Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Open the Gift of Your Future in Your Present Moment, Today

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This week I want to be aware of those moments that may seem to be wrapped in insignificance and yet when the gift of the moment is unwrapped, we discover a nugget of gold that continues to radiate and shine long into the future.

This awareness started with a question, “What if that conversation didn’t happen?”

I was reading a note I started to write yesterday. A note I never completed. A note that just sat here in my unpolished gem file – waiting for me to take action (or not) with it.

I wrote once again about the most important conversation I had in 2017.

It was a completely random conversation with a stranger. It clearly didn’t happen within a context of deep personal history and connection. It happened because I was being fully myself in a moment of time when an unsuspecting stranger didn’t realize he needed exactly the medicine my “fully-myself-ness” offered.

His words and actions allowed me to see myself differently.

“I want to hear what you’re saying,” he said, and turned off the radio so he wouldn’t be distracted.

I’m accustomed to going about my day, taking care of my kids, showing up for my friends as best as I can, making contributions as best I can and my perception of myself is often one of invisibility.

That one conversation has lifted me up countless times since that day and provides me the exact medicine I need when I am feeling discouraged.

Thankfully the conversation happened and I continue to receive its afterglow of grace and self-love.

Instead of worrying about “what if it didn’t happen” I am choosing to shift my focus to receiving the continuing gifts from the fact it did happen. Every conversation, every connection is a gift.

Every conversation is a gift.

Every connection is a gift.

Now, receive the gift.

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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What Message are You Sending the World? Think Authentically Before Responding:

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What message are you sending the world?

You may think, for example, you are sending a message of love and abundance  but your self-talk is filled with messages of fear and scarcity. Don’t messages or “watch out!” energy may permeate you while you may say “Love is everywhere” your subconscious is hearing “watch out for danger lurking everywhere, all the time.”

I say this because I have done it for so long I didn’t even notice it.

I’ll be telling a story this week on Periscope about an experience I had eleven years ago that was always important and yet I haven’t told much – and it wasn’t until this weekend I realized how much it has impacted my life.

The thing is – this story has transformative power and unfortunately I have morphed that power into fear and scarcity. I have taken heavenly energy and sheathed it into destructive energy rather than constructive flow.

Now I could keep digging my hole by scolding myself in weakness AND once again, that is clearly not the message my heart desires I send the world.

I am a stand for love and hope and peace. I am a soul opener, giving fellow humans the space to be authentically true to who they are no matter how eccentric and quirky and straight-laced and totally ordinary and polka-dotted and denim all of what you are is phenomenal.

The world is waiting for all of your words: the stories of your screw ups as well as your triumphs because truly – the path from the screw up to the… whatever is… connects us deeply with our fellow travelers.

Speaking of which – my writing time is up for now as I need to go fetch my child at school.

I ask you again – what message are you really truly sending the world?

Let’s shift your intention to send the message your heart desires you send now.

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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When Words are Left Behind: Revisiting Georgia O’Keeffe

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Perhaps it is my theme reveal for the A to Z Challenge   that has me thinking of Literary Grannies and Creative Makers who are trailblazing women, I don’t know exactly but for whatever reason, Georgia O’Keeffe sprang into mind today and I spontaneously posted an image and a quote of hers on Instagram. A quote about the ferocity of fear and the equally tenacious quality of creative life force.

To see my Instagram Post and read the quote (and you ought to follow me while you are over there, the slice-of-life stuff may be interesting to you) visit here.

I had studied Georgia O’Keeffe years ago so I decided to look in my old blog to see if I could find anything relevant.

There, nine years ago, I was with Samuel (then Sam) on a mini-roadtrip-turned-too-long and her presence was quite strong. Here is what I wrote then:

It was the end of Spring break and  tech week for “The Winter’s Tale”. The last ten days were rapidly fading in memory. They left behind a tired, soul aching me, sitting at my porch desk as the day faded.

I had no words left.

Instead of conventional language I had three blobs of paint on a paper plate palette, a brush, water and a piece of paper I had torn angrily into four more-or-less equal pieces.

Samuel and I had arrived home to an empty house following a trip to the Los Angeles airport. We were held tightly during eight hour round trip (due to traffic) into a cocoon in the back seat of a small car. He sat peacefully watching a hand-held GPS device while I allowed thoughts to flicker and flow through me and eventually brought me to this speechless frustration-laden perch on
my front porch that commanded me “Paint! Without question.”

“P!A!I!N!T!”

So I did exactly that. I just painted.

I dipped my brush into the blue-ish blob and added a touch of red and the speechless frustration turned into groaning, angry, somewhat muffled choking as I put the odd-colored paint onto the  page and became even angrier at what I created.

“This is not the color I wanted,” my soul lamented silently. From my lips came words I didn’t know were there. “I hate you, oh how I hate you. I h a t e you!”

Where was “this” coming from, I wondered, and what was “this” talking about, why was I so angry and what did I hate?

These questions rose up and washed away as I splattered color and water on one square and it leaped onto the other squares, skittering and scattering from the tempestuousness of my brush beating.

I rinsed my brush, dried it and dabbled into a sweet shade of yellow. I made a box, wanting to practice the shapes and lines as called on by one of my book-learning-painting teachers  I met with success-failure and kept painting.

My anger met my breath and I mixed my intention with the paper, water and color, making brush shaped rectangles of orangey-red and then yellow-y orange. My square-once-house became a pastoral scene.

I felt peace rising.

I continued. I continued again and again, two more times. I painted what came, painted what I felt. I sat there, painting, painting, painting.

It felt like hours had passed and it felt like no time had passed.

What happened next surprised me.

I reached out to the initial attempt at painting. When I wasn’t looking, the angry, blue-ish blob that overflowed with contempt had become something beautiful.

It had become beauty itself.

Edgar Degas said it like this: “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”

Even if the only person ever impacted by this painting spree at my porch desk is me, it was and is and will continue to be a good thing.

“Good thing” doesn’t begin to express it.

Georgia O’Keeffe reminds me in her words, “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.”

This painting episode was different than anything I had ever felt. The “must paint” feeling was overwhelming, stronger than any other creative call I have ever had – perhaps because I needed to listen to the message from the paint.

I needed to be the speaker, the conduit, the artist, the audience, the emcee, the chorus, the straight-man and be none of these because the paint overtook everything. It merged with my emotion: it became anger and frustration. The brush and the paint and the water and the paper were as much a part of me as my skin,  my blood, my muscles, my bones.

Tears came and washed everything “just right”.

Tears didn’t wash it clean because clean and dirty aren’t relevant.

Comparison – in the moment – doesn’t matter, it is needless. It no longer carries the markings of meaning because tears came and washed everything into a wordless version of “just right”.

I don’t need language dense words to know the exact word-language definition of “just right” because I am intimate, on a soul level, with the wordless “just right”.

I don’t need language dense words to step into the questions the paint answered so vividly for me, for you, for us.

It is as it is, raw and unedited – unmolded, without words, just right.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She created the process #5for5BrainDump that has birthed books, breakthroughs and many more livestream broadcasts. Participate in this process via livestream – to check the current schedule visit #5for5HQ

She is also 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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Soften: A Word that Earths (And Opens the Heart to Transformation) #7MagicWords

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This word rose from my chest. I was compelled to find a quote because that is often a part of my process – perhaps it is the community builder I am, reaching into collaboration. I knew when the quote I first found was from Mary Oliver and it was about writers – that soften was indeed the word. And then my heart fluttered toward Flagstaff and the Frozen Labyrinth experience I had there several Christmases ago.

Enjoy – My Day 2 flow into the #7MagicWords challenge from Marisa Goudy :

“Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing – soften their roughest edges – to accommodate themselves toward a group response.”

Mary Oliver

What follows is free flow writing for 5 minutes… no corrections, no fixes, no forethought. It isn’t concerned with appearances… isn’t toughened up by the editorial eye. It is soft and getting softer as the insights open. I’m grateful you are here, reading.

= * = * =

I’m not sure if this was meant to be something… I don’t know if my family meant to have me believe. I don’t remember ever hearing this but…

I have believed for my whole life that it is wrong to be weird, that nerds or freaks or anyone “out there” was wrong and above all, I needed to avoid wrong or different.

This is sort of in direct opposition to the family member most revered and treasured (or so it felt) my brother John who had down’s syndrome – and ironically squared, as a child never spoke about his down’s syndrome.

Things would be talked about like institutionalizing him and people would stare when we came into a setting but none of that different-ness that so many others saw as wrong was ever spoken. The first time someone actually spoke to me about having a brother with down’s syndrome was when I was seventeen and a co-worker asked me what it was like having a brother “like that” and on a playground a child asked my daughter, “Why is your uncle such a freak?”

My daughter shrugged and kept playing. I smiled, thinking how great it was that she didn’t get upset.

I talked to her about it – to see how she translated what the other child said.

I am comfortable calling myself eccentric. I don’t like being called a freak, though. Freak connotes cast out. Eccentric softens the freak, even though “Fly your freak flag” is something people say –

I pull my hands from the keyboard and hold my chin and my face in them, trying to make some sense of the curvy direction these words are going, sort of labyrinthean like the image I chose to go with “a word that earths.”

With age, my skin feels more dough-like. Softer.

I do not need to be afraid of softening, being a freak, or getting older.

My writing is strange and wonderful in its Labyrinthean shape. Having a freak for a brother was a huge blessing in my life. He paved the way for me being a mommy to a child with autism and another child who has bi-polar disorder.

The primary difference between John’s different-ness and my children’s is we can see John’s. It was obvious. There wasn’t any hiding of it behind a “I’m just like every other person here” look.

John’s down syndrome softened his proclamation of different-ness. My babies and I look “normal” and surprise! We are not.

Rewriting the Narrative: We are much better than normal as was my brother. Strange, wonderful, freak, unconventional, eccentric, darling dear lovely soft… me.

Note to self: challenge of all challenges is to move this from words on the page into deeply rooted belief. PS We can do this! 

I do not need to toughen up, another urge I was offered when I was young. I am choosing, electing, embracing etc my softness, my softening.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She created the process #5for5BrainDump that has birthed books, breakthroughs and many more livestream broadcasts. Participate in this process via livestream – to check the current schedule visit #5for5HQ

She is also 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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We Soon Forget and It Is Gone, Just Like That, Just in That.. What is the Word?

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Sometimes the need to write something is so intense and I just need to throw words on the page.

I had a prompt for an instagram challenge – my instagram writing will appear here shortly because, quite frankly, it has crackeled and flowed this week all written in 5 minute chunks.

A prompt today was “Books and Magazines” so I looked up “books” in my flickr account and what I got – well, what I got was this image and what I wrote below will be molded into a poem like shorter piece especially for my Instagram Audience – to follow click here please. Would love to have you along…

Now – here goes a surprising twisty road trip of 5 minutes – this is so surreal in its free form, fact and fiction and out-of-body merge and meld… 

Broken, put in a box for all these years

Months

Days

Hours

Moments

We soon forget and it is gone, just like that, just in that nick that cut that tear of a moment and the dirt sticks with more tenacity than the lightness of our once upon a time wish, the candle we blew out and never bothered relighting because…

Well, because.

You know the well, because as well if not better than I.

Don’t you?

Purple is my favorite color isn’t it?

And I discovered yet another broken mug in my kitchen sink this morning and I wondered again how I could still not value myself enough to have a dishwasher but after all these years I still don’t and I can still hear that long ago boss saying to me “What kind of a house did you buy that doesn’t have a dishwasher? And I was ashamed again that word, that foreign word I insist foreign but know more intimately than that man I fucked this morning who has no idea how much his humor hurts me, still vile as the bile creeps up my neck and I hold it back keep swallowing keep forgetting keep not looking not looking it isn’t good to look dumb shit you will regret it I guarantee it and I do. I do. I do regret it all.

I look back at the broken mess I poured into the beautiful glass bowl, so surprisingly heavy.

My gift for a performance I always thought was a dis not good enough oh yes the word is disappointment.

The word.

Disappointment

When will the damn timer go off.

Do I really need to write more of this?

The penultimate disappointment I stopped performing because of it, partially. I had to stop I didn’t couldn’t want to be.

Thank God, the timer.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative: this specifically is sharing everyday, in the now. A sort of 5 minute meditation upon that day or the day before…. we’ll see how each day shapes up without insisting it conform to any particular shape beyond writing for 5 minutes… go. write. now.

I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

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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Early Morning 5 Minute Meditation: A Friday in Early March

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It is a grey morning. I woke up due to the foreign sound of rain dripping from my roof. It doesn’t rain much here in Bakersfield and when it comes, I am delighted. My only hope is the First Friday festivities aren’t rained out. I love the gallery visits but what I most love is walking around, looking at what the courageous street artists are showing and collecting lots of hugs.

Tonight there is an event honoring an incredible young dancer and the invitation says “dress to impress” and “A photographer will be there.” That is enough of a call for me.

Last night I saw “Angels in America” Part 1. There is so much I don’t remember. I was such a different person last time I saw it. I was a theatre newbie back then and was in awe of everything, just in awe.

When we are in awe, sometimes that sense of “this is so cool” isn’t able to capture the nuances that I capture now: the set changes like a ballet, so every moment my eyes stayed fixed on the stage. The textured technical elements – gave the setting and the language more depth only subtle in a way it entered the awareness like a soft breeze does on a hot day: you feel it and notice it and you are grateful for it – it adds rather than detracts from the present.

My timer goes off and I have six minutes until I take Samuel to school. Today looks to be a steady stream of activity, but nothing nerve-unsettling. Peaceful productivity. A passion activator Friday sort of a day.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

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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Free Yourself From Banishment: Express. Strengthen. Heal. Awaken.

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“Each time I express myself with writing, I get stronger. I heal more. I awaken to what is true.”

I wrote today’s affirmation, in cursive, on an art background book page and what I heard was, “look at how pretty those cursive r’s are. You made them. They’re lovely.”

This awareness negates one of my early outer critic stories that in the past has prevailed and kept me from writing. Miss Pizarro said, “You will never make your “R’s” right. What is wrong with you?”

Miss Pizarro, if she is still alive, would probably be very disturbed about the lack of cursive writing instruction in schools.

As for me, I love the feeling of writing in cursive, how it feels to create the loops – and I love that as I am growing in healing through my personal narrative writing, I am releasing these long-time curses – these long time periods of banishment.

Here’s what happens with the whole banishing scenario:

I am the one who has locked myself into my cell of separation. No one else did that. Other people may have said the words, they may have been the ones who ignited the hurt feelings AND it is I who walked through the door marked “Go away, worthless one” not them.

Some might say I am victim blaming myself.

Keep listening and hear me out, please.

Just as I am the one who locked myself out of the world and into banishment, I am the one who is now setting myself free. I am the one who is choosing an active trust and then actually taking the steps rather than talking about taking the steps.

I am the one who is putting the pieces in place like stepping one stepping stone to the next, one big boulder in the river after another. I am the one lifting my foot and propelling my weight forward. I may seek help and a hand and more than a moment or two of solo prayer or quiet and ultimately just like I was the one who locked myself in, I am the one who is setting myself free.

There are people who reflect my wonder back at me who are helpful beyond words: many of whom have been beside me – even at a distance – for close to twenty years.

I recall their words of affirmation and as I step out from banishment, I hear them even more clearly. I tune into the truth within the love in their commentary. Rather than Miss Pizarro with her, “You’ll never…. Be right. What’s wrong with you?” I hear “Julie’s work  is better than (huge personal growth guru)” and “It is because of Julie I am a writer,” and “Your work changed my life.” And “It is because of who Julie is” and “Follow Julie, your future self will thank you.”

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

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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License to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry: The Art of Loss

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“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”

Elizabeth Bishop  From the poem ONE ART. Click this link to read the entire text of the poem at the Poetry Foundation website.

I can feel annoyance rise up my spine at the thought of losing something every day. Perhaps this is why I have more clutter than I need. The thought of losing is painful, abhorrent even.

Why would I want to lose something every day?

I settle back into my breath and stop debating the poem itself.

This morning I lost some of my usually most valuable time: early in the day, most productive, flowing space of openness and I was busily searching for Instagram challenges for March as it is only days away.

I managed to pull myself out of the rabbit hole of interesting people and images but not before I allowed time that could have been used to make my present and future and (I’m lost now trying to find the just right word) frittered away the moments that might have been the best of my day.

That says it.

Did I lose my best in search of mediocre?

My hands reach off the keyboard as if I had set fire to it.

How dare I consider such a thing!

Why would I purposefully lose my best in search of mediocrity?

(If I was a biblical sort of person, shouting “Get behind me Satan!” would be appropriate here.)

I rub my hands together, a sort of stimming learned perhaps from my father or brother or from myself. My palms are dry and need lotion. My hair which dried naturally looks completely strange and my eyes… are doing the drowsy difficult to stay open routine.

The timer goes off and I think “Wow, that is five minutes I’m never getting back” but when I peruse what I wrote, I see value. And if I didn’t? I would see loss. So we’re all good. We’re all good.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative: this specifically is sharing everyday, in the now. A sort of 5 minute meditation upon that day or the day before…. we’ll see how each day shapes up without insisting it conform to any particular shape beyond writing for 5 minutes… go. write. now.

I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

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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Take Time to Allow Others the Space to Speak into the Silence

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In yesterday’s writing, I mentioned almost off-handedly about a version of me who hides in the closet, praying she won’t be found.

I remind myself of my coaching clients who will wait until the very end of the session to say the most important thing, the whatever-it-was-that-needed-to-be-said-all-along important “thing.”

I imagine in their minds it is a gift (or perhaps a fire, a monster, a treasure,  an enormous neon lightbulb, a map) between us only visible to them.

Maybe that is how I would be best in making friends with that little girl, hiding in the closet. Recognizing the gift sitting in between us> Perhaps I am meant to  patiently sit with her as she gains comfort in being with me again.

Have I mentioned to you my background of working in mental health?

Years ago I spent five years working  a Deputy Conservator: in some places the title for this is “Public Guardian” which set me apart from mental health clinicians – I didn’t have to abide by the same “stand apart” sort of guidelines I understood them to have.

I was as close to a family member an employee might be.

One of my favorite clients was a woman who had schizoaffective disorder. This is a combination of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. She wound up in the hospital after an episode where she refused to eat or drink because she believed her food and water were being poisoned.

She often spend most of her time in bed, isolated.

One day I went to visit her in the hospital and I simply lowered myself to the floor – butt on the cold linoleum floor, back against the wall.  I said “I’m here with you, in case you want to talk.”

And I sat there on the floor, looking out the window across the room. There was no view – just bricks from the other part of the county hospital. It was quiet and peaceful. I had no expectations for the visit, I just thought she might isolate herself not because she had nothing to say but because she felt safe there. I wanted her to feel safe with me, so I joined her in her safe place and took a position of respect toward her safety.

Something in that “no questions, I’m just here stance” opened her up to me. She talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.

I found out more in that visit (and yes, I stayed seated on the cold linoleum floor for the entire conversation) than any of her clinical workers had I believe because I specifically didn’t ask questions.

I was just there with her, patiently waiting. I was able to advocate for her better after that because I had been patient and waited for her to speak and be heard. That silence spoke love to her.

My brother John never mastered language like other people. We spent hours together in silence and yet in that silence so much love was spoken. He inadvertently prepared me for silent love.

When we were the only two children at home while our older three siblings were at school we were together in companionable silence. At my parents fiftieth wedding anniversary party I sought his companionship when I got overwhelmed by the hub bub. We sat in companionable silence and then joined the others, together. As he was dying, I would visit him in his hospital room. He had a tracheotomy for nine months and was unable to speak with conventional language, yet we still spoke in silent love.

All this is to say, the little girl who has been hiding in the closet may have been waiting for me amidst the many episodes of my life to take the time to be quiet with her, to love her into being comfortable enough to speak.

To love HER into being comfortable enough to speak, I am actually loving MYSELF into being comfortable enough to speak.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

 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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Let’s Make Friends: Allow Your Inner Committee to Work With You, Not Against You

by

One of my weaknesses in past explorations of narrative is that I would have insights and discoveries and I wouldn’t return to them.

Now I am returning to them (close to) daily. I start with reading the most recent entry, take a sentence, and continue with it.

I know it challenges people to think their Inner Critic wants them to succeed or what is perceived as their ‘negative side” wants them to do well and yet – when we choose that as truth, more transformation magic happens.

Read on – to see how you may befriend Your Inner Committee: written #5for5BrainDump style. The opening line comes from my last writing here. 

Every part of you wants you to succeed and many of us here, on the outside, do, too.

The show was called Herman’s head, or in my memory that is what it was called. The lead character was named Herman and the supporting cast members were primarily different parts of his thinking practice or process.

Now that I think of it, this is also sort of like the fairly recent animated movie, “Inside/Out.”

Anyway, while we may have different names for the parts of our inside – different characters, different ideas, different thoughts and opinions, I know each of us has some sort of committee where the players seem to move us forward differently.

I have Little Miss Nicey Nice for example who is overly nice. And was how I thought I was supposed to be in every circumstance in every moment of my life.

I am pleasant and kind and thoughtful regularly and she springs from Little Miss Nicey Nice, but she is a lot more sincere and a lot less like Eddie Haskell, the Girl Version.

I also have an inner critic who is like Miss Pizarro, one of my third grade teachers who was particularly awful she used the phrase “You will never…” and it seered into my mind and for whatever reason I believed her. My sin against humanity that I would never… improve upon was that nasty inability to make a cursive letter “R” up to her level of satisfaction. (I will call her Miss Bizarro).

I also have a little me who hides in the closet and prays the object provoking my fear will pass and won’t notice me. I can tell from the tears in my eyes as I write of her, this is still fresh and I haven’t dealt with her as much as Miss Nicey Nice and Miss Bizarro.

She wants to be heard, So this week, I will make space to hear her.

I can do that in five minutes increments.

I’ve gone over my 5 minutes this morning.

My hands sit on my lap, in silence, which is sometimes a point of surrender and sometimes a point of hiding.

I didn’t expect to bump into a point of personal development or growth, this was supposed to be for you, my reader, to explore the characters that sculpt your narrative.

I’m going to get up from my desk and wash dishes.

I will write more of this later. Please hold me to it and I will hold you to sharing about your committee in short, yes you can do it, five minute chunks.

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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