Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Make Your World Better By Becoming an Intentional Yay-Sayer

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Let’s replace naysaying – taking away people’s joyful visions and instead become active yay-sayers: celebrating accomplishments through joyful acknowledgment.

What has your experience of naysayers been like? The practice of naysaying can be like pouring poison over my ideas. Depending on whether or not I am having a good day or not, someone sneering down their nose with a critique can shut off my positive, forward moving flow almost immediately.

Recently in Brene Brown’s book, Atlas of the Heart, I read about freudenfreude: experiencing joy from other people’s joy. I did my own research and found a fascinating article from Dr. Catherine Chambliss from Ursinus College. She wrote, “Schadenfreude refers to the unattractive human tendency to take pleasure in the misery of others. Freudenfreude describes its opposite, the lovely enjoyment of another person’s success.”

Let’s fill our day with freudenfreude and yaysaying. When someone says something they are happy or proud or delighted by, I challenge you to respond with yay-saying and curiosity. First, share sincere praise and celebration. Follow it up with a question about the success.

Here are some questions to use and modify for your purposes.

* Your idea is so interesting to me – how did you come up with it?

* Oh, you must feel so great. What will you do next to go further with this?

* I love how you told this story. Do you have any advice or wisdom so I may learn just a tiny bit from your success?

These questions both intentionally share the joy of the others accomplishment and they also may help you determine if this is a person you would like to develop a deeper friendship with, too. If they don’t want to share the tiniest bit of how they got there or what they’re dreaming of next, perhaps you don’t want to spend more time with them after all.

On the other hand, if they are friendly and generous to share their joy a bit, this is a signal that the yay-saying may indeed become reciprocal. In the future, they will be more likely to be a person who understands the value of freudenfreude and shower you with joyful praise, too.

We need more of this in the world, don’t we?

Speaking of which, what have you accomplished lately? I want to share your joy!

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

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Stopping the Slide Into Feeling Worse

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Yesterday I felt the familiar slide into the blues – and I am using that term loosely. I don’t want to say I felt the well worn path toward a downward depressive spiral though that would be accurate, too. 

I don’t want to give depression that power.

I asked myself a personal power question:

“What can I do tomorrow morning to keep myself moving toward feeling-better-than-right-now?”

I didn’t mean take on something huge like walk five miles at a top speed or similar physical feat, I simply knew myself well enough that the tilting down of the weight of the blues  could land me flat on my face in mud or dust or worse.  I knew I single-handedly possess the ability to take an action in the direction of better.

I have the capacity to choose to move forward, with love – or lurch toward the ground in despair.

This isn’t always true – I was on the edge of a breaking point.

Mental health has plagued me over the years. My optimism tends to confuse people who don’t understand how this goofy, happy go-lucky whistling, happy song-singing, tree-hugging poet can shut herself off from others for no obvious reason.

This morning as I started a focus-mate session, I was surprised by the flat affect that still hovered within me. I am grateful I witnessed it – as the short-fix feel better medicine of taking action: walking on the nearby wood-duck trail and hugging an old oak tree is the beginning of feeling better, not the finish line to feeling better.

When the focus mate session was over, I mentioned to my partner I couldn’t find my spotify off button and was concerned my “Cozy Christmas Instrumental” playlist might be a bit much. On the contrary, my focus mate partner loved it. We both ended the session smiling. I know I was smiling.

Human connection, acceptance and cozy instrumentals all make me feel better.

Have you ever taken the time to notice what lifts you up when you feel the blues sweeping into the room?

Do you or does anyone you love experience dark days (or longer days that stretch to weeks, months or more?)

It is important we normalize these moments of sadness and don’t shame ourselves or others or pretend them away. 

You could choose to start a conversation by asking about it: “What might make you feel better?” and be prepared for “Nothing” or “I don’t know.”

Besides tree hugging and walking by myself or writing, having other people simply be with me is a big help. Talking isn’t necessary, but presence feels really good. Listening to or watching TV, reading books side-by-side. Silently sipping tea and looking out the window, all are better with someone beside me – also quiet without pushing me to feel better so that they may feel better, too.

James Clear wrote, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” While I agree with the energy and meaning of this quote, I look at it more like every action I choose to take builds self-trust and provides evidence I am worthy of continuing to move forward, with love and do the creative work I was put here to do.

Today, I am feeling better. I am not dancing on the rooftops gleefully and I am mindfully present to my circumstances. There is no hyperbole, no numbing out and no racing throughts.

It could have so easily slid into much worse.

Julie JordanScott is a multipassionate creative who delights in inviting others into their own fullhearted, artistic experience via her creativity coaching individually or in groups, courses and workshops. To receive inspiring content and videos weekly and find out more about Coaching, Courses, Challenges and what’s going on in the Creative Life Midwife world? Subscribe here:

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Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Shift Happens so New Perspectives May Bloom

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Today I woke up with a sense of urgency and direction, that is after I hit snooze on my alarm when it went off at 5 am. My routine is pretty standard:

  1. Meditation: A 7 minute exercise including choosing what I will focus on during the day and a visualized “dress rehearsal” for the day ahead.
  2. Full body stretching that starts with lying in bed and end in a position to leap forward, up and out. I don’t know how I got by without this brief, five minute stretching routine.
  3. Writing, stream of consciousness style, in response to what I wrote the night before in my pre-bedtime “jots” which I also see as “notes to my highest self.”
  4. Skin care/hygiene/water/dress and out the door.

Today was the first time in weeks I completed all the steps.

It ought not surprise me how the word “excellence” floated into my brain during meditation. I almost balked as I breathed in and out, in and out.

“Excellence! Pah! Bah! Excellence? Ummmm, nah. Not that.”

What happened? Without thinking about it my perspective shifted and I promptly created excellence.

I left the house on a very happy note and as I drove to this morning’s choice of walking spaces I allowed the morning invocation of the Gayatri Mantra to further shape my day.

Something about doing this mantra not only makes me smile it keeps me smiling all morning long. By the time I arrived at the trail, I was so filled with excitement and positive energy I couldn’t wait to hike.

I went farther than I have ever walked on this particular trail even though I could have wasted my energy on worrying about whether or not I would be late to pick up Samuel since I hiked so far. 

I wasn’t late to pick up Samuel. I was right on time. I was still smiling. Both the moment and I were the symbolic personification of excellence.

I shifted my perspective and naturally floated into excellence not because I was trying hard.

I shifted into excellence because of my attitude, my willingness to complete the steps of my practice and allowed my natural propensity of excellence to take over the naysaying side of me that has been known to persist during the past few years.

There are so many benefits to hiking, some of which I couldn’t have set as goals when I stared because I didn’t know they were an issue.

Downward slopes frightened me at first.

Ten days ago on the Umal Trail near Greenhorn Summit I walked up a steep slope and on the way down if it wasn’t for children I heard coming from a further direction, I wouldn’t have gone so quickly.

a cottonwood tree with multi colored leaves stands tall at the Panorama Vista Preserve

2020 has been a year I have spent more time outside than I have in many years. This is a bonus that cannot be measured entirely accurately.

Scientists at Harvard University studying a growing field called ecotherapy have illustrated a a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced stress, anxiety, and depression and they don’t know why exactly being outdoors has a positive shift in how we feel emotionally. 

This year has been seen as a problematic year. Indeed it has in many ways – their are a lot of people grieving and the unrest has been tragic.

Not discounting what has been horrible, I have begun to be willing to celebrate 2020.

This shift in perspective feels good, doesn’t it?

Julie JordanScott helps creative people transform their lives from decent and “fine” into a shifted, remarkable life when they choose to make one small shift to inspire a renewed life of fulfillment, hope, satisfaction and whatever their desire may be underneath their previously ordinary life.

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I don’t want to, but I do it anyway. Everyday.

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Most mornings I wake up and think I ought to just sleep in. I can skip a day: just this time no one will notice. It’s a pandemic, no one is paying attention, no one really cares.

Then something lifts me up and out of bed and says “Get up, get out, create.” or as I said a long time ago, “Show up. Look up. Translate.”

When I codified my plan to do something daily that made me feel better – created guidelines for my personal creative practice – since I stuck with what I codified my life experienced has changed radically for the better.

Today I realized how my seeing has become so much more alert since I started my daily morning haiku practice. I think even more so since I chose to write sunrise haiku.

This slight change in schedule – on purpose – has allowed me into each day as it begins. It feels like an initiation into a society who are all in on a secret the people who are asleep all around us don’t have a chance to get.

Just as the sunrises at Lake Ming in Bakersfield. Ducks in the lake swim as the sky brightens.

Seriously: today I sat at a table at Lake Ming and had my phone in its tripod and the rays of sunrise made visible through the camera reached to me as I watched and wrote, as if it was saying thank you.

People get caught up – I get caught up – in anger and frustration and a sense of incredulity when I witness even the slightest taste of the horrors swirling around us as of late.

The sunrise reaching out to me – in gratitude – and my “new seeing” is a feeling of communion I haven’t felt since holding my newborns or when I was a little girl in the back seat of our turquoise country squire watching in awe as I believed the stars were actually following me, specifically. That’s what it felt like on that magical evening so long ago.

This simple act of writing haiku every day has helped me to reconnect with everyday miracles and wonder. It wasn’t an instant awareness with the first few haiku, but now – a day doesn’t go by without a surprise.

Julie JordanScott typing a love poem on the edge of a foothill of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Julie JordanScott typing a love poem on the edge of a foothill of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is a writer, a poet performer, a Creativity Coach, A Social Media Whiz and a Mother of three. One of her greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet. 

Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in 2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. Click the graphic below to join the Private Facebook Group to join the conversation!

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‘Tis the Season for Love: How Will You Spend Your February?

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Last year in early February I was approached by Amanda with House of Flowers here in Bakersfield to hang out in her flower shop and type personalized love poetry and donate the money people paid for the poetry to local art organizations.

If you have known me for more than a minute you would say “This has you written all over it!”

This definitely sounded like it would be a fun adventure,  but I wasn’t prepared for the Pop Up Poetry Shoppe experience to include such transforming conversations for the people who asked me to write a poem for their loved one.

Writing personalized poetry isn’t new to me. In the past there have been several times when I crafted various forms of personalized poetry for people. Often times it was connected to a mission or cause and soemtimes it was simple to create distinctive times of connection.

Most notable was writing Soul Poetry with the intention to connect deeply with the subject of the poem and then write what I saw, felt and experienced of their person – their soul – and crafted it into a poem.

I knew this would be different because most of the time the object of the poem wasn’t there, but the love for that person stood in front of me as told via answering questions and sharing snippets of stories. These moments of collaboration helped me to get a poet’s view of the one they love and the relationship they shared.

I sat among flowers and wrote poems for quite an eclectic group of people from couples who had been married for decades to people who were platonic friends – several “Galentine’s” and one for two friends where at least one of them was beginning to hope for more than a platonic friendship.

I’ve often wondered how that one worked out.

I wrote a poem from a Mom to the baby she was pregnant with at the time and an auntie for her niece and nephew. One asked for a poem of love to herself from the Universe – with my voice tuning into what the Universe had to say.

This year I was asked to return to my typewriter at the flower shop to craft more love via poetry. I gladly said YES!

I realized there may be others in my wider, outside of Bakersfield sphere who would be interested in experiencing this time of deep connection and soulfulness crafted into love poetry especially for them or for their loved one. If this describes you, please visit our Pop Up Poetry Page here for complete details.

One of my favorite romantic poets, Robert Browning, married a woman who was eight years older than he (uncommon in the 19th Century). Her name was Elizabeth Barrett, another romantic British Poet whose name became Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

One of his famous lines of poetry was one he wrote as he woo’ed Elizabeth Barrett. It goes like this, “Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”

The best poem for your loved one has yet to be written. This Valentine’s Day, take a moment to write one or if you would rather collaborate to bring your words of love to life I would be delighted.

If you have questions, please leave a comment below or send me an email at juliejs at creativelifemidwife.com

I can hear your poem in the future right now.

Can you hear it, too?

Julie JordanScott is a multi-creative who lives in Bakersfield with her daughter, Emma, in an eighty-year-old house with two palm trees in her yard. She loves writing and reading poetry, sitting by the Kern River and learning new quirky facts about literary grannies and what makes people tick. Her current project is finding ways to end the secret epidemic facing the US – with 60% of Americans affected by it. This love poetry project is another way she is working to eradicate loneliness – more information may be found on how you may be involved in the cause at EradicateLoneliness.com

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Ta-Da! Celebrate What Gets Done

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In December we offered the Bridge to the New Year experience and one of the big a-ha’s was my evening writing practice that evolved into Bullet Journal for Beginners starting with writing a To-Do List Daily and during the day, taking notes in a “Ta-Da” list, Rumi style.

As a creative, it is important to never stop growing.

How do you want to grow creatively in your work life?

Yes – not only in your art life, in your Business or Work or Education life! .

I have this idea to take my Beginner Bullet Journaling and add it with the pleasure of a simple evening writing practice that can make it not only fun for me, but for you, too. Have you watched the video yet?

It will inspire you!

Let’s try it out, together, I’m thinking in a 5 Day Mini-Challenge starting next week. What do you think? If I get enough interest, I’ll put together a few PDF’s and some simple quick hands-on methods and we’ll do some quicky daily method of check in from Monday – Friday and see what happens.

Please comment to let me know your interest.

As I mention on the video, below are some links of places to find me talking about this new practice on social media. It’s genesis was in the Bridge to the New Year: I will link up to that post last.

On Instagram I have Photos, Videos and Lots of InstaStories and Highlights with numerous tips surrounding To-Do’s and Ta-Da’s and all sorts of writing.

On YouTube, you will find writing and video and over a decade’s worth of stream of consciousness me being me and even some ancient “Mommy and Samuel” show and my children when they were little. At the top though there are Journal and Writing playlists to explore along with Poetry and Writing Prompts and some Video/Livestream How-to’s.

I also have a Word Love Writing Community on Facebook you may want to join. It is less formal, a place to “hang out and be” without the need to put on a fancy face… I like to say “Sweat pants and eating pizza straight from the box” is perfectly acceptable here.

Here’s the post where we got started in Bridge to the New Year.

Take Delight in a Daily Practice

Julie JordanScott is a creative life coach, writer, poet, Mama extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet. To set up a complimentary exploratory session, please visit here.

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Move Forward: Endings, Letting Go and New Beginnings

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What Ended?

This has been a year of loss. January dawned with a full slate of cool activities here in Bakersfield for me and some opportunities reaching beyond. It felt like I was back: showing up in the media, in public speaking, in gigs, in so many activities that enriched me.

It felt like the fogginess of 2017 was lifting, all that struggle and fear about getting everything perfectly together and helping Emma readjust and all of that was behind me and this would finally be my shot to be back to who I used to be, just a better revised version.

December 2017 had a couple glitches – one notable one I believe is almost a year old to the day from now but I lived through that, primarily unknown to others around me as it was too horrible to share the “what happened” so, as is often my practice, I didn’t.

I just realized it was also my second round of chemo. I tend to edit those episodes out as somehow irrelevant. Interesting. It was only on my forehead so I changed my hairstyle so as not to alarm people with what happens to skin when it is subjected to chemo lotion and moved along into January, 2018 with a well rehearsed smile on my face.

Some of the groups and people did not fail me, including VDay and One Billion Rising.

I was the featured poet at an Open Mic early in January and I was startled at the numerous not-so-great amidst that great and then things started to slide. Once again, I’m opting not to share details which I trust you will respect.

One after another, organizations I have respected, raised money for, spoken up passionately about, caused harm or damage to the people I love. I am not even thinking of myself here, I am thinking of my loved ones. Again, because these are organizations I have long supported and still believe in, I remained silent.

So what ended was my naivete. What ended was my belief that just because organizations seemed to share my values and my causes, they may also be tainted by fear and won’t do what’s in alignment with what they purport because of mismanagement or other reasons but worst of all, when a client raises her hand to say “Hey, what about?” they care more about covering themselves than following up with the client.

What am I letting go of this year?

I am letting go of expectations.

I am reminded it is individuals who make the biggest difference. Individuals are less likely to hide behind the type of fear that sits atop board rooms and bureaucracies. I saw this when I worked for local government and in 2018, I saw it very strongly with organizations with mission statements directly in opposition with how I witnessed them carry out their work in practice.

Again, I don’t expect organizations and institutions to be the ones to come forward boldly and in a satisfying manner. I don’t expect individuals to, either.

I do continue to have high expectations for myself, however.

I am late with this posting.

I wrote and rewrote and wrote again.

I am glad now to mark it complete.

I will do my best to not discuss these matters further and do not desire to open these chapters up, again. I am simply choosing more consciously and will continue to steward my time as I move forward, with love.

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Art Every Day Month Creativity Hub

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Beloveds – This is the place where I will have an ongoing list of links for my adventures in Art Every Day Month – a fun exploration of Creativity hosted annually by Leah Piken Kolidas.

I have no idea how this will manifest or take form – so for now, we have pretty much a blank space. The idea of this completely delights me.

Watch here as November is born, lived and then brought to conclusion.

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The Risk of Reliving and Recreating One’s Life Narrative

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I originally wrote this more than six months ago. I thought I had published it but apparently I didn’t AND I didn’t follow through so… now  is the time.

In two-and-a-half weeks I am returning to where my memory of my life narrative began, so I will be consciously prepping for that journey here: out in the open.

My inner-seventh-grader says “ewww. I am an embarrassment.”

What I’m taking on is risky. I keep thinking, “Normal people wouldn’t do this. This is a private thing, possibly embarrassing and ugly.”

Maybe it is because it is risky and has a high possibility of getting ugly that I am doing it.

I have given myself an assignment: to rewrite the narrative that has held me back from expressing my unique gifts and talents so that others may benefit and experienced transformed lives as a result.

I will be writing my way through these experiences using the #5for5BrainDump method for the next few weeks. This morning via text the idea started taking form.

The other night I had a rather distressing moment with one of my daughters and words were said and other words were not said and I could have fallen into a deep muddy mess of well-worn recordings of all my short comings.

Instead I wrote,

“Yes, I am ashamed of my behavior. I said things without thinking and no, I am not proud.”

I took several breaths before I wrote, “I am a mother who makes mistakes some of the time. I am a mother who most of the time does the best she can for her children. I am usually quite conscious with my words and actions and only want the best for not only my children but all children. I fall short from time-to-time.

“I wish I had never said those hurtful words. Unfortunately they were spoken, they were received, and they will be remembered with more electrical charge than more quiet, soft moments of every day love and guidance.

“Today, I am choosing to remember moments of love and focus on creating more of them.”

Later in the night after our argument, I walked into my daughters room and put my hand on her back to feel her breathing. It is a ritual I’ve lived through with each of my children – each of my children who lived.

Today I am choosing to remember moments of love and focus on creating more of 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 or to request she speak at your next event, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

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I Know the Letters Are There: The Inner Rumblings of a Writer

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I remembered writing this piece as my mind-heart-spirit took a few deep breaths into the #7MagicWords challenge from Marisa Goudy : I wrote the original poetic essay in 2003. In reviewing Marisa’s prompt now I realize I got it… wrong. Yet it is entirely right.

I’m joining the challenge three days late. On the first day we were to uncover a word that integrates and on day two a word that earths. Mine… integrates. Definitely. I’m sticking with it: LETTERS.

I just completed a modest rewrite on this essay. It is ripe with letters.  I took a joyful classroom memory that integrates my childhood with my now – my passion ever present, continuing.

Here I am, the 7th grade me as seen by the early forties me.

Did a hush fill the dark room as a storm gathered outside or was it in my imagination? I can’t remember exactly.

In the back of the room my fingers dashed steadily across the keyboard, pounding away at the manual typewriter as it spoke clankety clankety clankety ding!

A woosh replaced the clanks as I swiped the typewriter carriage with all the zest of the former girl’s arm wrestling champion from Linden Avenue School, now graduated to the Middle School that sat proudly on top of a circular driveway. The yellow brick walls were sunny with optimism despite the rain drops increased force against the windows providing a counterpoint rhythm to my typing.

Did the ceiling evaporate and a ray of light suddenly connect my hands to heaven?

Something had shifted. It had broken through the physical plane and into my thirteen-year-old being. I had the skill to type without looking at the keyboard thanks to the Tap Tapnick poster on the wall and hours and hours of diligent practice so I was able to scribe the words without looking at my hands. I could close my eyes or stare straight ahead or above the chalk board and continue typing.

I knew the letters were there.

There was never any question.
There were other children in the room tapping away at their machines. I know there was other activity. I remember Mr. Seymour, my English teacher, walking into the room to visit with Mrs. Behrman, the
typing teacher. Right in the midst of the bustle and the buzz of thirty or so typewriters all clanking and dinging and swiping, I was not there at all and I knew the letters were there.

All I had to do was connect my mind, soul and heart to my fingers and words burst forth from knitting the letters together, stitching them into a patchwork of meaning. I was able to translate all the emotion that was rumbling through my early adolescent self onto the page so that the world of the Glen Ridge Middle School and beyond would be able to understand what it felt like to feel so incredibly alive, so
incredibly buoyant.

From reading my words I knew they would be able to understand what it meant to tap into the power of God while writing.

The Topic was simply “Music”. The composer was for the first time a life force greater than my own.

I had tapped into the Zone, the Flow, the Space in the Center where everything is conceived, birthed and buried.

I knew the letters were there. And so was I. And all was well, even if no one ever read those words pumping out of me, the letters were in front of me, within me, surrounding me.

All was well and would be well. I knew the letters were there.

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.Facebooktwitterpinterest