Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Archives for November 2017

Blue Lined Conversations: Writing from This/That… Ten Years Later.

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Over the many years I have used writing practice as a way of life I have found sometimes I need different methods to get deeper, to tune into that soul-voice asking me to listen more carefully.

Today I found this writing from more than ten years ago. I wanted to share with you about the “Infinite Loop de Loop” so I searched my old blog for content and this is one of the pieces I found.

it is a suggestion from Natalie Goldberg, where we write back and forth from two sides of a the same statement.

In our #5for5BrainDump we will write, “I give…. ” and “I don’t give” as well as, “I receive… I don’t receive.”

On this day in February 2007 I wrote from “I am…” and “I am not…” The process took two separate writing sessions and the result was an ongoing deluge of a-ha’s, bubbling up everywhere I look.

The Julie of 2017 had forgotten every moment and now scooped up even more insights.

Here is where it began:

I am hopeful. Well, _begrudgingly_.

I am pondering conditionalism – is that a word? What I mean is I am contemplating my own experience of loving with conditions attached.

I am not so pleased with the discomfort I feel when I surround myself with past happenings of “If you ________, then I will show you love. If you don’t _________ , I will withhold love.”

This is so contrary to my being – and I am open to the discoveries the divine is requesting I make.

I am different.

I am not ordinary. Convention? Pah. I am glad the Dixie Chicks won a lot of awards last night. I am not used to having people be mad at me, so the last few days of people seeming to be mad at me has made me WAYYYY uncomfortable… and again, there are discoveries to be made and growth to happen, all of which is just right.

I am frustrated as I witness stupid stuff causing my nerves to fray (as I am allowing it to do, not that stupid stuff ‘causes it, it is my opinion that causes it so sayeth Epictetus… nothing like ancient Greeks showing up in my 43 things meanderings) I am letting it go now.

I am not prone to tantrums but maybe just maybe if I gave myself space to have one… oh, I don’t know.

I am willing to grow.

I am not amused by meanness and sarcasm. No wonder I don’t fit in with a lot of people.

I am tuned into Sam today. I am so glad, because he seems to be feeling so much better – relief.

I am not concerned about tomorrow.

I am Julie.

I am not anyone else.

I am.

Who are you?

(Something was waiting in the conclusion of the writing earlier today… that something asked…)

Who are you? So I answered my writing –

I am a fledgling collector of crystal doorknobs – these objects of fear, of wonder, of curiosity, of bewilderment.

I close my eyes to feel with, with the palm of my hand and my fingers. An iced over pond, with a new dusting of snow that stands clear of footprints until I walk across it.

The doorknob has eight perfectly symmetrical indentations – eight, the infinite, standing up. The doorknob – held, turned, let go. Grabbed, tugged on, pushed on, always so momentary.

The doorknob that is never really held,

So I hold the doorknob and sob, feeling like we have this in common.

My fingers wrap around its slick exterior and my palm grips it fully. My cheek rests against it. I wonder for a moment if the little Julie’s cheek ever grazed the old bedroom crystal doorknob, the one that seemed to mock my middle-of-the-night, eight-year-old spiritual musings we assume eight-year-olds don’t muse.

Constance-the-Cat doesn’t quite know what to do. She grazes me until she senses I am ok. The wind chime sings its approval of the moment to which it is witness.

I kiss the doorknob and nuzzle it from the other side.

My smallest finger notices an imperfection inside, a place where a tool pushed too hard and scarred the doorknob. Its scarring makes me delight in the doorknob even more.

Why?

Connection.

We are all scarred. Doorknobs, cats named Constance, outdoor-living-so-weathered-wooden-desks, women named Julie. You. We can choose to bear scars – with dignity, grace and wonder. We can choose to bare scars with vulnerability, unfamiliar to most, yet desired – in truth – by all.

I traced the scar on the doorknob and traced my own scars with a sacred hush… alighting gently from my fingertips directly into my heart.

I look deeply into the soul of the doorknob and see the core, the artistic beginnings, the casings and the laser-like narrowing into oneness as the doorknob offers itself into a lifetime of service only to be passed off as salvage until….

Until one conversation lead to one spark which lead to one man walking through another door to pick the just-right crystal doorknob that is now nestled in my hand in its own, unmoving stand… placed on the outdoor desk of this wildly passionate writer, relentlessly following her divine call and allowing the observations to flow….

And the loop of infinity swoops up and down and back and around, once again….

Who are you?

 

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I’m ready…. to sing with the soul-voice… to create the new choir

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“To sing means to use the soul-voice… to breathe soul over the thing that is ailing or in need of restoration.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Before I returned to acting after thirty years, I took a voice class where I got to sing, intentionally and with great heart – and the longing and pure joy was so strong in that first class, I cried.

It was a teen and adult voice class and I was the only participant who was over sixteen-years-old. These young women were in musical theater in their high schools, I never intended to do any theater at all.

If you’re a long time follower of mine, that might make you laugh. Countless plays, awards for acting and directing, music videos and films later I obviously found my acting voice but it wasn’t until I gave myself over to singing, learning an aria, hitting notes I didn’t know I could hit, performing in a recital, that I knew I could indeed sing and dance and be comfortable on stage.

I re-discovered my soul-voice.

For ten years, nothing could take me away from the stage. This year, I intentionally took a respite from theater performance. I made one film – it was an absolute blast and only took a couple weeks of my time and attention.
This week I have been decluttering in earnest, reclaiming lost space, and I have a week left of my self-imposed exile from stage. It is time for me to discern if and when and what circumstances will bring me back to theater.
It has been a lonely year.

It was a year of dynamic self reflection and transformation.

I have read more books. I have cried more tears. I have traveled but not as I had expected or hoped.

I spent a lot of time treading water, much more than is healthy.

I am much more clear about my hopes, dreams, ambitions and where my place in this world is one of mutuality, love and collaboration.

I have heard myself spontaneously singing again, humming, free styling as I work.

The restoration process isn’t complete and it is much closer than when the year started.

I am standing at the edge of the bridge into 2018. There is a misty fog here, rising up.

I have become more courageous and more sure of my footing.

I am ready. Are you?

(Vide0 – during a day of poetry writing I spontaneously went for a walk and sang – lyric free singing, I video taped it… and there is still something speaking to me of that brief 1 minute 18 second video adventure. Watch with me here)

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Oh, to Be Mysterious: a 5 Minute Writing Session Earned By Decluttering

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Have you ever seen the movie, “West Side Story?”

There is a scene when Tony is singing about a girl named Maria and he is so entranced with her he has to inexplicably brake into song. Well, I know how Tony feels because I found a word to write about today that was so powerful I made myself declutter before I used up all my energy lusting after a…. word. I know it sounds strange.

Here I was investigating cures for writer’s block when I was hit by a words so strongly it nearly knocked me off my feet. Insert “Sibylline” for Maria and you’ll get how I feel. And after the clip are the words I wrote after a garage decluttering session.

Your tip? Be open to a word that will make YOU want to sing. And then sing. Or borrow this tune from West Side Story and sing along.

I’m investigating Wrier’s Block today: its causes and more importantly its cures.

I was all tangled up in other stuff rather than writing when this new word flew off twitter and dove headlong into my heart: sibylline. It means mysterious.

I saw the word and it was instant lust. Originally I called it love, but no. To be truthful it was all about lust for who I wish I could be and never was.

The guilty pleasure wished for word: sibylline.

I was under its spell. Oh, to be mysterious. How I would love to be mystery personified.

I closest I could claim is when a suitor (does anyone use that word anymore, even in 1983 when it happened) described me as an enigma.

The man in question happened to be 19 but if anyone was mysterious it was he. After all, he is the one who went on to be an internationally known business man. I’m the one who became a mother-of-three in Bakersfield listening to music that is supposed to keep her focused on writing and is now more than slightly mortified to be writing in the third person.

If you put this now internationally well-known business man’s Facebook photo and my Facebook photo side-by-side he would hands on get more votes for sibylline.

I’m not sure what adjective people would use by my smiley face selfie taken by the river last Sunday morning but certainly it wouldn’t be the longed for sibylline.

I’ve always been an “open book” and “heart on the sleeve” sort of person who could have won Girl Scout badges for Transparency if there was such a thing probably because I wanted people to engage me in deep conversation even as a middle-school-aged-child.
If I were more sibylline, people with glasses in really cool frames would speak to me and assume I had a wide vocabulary and varied interests and expertise in random subjects.

When I think about it a moment, I do have varied interests and expertise in random subjects and it sort of bothers me when people can’t recognize this immediately.

Sibylline: teach me how to express your presence in my life.

A very excited aspect of my life, probably a freshman in college me or a before-fifth-grade-me leaped to the forefront of my brain and quipped, “I know, a poem! Write a poem with the writer’s voice being named Sibylline!” she takes a pause, “or get a new cat and name her Sibylline, or write a character with a cat named Sibylline!”

The headset which is playing a binaural beats playlist in my mind gets to the part that sounds like the El in Chicago during the Risky Business sound track and I realize my timer has gone off and I have effectively used up the writing credit I earned while cleaning the clutter in my garage.

Time for me to go back to being perfectly ordinary and decidedly anti-sibylline. For now, anyway.

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There are Many of Us with Writing Wounds: Let’s Heal Together Now

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Fifth grade was a rough year for me. I had my first taste of mean girls when my long term girl gang dumped me in one of those horrid pre-pubescent moments when the other girls decided I didn’t measure up to their checklist of cool-ness, my family was being tossed and turned by transitions and shifts, and I started middle school.

In those first weeks – perhaps the very first week of middle school – I got pulled aside in my English class with a group of 6 or 7 other students who hadn’t done well on our first writing assignment.

(The wound still hurts, I discover, so I will shift into third person for a moment).

Little Julie, who always excelled in writing, was set aside as someone who writes badly.

She who had been scribing before she was literate – dictated to her Mommy, sat in the back seat of the turquoise country squire because  and wrote cursive e’s in row after row after row because she knew she had something important to say  and she wasn’t going to let the fact that  she didn’t know how to read or write stop her.

She knew she had to write.

(Now that Little Julie had her moment, back to Now Julie).

By the time Mrs. Wilson got to me to review my bad writing, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. Here was the one thing I knew I was good at being marked the equivalent of a “D” with all the requisite red marks across my carefully planned words.

David and Perry were there and only one other girl. I was singled out with the low achievers and only one other girl who I didn’t know and I further embarrassed myself by crying as I explained, “But I always write well….”

I can step back outside myself and witness this as an adult and I see Mrs. Wilson’s horrified at herself face for “making this little girl cry” (perhaps sparking her own memory) and before the end of that session, my paper had been remarked “Excellent” and I went on to have a great year in that particular classroom.

It even became a refuge for me amidst other not-so-great stuff which may be why the call to write and broadcast about writing woundedness is so strong.

On my periscope broadcast today one of my beloveds spoke of her writing wounds and how writing with us in #5for5BrainDump changed things for her. So I cried again today, live, and now recorded, for anyone in the world to see. And now I am not even embarrassed. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of authenticity – no apologies.

I’ve been trying to find something written about the woundedness many feel around writing – perhaps the biggest cause of writer’s block and I can’t find a thing about it.

Strange, because this is oftentimes the reason people show up in my programs, classes and livestreams: they’ve gotten the word I create a safe environment for people who want to write: a place where we write together, allowing our pencils and pens to flow freely without worry of judgment or a big thick red pen marking out our most of the time carefully chosen words.

Harsh criticism – delivered without considering the person whose hand brought those words to the page – is something that has long troubled me. I have many examples from my past I’ve managed to write around which is somewhat surprising given my sensitive nature.

People have stories to tell, YOU have stories tell that the world is waiting to hear – a specific audience member, a distinctive listener or reader waiting for you to become brave enough to move your pencil across the page and say what needs to be said, what is waiting to be said as only you can say it.

With you.

The world is waiting for your words.

Let’s bring them to the page now.

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Note to Self (and to YOU, reading.) Continue: When All Else is…..

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Note to self and to you: when all else feels like it is failing, all I need to do is this:

Right now, as a vibrant member of the human community I choose to….continue. To grow, to feel, to express, to love, to seek understanding and compassion. Reminding oneself, daily, of wonder right in front of us.

Here is what happened when I reviewed a line of Diane Ackerman’s poem, SCHOOL PRAYER and used it as a writing prompt. The actual visual prompt is beneath my writing for YOU to use. Also below is a video I created as a result of this writing.

I offer myself as a messenger of wonder –

How do I do this?

I open my mouth.

I open my mouth and I speak what is in front of me.

I open my mouth and I speak the details of what is in front of me – the lines, the light, the way the lines and light reach back to me and fill my hand with energy that ignites my muse and makes my fingers push the keys that become these words and further the process in an infinite loop de loop when someone else lifts her or his or their chin and sees… oh, the plug.. oh the chord into the plug that makes the light turn on. The switch. I hear the click, I see the light turn on and suddenly I notice…

And the a-ha’s flow because people say “I never saw it like that, I never thought of it like that, I never… until now and suddenly the plug becomes an object of wonder and curiosity and we appreciate those who created the plug and the lamp and our heartbeat joins their heartbeat and the collective heartbeat and….

In what ways am I currently a messenger of wonder?

Here. Now. This. You. Look. Listen. Translate. Taste. Touch. Cry when you feel it, laugh when you feel it. Feel free and stand with it, allow yourself to hold onto that fearful moment with the same gentle tenderness as you hold onto a first kiss or a first bite of the most incredible taste ever (pesto, dark chocolate, pear brandy come to mind) and then….. recognize the divinity of that moment and….

How would I like to further my message of wonder in the world?

Increase the people I interact with and who appreciate what I am up to… invite them in. Cherish their them-ness. Reflect this beauty of humanity so the static will be silence and the pure breath and tone and light and harmony and dissonance and choking and relaxing back into presence flows….

Right now, as a message of wonder in my world I choose to….continue.

And now it is your turn: write about being a messenger of wonder in your unique way. Splash words and images freely on the page. Ready? Here’s your prompt:

 

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Tweaking No, No, No Into Yes, Naturally, Ofcourse!

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I humbly offer myself as a healer of misery… and the first thing that pops up is… oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.

Yet today on a livestream broadcast the vote from all who knew me was unanimous: the work I do is healing. Who I am in the world is healer.

I carefully outlined some of the ways I have healed this week and if I am honest, pretty much so anyway at least 50% of me just being me in the world is healing so if one side of me is saying “oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.” well… let’s just say the disconnect is looming, thunder-cloud-like, eclipse right in the middle of the darkness.

I may have stumbled upon something.

Think of my worst misery:

Grief. Out of alignment with purpose… not expressing my gifts. Listening to the advice of people who don’t have a clue (I almost edited that before I typed it but “have a clue” is more accurate than “aren’t clear on what I am doing.” No, they don’t have a clue and I have put much more emphasis on their opinions than my own wisdom.

It is my fear, after all, that shouts with the “oh, I can’t. I don’t have it in me I am not up to it. No. No. No.”

I’ve been thinking of making a puppet like when I was a little girl and talking to myself through her. Getting really really real with her, and in doing so, getting real with me and you and whomever and in doing THAT allowing others to get real, really real, too.
Yes, I have it in me. Yes, I can and I do, regularly.

I am not only up to it, I am pretty close to mastery in most places.

In fact, I am remembering a woman once who came to me completely flustered and said, “Julie, I don’t know what it is you do but I need it right now!”

I had no idea what she was talking about so I simply said, “Yes, yes, let’s do this.”

I took her hands and looked deeply into her eyes and said “Breathe with me.”

We bnreathed together, in unison.

I said, “Close your eyes and see yourself feeling better as you continue to breathe with me.” She did.

“After adequate time passed I said, “In silence, we will continue to breathe together now…” and we did.

Thirty seconds later, I smiled at her and said, “So be it, Amen.”

Instantly feeling better. She hugged me for a long hug and thanked me for being so generous with instant work with her.
She left the room and I looked at the other woman and I said, “I have no idea what just happened but, it happened and all is well, so… it’s all good, right?”

The next prompt in this “series” I wll write on either later today or tomorrow is….. (because of my own block I am working through on this content is…)

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When Prompts Don’t Quite Do The Trick, Here’s What I Do

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See the prompt to leftt?

It didn’t work this morning for me. I tried it – and nothing.

It is from the poem I am focusing on this month, “In Praise of My Destroyer” by Diane Ackerman  and it just wasn’t working.

I needed to do a couple things.

  • Search for related quotes. One I focused upon is from my dear friend and always inspirational Ralph Waldo Emerson. I aimed the patience he suggested directedly at myself.

“Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Choose key words out of the prompt or reading and focus on them as singular entities rather than a part of a whole. This really helps ignite the writing process. “Humble Guardian Nature” allowed me to play with each individually and provided me freedom.
  • Create art, letting go of the need for language. here’s what I came up with:

And finally I got down to the business of the Brain Dump… moved my fingers and trusted….

Sometimes I have a challenge with the prompts I write, the prompts others write… prompts in general. I sit at my keyboard or at my desk, my fingers mute. No movement – and I wonder, “Am I concerned somehow with getting this right even though I am the only one here, writing? I’m not in a class and then it comes to me.

Consumable. Audience. Worried about the consumable product I am trying to create.
It would be more apt to say I am a worried creator of hoped for value but never trusting it will really work out so if I sit with my fingers immoveable close to the keyboardd nothing bad will happen until we discover 15 years have passed and nothing of note or merit or meaning has happened.

And I am to blame.

And not moving and ignoring the blame (which I know kvetching without action to change is really foolish) and so I chase my tail.

I say I don’t want to chase my tail and I won’t chase my tail so I find myself a guardian to my stagnation, choosing to lie down atop my gifts and talents, a rather forlorn lump of purple plaster of paris, cracked and crumbly who has given up on seeking water to replenish her.

(My thought now? Geesh, I’m being melodramatic again, no wonder people don’t like me.”)

It is close to dawn.

I look out my living room window as I type, taking my hands away from the keyboard long enough to hold my coffee mug to my lips and gaze at the mulberry tree standing watch over the bay window.

Her chin is lifted now (her being the tree, not me suddenly speaking in third person) her branches up and not quite weeping.

My gardener doesn’t like her sweeping branches, kissing the ground.

I love them like it when the branches kiss the soil. Next Spring, I need to speak clearly to my gardener to let the branches sweep the lawn with their grace.

I notice Emma did some tidying up while I wasn’t looking and am slightly surprised and primarily pleased.

My intention for today is to feel better.

Yesterday was another ball of contentment: a blend of work-life, taking care of loved ones and basking in the afterglow of long-ago creative process that is such a part of acting in a film. We do our thing, put our images on film and the artists who come afterwards continue the process while we go back to the rest of our lives and almost forget that initial process.
I am a humble guardian of my days, wanting not to send myself into a pattern of destruction. I want to live.

I would like to be a humble guardian of my gifts – one who takes my gifts and mixes with whatever turns up and move forward with better and better life experiences.

The timer goes off again.

I say good enough for now and know the keyboard and the letters will still be where I left them when the time comes to write again.

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What will you choose to show love to today? Prompt for Contemplation & Writing

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“I will not dishonor my soul with hatred.” Diane Ackerman

(From the poem “I Praise My Destroyer” by Diane Ackerman)

Prompt for Contemplation, Creativity and Action:

What will you choose to show love to today? Who will you choose to show love to today?

This is your call to actively be loving to the world. It is a call to be a mirror, a reflection, a candle in the darkness (as cliché as I know that sounds) these words are asking you to go beyond meditating, beyond thinking, beyond looking at hatred and tsk, tsk, tsking in your coffee circles and step into actively choosing to show love.

Who will you be when people look at you and say, “You shine, you radiate, when you _____ my day is brightened.”

I remember watching a Designing Women episode years ago and Charlene and the woman played by Annie Potts were just being who they were and Suzanne Sugarbaker (played by Delta Burke) said with tears in her eyes, “I want someone’s eyes to light up just because I walk through the door.”

When we actively choose to show love, that is one of the natural results.

Perhaps you actively choose to show love by expressing gratitude. Not just thinking “everything is great” but specifically telling someone “The way you carefully put those papers away (shielded your child from a bully, took care of that elderly person’s need in the grocery store, tied your child’s shoe for her, made me feel better when I opened my heart to you) made a difference today and I am so grateful I was able to witness you being you in the process.”

There are a lot of things to not feel actively love for in this planet, and when you seek, instead of dishonoring your soul with hatred, but actively opening to love and communicating this love through action, the veils will come down and you will feel your hope being restored.

I want more of this in my life, don’t you?

What will you choose to show love to today?

Contemplate. Write. Bring it to 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.

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Writer’s Affirmation – It is Your Time to Write, Right Now

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It is your time to write, right now.

It is your turn for your voice to be heard, to have an echo – for people to hear you, to see your words on the page and allow those words to rain into their skin, their spirit, their psyche – people want to access your words hours, days, weeks, months, years later and say “I remember, I know, I trust, I love…”

Say it aloud, now, write it:

“It is my time to write, right now.”

It isn’t too late. You are exactly at the just right starting place for you now.

When I lift my fingers from the keyboard and shut my eyes, I can hear your pencil scratching across the page. The sound of my fingers tapping the keyboard is replaced by the sound of your fingers dancing on your keyboard.

I feel a smile cross my face.

In my mind’s eye I see other writers across time smiling with me, with you, as they hear, as they see you finally understanding your way into action. It is your time to write, right now.

Write this phrase,

“It is my time to write, right now. It is my time to write, right now. It is my time to write, right now.” And write it over and over again until other words speak up your arm and out your fingers.

There are phrases waiting – they’ve been waiting. There are people listening who don’t even know they are listening for precisely what you have to say.

No one else can say it like you do.

You are unique. Your message is yours alone to share. Even if your writing right now is completely private. Even if you shut your file when someone gets close to your computer. Even if you hide your notebook or journal under last year’s sweaters – the process of getting them out of your body and onto the page matters. It matters a lot. Your words matter. A lot.

It is your time to write, right now.

 

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Be Gentle With Yourself

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I smell coffee brewing, or hear it. I hear coffee brewing may be more accurate.

It is Friday morning. There is no school today. I am incredibly grateful to not have to move from my house unless and until I dictate it is so.

My brain immediately clicks into planning mode and my soft, gentle, calming hush mom-of-a-newborn self-steps in to pat my back in circles, “No plans are necessary, love, follow the flow, follow the flow…” so here I am. Staying steady in my chair typing words into my laptop and allowing the feeling of whole, holy satisfaction to leak from my fingers.

I have a creativity date set for later today which I may postpone due to the sweetness that comes from having a free, meandering day. It has been a week of hyper programming that felt very unsatisfying much of the time. I may work tonight – and I may not. I feel the call to that brand of silly satisfaction with the knowledge I don’t HAVE to and I may CHOOSE to.

My heart asked me to write of utopia. That I will do today.

I will write of utopia and love, true narrative and form. I may paint or collage or allow my process to swallow the soles of my feet like just damp enough soil does when you stand there long enough, kissing it, appreciating it, allowing the connection to feel like another dawn.

I hear the coffee has stopped perking.

Time for me to go appreciate differently.

How will you step into your Mom of a Newborn persona today to treat yourself with loving kindness?

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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