Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

My First Renaissance & Making My Way Back to Believing In Happy Endings

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I would rather feel a lot than be numb.

I know numb. I don’t like numb. It is like being asleep – eyes half open, heart shuttered, laughter muffled.

I lived this way for far too long: back when I believed in sacrificing all my hopes and dreams (except for conventional, acceptable ones.) For some people this was an agreeable Julie.

For me, It was like a slow churning road to a very sleepy life.

I notice my hands leave the keyboard.

I don’t like writing about that time – I don’t like remembering that time. A big part of me doesn’t remember many specifics from back then.

I remember bits and pieces like when I broke my arm the day I took my first roller skating lesson. I was 37. I wanted to be sure my children knew how to skate because there were lots of birthday parties back then at skating rinks and I didn’t want them to be the only children who couldn’t skate.

I was in a bright pink cast for a few weeks and as soon as it came off, I was back at the skating rink. I never got good, but I did actually skate backwards (on purpose) once and I learned to fall so I wouldn’t break anything.

I remember going to Open Mic night. Actually, that was later.

I remember the first time I bumped into the man who told me my assault wasn’t an assault, it was a miscommunication. He laughed at one of my pieces at Open Mic I didn’t realize was funny. I was just being me and yes, that is sort of funny. That was at Open Mic my first time and I was reading from my first ever ebook, a memoir called Don’t Let It Take Two Death Threats published back in 1999.

This was when I was coming out of my sleepy fog.

My first renaissance. I actually read How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci and back then I still believed in cliché versions of happy endings.

I don’t see that as a bad thing, actually. There are times I wish I still did believe in happy endings.

I need to write on that, actually, because I may still believe in them… just need a tussle or two to get my Santa Hat on straight. I still believe in him after all….. and the timer sounds saying “Time to pick up Samuel from swimming!”

(I would love to hear your insights on happy endings. Please leave me a comment if you have something to share.)

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 soon!

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

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5 Simple Ways to Use Affirmations To Fuel Your Best Writing:

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Affirmations are a simple and helpful technique to switch your mind from getting stuck in loops of destructive messages and tune into creative, constructive thought patterns instead. If you are unfamiliar with affirmations at all, go to google and search for “Introduction to Affirmations.”

If you are familiar with how to use affirmations and would like to see how to use them as a tool for writing, stick around – this will be helpful!

  1. Combine Affirmations with deep breathing. Say your affirmations aloud as your day begins and then throughout the day. A good rule of thumb for timing is before standard meal times and right before sleep.
  2. Use Affirmations as a free flow writing warm up. If you use a relatively short affirmation (seven words or less) simply write the affirmation on your page repeatedly for a minute and then see where your pencil, pen or fingers on the keyboard wants to go. Follow the flow of the energy after you have affirmed yourself as a writer and usually the difference in what you write is nothing short of astonishing.
  3. Do the classic mirror work: look into the mirror and speak your affirmations aloud to your reflection. Smile at yourself as you would smile at your best friend. While this technique gets a lot of flack, try it at least 5 times to see if it makes a difference for you. If it doesn’t fine, move along and say you tried.
  4. Use several short writing affirmations in a row, like an affirmation chorus. There are days when general affirmations work or other days when affirmations about starting, completion, editing or revision work best.
  5. Start and continue. When you fall down, get back up and start and continue again. The world is waiting for your words. Today, play with writing your affirmation and then flow into free flow/brain dump writing for five minutes like I did below.

Let me know how it goes! Now: here are my words, fresh off my paper – #5for5BrainDump style which means no editing, no forethought, just allowing my energy to move the words ontot he page.

I am blessed with sweet satisfaction when I complete my writing projects.

I am blessed with joy and fulfillment every time I sit to write for five minutes and allow the words to move through me rather than control each letter, each vowel, each consonant. Funny, isn’t it, how when I let go of the control, not only does the flow feel better but most of the time the meaning, rhythm and sound gets better, too.

I am blessed with exhilaration when people read my work and appreciate it and tell me.

I am blessed with smiles of connection when people read my work and feel themselves in it: they not only know who I am (this is less important) they know more of who they are.

I am thrilled to dive deeper with rewriting my narrative: looking at the facts from a space of love amps up my awareness of the sacred in everyday. Some people call this magic, some miracles, some are too deep in their to-do lists to even notice AND it feels so good to share the stories.

I am blessed with friends who listen, who do lift my chin, who cherish what I am up to and reflect back to me the goodness and beauty in what I create. I feel valued and not leeched upon. I feel precious because I am precious.

I am overflowing with ideas to bring what I am remembering into concrete, working forms to serve the world and make it a more welcoming, more growth, more constructive and creative place.

I am blessed with sweet satisfaction when I make progress.

I am happy – so happy – in seeing this single page fill up. I am grateful to hear my son’s footsteps outside my room and not rush in to see what he needs but give him the gift of self awareness and personal responsibility knowing HE can take care of it.

I am grateful for timers that ring – and realize in just five minutes I learn and grow in unfathomably wondrous ways.

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 soon!

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

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Hello, February! A Free Flow Greeting + A Writing Prompt for You

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Hello, February!

In all your beautiful winter-y-ness which seems to be flying over this February, hello.

I’m ready for you. My heart is filled with optimism and my plate is filled with healthy yumminess and plentiful projects that stir my spirit and make me smile. I’m coming alongside Radical Grace and Abundance as I continue with Freedom.

I’m like a little girl again, taking each by the hand as we walk down the sidewalk with your name overhead. “It’s February, Freedom – Radical Grace and Abundance! It’s February!”

I’ve noticed the Tulip Magnolia blossoms are beginning to appear on Robert and Stephanie’s baby tree and I literally shouted in delight yesterday as January came to an end.

I’m remembering an affirmation I created a few years ago – maybe as many as ten years ago – when I borrowed the essence of Anais Nin and wrote, “My business blossoms when I am bold.”

My writing blossoms when I embrace the essence of radical grace and abundance and allow flow her due course.

I’m remembering the loving surrender of childhood – holding hands and looking up into the faces of those you trust.

I am learning more about trust with you, February. I lost my verve around trust. Repeated hurts sometimes push trust out of view and I know, yes – I know, it is time to allow the healing power of grace in exponential, infinite ways to not erase the hurt, but to allow trust to be strengthened because of the hurt.

I pause as I write because that feels so paradoxical.

I smile because I remember now how much I love skating in the infinite-loop-de-loop of abundance.

Let’s woo each other, dear February. I’m up for some old-fashioned self-love, word-love and overall life-love. We’ve got this….

With Passionate Gratitude and Radical Grace in Abundance,
Julie

Writing Prompt: This post was written by simply setting my timer to 5 minutes and free flow writing. I didn’t overthink or even really think at all, I simply wrote. Before I hit “publish” I briefly eye balled the text but that’s it. What is more important than the outcome is the process and the revisiting, daily, as we settle into February.

Tip: Write your own  “Hello, February” greeting. Let’s make this month phenomenal. You deserve it!

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. 

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

 

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The Journey to Passionate Detachment is the Road to Healing

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The woman sat across from me, smiling – eyes wide and happy. I thought it was miraculous: she looked excited to see me – this she who is my therapist, one who enjoys the Myers-Briggs assessment tool.  She was talking about how I show up in the world, personality wise. She was talking about how I am free spirited, don’t like to plan, don’t like the middle or endings of things so I work under pressure… and I remembered, so clearly…

The college-aged me loved getting assigned mammoth research papers. I am such a nerd I wrote my first research paper in the fifth grade. Thirty-five pages on the plight of the migrant worker. No accident I live in the county where Caesar Chavez got his start. Those thirty-five pages included 37 different references which I gleefully compiled on index cards which I joyfully attached to a carefully crafted outline.

I loved watching other students race to get their assignments in when mine were consistently done well before the due date, no crunch necessary.

So when did I stop behaving like this and when did I start stuff and then (more often than I will care to admit) fall apart before crossing the finish line?

I can easily look back and point to “stuff” that happened that made me not want to go the finish line because of painful associations.

The first notable case of this is the Birth/Death of my long awaited first child, Marlena.

Then  there is the job I had that seemed like such a good fit which ended when my life was threatened twice in two months and then my associates and co-workers all deserted me.

There is the reality of two of my children’s education where schools failed them, repeatedly, in more ways than I need to document here (and would happily do so privately for those who may have similar circumstances).

For someone with serious abandonment issues, feeling left out or different from the mythical “most people” may create a downward sloping day, week or months or more.

Let’s face it, most people are excited about pregnancy and delivery and I, instead, almost always have death hovering as a very real known-to-me  option.

Most people look to new employment as an exciting opportunity for growth and I look to it as if the unexpected associations with work may cause my death – no matter how irrational this may seem, my brain serves up this fear when I think about getting a “conventional” sort of job.

I know some Moms who break out the bloody Mary mix and Margaritas on the first day of school. Me? I am more likely to don combat boots and camo, waiting for the inevitable crisis call.

This very real scenario happened last week:

My son’s school called when I was away from my phone. I saw I had just missed it so the voice mail hadn’t yet arrived. I stood there and felt my heart race, a sudden unexpected flashback.

“Ohhhh, no… the school called, the school called… what happened what happened what happened? Did he get bullied? Did a teacher humiliate him? Did he have a breakdown or a meltdown or was he sexually molested (and blamed for not coming straight back to class) or was he urinated on by a peer?   Do I need to rush over there and pick up the pieces?”

Here’s the thing. All of these things have actually happened on school campuses to my children.

The voice mail landed in my email box and here is a reasonable version of what I heard: “Hello, Parents. We are calling to inform you at 8:40 we were called by the Sheriff’s Department notifying us there was a man on the adjacent street to us carrying a rifle so we immediately went on lockdown.”

My response? “Oh thank God, it was just a man walking near the school with a rifle.”

I have told this story to other special-ed parents and the story brings nodding and understanding and yes, the occasional laugh or two or three.

My beginnings haven’t been met with excitement because the journey turned from gleeful excitement about the what’s next to dismay and horror about what might come next and then, so it seemed, the “rightness” of the mess that came next.

Now, the-me-I-am now – has a whole lovely decade (and more) of narrative to rewrite.

Old narrative: “The experiences and starting lines other people celebrate with hopeful expectation, I need to be wary about because I don’t think I can stand anymore pain in my life.”

New narrative (First draft, will continue to tweak). In any life process, there are possibilities for deep pleasure and satisfaction and there are possibilities for loss. This is true for everything. My choice today is to do the work and experience the profound joy I was meant to do here to benefit humanity and experience mindful creative abundance every day. My choice is to have my eyes wide open and to keep moving forward, onward and upward with loving, passionate detachment.

If you would like to work towards rewriting your narrative in order to have a more truthful foundation to build your life upon, I would love to work with you to do that. Contact me at the number below —

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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The Power of Discernment as Seen Through the Lense of the Just Right Cookie

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Today I was in a conversation when one person used “discernment” and another person confessed not knowing what discernment meant. Considering it was the second day in a row a term I don’t think about much popped into a conversation I knew I needed to spend a few minutes tossing the meaning around.

I couldn’t just offer a trite, under done answer. IN that circumstance, no one gets any better.
The power of discernment is like a vat of wine aging just enough or a batch of chocolate chip cookies straddling the line between just the right amount of gooey and the perfect assemblage of crunchy.

The gooey may be seen as the ability to quiet oneself enough to hear the music accompanying the heartbeat. Sometimes it is just the rhythm or the beat, other times it may be the surprising throughline and other times a lyricist’s sweet contralto floats across the barriers we often raise up between one another.

The crunchy though – in the oven for the tiniest speck of time longer at perhaps the smallest nth of a degree higher brings the cookies of discernment to hearing and then understanding.

Actually eating the cookie and nodding your head in joy at the taste and texture and sharing the cookie – even if one wants the entire thing – that is the fully flowing power of discernment. Hearing and understanding and sharing what we’ve heard and understood and perhaps then seen and deepened and yes, acted upon whether or not it made sense to anyone except for ourselves.

The folks who do this are the inventors, the change makers, the ones others look at with their left eye scrunched up and their ride eye still. “What is she up to now?” the left eye asks, usually with distaste.

The right eye says, “I’m not going to miss a thing because I know the surprise more than likely will taste good.

= – = – =

This blog post was inspired in part to this question from the #SpiritChat Twitter Chat hosted each Sunday morning by Kumud Ajmani (@AjmaniK ‏ on Twitter) . I’ll be responding to the questions throughout the week as a way to “keep up” with the chat I’ve been sleeping through lately because Sunday at 6 am is sometimes just a little bit too early for me.

= – = – =

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books,

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.

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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First take: a window into process that includes falling (getting up). Veering more than slightly off course.

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This is not a blank page. This is a cure to the blank page. This is saying no to block, this is a singing declaration of “I have your back creative process and we are moving and grooving.”

Yes, this is a start.

I wrote this partially to write a brain dump, partially to get in touch with my friend Virginia and partially to tune into my past narrative. I keep telling myself, this is a start.

Next: I am going to make a list of times…. I avoided life in attempts to keep the peace.

My guess is some seemed to succeed (and may still be a bit of the glue holding feeling mediocre together), some failed and some are untried.

Here is the first take: a window into process that includes falling (and getting up) and veering more than slightly off course.

Enjoy – and stay with me – because the world is waiting for your words.

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

Virginia Woolf

This week I have felt consistently out of peace because I was doing things that made me uncomfortable. Who wants to do that?

We want to go where we are praised and adored!

We don’t want to have to say unsettling things and make people unhappy with us! Well, most of us anyway.

Even as I type this and take a sip of delectably bitter coffee I realize I have actually made it a spiritual practice to make myself uncomfortable. I regularly chat with people others toss aside, like today I conversed amicably with a homeless woman: I engaged her in conversation like I would anyone else.

I actually put myself in a place most people would never think of going and yes, I found peace there.

I think that is a big part of it: being willing to go where others won’t, being willing to recognize there is tension there and then just moving forward anyway. Repeatedly.

(And then I reached for a poem and my chair toppled over and I went with it. I think I can officially call that a take two needed?)

I found myself on the floor, reaching for my book of poetry for 2018 I carefully picked out in December. I wanted to read “January in Paris” because I felt a message from Billy Collins words:

“I followed a few private rules…” and that steers me back to what I meant to be saying the entire time.

What I have been discovering in my journey into the uncomfortable is this: when we are aiming to stay aligned with our personal values, we will bump into barriers that seem larger than life itself.

We may risk losing friendships.

I’m sad to say I have lost friendships because they were no longer in alignment with me. I’m proud to say I have been strong enough to do so.

Our barriers may be huge organizations we’ve supported our entire lives. This also happened to me in December and January. It took 29 days of consistent follow up to get a single returned phone call and some restoration, though I still wonder if they are actually doing as they should be.

When we choose to pursue peace even when it leads to falling on the ground with our hands scuffed up or finds us alone on yet another Friday night or finds us with a cloth over our mouths because we choose to not speak even in our frustration because we think the friends we have left will desert us when they hear our story, we are also able to know it is in these very experiences that we come to know ourselves and our life more intimately.

We connect more authentically, in a sacred joy, in a holy connection – which for me is a combination of soft socks and knowing laughter.

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 soon!

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

 

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Stop Taking Action Towards OTHER peoples Goals: Focus on YOUR Dreams Now

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Is this action moving me toward my goal?

This is the question that is guiding my “in the moment, going to get this stuff done” reprisal Passion Activator Friday, a regular activity I used to do when my website and personal development business was humming along in a pleasantly sustainable way.

Is this action moving me toward my goal?

Not someone else’s goal, vision or dream but MINE.

In December I created a wheel of life which broke down my overall life vision into 8 categories. I continue to review those and when I ask the question, I can easily scan my categories and see how that action fits in such as:

Is this action making me healthier?

Is this action engaging me in creating more abundant financial sustainability?

Is this action helping make my family stronger?

There are 5 other categories I can quickly scan and see if it fits or not. Today, if it doesn’t fit, it is off my list. If there is any hesitation it is off my “now” list and onto “later if I have extra time” list.

With that, I will move to my next thing, which is taking a water-and-walkabout intensive time and prepping for about 30 minutes of intense marketing focus work.

Are these actions moving me toward my goal?

Why yes, beloveds, these actions are! What about you?

Tell me how your next actions are moving you towards your goals. If your current actions and plans are NOT empowering you to reach YOUR goals and dreams, please let me know because I’ve been where you are and I have tools to help. After all, this was written because I noticed for a couple days I was other-centered constantly instead of my dreams and goals centered.

In a moment, that changed by asking the simple question and found support for my continued process.

Let’s support you now, too.

Is your next action going to move you toward your goal?

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 soon!

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

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Restore to Better Than Ever (Payment of “Feeling Awful Temporarily” is Worth It)

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What I say as a reflex: I want to fit in. I want to have a group of friends who are both a support system and who love me unconditionally where there is a reciprocity not because of expectations, but because we value one another.

Then there is the unaligned to a certain extent contrast: I don’t want to conform to the norms of any particular group because I don’t appreciate or value being “boxed in” to those norms.

I’m remembering back to my initial coaches training and listening skills. Are you listening to agree or disagree so you know how to “lob back” the conversation like a tennis match or are you listening from a perspective of, “Oh, that’s interesting, tell me more” space.

I know this past year was very lonely and I was rather isolated.

I intentionally took a year away from theater and at this point I would very much like to perform but I also know I just don’t want to audition for whatever comes along, I want to find a project and give my whole self to it. I am not sure what that will take or if it is possible now or in the near future.

Subtracting myself from a favored activity was difficult.

Subtracting myself from this activity reawakened other areas of dormancy and allowed me to focus on what was most important going forward: what would help me to build financial sustainability.

Subtracting myself hurt yet I was hurt by staying in a space that didn’t feel good anymore, too.

One of my biggest blocks is the fear of being abandoned and during this past year, some of these choices I made leaned toward to the natural experience of being left outside the foxhole. People didn’t even notice I was metaphorically out in the rain without an umbrella.

Because I wasn’t in the trenches with my theater friends, I wasn’t invited to other activities. My feelings got hurt over and over and it wasn’t until the Fall – nine months into the year – that I got the courage to say “this hurts my feelings.”

Some of my friends still don’t seem to know. I would rather believe they don’t know rather than they don’t care. 

I left doing what I loved, I lost significant social relationships and there were lots of other tangled twists and turns AND it also feels like the tide is turning for me here in the beginning of January.

At first I thought I didn’t exactly switch my narrative here, but then I realized I didn’t conform to anyone else’s ideal in order to feel less uncomfortable. I stuck with the misery in order to process through it and now I feel 1000% better about life in general.

My goals for the New Year are in process, very cool activities and experiences are lining up for me. I am asking for support when I need it and I am no longer afraid to tell people how I feel, especially when I feel hurt.

Most importantly, I have clearly gotten better at releasing relationships that no longer serve.

Old narrative: Do what it takes to get approval of others so you won’t feel all alone.

New narrative: do what it takes to create breakthroughs, even if for what feels like a long time feels pretty awful. The invitations and opportunities will return. Trust, trust, trust the process.

 

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 soon!

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

 

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3 Simple Steps to Knowing What You Believe & How to Achieve Extraordinary Results

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I sat down this morning to write for five minutes. I literally rolled out of bed thinking about the power of rewriting my narrative (after being horrified about rewriting my narrative publicly) and I thought about how to dig deeply into what is actually going on in the day-to-day narrative when I am feeling good and strong and in alignment -rather than triggered.

I had a prompt that was totally simple and yet left me totally stumped because I didn’t want it to be a cliche, I didn’t want it to be a bunch of trite phrases or posters hanging in the hallways of junior high schools.

I don’t know if I succeeded, but I know I went on a journey during my five minute writing that I could not have entered without this prompt – and without sleeping on it and waking up and writing soon after I got out of bed.

(On the way to writing, by the way, I plunged the toilet, cleaned up a mess or two made overnight and made a pot of coffee.)

To discover your beliefs and how they shape your world, follow these simple steps:

  1. Write for 5 minutes a day to simple writing prompts.
  2. Before you go to sleep, review what you wrote when you first woke up as you do an overall review of your day mentally and create a brief t0-do (or I call it a possibility) list.
  3. Repeat, preferably in community so that your transformation may be witnessed by people who believe in your newly rewritten narrative and may support you as you set out to create and live your life accordingly.

Here is the prompt and my response and I wanted also to offer a dare to you to write for your five minutes as well. Your “I believe” may be completely different than mine. Whatever you write is absolutely perfect. There are no rights and no wrongs here and I never ever ever expect other people’s beliefs to match mine. That would make for a very dull, uninteresting world.

I believe…love is the question and the answer. I believe the path isn’t paved with good solely good intentions like the common perception may believe, I believe the path is a playground for practice between love, fear and apathy. Love, hate and uncaring.

I don’t believe the opposite of love is hate or fear, I believe the opposite of love is apathy.

The road is paved with love taking form.

The road is paved with our actions which are most fruitful when they begin with the love question and are completed (if there is truly such a thing beyond momentary satisfaction – I have to sit with whether I believe in that whole finality rather than infinite loop de loop later.)

Our actions, projects, plans are the most productive, the most abundant and feel the best when we ask the question with love as the coating, the primary content and is filled with our breath of love inviting your breath of love to join the game.

I believe love is both the question and the answer and I believe that together, we will continue to make things better and better for now and the furute when we bring ourselves to make that belief into something whether it be word on a page or a photo in the book or a business that employs people or a song we sing on street corners or a meal we create to feed whoever happens to be hungry.

Love is the question and the answer.

And when the timer went off, I felt like a few more words would add value for you so I wrote –

So for you, love personified, reading these words, how will you take this reality and create something from it?

Perhaps this one and only day with this date upon it will be your first creation.

Perhaps you will write a thank you note in five minutes, free flow, #5for5BrainDump style like this one was.

Perhaps you will invent something or make a new life or be thoughtful by speaking up for someone (perhaps that someone is yourself) or maybe you will incognito take a task off another person’s overworked schedule.

You, after all, are love. Be the answer. Live the question. Report back what you find in your world. If you would like individual guidance, my phone number is listed below. Text me or call me and we can set a time for a transformational conversation.

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 soon!

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

 

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The Song You Have Been Singing May Not Be the Best For You: Rewriting Your Narrative

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I’m about to share an actual thought I had two days ago. I haven’t shared this yet due to mortification and hoping if I procrastinate long ago it will just go away and the true confessions of Julie narrative might be an episodic program that gets canceled right after the pilot.

Unfortunately or fortunately I also know the most productive action I can take is… writing and hitting publish. Rewriting in my new snazzy pleather journal I bought specifically so I could categorize my old and new narrative and find a new way because quite frankly that old one was clearly not serving the world or me very well.

I received a facebook messenger post from a playwright I met probably eight or nine years ago. I was in the play he wrote and my friend directed. I never felt like he was happy with my portrayal of his character and never really felt like he even liked me at all.

Fast forward and more confession, I don’t feel like the man who directed that production likes me anymore either, not that I would be brave enough to actually sit down with him and say, “What’s up?”… yet, anyway.

“Why did you send this to me?” as I read the post. I started singing inside, too, like a catchy commercial jungle: “You know you hate me, you know you do.” Over and over and over my mind sang this ditty until the conscious Julie swooped in and said, “What the Hell, Self? This man has NEVER told you he hated you just STOP STOP STOP and rethink and rewrite NOW!”

I obviously rethought but you know the rest of the story: I’ve been sitting on the avoidance of writing this for three days.

The facts are, I don’t know if this particular individual has even thought of me once since we worked together.

<< I left the keyboard again, this time for about 36 hours, to digest and move forward.>>

The truth is this:

I have bruises from long ago and I have current bruises that become tender when I am tired or feel alone or left out or unsure.

I am triggered by the thought that people don’t like me and I risk being alone in the majority of my life.

The overlying truth is I have the choice to make insignificant actions mean whatever I choose to make them mean. This message may have gone to every single facebook friend this person happens to have and I happen to be one of them.

I also have the choice to be gentle with myself when I say things that are hurtful towards myself. I have a lot of years to heal. From moment to moment I pledge to treat myself with as much love and respect I am capable of in that moment.

Finally, I can embrace the truth that most people enjoy my company after they meet and get to know me. Some people even like me right away. What really matters is whether or not I like me, whether or not I am enjoying my company. Whether or not I create a community and live in a community of people who care about me, my feelings, my growth and what I create.

I have the choice to make insignificant actions mean whatever I choose to make them mean.

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 soon!

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

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