, but I have always had some always-ready-to-serve eyeglasses close at hand.

I had brief flings with contact lenses and these days, I use them differently, but oh, my glasses. How I love and appreciate the work you do for me.

Writing this love letter meant so much more than just adding them to a list of gratitudes.  I love my gratitude lists and may write them again in the future. For now, I am going to write gratitude love letters to all those mundane, overlooked, underappreciated aspects of my life I normally don’t even notice.

Maybe you’ll even feel compelled to write gratitude love letters along with me.

Try it out. Start with 5 minutes of love for something ordinary.

If you post something – an instagram post, a blog post, anything – please send a link my way. Maybe I’ll end up writing a love letter to YOUR love letter.

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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