Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

You or Someone You Know Needs to Read This: Forgiveness & Reconciliation

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2009:

I wrote about having a falling out with a friend and finding my way back to forgiveness.

In forgiveness, we find the pain of the shattered glass is remembered by the scars it leaves, but the strength gained from those scars makes them both worth the pain and strikingly beautiful as well.

2017:

I write about having a falling out with myself and finding my way back to understanding.

It is the 5 am hour and I am writing. I lit a candle, the coffee is brewing it is quiet except for my fingers tapping and the heater making the room comfortable for me. A soft pink blanket is covering my feet. This feels almost idyllic.

Next week at this time there will be a Christmas tree in front of me.

Fifteen minutes ago I discovered the toilet had overflowed sometime after I went to sleep and this morning I plunged it, matter-of-factly, when I noticed the hem of my pants and warm socks were inexplicably saturated in water.

Not idyllic.

This week the Christmas tree isn’t in its spot and I wonder why I feel content and satisfied. Aren’t things supposed to be perfect, like an Instagram photo of the clutter free living room, everything in enviable feng shui order, cookie cutter offspring leading successful satisfied lives and me with a huge bank account, an adoring partner and a vast array of assorted friends who unwaveringly support every choice I make with a chorus of hurrahs?

That would be satisfaction of a slightly different sort. Perhaps that is a goal for six months from now.

Progress is the new perfection.

Julie Jordan Scott is enjoying writing without her glasses on so she can barely make out what the words say as she writes. She has been revisiting her past writings in order to gain perspective and to learn from the wise one who once wrote from these very same fingers yet have been forgotten, somehow, even in the words’ inherent value.

Interested in working with Julie? Getting to know her? Use the social media links on the side here or text her at 661.444.2735. its the most direct method of contact. She loves hearing from you, even when it feels awkward to write in the expected third person.

 

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Where Has Your Journey Taken You – Artist, Entrepreneur, Human? Let’s Explore Together –

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I tried something different today with my five minute writing free writing/brain dumping time. I took an essay I wrote ten years ago and had a conversation with my past self.

It was the closest thing I can imagine to time travel, witnessing my thoughts in the past and communicating back to myself.

I even quoted myself from ten years ago on twitter and facebook and got responses from dear friends who offered reassurance. So much love abounds: for all versions of me and for all versions of you.

Do you wonder what a conversation like this sounds like?

Here it is – me now in bold italics and me then – not bold and not italics.

Collaboration with ten years ago me:

Sometimes I think I pour too much of myself into my art. I get concerned that somehow the dark corners of my being will “pollute” the art itself.
(Just this morning I worked on a mixed media piece and smeared paint across a segment of the work I thought was “just right”. Even as I type here I think “maybe I should go pull some of that paint up, restore what’s underneath. Admit it, self, it did look cool as was and now, as you so often do, you messed it up.

And then I remember the following whisper into my mind-heart. “Trust the process” it told me. I took a deep breath, set the newly smeared canvas aside and walked away. “Trust the process” – don’t intervene anymore and allow someone or something outside yourself to decide what is just right and what isn’t.)

Then there comes a time when I get to purposefully and intentionally explore my artist’s journey, like
I did when I was asked to prepare an artist’s statement for an upcoming art show.

(Note to self: seek submissions to art shows. Trust that process, too, of rejection to rejuvenation and the steps in between.)

Here is what I wrote (back ten years ago).

My artist’s journey has taken significant twists and turns since the first (burn the witch).

I watched myself dive into wordlessness (through  watercolor paint and photos) and trust that
even without my preferred creative medium – words – art is born. Three words encapsulate this year: Loss.
Sacred. Love.

(I didn’t know it at the time but these words became the foundation for the following decade.)

Loss, through absence and broken perceptions and death – awakened a different form of creative
communication. The Sacred invited others into my world of flow, trust, divine guidance and non-judgment. I discovered love cannot always adequately be communicated with words, it must be felt in breath, in energy, in what is conceived when we collaborate.

(Note to self: this paragraph is worth reading daily, maybe several times a day. Your ten years ago self was wise. And by the way? Don’t go into self critique.  – You temporarily forgot this wisdom.

What were we just saying? “Trust the process” even the sliding backwards. The world is waiting for these words of backslides as well as the words of victorious celebrations of insight after insight after insight.)

It is especially joyful when we join hands to experience (metaphoric) creative tandem bungee jumping. I love feeling the wind whip through my hair and the whooping and hollering in my heart as we careen towards the earth and then get swooped back into the loving arms of the Divine.

(Note to self: I was writing about Soul Poetry. It is time to write this again.)

This year that deep, profound, sacred love looped back into loss which bred even more art. This year I picked up a camera, I wrote another play, I allowed myself to step into the darkness and draw the door
closed behind me so that I could learn from this year’s gift.

(This decade-long gift)

Feel the loop now: Sacred. Love. Loss. Art. Love. Sacred. Art.

(Feel the loop now: Sacred. Love. Loss. Art. Love. Sacred. Art.)

Where has your artist’s journey taken you this year?

(Where has your artist’s journey taken you this decade? This life?)

(Where do you want to go next?)

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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Love for Systems and Structures: The Artist’s Dream Companion for Success

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“What sorts of systems and structures may I put into place that will support me and not feel like a noose around my neck?”

What makes a system?

What makes a structure?

What makes me think of them as a negative or something I don’t want?

I love mission statements, I enjoy guidelines, what makes me feel like I’m being strangled is this:

The first time I was witness and a victim of a “according to procedure 467.3” mentality I had recently lost Marlena. I had taken on a job as a Program Manager at a home for the developmentally disabled. It was the start of my getting underpaid for my work because I was holding on by a thread and needed to keep holding on and it felt like the best I could do.

This man (The one speaking about procedures and repeatedly parroting them back to me) was a bumbling bureaucrat, former state employee. He had worked at the dreaded state hospital my mind always told “avoid, avoid, avoid” and then he did the droning on about numbers and “the state the state the state” was something of a God at that place I worked and that was a natural turn off and fear inducer for me.

I remember being sick over that stupid, didn’t pay enough job.

I remember when I was stressing out about something and Katherine jerked in my belly and I freaked out more. I was literally in a chronic state of fear, a chronic state of “I am risking the worst pain in my life in order to have something really great but damn I feel like I myself am on the verge of death all the time!”

He was tall, on the edge of portly and was losing his hair.

He wore glasses. He bent his neck when he looked down at me and droned on about whatever whatchamacallit he was worshipping.
I wonder how many times my subconscious mind said, “I will never be like that blow hard, I will never, ever EVER be like that blow hard.”

He was a caricature of a small time good ol’ boy and therefore to be avoided at all costs.

I saw him as systems and structures personified.

Note to self: this bumbling bureaucrat was NOT systems and structures personified, he was a buffoon.

  • Let go of him as a representation of systems and structures – which are in place to support you – and start recreating your relationship with systems and structures which will keep your vision alive:
  • spiritual practices (Gratitude, Art, Meditation, Prayer)
  • timed writing daily
  • a calendar to keep track of appointments and tasks for long, medium and short term
  • a daily list of 5 passionate possibilities written the day prior.

These are systems that nurture and nourish.

These are structures upon which you may build your sustainable transformed life.

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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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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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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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Seeking Simplicity: Transforming To-Do’s into Delightful Discoveries

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Sundays are a special time for me on twitter because of the weekly #SpiritChat hosted by Kumud Ajmani. Lately I have not been able to participate there so instead I am choosing to interact on my own throughout the week.

What popped up during my writing time this morning may be helpful for you, too, so here it is –

.Q1. Sit with the phrase “returning to simplicity”. What does it speak to you in your current environment? #SpiritChat

Here is the result from writing for five minutes, stream of consciousness style. Note – I changed the opening sentence after editing a photo to go with the words.

Return to simplicity: starts when I return to home, every time.

I hesitated before getting out of my car after my morning errands/Samuel school drop off run.

This has become a habit of mine: sit in my car when I arrive home. Sometimes I pull out my phone and get lost in responding to tweets or texting or seeing my facebook notifications.

I told my neighbor recently when she commented how I seem to sometimes rest in the driveway, “I sometimes wait to go in because I don’t want to deal with what’s inside.”

Somehow crossing the threshold of my house has turned into stepping into a lengthy to-do list rather than stepping into a nurturing space of sweet surrender, of holding, nurturing and a leap of too passionate growth.

When did this happen?

How did this happen?

Even as I write I realize neither of those questions matter, what is significant is I noticed it in time to make a change that delights and inspires.

I am able to choose to be simply  delighted and inspired rather than annoyed and disjointed.

I sit back in my chair a moment, stop typing, and smile. I allow this option of returning to simplicity to fill me.

My hair is half way curled because I wanted to start and didn’t care about finishing. I made coffee and actually poured myself a cup, and I put Samuel’s laundry away this morning yet not my own.

I’ve made several possibility lists and managed to rejoice about my weekend blessings (there have been many.)

How to create a more simply  loving relationship with my home?

1. More down time here. I don’t need to hurry-scurry all the time.
2. Do more intentional decorating.
3. Fill my space with sensory delights – diffuse essential oils, play my favorite instrumental music and put more art/photos up so that my chin is lifted and my spirit is lifted.

My timer went off with “festive bell” sounds today.

Maybe I need to put up some bells around the house so that I may ring them as a reminder: love, hope and optimism is in the air.

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 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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Now I Allow, Invite, Intend….

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Now I allow myself to feel my way into my response I keep blustering into forgetting. I need to start over because I forgot my timer. Embrace the restart. Prompt and Timer in place, go again.

I allow myself to be transparent again. Really, really truthful and clear because I find when I am transparent I am free. I have nothing to lose and as Janis Joplin reminds us (well in the Julie version) freedom stands or freedom means there’s nothing less to lose.

Things have not been easy this year.

Things have sucked much of the time.

I have kept a smile on my face most of the time and I have allowed myself to pull back and pull away.

I am allowing myself to use language differently – getting away from the should and needs and lack based language I fell into unconsciously. November is about recreating from love and abundance rather than fear and lack and neediness. “What if they leave me? What if they hate me? What if something bad happens and I need help and I’ve alienated everyone by being so full-on-flat-out myself?”

I can get intellectually it is distorted thinking that people will abandon me if I am fully myself but I can point to times when it has happened over and over again and that base fear of abandonment is a doozy!

I remember Katherine’s wedding nine days ago and I was dancing and singing like when I was a young girl. I had so much fun and I didn’t care what people thought. I remember one flash of a moment when I cared: I caught the eye of a member of Katherine’s new family – my new family – when I was singing and dancing in a way some might think unbecoming of the mother-of-the-bride and deep within me fear popped in, evil weasel like.

I smiled at it, winked, and kept dancing singing and laughing with my friends. Wasn’t wearing shoes, wasn’t at all dolled up beyond my normal self-face and I had the time of my life.

#MoreofThatPlease

Now I allow myself to continue to write into the #moreofthatplease. This week and beyond.

I am grateful for dear, life-long friends and family. I am grateful to the people who show up for me when I facilitate writing programs. I am grateful for coffee and actually drinking it without it going cold. I am grateful for my cell phone. I am grateful I asked for what I hoped for and I got it… even belated it was good still.

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