Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Archives for August 2017

Building Momentum This Monday: Questions to Guide Your Writing & Life Experience

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Momentum is based on movement which is difficult to conceptualize when one feels stuck. Movement – stuck. Stuck – movement. Two entirely different and also totally oppositional experiences.

Eleanor Roosevelt reminds me “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Today all bets have changed. My lack of movement yesterday (or many assembled yesterdays) may have become a practiced experience and yet they don’t need to define me. I am sitting here at my table, preparing for the week ahead.

That is movement. That is momentum.

Each word I stitch together is momentum.

Each time I take five minutes and declare my butt in chair and then move my fingers on the keyboard is an abundance of momentum. The crank is turning, the pencil is sharpening, the project getting closer to completion.

Writing prompts for Sunday Evening and Monday Morning:

What do I want to build momentum toward this week?

When Friday arrives, what will help me feel the most abundance around my accomplishments?

What momentum inducing practices/actions/allegiances will most likely get me from where I am right now to where I want to be on Friday?

What are the first three actions I will take?

 

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 in the header comments or 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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Move in the Direction that Delights and Compels You Now –

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“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”
Albert Schweitzer

I sat on the big, red rocking chair on my porch this morning, reading Samuel’s English classroom rules. Simply stated, one step after another, one guideline and future assignment building upon the next.

I rocked a moment, looking toward the horizon over my neighbor’s roof and wondered about the day yet to fully arrive. I thought about myself, yet to fully arrive. I looked at the leaves on the mulberry tree who has faithfully offered me shade and more than enough arguments with my neighbors for more than twenty seven years now.

Now I look at the plants on my living room mantel, seeing one that was in the Virginia Woolf room where Emma has been living since she returned from the East Coast. Yesterday I noticed my plant, faded and dried up. “My plant,” I said, a whine in my voice.

“You didn’t tell me to water it,” Emma countered, with a voice even sadder than mine.

“It’s ok,” I whispered. “Just give it to me. I’ll water it, I’m sure it will be ok.”

As I prepared to begin writing, I looked up quotes about trees and found the one below from Joyce Meyer and I hesitated to use it because of her affiliations and worried she might be a part of the vociferous hate streaming out of the vitriol within the hearts of some of the people across my country.

My heart literally hurt at those thoughts.

What has become of us and what will become of us?

I overslept the tiniest bit this morning and didn’t move for too long of a time.

What shall I do first?

The thought came back. “One foot after another. Repeat.”

So this is what I have done, in attempt to keep the depression beasts in their pens and bring out any shred of evidence of all-rightness I can muster.

In trees leaves I hear God-sounds. That’s what Albert Schweitzer must have heard in the trembling of the leaf. He is one of my dead-man crushes so I know he wouldn’t lead me astray. A scientist philosopher, a close observer who reports evidence rather than tangential, second-hand thrice told tales.

I look at the mulberry tree outside the window where I type now for five minutes (and perhaps one extra one.) I see the light of sunrise filtering through her leaves. I see a volunteer bush pushing through my lavender and wonder how I may most effectively replant it.

I believe putting one foot in front of another in a forward moving direction will also move me and my life in the direction that compels and delights me. We can do this. Let’s.

“Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.”
Joyce Meyer

Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

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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Aiming for “Almost Normal” is Sometimes the Best We May Do

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Vulnerability alert: for the next week or two, I will be modeling the #5for5BrainDump method through writing blog posts in 5 minutes, stream of consciousness style.  Sometimes these posts will be…. more transparent and real than I have been recently. I’m so grateful you are here, reading, even after I warned you.

Now, from this moment until I tell you the timer had stopped – was straight from my heart to my fingers. I had no idea what was coming next. Ready? Walk with me as together we focus on —

I was supposed to be writing something else, but I needed to write this instead so here I am and there you are and together, my prayer is we will find something.

I’ve been preparing for Katherine’s arrival: my precious daughter who I sometimes think of as the “normal” one from the Munster’s or The Addams Family. I feel embarrassed at times because she is so good and so not depressed and so… well, I always worry she will be disappointed in me.

This hasn’t been an easy year by any stretch of the imagination and my depression has been getting deeper and wider and it has been a near constant struggle to gain control. I don’t remember her seeing me “this bad” though because I am pretty practiced at hiding my real feelings, many don’t know how bad it has been.

It is only in the recent past I have reached out for help at all, only in the recent past I’ve told people “Hey, I’m struggling.”

This is after last Summer, when I told someone I thought was a dear friend how bad off I was and that person didn’t speak to me again for – I lost track of how long.

See, that’s the thing.

Those of us who struggle with depression and other invisible diseases often times struggle and try so hard to not let it show that  this particular action: putting a cloaking device over how we really are takes every ounce of effort we have so other stuff gets neglected.

I can’t remember how many times in the past year I’ve fallen asleep in a collapsed heap at the end of the day with the same clothes on, for example.

The only reason I can even write about this is because I’m starting to feel better. At least I think that’s it. I’ve woken up oddly optimistic for the last few days. I’m going to call it “feeling better” because it feels better even proclaiming it so yes, I’ll proclaim it.

My timer just went off saying my five minutes are up, so I will close with this:

There have been several tragic celebrity suicides lately.

There has been unrest in the country where I live because of people hating one another rather than loving one another.

There have been people forgetting the most important thing we can do is look beyond one another’s circumstances and look into one another’s hearts.

You may have someone who seems perfectly fine and then you hear they actually weren’t just fine.

Take time to have a conversation with someone today that goes beyond the surface. Take an extra moment to hold eye contact. Take an extra moment to remind them you are with them and that they are never a bother to you, ever.

To call you or write you or text you whenever the urge strikes. I know in my darkest days I have sat with my phone in my hand thinking there was not a soul out there who would take my call.

Be the one who will take your friend’s call and show up and help and smile and do what your friend or loved one asks for you to do. If they say they don’t know, give them multiple choices. “Do you want to go out for coffee or a walk or get a pedicure with me?”

We may not all be aiming for “normal” or at least “almost normal” whatever that means. I can guarantee each and all of us is aiming for better than feeling consistently not well.

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 and above in the top margin 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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Feel Better Now & Be More Successful: Pure, Simple and Using Skills You Have Right Now

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#5for5BrainDump was created on a whim. It took several months until the lightbulb went off in my head. Breaking through blocks using free flow writing is basically what I’ve done my entire life. I know inherently writing makes us feel better, helps us gain clarity about who we are and the work we were meant to do on this planet.

You know – the businesses we were meant to build, the art we were meant to birth, the songs we sing, the banners we fly, the friendships and partnerships – writing free form, no thought, intuitive, automatic, brain dump whatever you have called it –

My work combines prompts, encouragement and love and turns out results – pure and simple.

I create an environment where participants feel welcomed and unpressured yet become inspired by the sense of urgency directed by a love-filled vision. Participants become increasingly focused and suddenly have a new awareness, a regained vision and can tune into and instead of creating from the block of confusion, a bundle of nerves and a kettle of “I can’ts” you will find yourself creating from that sweet spot of knowing. What would you rather have, after all:  a mismatched tub of tweets and Instagram posts you afraid to post, an unused blog and an outfit you never wear to networking events because you don’t know what to say OR satisfying results with words on your business plan, the next chapter of your book, a social media plan that is aligned with who you are and all you dream of becoming as you wear that perfectly fitting outfit from the podium to deliver that keynote speech?

Writing always makes me feel better, pure and simple, and I know it will make you feel better, too.

Would you believe I wrote all of this in 5 minutes?

I did exactly that. Stream of consciousness and it fits. Might not be grammatically perfect and may certainly be polished into something better, but it says so much of what I’ve been longing to say and I haven’t said yet.

Now, I have said it. Thanks for being a part of my standing up and saying it.

My greatest hope and dream? You will take 5 minutes and write, too.

Prompt: With 5 Minutes, I will…..

Let me know what you write and how you feel when you’re done. Remember, no editing, no thinking, no forethought just let your fingers float across the keyboard or your pencil dance across the page.

= = = =

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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Increase Your Awareness & Positively Impact Your Business + Your Life Now

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How would your professional and personal life benefit if you became more alert and aware around the clock?

Here’s the thing Alert, attentive, keen observation is a skill set easily developed by writers across genre. Whether you are writing sales copy, a Pulitzer worthy journalistic piece or a screenplay, honing your skill of deep concentration and awareness will reap you multiple rewards.

This is what happens when you practice such qualities:

  • increased ability to think clearly and to understand what is not obvious or simple about something
  • expanded strength and sensitivy : highly developed
  • elevated levels of excitement and interest in a topic, concept or idea
  • continually rising intellectual alertness and curiosity

What is a better way to be described?

What I would give to have my name attached to”highly developed intellect” or “intellectually alert” or “showing an ability to think clearly and to understand what is not obvious or simple about something”

When one has a keen awareness of the world as it unfolds around us and can communicate this to the rest of the world, the better off we will all be.

Quote

“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”

Napolean Hill

“I was a keen observer and listener. I picked up on clues. I figured things out logically and I enjoyed puzzles. I loved the clear, focused feeling that came when I concentrated on solving a problem and everything else faded out.”

Sonya Sotomayor

Questions for reflection, writing and creativity – 

Consider a time you had “keen pulsating desire” as Napolean Hill describes. What happened? What did you do about your “keen pulsating desire”?

How important is observation in your writing life?

Lists

Make a list of 5 – 10 ways to use your senses to increase your skills at keen observation.

Remember 5 – 10 times you were an alert, keen observer. What happened?

Bonus: Write a scene, vignette, poem or outline surrounding one of the items on your lists. Take your list to create your own writing prompts.

Writing Prompts/Activities:

Writing Prompt Activity: Observe an object in your near vicinity, preferably something ordinary. Observe it keenly – with all your senses for five minutes. When the five minutes are over, write what you saw, smelled, heard, touched and in some cases, tasted. Write what is tangible as well as metaphorical. Make associations. Have fun!

Second prompt: Write about what you observed about yourself in the previous activity. For fiction writers, how would your character approach this exercise?

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs soon. 

Check her out on social media channels using the links above, 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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It Feels So Good (To Finally Feel Better)

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Today is the first day in many days I woke up feeling good. Revisiting old works-in-progress, writing new poetry that weaves old in new, combining household chores with wild creativity in the AND space (rather than either-or)How do I forget how good this feels?

I posted a flat-lay of my calendar and hints of my creative process and knew, just knew, I needed to spend five minutes in stream of consciousness, free flow brain dumping to make the day even better.

I’ll admit it: part of this is an invitation for you to create alongside me – so if you’re willing – keep reading and prepare to write, too.

It feels so good to….

Set my timer for five minutes and know I can completely give this time over to my creative process.

It feels so good to listen to classical music just because I like it and not worry about anyone judging my taste or think anything other than “wow, this must really make Julie feel good to listen to classical music!”

It feels so good to have my diffuser going as I listen to classical music and write. It feels so good to ask myself questions and have conversations not with my higher self but with this self – the me that is right now inhabiting this imperfect body in this scratchy time in our culture that sometimes looks like thunder storms are brewing and then I remember, “I sort of, no not sort of – I enjoy thunder storms.”

It feels good to smile, gently, truthfully – and feel it get wider as I think “Mona Lisa, in my imagination anyway, would be proud.”

It feels so good to have conversations over breakfast with Emma and Samuel, to invoke Samuel’s creativity and watch his non-poker face as I mention his gifts in the way of seeing. “Samuel is a really good photographer” I say and Emma says, “He has a really good eye. I don’t.”

“Ahhh, practice will help that,” I tell Emma. “I’m like you. Samuel is a natural.”

That just feels sacred and holy, moments we would often brush aside as we exfoliate our memories and our presences.

It feels so good to reorganize and tidy up a bit. It feels so good to put my hands in the suds as I wash dishes and clean the counters not in an angry “Oh I have to do this and I hate it” but “oh, I am so glad this will look so bright in a few minutes and the way this stuff smells….mmmmm” and yes. It all feels so good.

I hear the applause on my timer peter our and it tells me this particular moment in good times writing is over.

I am grateful I took the moment. I am grateful you are reading. I am grateful for feeling better this morning than I have for a long time.

Now, your turn. And now you write….

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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.

 

 

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