Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Healing What Wasn’t Said “Back Then”

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In Spring of 2023 I said something aloud which is what I ought to have said about this haiku project long I did.

“I’m sort of on a pilgrimage” I said to a stranger.

While it was true of that Spring day and it was true of writing haiku for 377 days and hugging trees for 377 days (and beyond) and writing love notes for 377 days saying “I’m sort of on a pilgrimage” is easier to say to strangers or people you doubt you will see again. 

Even more odd was this person I didn’t recognize is someone whose history intersects with mine but I never would have known if we hadn’t had a conversation, inspired by me taking note of the writing on his t-shirt.

On that Spring Day in 2023 I was in a garden I visited regularly as a child. It is a public garden I used to walk by on my way to school. Honeysuckle grew on its fences, a delight to taste at the opposite end of the block where I spent 14 formative years. 

I decided to go there randomly on a recent Saturday because I was being called to deepen my healing – why or how or because – the details are unclear.  I simply knew that in order to get the work done I was supposed to visit the place where my memories began.

Where was the wild path?

Long ago invitation to fear –

Now step beyond it

“I was afraid of everything as a little kid,” I said to the man wearing the interesting t-shirt. “I was even afraid of lightning bugs.”

I rolled my eyes and looked away, more than slightly embarrassed.

 This was less than ten minutes into our conversation. He had spoken my childhood story, “Are you Sue Jordan’s sister?” referring to my older sister. She was the personified antithesis of being afraid of a lightning bug.

“I was afraid of the gully at Carteret Park,” I continued. I was on a roll. 

Somehow, I held onto my dignity enough to not mention my first near death moment choking on a gum ball outside the now long-gone Grand Union.  

The adult me, though, authentically spoke of being on a pilgrimage even though I had no idea why those words flowed out of my mouth with authority, but a soulful lightbulb went off in my head as I spoke to them.

These 377 Goals weren’t goals at all. They weren’t challenges or projects or something to check off a to-do list.

The haiku writing and tree-hugging and the daily love note greetings from my everyday life were all post near-death pilgrimages back to being fully alive. 

These experiences of pilgrimage left evidence that said, “I am still here. I am alive. I am curious. I am not done with this life and this life is not done with me.”

These haiku say “I am devoted to continuing. I am devoted to holding life and all the love I can inside these measurable, meaningful, love-drenched everyday containers of creativity.”

Patricia Hampl said “The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That’s a pilgrimage — a mind full of journey.”

Inhale: look at what is in front of you (first line)

Hold: Allow yourself to bring the message of the image in front of you into your body (middle line)

Exhale: Let the image go – hold the clearest bits in language for transcription! (third line)

Hold: Check in – repeat or complete? Sometimes you may even break rules.

You, who is reading

With a body, breath and soul

Crack your heart open

Haiku as a Verb

Question: Have you ever taken a pilgrimage? Whether you have or haven’t, where would you go if you were creating a pilgrimage?

I’m so grateful you are here, reading and look VERY forward to deepening our connection.

Woman at her desk, drinking coffee, preparing to blog.
Julie Jordan Scott

🌟 Creative Life Coach & Muse Cultivator

 🎨 | Award-Winning Writer/Actor/Storyteller

🌱 | Empowering Your Second Act

🎉| New Courses/Programs soon!

🎁   Your presence here makes me feel grateful. 

✍🏻I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.

🎯 My aim is to create content here that inspires and instructs – if there is ever a topic you would like for me to explore, please reach out and tell me. My ultimate goal is to create posts, videos and more that speak to your desires as well as mine because where these two intersect, our collaborative, joyful energy ignites into a fire of love, light and passionate creativity.

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“Writing Through the Silence: How I Faced the Dark to Find My Voice Again”

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Several years ago I bribed myself to get my writing done. On that day in 2017 I earned a cup of coffee by writing about what I didn’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 500 words or 5 minutes are spent writing.

What do you think?

I quickly jotted moments in time from that painful era, but I felt extra fussy about what was coming up.

 They were tangentially about what I didn’t want to write about – they would be, if I allowed them, to be a path back to writing. It was as if I wasn’t really listening.

I thought I could write…

  • 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.)

Or I could choose to investigate, try, explore

  • 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.

I dove into the last option.

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

What I didn’t know was August, September and October did nothing but get worst.

Blog Silence for all of August. All of September. All of those early Fall months were filled with darkness.

It’s about time I trust myself enough to I bow to the darkness, putting my face closer to the metaphorical flower that is poisonous and only opens in the dark.

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 Stop the Stuck: Cultivating the Abundance of Your Inner Muse Group Coaching Program coming soon –

 To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

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Who Is Julie Jordan Scott & What are her July Goals?

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First: I don’t normally talk about myself in third person, but here I am and here we are – and I am incredibly grateful you cared enough to visit this blog post and hopefully let me know what resonated the most with you in my introduction and in my goals.

We’re going to do a 5 + 5 approach: 5 Unconventional Facts About Me and 5 July Goals

Facts, just the facts about me, ma’am by means of introduction:

  1. I am the fourth of six children. My two younger brothers have died so since December of 2021, I have been the youngest child which has been quite strange (at least for me.)
  2. I enjoy doing consistency projects like writing Writing Haiku for 377 Days or Hugging Trees for 377 days. It has been a while since I have taken on a new big consistency project so this month I have a top secret experiment in a shorter term to see if I still get as much joy from these activities.
  3. My middle name is Ann, which I always thought was exceptionally plain and ordinary. I did think for a long time that one of my heroines, Julie Andrews, was actually Julie Ann Drews, so this made my middle name much less unfortunate.
  4. Rivers, lakes and the ocean are among my natural friends. In July, I will experience all three.
  5. When I was a child I wrote letters as a hobby. Perhaps as a way to encourage my writing, my parents never complained about the cost of stamps, even though I wrote upwards of 10 letters a week or more.

GOALS for July:

  1. By Mid-Month, send my book to the book designer (finally, not finally, right on time.)
  2. Create a sustainable evening/ pre-bed routine.
  3. Successfully on-board my new virtual assistant.
  4. Participate in Summer Reading Challenge
  5. Maintain a learning goal around writing fiction (I usually write creative non-fiction and poetry but participated in NaNoWriMo again this year and enjoyed it very much)

Who are you and what are your goals for July? What do you resonate with from my two lists?

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Welcome, July – Optimistic, Warm-Hearted, Let’s Celebrate Completion Friend

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Happy New Month! Happy Monday!

It may seem odd the simple joy I get from layered white canvas. Monday is a week’s new canvas, the 1st of a month is a chance to do my best, again – though my best differs from time-to-time.

I am participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge once again. My blog and my website and my business have fallen by the wayside more often than not since… well, for a long time. My biggest July intention includes changing that – I have a plan, I have a method, I have collaborators.

This delights me.

Completion, skating along the infinite loop do loop towards endings and beginnings is a place the blog will document throughout the month. I look forward to meeting new people and spending time with old friends.

There is only one July 2024 and one of my greatest desires is to be able to look back at it and say, “Wow, that was an incredible month of peace, joy, fulfillment and more than I expected.

My biggest completion is I am finishing “Haiku Saved My Life: How the Healing Properties of Courage, Creativity & Consistency Changed Everything.”

I refuse to say “finally” because the entire process was important. 

So much of my life over these last years has been about falling down and getting up that the pace of this project is not setting a pattern for books that take forever – after all, this one took half the time of the last one which I ended up shelving so this is actually progress!

“Haiku Saved My Life” is a braided memoir sharing the tales of 377 haiku writing from the end of 2019 into the beginning of 2021. The reader will be taken on an adventure which opened the door to creating several inspiring bodies of work one small step at a time.

It has elements of inspiration, instruction, poetry and themes of mortality are woven in as well.

By mid-month the plan is to send the final draft off the the book designer – and go from there.

Here’s to a festive, celebratory, project completion extravaganza in July!

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creativity coach and creative entrepreneur. She enjoys drinking coffee at her desk as she expands her entrepreneurial circle.

Julie Jordan Scott is a Writer, Creative Life Coach and Creative Entrepreneur who looks forward to a July that expands her work as a writer, speaker, teacher, facilitator and traveler.

She is grateful to be spending parts of July with her.

Watch her reels and images on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/juliejordanscott/

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Gut Kicks & Delayed Returning Day 31/31 of (Self) Belonging:

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I have been wading around the shallow waters of (self) belonging for the last few days due to – not surprisingly – due to what felt like a piercing of my shield (maybe better seen as a cushion, safe space, another word) of my sacred internal safe space.

I don’t feel the need to write the specifics here, but I was thrown by what happened and had the privilege of expressing my emotions with depth and had support to restore myself.

Another metaphor, from the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, “the soft animal of my body” needed to go back into my cave and gently, quietly lick my wounds in a familiar, anonymous setting.

A bit of a setback and a bigger space of deeper healing because I allowed myself to feel what needed to be felt, to speak what needed to be spoken and perhaps most important, I allowed myself to receive the gift of belonging from my sister – even when the message I was pushing back on and stumbling along the way was translated through past experiences and the tapes that have played in my mind for years that rang out  “you are wrong, you ruined everything, you are unworthy, you are a problem, you don’t belong” which historically brought me to my dank, dungeon exile, empty of the nurturing tools of love and reassurance.

I can still hear my sister’s light laughter when I recognized she reached out to protect me, to be with me in what had become my danger zone.

I’m not accustomed to being protected. I am grateful she did as it helped me stay in the cave longer and use tools that before would vaporize after an attack rather than become completely numb and unable to access my self-nurturing tools at all.

I realize as I continue to process – my acceptance of protection and taking my time before jumping back into the public sharing is also an example of (self) belonging.

During these last 61 days of 2023, I am getting closer to understanding how to express and live from a space of (self) belonging. What a heart felt victory!

How do you connect with the concepts I’m sharing here in this rough, raw draft?

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

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

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The Nurturing Power of Best Habits & Spiritual Practices: Day 19/31 of (Self) Belonging

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A funny thing happened on the way to working for someone else.

I have been a creative entrepreneur for more than twenty years. Even when I “went back to work” it was as a freelancer or gig worker and that’s how I liked it. It is how I wanted it.

I didn’t want to have an employer. Thank you, no. 

When I got my regular, go to work for a set number of days and hours this year it was actually by accident. I wanted to be a substitute teacher but then was offered a five-hours-a-day, five days a week job which I accepted as an experiment.

I became much more organized as I began finishing long awaited projects and when school started this year and I was also babysitting my precious grandbaby 2 and a half days a week, I realized I would be most effective in all of my endeavors if I was more organized with my habits and practices. I needed to put what I learned from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg into practice.

I do not have extensive, do-or-die practices and habits, it is more like I created habits and spiritual practices that help me feel more loved and nurtured by myself. I need to have extreme focus, especially when I write. Time is limited.

I now prepare my breakfasts one day for eight days and prepare two different protein sources which last me for the entire week of lunches and dinners. 

I put together my outfits so when I wake up I can slide into my clothes as soon as I am out of bed so I don’t have to even think about what I am wearing.

I have a set writing schedule and use focus mate to write with many people all over the world every single morning (at my desk at 5 am 5 days a week and sometimes on Sunday, too.)

I didn’t realize how much I love caring for myself in these ways. It feels so caring, so loving, so much like a caring parent or guardian who says “You are valued, I want you to feel calm and cared for and without a worry in the hectic hubbub of life.”

I am continuing to build my habits so that I may continue to hone these profound feelings of practical means and passageways for belonging to find her way back to me and me to her.

Never, ever did I expect to see this marvelous miracle approaching me.

There are now 73 more days of 2023. What small new habit (or renewed habit) would you like to try until the end of this year?

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch exclusive reels, videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

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

 

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Feeling Invisible: Day 7/31 Days of (Self) Belonging + 85 More Days of 2023

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Feeling like we don’t belong and are disconnected at work or at home hurts. Have you felt this disconnection, this anti-belonging? It pops up when we feel unseen, unheard, unimportant.

Yesterday I felt this, loud and clear. It started almost as soon as I got to school/work and felt disconnected from belonging which was ironic because I started in my home so happily and intentionally.

Invisibility doesn’t feel like belonging

The best part of the day was at the end when I told one of the most effective teachers I work with, “It’s been a strange, uncomfortable day today – and that’s alright, we all have days like that. I figured I filled my quota and can now move along.”

It is interesting in the aftermath of the day, I can see how a lot of that disconnection happened because instead of staying mindful and open hearted, I fell into the swirling confusion and my self talk was immersed in not seeing the facts as they were, instead my inner dialogue which was blended with me telling myself a wide variety of ways I didn’t matter, how I was unimportant, how no one likes or appreciates me anyway and then, right before I felt better, this happened.

Yes, it came into clarity when a kid almost knocked into me and didn’t notice. “Hey, you almost walked into her!” one student scolded another student.

“Who?”

I mumbled to the first kid, “He didn’t see this invisible woman walking around the hallways.” I wasn’t being seen nor was I being heard.

Wait: wait, wait! Not only did one student see me, he requested the other kid pay more attention. I failed to notice that…..instead I felt body’s natural response to the invisible rather than the visible as my shoulders hunch and my body sinking into my feet.

This being invisible – my sadness over not feeling as if I was seen – could have been a refrain for the day if I let it continue. 

In the next and final class of the day, things turned because I spoke up about it and began filling in the missing pieces. Writing this, today, is like finishing the puzzle making.

I ended the day in a favorite book store and took some photos of a very cool building.

When I got home, I “was craving” a sugary treat. I did not give in to that craving as I have found part of my belonging work is creating healthy boundaries with myself based on my hightest self rather than following past self destructive patterns.

Before I wrote this, I thought it was going to be seen as negative and people might be discouraged from the content and stop following me, never comment or like or engage again.

That was the hangover from the not-so-great of yesterday. Through writing, I was able to remember and discover how I negotiated around the tangled emotions and come out with my sense of self-belonging and self-visibility intact.

We have 85 days of 2023 left: how will you invest your days to bring this year to a satisfying conclusion?

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch exclusive reels, videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

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

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Day 5: 31 Days of (Self) Belonging

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I find belonging in my notebooks. Whatever notebook I happen to be writing in at that time.

I used to write morning pages a la Julia Cameron: 3 pages of longhand writing as close to first thing in the morning as possible.

I loved it for a long time until I didn’t. I did love free writing, always have – and I do like the container of 3 pages AND I needed to have structure with freedom.

After a long dry spell and serious resistance to doing them again, I started doing some modifications to the model that all included a free flow writing element. I created something I call the Roll Over and Write Journal: Where your words are always right.

I write for however long and however much I feel compelled to write close to when I go to sleep and close to when I wake up. Sometimes I write a lot, sometimes I write a little, sometimes I write my dreams so I can do some early- in- the-day analysis. 

At night I may ask my highest self, I call her Julianne, questions. It allows me to dump problematic thoughts on the page and ask for wisdom and experience a bit of letting go as a result.

I give myself space to kvetch and complain as necessary and I do my best to keep things truthful more than toxically positive. 

Maybe that is why I have often said my notebooks are one of my best friends. I don’t fake it in my notebooks. I don’t have to pretend to be a persona or be worried my notebooks will betray me. My notebooks know my shortcomings and don’t ask for favors or try to make weird quid pro quo arrangements with me.

My notebooks always listen, consistently inspire, and enjoy me even when I am annoying.

They offer me exactly what I look for in friends, except since they aren’t human or sentient I can’t take thim to events and expect a fun conversation later.

Notebooks have taught me a lot about myself and have helped me gain clarity when I found myself in dark spaces when I wondered if I would ever arrive safely to the other side.

In case you are wondering: Sometimes people prefer to call the type of writing I do in my notebooks to journaling and the books themselves as journals. I use the word “writing notebooks” more often than any other title. I don’t know why I choose that except ever since I started using notebooks to write my morning pages, that has fit me better than fancy journals – although I do use the fancy journals people gift me much better than I once did!

Do you keep a notebook? I would enjoy hearing about it in the comments.

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch exclusive reels, videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

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

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Day 4: Believing Mirrors in 31 Days of (Self) Belonging

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Believing mirrors: people who see you, hear you and reflect your goodness back to you. It is similar to holding unconditional positive regard as we discussed yesterday, though the term is rooted in the work of Julia Cameron.

I have often suggested the discovery of believing mirrors to my coaching clients as well as myself and I have never thought of it in relation to belonging, especially self-belonging.

This realization hit me like a hailstorm yesterday.

Two aspects were especially strong: what is it to find and be in relationship with people who are believing mirrors and what would it take to be my own believing mirror?

Being my own believing mirror - photo illustrates being a believing mirror before going onstage while waiting in the wings at the Empty Space Theater in Bakersfield, California

“WHAT?!” I internally yelled at myself. “I never even considered being my own believing mirror!”

Sometimes the most obvious are the least likely to be seen, like in a romance story where people start the movie as enemies and become lovers. Think “You’ve Got Mail” or I’ve lost count of how many Shakespeare plays.

Today will begin my practice of being my own believing mirror.

I am devoting myself to an evening practice of collecting what to reflect back to myself with unconditional positive regard and speak to myself in respect to what I did not only well, but when I was notably trying my best in the moment.

To increase the emphasis, I intend to create a daily story on instagram sharing from 3 – 5 ways I am believing in myself for the next week. If I miss or mess up, I will believe – because I know – if I make doing my best into a practice I will remember even when my best doesn’t look exceptional, it is that day’s best.

Do you have someone who you consider to be a believing mirror for you?

I would love to hear how you communicate to one another.

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch exclusive reels, videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

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

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From Nightmare to a Small and Mighty Action that Made a Big Difference

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As the day wore on yesterday, I got more fussy and cranky. I was planning to go to a poetry event in Newton and instead of not going because I was fussy and cranky, I showed up anyway. I was not my sometimes ebullient self AND I showed up. WIN!

I have been having challenges staying asleep, so I did the entirely wrong thing by procrastinating even going upstairs until way after my preferred time. I went to sleep late and my sleep was interrupted because I thought a war had broken out in Sussex Borough and tanks were rolling down Unionville Avenue shooting recklessly at the homes and churches and were headed to the (tiny) downtown. WHERE WAS MY PROTECTION! Then I remembered: this is what the thunder and lightning of my childhood felt like. 

No wonder I ran away crying from “lightning bugs” aka fireflies.

When I woke up later than I like, I decided I needed something different. I had planned to go for my morning walk – which I did very briefly and then…. I decided to experiment with my morning roll over and write and instead, make it roll over and walk, write outside after the walk. This was nothing short of miraculous. Sitting in the rocking chair with my journal and writing for only about five minutes made me feel completely refreshed – and this was even before coffee!

I wrote longer than I might have made it AND it warms my spirit  to share these moments in time with you.

I went from being grouchy to having a nightmare and being grouchy to taking a simple action that shifted everything.

Is there an action you might take, no matter how small, that has the power to make a big difference in your attitude right now?

A five minute walk might become your miracle (or a five minute brain dump session or a quick phone call to a dear friend or a 15 minute cup of tea gazing out the window.)

Let me know in the comments (or send me a direct message) to let me know what tiny and meaningful action you are willing to take in the next 24 hours to may make a big difference in your life now.

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 has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch exclusive reels, videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

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

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