Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Gratitude: It doesn’t always look like you expect it to –

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This morning I was scrubbing the toilet. Round and round I went with the brush, round and round and round. 

I remembered when my son was little and the only way I could get him to allow me to wash his ears was to make it into a game. First we would play the game of washing his hands in the kitchen sink. We would dunk them 100 times in the water and then dry them with a washcloth. We would then get another clean washcloth and wash his ears with gusto and joy, he would be laughing and squirming and I would be grateful for making up this game, otherwise his ears would have gotten horrible and I would have felt like a neglectful mother.

I am grateful I am still able bodied to scrub the toilet.

I am grateful I have a toilet to scrub.

I have had an intentional relationship with gratitude for a while now, but at first, it was not entirely wanted. I didn’t believe gratitude was all that useful.

I knew about people who went on and on about “an attitude of gratitude” and usually they looked about as plastic as the Barbie my daughter played with every once in a while.

Then I hit one of my first rock bottoms on the way to a long sequence of rock bottoms.

I started tracking my gratitude every day and posting it on a now defunct social media meets goalsetting website. I did this for 500 days. Now I use gratitude as the closing to my daily writing practice and teach the same method in the writing workshops I lead.

Ending one’s writing practice with gratitude brings the end of the session to an upswing, something that is often a necessity if the writer has processed a lot of garbage and grit and not-so-pleasant stuff – like most people face when they scrub the toilet.

I’m going to ask you about gratitude – and I want you to pause before you throw down the first thing that pops into your mind. 

What are you grateful for that is underneath what you usually say.

If you are grateful for your child, think about what annoys you about the said child and consider what about that annoyance can you claim as gratitude.

If you are grateful for your home, think about a chore that you don’t like so much and think about what about that chore is actually a blessing.

If you are grateful for the sunshine outside your window, remember the last time you got caught, unprepared for the weather – and what brings a smile to your face from that memory.

Now jot one or two of those items in the comments.

Gratitude, when expressed from your deepest gut places, is immensely transformative.

Julie Jordan Scott is the Creator of the Radical Joy of Daily Consistency Course which helps people practice consistency and completion daily in order to experience a more incredible life experience. She also founded the free, private facebook community for writers and creative people at all levels of experience: the Word Love Writing Community. Join us!

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This July: Cultivate Memories that Transform Your Life Experience

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I started this year holding the intention for transformational memories. I would that intention has definitely come to fruition, but they came about in ways I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to happen.

It is valuable to collect memories, especially the transformative ones - so that we may continue to return to them for their love filled and meaning - rich energy. Collecting them now in the middle of summer will help continue the power and add to the initiating intention.

What are transformational memories?

Memories tend to fall into several different categories: the mundane, the memories we want to forget, the bad memories that are burned into our psyche and the mountaintop memories – or big events we work to remember for later in great detail.

Transformative memories are those every day moments that make a lasting mark on who we were in the moment and who we are becoming, still.

Are transformational memories active gratitude, counting your blessings?

2020 may have many transformational memories for you that are certainly not mountaintop memories and they were also not mundane. This is evidence of the “unprecedented times” we keep hearing about and experiencing again and again and again.

Now we have crossed the bridge to 2021 and although the calendar has changed, we are still facing many of the challenges from before. This series is to stay focused on what moves us forward.

Building a creative streak to practice successful completion

It is also an example of a small “streak” or container to hold a 31 Day Experiment in Counting My Blessings everyday that also is a method of completion practice.

I am a believer in practices like this because it gives you a daily completion, so you get practice in what it feels like to accomplish something simple to do and significant to do everyday. It is nothing short of magical. 

Don’t believe it?

Try this for a week and tell me how you’re feeling.

Today in June I am revisiting – Three cool things I noted from January 3:

  1. Samuel started the day shift at his job. No more graveyard. From now on he will work conventional hours and I won’t get to bring his lunch to his bedroom door by special delivery every day. That is a sadness I will just get over.
  2. Katherine got a full-time church job! She will be the Solo Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Sussex, NJ. I told her today I look forward to the day I can travel again and see her in action in her congregation! Update: In September, 2021 I will be moving to Sussex myself for a year to be close to Katherine and Donald AND experience an entirely different life. It will be a valuable experiment I never could have imagined when I set the intention for a year of transformative memories!
  3. I created a bunch of content for the week to come, ahead of time. “Getting ahead” always makes me happy – now I simply need to get better at batching – working on one task theme for a set amount of time. For example. An hour of making graphics. An hour of writing copy, an hour of scrubbing the kitchen. 

This process also helps me as a part of my evening writing practice, something I have wanted for a long time. As soon as I am done with this, I will do some writing in my notebook, some meditation and fall asleep.

The significance of revisiting recent (and not so recent) personal writing to mine for transformational memories.

I am revisiting this writing at the end of June, 2021 and have decided to begin this practice again for the month of July, 2021. To recap between January and now, I will touch base on some of what I have been experiencing.

I will share three transformative memories – and attempt to keep them succinct.

  1. My father died on April 18. From that moment, so many things happened and the memories have been very sad and also very filled with love.
  2. I learned the Valley Fever I have been carrying disseminated, which means it spread beyond my lungs. This could be very dangerous AND I have been receiving ongoing treatment AND I have never felt more confident in my ability to manage my health. I was filled with stress for a lot of time from January through whenever it was I had a biopsy-turned-drainage (I think in March? Since Dad died, a lot of time has had a very different meaning and context.)
  3. I have been getting my writing mojo back, slowly and surely. Poetry is back, working on my book projects is back, writing in my notebook daily is back. I realized in getting it back I was in quite a state of languishing for a long time. This is definitely transformative.

It is easier to see Transformational Memories from a distance, but what does naming 3 good things from any given day tell you?

I like to look at collecting transformative memories (and transformative memories-to-be like this: it is as if my future self and present self are having a party. Since my life in 2021 has been in a surprising uproar, there are so many times when I have said to myself with a lot of incredulity, “I am so grateful my past self was looking out for me!”

It is in the tiny, day to day things that the transformative memories happen. It is only from a distance that we can see what the whole picture looks like.

With that in mind, tell me:

What are 3 Good Things from your day? When July 1 hits, I will return here every day. I hope to see you here, too. This will be informal, flexible and fun.

Are you ready to count your blessings? Let us know in the comments!

Julie Jordan Scott is the Creator of the One Small Shift Course which helps people practice consistency and completion daily in order to experience a more incredible life experience. She came to this conclusion after almost dying and coming back to true healing by writing 377 consecutive haiku… and a lot more along her way to building that streak! To find out more about this program, visit this link, here.

She has been a Life Purpose and Creativity Coach since 1999. She has taught workshops in college classrooms, hospitals, teleclasses and webinars with participants across the world.

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Gratitude: Ordinary Beautiful & You

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What am I grateful for in 2018?

I’m staring across the room, looking at a candle I lit about a half hour ago as I settled in to see who I might connect with: what like hearted people, people with whom I might build a positive relationship in order to make this world a better place through writing and the creative process.

Now I am quiet, attempting a go at naming only three things I am grateful for in 2018.

Only three. I am setting the timer to write for five minutes or else I might get stuck trying to make this perfect, which it will be no matter what, anyway.

  1. I am grateful for tenacity. In early Summer things looked ridiculously bleak. After the year started with such promise, but July, I was despondent. It wasn’t until the last six weeks or so that I felt consistently better about myself and about the year.
  2. I am grateful I started reaching out again to different people thanks in great part because of local groups and people using social media. I found KWESI and my new Cameroonian family and I took that extraordinary day trip to the Tejon Ranch artist in residence day that was so spectacular my mood was bright for weeks afterwards. That was a really big thing I almost missed but I hung in there and did it. So grateful.
  3. I am beyond words grateful to everyone who is participating in Bridge to the New Year. I have cried repeatedly to Paula who started it with me because I have wanted to do something like this for years, literally, and in doing it I feel like I am shedding a lot of excess ugly thoughts and no longer constructive attachments. I am looking forward to more people showing up in the last two weeks of December and am excited to be adding a week of brain dumping into the mix, too. Every day in every way, better and better and better.

I purposefully didn’t add “big things” (except for The Bridge) because I know gratitude best in the small moments, the day to day, the extraordinary ordinary. A lit candle, the voice of my son asking me for something or another, a clean desk. Grateful. For you reading? Thank you, more than you know.

What are you grateful for?

Our group is ready for you, even if all you do is read along with us your presence is valued.

Click here  to connect with us and become involved in the group  and/or  the upcoming livestreams.

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The Why it Happened or the Reason Isn’t What Matters, Responding Now is What Matters: Write What You Need to Say

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I realized something today, something somewhat simple – well, absolutely simple actually. I’m sort of embarrassed to even say it AND I realize in saying it there is power so here goes.

I have spent far too much time looking at who I was “before” rather than being present with who I am right now – and how the who I am right now is far more valuable to the world right now than who I was then.

Ten years ago I had a domino effect of horrible, lifetime movie inspiring themes take place within a matter of months and they effectively shattered me. I was crushed, defeated and fell to my knees with my face hitting the ground in one of those slo-mo fight scene sort of ways.

I attempted to get up and didn’t. And repeat. And repeat. And probably repeated again in that I got distracted and then I got scared and then I got scared of the distraction and while I could still talk a good game and though I kept writing, I didn’t keep taking action that made my work profitable – certainly not at a sustainable level and not as it was ten years prior.

I felt hopelessly stuck.

I talked about it in therapy and got lost in more fear, more breakthroughs but still not forward progress toward sustainable work.

This year my life took another hit and if I didn’t make changes I couldn’t feed my kids kind of crisis I knew something had to give and I fell into yet deeper depression, this worse (if there is such a thing) than I did ten years ago.

Perhaps worst of all is I managed to slowly drip away all sheds of optimism I once carried, so I couldn’t look to light anymore because I couldn’t see light anymore.

About two months ago I called the mental health crisis hotline a couple times, just needing to have the comforting feeling that someone cared about me because I had found my way back into the space where I didn’t want to trouble people in my immediate circles with the depths of my depression and I doubted they cared or if they did care, I doubted they had the resources or the patience to deal with me.

Last Thursday my new therapist asked “What caused you the most pain in the last ten years?” or something like that and I was “struck dumb” as the saying goes in that I couldn’t speak.

It was like a noose was around my neck, pulling tighter and tighter and the pain from my throat became increasingly unbearable with the gravity of the question and my inability to point to one thing immediately just that the question hurt too much to respond to and I didn’t want to start talking because I might start crying and not be able to stop and I am just. so. tired. of. crying.

Odd thing is I’ve been slowly feeling better.

I can’t point to a why or an a-ha moment or a medicine or a new diet or exercise routine. I have been broadcasting daily, I have been communicating with people and leading #5for5BrainDump and I even have a schedule and some pay-to-play programs scheduled which people are interested in taking with me.

I’ve been writing for about ten minutes now. Haven’t edited but my timer went off and I kept going. I know it is best if I stop and come back so I think I will do that, after I re-read and come up with some “moral to this story.”

I’ll just wrap back around to where I started.

I realized today I need to stop looking back at that ten-years-ago story. It is a chapter, it isn’t the whole story. What I am doing now is finally getting up, finally shaking the mud off my face and realizing the mud has kept me safe to a certain extent.

I could talk about my cancer or other such chatter and I won’t, except for what I just said.

Now, and the actions I take in it, are what matters. Being charming, silly, passionate, pull-out-the-soapbox-whenever-the-right-mood-strikes-me JJS is what matters.

Some people will think this writing is self- indulgent and silly. I believe it is helpful to whomever has read to the end. It isn’t for me to judge, it is just for me to hit publish. Which I’m doing now.

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.

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.Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterest

Secret Hint to Making The Most from Your Brain Dump Experience

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Two memorable conversations keep popping into my head as I begin to write:

  1. Never go to bed angry.
  2. Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

I don’t know that I whole heartedly agree (or disagree, actually) with either of them.

I agree, it is better for our overall feelings of positivity and gratitude if we fall asleep in a state of contented curiosity rather than angry lament, but sometimes the energy of anger clears out a lot of gunk – or is that just our habitual way of experiencing the world?

I could talk (write) myself into a corner with this one and perhaps that is part of the point my subconscious and writing practice is making here.

We make it a practice to complete our brain dumps and free flow writing with thirty seconds of gratitude and praise about anything: what you may have discovered and uncovered during writing or anything at all. The point is to finish the writing practice on an emotional upswing.

If we always ended our writing practice feeling like garbage most of us would give up our writing practice. It is natural to want to feel better.

We don’t want to feel like crap, we inherently want to feel well or at least better than when we sat down to write.

Maybe part of your gratitude IS saying you are sorry.

Love and forgiveness go hand-in-hand as do love and gratitude.

Admitting our weaknesses – is a pathway to wholeness and gratitude.

(And the timer tells me five minutes is up – so this concludes today’s entry about one of my favorite secrets to always ending on an upbeat note, thus preserving the practice that is such a grand, sustaining partner in my life.)

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.

 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.Facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterest

This Exact Gratitude: Origin Unknown – Result? Remarkable

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The date of this exact gratitude list that gave birth to this (nearly over) mini-retreat/soulful social media quiet time is unclear. I remember sitting in my car, scribbling the list  it – but exactitude? It won’t matter in the long run. It doesn’t even matter now, a week or so later.

I wrote:

I am grateful for the ability to communicate.

I am grateful for the beauty of words.

I am grateful for the people who read the words I toss, cry and mindfully set down upon blue lined paper.

I am grateful for whatever it is I manage to create today (because I know I will. Eventually anyway.)

I am grateful to know I will not judge quantity or quality or relevance of the words and objects I create today.

I am grateful I am able to move my pen across the page. I am grateful words fall off the tip so effortlessly.

I am grateful there are papers to catch the words I write in cursive (and it looks pretty!) I’m grateful for pencil sharpeners.

I am grateful for crape myrtle trees and finches and mourning doves.

I am grateful for enthusiastic young people (I sound like an old farm-hand) who just got promoted who still have a vision for their lives that includes accepting whatever happens with grace and building upon those circumstances, whichever, with grace.

Today I am grateful for the years I have been writing and sharing consistently. That “old stuff” is so current, so accessible and ready.

It created the plan and execution of that plan. Edit to evolve and the mighty, beneficent yes shines through.

My mission is to daily “gather our word-love community to collaborate and create a ritual, path, method to save/preserve/curate and continue to breathe heart into our collective life work.”

Daily, recognize and claim my place as a singular and sacred expression of life itself and a gift from the divine to the world – meant for taking action with passionate gratitude to join the flow because I know this world is a place of healing, wonder and wholeness where all know each one is welcome.

= = =

Since I re-visited this time of creative process last Wednesday, I have repeated these declarations and oh, have they ever helped me not only in my daily direction, but also in casting my future and present vision.

This exact gratitude list may have unknown origins, but the continued growth and rebirth as a result of gratitude is blanketing my life. It is grounding me and lifting me toward heaven.

It’s been a while since I felt like this.

Today I am remembering and standing on this strength to continue as I declare daily: I recognize and claim my place as a singular, unique and sacred expression of life itself and a gift from the divine to the world – meant for taking action with passionate gratitude to join the flow because I know this world is a place of healing, wonder and wholeness where all know each one is welcome.

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 above 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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