Creativity While Quarantined – Page 4

Looking Into this Week Ahead: April 5 – 11, 2020

April 5, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

What are you looking forward to this week?

I know: we are in the middle of a pandemic and we are stuck at home and looking forward feels counterintuitive, so please keep reading – let’s work through this together.

Woman in a funky mood looks contemplatively toward the side as she lies on a lawn, seeking solace.

Yesterday I wasn’t “feeling it” – meaning I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t feel like “showing up” in my spaces on line. I didn’t want to answer my phone when well meaning people called me, I didn’t feel like facilitating the Intentional Conversations Virtual Coffee Date, even though it was Saturday and therefore game day!

Normally I am quite capable of the old adage of “picking myself up by the bootstraps” and “putting on a game face” I am a theater person who performs while sick, I sing out when I have a sore throat, even as a baby my mother wrote in my baby book, “Julie is such a smiley baby, she smiles through her tears.”

Yesterday proved I am not so good at smiling through numb, which is what I was feeling.

I did manage to have a fun hour playing Pictionary on Zoom and I did manage to place an order for art supplies for curb pick up on a website that didn’t feel very intuitive AND I managed to wake up today and participate on a worship-livestream at the church where my daughter serves as associate pastor 3,000 miles away and I found myself feeling refreshed.

I remember when this all started and she was so concerned about Holy Week and could this isolation stuff PLEASE be over by Holy Week and now we know Northern New Jersey where she lives and works is in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic.

She and her church have adjusted to “doing Holy Week” differently.

If you would enjoy the service, here is a link to the facebook live recording you may watch on replay:

Seven-Year-Old Samuel preparing for Palm Sunday Service in 2008. Little Children at this church provide hope for the participants in the beginning of the Christian Celebration of Holy Week. — Remembering when…

I watched Katherine with Palm leaves in her hands saying “Hosanna!” and all those past Holy Weeks of her childhood and her brother and sister’s childhood rose up in my memory. All those palm branches, all those sweet upturned trusting faces. I watched the worship service from the church where I grew up as well and remembered waving palm branches as a little girl.

This morning may be the first time since we were called to stay home I actively thought of the future with a ray of light.

The skies here are filling with clouds. I know many of you are used to April Showers bringing May Flowers, but here in Bakersfield April is usually awash in wildflowers and the rains have left us. Our desert landscape returns to a lot of brown and is dry, dry, dry!

My heart is welcoming the rain – and I find myself ready to make plans for the week and fill in my calendar with zoom calls and twitter chats and times to create content to keep bringing you messages of hope and inspiration and creativity.

I ask you again: What are you looking forward to this week?

It may be as simple as “breathing my next breath” or it may be specific tasks or phone calls or times of meditation or prayer.

If you are unable to think of anything now, I invite you to return later – when you feel even a slightly bit brighter – and consider the question again.

What are you looking forward to this week? Please leave a comment so I may add my intention, love, hope and prayers to yours.

Also, if you are feeling isolated and alone, remember we have our daily Intentional Conversations: a Virtual Coffee Date of sorts daily at 1:30 – 2:30 pm Pacific time and YOU are welcome to join the group of heartful, whenever and however you care to participate. Click here to sign up for free at the Registration & Invitation page.

Welcoming people across the world in one supportive, loving “Zoom” community.

Julie JordanScott is the Creative Life Midwife. She inspires people to live their life as an artform and take action towards their best results. During the 2020 Pandemic she is also leading daily Virtual Coffee Dates, Facilitating Intentional Conversation so people will feel less isolated during this time of social and physical distancing.

How to Use Creativity to End Shame’s Power Over Your Choices

April 3, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

More than twenty years ago I sat in a therapist’s office and she asked me to make a list of “Family Rules” which I went home and dutifully wrote. I returned with my list with lots of blue ink across a yellow legal pad. My cursive lettering detailed unspoken codes of conduct such as “Don’t cry in public” and “Do not do things that might embarrass the family.”

There is space in the world for such guidelines.

I don’t agree with any prohibition on crying – perhaps because I am one who cries at movie previews, coffee commercials and baptisms of babies I don’t even know. It isn’t the rules themselves that causes the problems all these years later, it is in the denial of what happened because of these unspoken codes.

What I believe in is taking back our personal power through creative process and growth. It isn’t about blaming others or fault finding or pointing fingers – it is about acknowledging our own strength and truth.

Today, I look back at things that happened and I say, “I am not rewriting history, I am recognizing we are all human and everyone was doing the best they could at the time.”

With that said, it doesn’t subtract or nullify the pain that was experienced or the grief that occasionally rears its head, especially during trying times like we are in right now.

Denial, for example, is something we are seeing across social media, in zoom calls I am on, in conversations with friends and family. Somehow we think if we don’t watch the news, COVID-19 will go away. We think if we share “Positivity Only!” on Instagram, sometimes we hope and pray reality will happen only to other people.

Quote & Prompt for Creativity and Conversation

A row of beautiful pink roses in flat lay style frame the words of Brene Brown and a writing prompt that suggest we ought to speak to shame directly. Speak on behalf of our shame instead of covering it up. — If poetry is not your thing, use journaling or free flow writing instead. Some of my best poetry started as a line in one of my many notebooks.

I found shame abhorrent for a long time. I read John Bradshaw’s work of the early 1990’s and I was “all shamed out.” I wouldn’t read any of Brene Brown’s works.

Less than a year ago I was declaring my distaste for anyone who “worshipped shame” until I realized she isn’t about the worship of shame, her work is about working through shame. Not denying it, not burying it, not climbing on top of it to look at the view below… instead, her work stands for working through shame and all shame destroys along the way.

Making that list of rules all those years ago allowed me to begin to disassemble them to see and label what was worth saving and what was fool’s gold or just not right for me.

Prompt for Creativity, Contemplation and Conversation

I aimed to consistently be open with my children, ready to talk about issues others turned from or stifled. In my view, it was easier to talk about things rather than hide them yet one of my daughters will disagree with this notion. She will insist we didn’t address important details.

Sometimes certain topics: death, grief, job loss, financial trauma and sexuality are just the beginnings of topics we may have varying levels of discomfort discussing around the dinner table. My family gathered during the holidays and played a conversation game about goals and visions for the new year and one of our family members would not address any of the questions.

My guess is there was quite a bit of shame attached.

The rest of us gave permission for the questions to not be answered. My hope is the unspoken questions will continue to percolate. Journaling or free writing in a notebook or into your phone is often a good way to process through untalkaboutables. I prefer the least expensive notebooks possible. It is a splurge when I buy a “Decomposition Book” – a composition book made from recycled materials whose paper feels fantastic underneath my hand.

If I had said something like this as a child – “whose paper feels fantastic underneath my hand” I would have been shamed for it – someone undoubtedly would have scoffed and said “Julie, you’re so weird. Who notices what paper feels like?” just like when I said I wanted a curling iron I was shamed for being so vain.

I don’t let either of those things bother me anymore: to this day I have numerous tools to curl, straighten, double curl and curl my hair in different sizes. Who labeled wanting to look nice a bad thing?

Here’s what I know: our time is now to move beyond whatever is holding us back. Chances are if you are living there are some shame experiences to review and set aside and in some cases, finally bring out into the open so light may hit them.

I’m laughing because I love choosing the just right curling iron for whatever hairstyling task I am up for at the time and thank goodness I didn’t let sibling shame stop me. There are other times when I have allowed other people throwing shame in my direction stop me from using my gifts and talents for the greater good of all.

Finally, there may be a poem or a blog post or an instagram caption or a journal page you haven’t written yet. Linda McCarriston sees poetry as the art of language. Let’s throw some possibilities around today.

Prompt for Creativity and Conversation

PROMPT: What possibilities does artful language – like poetry – or visual language – such as painting, sculpture or photography – open up for you?

Our time is now. Your time is now. Take back the power shame has taken from you. Release the guilt or anger attached to what happened once-upon-a-time so that you may now live a life of peace and joy instead.

If you happen to write something, nothing would make me happier than seeing what you come up with as a result of this blog post.

Also, if you are feeling lonely and isolated as you work through reclaiming your power over shame, I host a daily Intentional Connective Conversation – you may think of it as a sort of Virtual Coffee Date – where we meet to give one another support, listen to each other’s stories, and just “be” together. You may find information about that in our

You may find information on our Facebook Event or directly on Zoom – the link is either here <— or at the bottom of this blog post.

Julie JordanScott writing personalized love poetry.

Julie JordanScott is the Creative Life Midwife. She inspires people to live their life as an artform and then take action towards their best results. Her specialty is writing – her easiest way to express what she does is this: She Coaches. You Write. Your Readers Win! During the 2020 Pandemic she is also leading daily Virtual Coffee Dates, Facilitating Intentional Conversation so people will feel less isolated during this time of social and physical distancing.

Feelings: Over Around and Upside Down Getting Through the Covid19 Pandemic

March 31, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Weekends for me tend to be busier than weekdays and during these days of quarantine, it is not different. I stay where I am and I have the meetings I would have had out and about. I leave my home to write haiku and I come home and I have more meetings.

Earlier today I was so tired I really wanted to opt out of my later-in-the-day meeting but I didn’t. I was actually energized afterwards. Yay me for showing up anyway?

I did some decluttering and purposeful television watching (Little Fires Everywhere) and now, I give myself the gift of a touch of writing before I either make a video or do some decluttering or both.

I look back up and see the graphic I made earlier in the week,a quote. “A word after a word after a word is power,” and I think “She’s right. Margaret Atwood is right.”

What I was feeling before I sat down to write was anger.

I saw a writing prompt and it made me mad.

But I pushed that mad away and pretended it hadn’t existed and allowed the distraction to take center court and then again, “A word after a word after a word is power” so here I am.

I am angry. This unknown is stretching out in front of us with no end in sight is starting to get on my nerves. I can pretend it doesn’t bother me and get all into spiritual mode, but I am afraid to go into grocery stores and I am out of cranberry juice and that makes me feel angry, which highlights my privilege and makes me feel ashamed for getting upset about something like not having cranberry juice when lives are being lost.

Someone is texting me as I write and my phone buzzes. I more than likely don’t want to talk to them (or text with them.) Right now I would like chocolate. I am angry that my default is still chocolate. I am angry I have had a chocolate addiction for almost my entire.

My spiritual better half is whispering in my ear to practice self-forgiveness but my mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore side is escalating. Clackety clackety clackety up the roller coaster mountain my anger goes…no relief in sight. No relief in sight.

I put my head against the back of the chair and watched videos of my trip to the river this morning. I allowed myself to feel whatever was gurgling up. I stopped feeling angry and remembered I am in control of what I do with my anger.

There may not be the relief I would like to have and there is relief in knowing I have tools like writing, meditation, daily virtual Coffee Date Conversations, music, 27 fling boogies, art journaling, all of it will get me closer to feeling better even if these circumstances continue longer than I might want or like.

“A Word after a word after a word is power,” says Margaret Atwood.

My words, “I have the ability to process. I gain strength daily. I have the resources I need to get through this just like I’ve gotten through many other setbacks along the way.”

Grace flows because my heart knows – a word after a word after a word is power.

AFFIRMATION TO USE:

“Grace flows because my heart knows “A word after a word after a word is power.”

Writing prompt:

Right now I feel…… (write without editing or judgement. End your writing with 5 gratitudes and the affirmation, “Grace flows because my heart knows – a word after a word after a word is power.”

Women holding mugs of coffee, tea, mocha to represent a "virtual coffee date" held virtually during the 2020 pandemic. — Join us for our Virtual Coffee Date on Zoom, every day at 1:30 PDT. Click this link to register for free. Yes, even on weekends!

Hold Onto Your Vision & Your Ideals – Even & Especially During This Pandemic

March 27, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This afternoon I felt like a deflated balloon.

One minute I was smiling and energized and when I switched the off button if I didn’t have a body I might as well have just fizzled flat and evaporated instantly.

If I wasn’t myself and I was one of my closest friends I would have walked me to a comfy bed and tucked me in. “You need a break, Julie. You have clearly been pushing yourself… and doing a good job, too, by the way.”

Instead I stumbled into the fresh air on my front porch and called Jennie, my friend who once lived around the corner in her “zen house” where I used to go to get filled up when I felt like an emptied balloon.

I didn’t vocalize all of what was bothering me, but later I spent time writing and old storylines poured off the end of my pen.

So many worries about not being good enough, not succeeding in what felt like a true sense, not making a difference…. and even as I write these words I have the compulsion to add a caveat, “I am not writing this so you will either reassure me or tell me I am being ridiculous, I am writing these words because at this moment, at this time, it was what I felt.”

Having high ideals and wildly wonderful dreams is challenging enough when the world feels familiar, but in this surreal time when we feel like nothing works like it did just weeks ago, it feels impossible.

Here’s the thing: even though it feels impossible, moving forward anyway – allowing ourselves to recharge and get back into our purpose and our vision and try again – is my most important work right now.

There’s no saying “wait until tomorrow” with this.

Today is tomorrow.

I rested my head against the back of my chair. That makes no sense, today is tomorrow. Except in reality, I started this yesterday and am editing today – so yes: today is tomorrow.

I also know that sometimes when things don’t make sense they make the most sense of all.

Hold onto your high ideals and your vision. Allow your purpose to sustain you. Open your arms, your eyes and your pen to catch your “what’s next” even if you don’t quite succeed.

It’s our time to stay in the game.

Julie JordanScott creates content to inspire creative people to lead more satisfying lives even during this pandemic. Walking and sitting at the Panorama Bluffs helps her feel centered.

Mugs of coffee and comforting drinks connect us during this time of the 2020 Pandemic.

Permission to Feel & Love Grey (or Not) #covid19support

March 25, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A tree in the grey fog on a cold looking morning gives us permission to feel whatever we feel, thank goodness.

It is a grey day here in Bakersfield. I realized after being awake for about an hour I was feeling grey as well. Not dark, not light, just grey. Just grey simply grey and I didn’t and don’t have any fierce predilection to change.

I don’t even know if “predilection” fits there but I like how it sounds, so I am keeping it.

I overslept so I opted out of bed yoga and pre-rise meditation because I wanted to be on-time for my poetry livestreams.

It was cold on my porch, but I livestreamed anyway.

It is drizzling so I didn’t walk though I did take a photo of a sunshiney house in my neighborhood on a street I have always loved and wished I had the vision to push to buy the house on that cul de sac those thirty years ago when I was buying a home.

I decided to light candles and write because it is something I could do, right or wrong, I could simply opt into doing something.

My coffee is brewing and the smell is rising which brings me comfort.

The garbage was collected as always and that gives me an expansive feeling. Am I the only one who enjoys filling my trash can to be picked up? Because I house sit I have two trash cans to fill and I am doing it with such joy I think I must be more than odd and I accept that.

I give myself permission to be how I am and to feel what I feel and cherish this all whether I like it or not. I am holding my grey feelings close and loving them, not trying to change them or “make them better.” I am reminded my wedding china was “Glories on grey” by Lennox, partially because I truly love grey and partially because I deeply cherish the neighbor of my childhood, Mrs. Elder, who had a carefully curated Lenox collection. She took her time in choosing her china and the little me loved her for it.

These days of separate togetherness will look different from day-to-day and our feelings will vacillate – may we grant those around us permission to feel how they are feeling as we continue to grow in compassionate understanding to live and love what is.

Coffee mugs lifted - an invitation to join the Virtual Coffee Conversations - a way to stay intentionally connected during this time of social distancing. — If you would enjoy “hanging out” with a welcoming group of people during this time of social and physical distancing, join us in our Zoom Meeting. We meet daily from 1:30 – 2:30 PDT. Registration details are listed below.

To register via Zoom, please visit here. We also have a Facebook Event where people within the conversation will see recaps of the Coffee Conversations and resources mentioned there. To mark yourself as Interested or Attending and to see what we’ve been up to, please visit here.

What Creative Activity is Calling You While You Social Distance?

March 22, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

An invitation to creative practice while you are experiencing quarantine or social distancing.

I woke up this morning and knew my notebook was calling me so I chose not to putter, look at my instagram feed, check the latest news or otherwise distract myself, I sat down to write. I set my timer for an hour full of creative process.

I stumbled into a thread of Thoreau writing about lives of quiet desperation and Tagore writing about bird song… and I might as well have been on a writing retreat in a tucked away North Carolina cabin.

It felt so good to pay attention to the light.

It felt so good to honor the call to creativity.

It felt so good to take action instead of thinking about and talking about and considering writing – instead I wrote.

Did I write the start of the best American novel? Definitely not. Did I write a poem that will be quoted for a generation and then some like my beloved Mary Oliver? Not in the least, not even a rough rough draft of such a poem. Make that not even a triple rough draft.

Did I write sales copy for my next creative coaching program that will bring people from everywhere to enjoy the journey with me? Nope – although I did do a bit of business processing writing.

Did I write a screenplay, an inspirational essay, a thank you note, a something tangible that would make people like and appreciate me more?

No, I did not.

What I did was enjoy my process. I literally sat at my art table as the sun was coming up and enjoyed the dance of her rays hitting my page. I made a short video and noticed for the first time how my pen actually creates its own vacuum when the letters I swirl magnetize their message (that will be on my Instagram story later today.)

I planted some trees on my focus app which always makes me happy – silly and true.

Because I was sitting at my table instead of squirreled away in my room, Emma could pronounce to me she saw an opossum in our backyard! Hooray for opossums!

Before I went to sleep last night, I knew writing would be the best way to start my day. I have known this for years. Today, I took action. I smiled as I wrote and I wrote as my coffee perked and I wrote as I lived fully despite being “stuck” in my home for who knows how long because the world and the people in it deserves my cooperation.

Next up is my morning walk, which I am now calling a haiku walk.

Later today I will attend my friend Paula’s art zoom and then host the Coffee and Connected Conversation Zoom I’ve been hosting and will continue to host for friends – some of whom I have never met “in real life” and some I have.

What is calling you into connection today?

How will you honor that call?

To be inspired by joining a group of people in a Zoom “Coffee Date” you may join us at 1:30 pm today (we meet daily, you may pop in whenever you’re available.) Click this link to register now.

Julie JordanScott is a creative life coach, writer, poet, Mama extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet. To set up a complimentary exploratory session, please visit here.