End Writer’s Block – Page 7 – Creative Life Midwife

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.

This 5 minute brain dump… was like the veins in my arm is to a needle. My veins roll and don’t want to submit to the needle. These finicky veins protect me from bleeding AND are problematic.

As always, when I just hold tight to the topic while simultaneously releasing attachment to writing in any particular way, the flow started. Sort of. I’ll be back AND for now, thought it was more important to show the process than worry about perfection.

There is something parents with special needs children often refrain from discussing.

(Can you feel the tightness in my language there? The holding-close of my words? The self-protection?

Grief is not something people usually seek out. It is not like the new car everyone wants or the fancy new phone from Apple or even a new outfit or daytrip.

Grief, in fact, is something we avoid at all costs, so when your child is diagnosed with autism or spina bifida or a learning disability, we would rather pretend we didn’t hear what we were told. We would rather pretend we never noticed anything different about our little one, the one whose life is indelibly connected to ours.

Years ago I worked for county mental health, primarily with people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other severe diagnoses. What many don’t know is the onset of these illnesses is usually somewhere in late adolescence or early adulthood so the individual is “normal” for childhood and high school and then – suddenly, they are not.

I wondered what it would be like to think you have a perfect child only to discover your perfect child has a disease you can’t fix – you may treat it, but you can’t fix it with all your best Mama-Love juju. It won’t seem to matter.

At the times after Samuel’s diagnosis with autism when he was six-years-old I felt some of what I had contemplated although he was much younger.

Even writing this causes me to hesitate. In these first five minutes, I can’t break that barrier in not wanting to talk about “it” – feels like a combination of betrayal, not wanting to step back into those now too tight “shoes” and worry I will somehow offend someone with my thoughts or observations.

If I was my creativity coaching client, I would give myself a time out. “Set your writing aside and come back soon. Don’t leave it completely. Leave it open and come back soon.”

So that’s what I’ll do today.

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.

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.

Now I Allow, Invite, Intend….

Sometimes There are Topics You Just Don’t Feel Like Talking About. Thank you. No, not that please.