Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Archives for April 2022

Joyful Practice Beyond the Performance and Into the Authentic Flow

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I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. It was simple enough: I put my phone into my tri-pod, turned on the Outta Puff Daddy’s on Instagram Reels and danced along with them for somewhere between five and ten minutes.

I wasn’t good, I wasn’t completely horrible, but I have this weird vision to have an “outta puff grannies” or Mommy’s and Granny’s – women dancing together for their mental health and the joy I felt while doing this was almost off the charts.

I laughed when I was horrible and I smirked when I was not as horrible.

For whatever reason there was one part of the dance I intuitively “got”. “Remember when you were younger, Julie, and you would mirror the guy you were fast dancing with? Do that here, toss in a little musical theater step-ball-change… there you go.”

There is a first time for everything.

I am a performer: actor, poet performer, sometimes the advocacy work I do is performance.

Yesterday I played in a handbell choir for the very first time. I went to my first choir rehearsal in the afternoon and was asked, “Do you play handbells?” and when I said “I never have… and…” suddenly I found myself singing, playing a new instrument and now I am dancing on the second floor landing as if I know what I am doing!

Late last night I wrote about grief – and living the best we can, even while grieving – and that’s what this felt like again today. On the year anniversary of my friend’s murder, I was dancing as best I could with the intention of improving. I trust myself to continue.

I trust myself to continue to write, to sing, to share what I am learning. I trust myself to let myself feel what I feel without shame, without fear, without holding back – and discerning what people are healthy enough to trust AND the first person to trust is myself.

Finally one of the most intriguing discoveries I have had lately is how well the Julie-of-the-past seems to know what the Julie-of-2022 would really need to be supported. It is like these aspects of me I had covered up and avoided are now hugging me for coming back into myself so fully and unabashedly flowing in the moment with presence, passion, purposeful joy.

No dancing photos from me yet, but maybe soon. Maybe in a week. That makes me laugh and oh, laughter is a good thing.

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

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


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Another April: To Become Whatever It Will Be

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This is me: March, 2022

It is April Eve and again, I am valiantly sitting at the keyboard to write. I pledge right now to do my best to publish a blog post daily in this, the most historically deadly month of my life. April.

I have spent the better part of the last half hour dissecting blog posts from April, 2007 here I captured early grief after my brother, John’s death on April 2 of that year.

I captured a poem my then nine-year-old daughter wrote, a phone call from my mother, an email from my father.

This is why I write, why I blog, why I share what feels painful and what feels joyful and even, on occasion, what is downright boring because all of it is the bold and valiant proclamation, “I am alive, still.”

It is April, another good month to be alive: quote on pen and paper, and a dyed book page.

I cannot say exactly what I will create this month, I will only say that I will create this month. Here is a snippet of the poem I wrote just now, a draft, a poem-in-the-making. Love letter of sorts to life, to grief, to experience. To continuing in April.

It is April Eve. My heart and I, we

are fluttering. We are flailing. We

are openly and willfully gripping the 

sides of the armchair, praying – begging –

to see this through to the end.

Whatever this this may be.

I so wanted this poem to have a happy ending.

I wrote this poem to feel less dead inside, to begin and not end.

No ending, no beginning. Wait.

Wait.

Who said that  only infinite thing?

Fellini, it was. And I hear myself exhale a quiet laugh not laughter

Maybe a lau – breath – gh- breath.

I cry into the palms of my hands and feel the chilled fingers

reach across my lined forehead.

What is a happier ending than to still being able

to put letters on a page, like a five-year-old-me 

scrawled cursive lower case e’s before I knew how language 

worked, I simply knew language was. It existed. I existed. Together.

We would create. This. And That. Something.

Badly, better, happier, boring, worst, best, eeeeeeeee

looping carefully in pencil across blue lines 

Eeeeeee as I sat, deeply focused in the country

squire before I was

Banished to the way back

I never knew

someday a much older version of me

would create a magic circle to honor

my brother and give a gift to my father and my 

mother no one else could give?

It is April Eve. My heart and I, we

are fluttering. We are looping through another

April. We are alive. We are still writing

things down. If I am still alive in fifteen 

years I can recall the things I will have 

Inevitably forgotten this.

===

I hope we will connect meaningfully this month.

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

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive 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 by clicking here.

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