Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Healing: One Mindful, Constructive, Forward Facing Action at a Time –

by

Your First step: fill in the image blank: This is how we heal: One ____ at a time. This post is my #5for5BrainDump – I filled in the blank with “conversation” and didn’t necessarily stay on topic!

This is how we heal: one conversation at a time.

I have to confess, I felt pretty frustrated yesterday by a comment someone made and I don’t even want to talk about the comment don’t even want to talk about the context for fear of someone recognizing herself in my words and leap to conclusions about what I am thinking/feeling/choosing when I’m sorry, beloved-perhaps, you can’t know how I am thinking/feeling/choosing because we haven’t had a conversation on the topic lately.

One thing I will confess, though, was when I took an African Culture class my senior year at University of the Pacific. I was hungry for course work focused on Africa because as an International Relations major, I had fallen in love with the study of Africa.

I was an Anglo woman who had (and still hasn’t) visited Africa – and this class was offered under the Black Studies department. I was the only non person of color in the class and in fact, if we had said “person of color” it would have been seen as a racial insult.
One particularly tiring afternoon I said, “You know, I love you all and sometimes I feel like I have to spend every class period here apologizing for my ethnicity.”

In that moment my professor nearly jumped out of his feet with excitement.

“That’s it! Exactly! That’s the feeling!”

I wish I had a photo of my pale face scrunched up with my twenty-one-year-old confused blue eyes looking at him in a perpetual question mark to remind myself not getting it and not having “the” answer is a part of the beloved process.

I started to get it then and now I’m getting it more and more.

I loved that class. I loved my classmate who had transferred from a college from Chicago who said, “I hope someday I know as much as you do about Africa.” And my other friend, sophomore year in my Politics of Africa class who admitted to reading my ten-page single-spaced term paper on Ivory Coast (now known as Côte d’Ivoire) twice because she enjoyed it so much.

I love being an Africanist. I love engaging with my African friends and I love knowing where the African grocery store is in Bakersfield and I love engaging my curiosity and not accepting what people tell me vaguely as truth.

This took longer than five minutes. It took closer to seven.

And I still have so much more to say.

Which I see as a sign of a really good thing.

_ _ _

A few last words: Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) 
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper? 
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
– – – –
Now – your response would be adored.
 
If you take time to write for 5 minutes to it,  I may dance with joy – especially if you post a link:
 
“This is how we heal: one ______  at a time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

The River: My Restorative Friend & Forever Companion

by

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

Ann Voskamp

As a little girl, I fell in love with the Delaware River and the nameless creek which ran through my home town of Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

When I first moved to Bakersfield I didn’t pay much attention to the Kern River. I was aware there was a river in a mythical canyon I never visited. In Bakersfield itself, there were canals and dry riverbeds. It wasn’t until we had an exchange student named Sandra from the South of France that my children and I engaged with the river as it was actually flowing through town that summer. We discovered it was a fun place to play.

 

Eventually my visits to Bakersfield’s Hart Park’s pond expanded to the river that flows along the park’s border and then the river’s call invited me more deeply into the one-time mythical canyon. It was there I hiked and explored and contemplated the flow rather than stepping into the dangerous Kern River – except on a rare occasion when the call is strong and I was surrounded by people I loved and it seemed perfectly sane though perfectly freezing to climb into the river fully dressed for the just right photos.

I’ve been in a dry spell energetically and my visits to the river have become medicine for my spirit. She is restorative, my deep well of a friend when human friends aren’t spontaneously accessible.

I treasure her song which encourages my voice to return as it is here.

I’m grateful I moved beyond the boundaries of the streets and avenues and sidewalks and into the slightly off kilter lesser traveled roads that meander beside her. They remind me of myself.

Somehow when I am beside the river’s flow, I feel strength in knowing others are “with” me in creative spirit. The absence of my friends “with skin” is less lonely as I tune into my solitude rather than the aloneness.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson and my heart:

“And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired”

Beloved river, sacred medicine, thank you for who you are whether flowing or not flowing, you bring life to me.

 

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Right Before School Starts: When It is Over, Then It Will Be Easier –

by

It is the weekend before school starts.

Ten years ago during the weekend before school started Samuel ran away from me, four blocks, in extreme fear insisting he would be in kindergarten not first grade. He ran, I now know, because he didn’t have the language abilities to communicate what was going on in his head.

Samuel – August, 2007

I have tried to imagine what that scrambled language feeling must be like, especially for one so intelligent.\\

It was four months after the death of my brother and I had no idea the amount of crisis after crisis I would soon be facing. I remember chasing Samuel down F street in downtown Bakersfield, not even sure if he knew to stop at red lights, calling to him as he ignored me, running with all his six-year-old might, me running with my tired forty-five year old frame, praying through every footstep.

It was Emma’s birthday and we were at a church luncheon where the children would be visiting their new Sunday school classes. Samuel escaped when I was picking up the mess prior to visiting his new classroom upstairs.  I didn’t cry when I caught up with him and he was completely resigned to checking out the new  Sunday School rooms I was so enthusiastic about.

Yesterday I revisited my notes from that day, to calm my nerves and see the facts as they took place instead of my worry about what took place and the cobwebs surrounding the memory.

After I caught up with him and we both caught our breath, we visited his new room and he declared he was starting first grade. I felt a glimmer of hope I had forgotten and later that night his father took him and his sisters to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate Emma’s birthday. Samuel screamed when the cook at the fancy Japanese restaurant lit the food and fire and he and I they did the celebratory fire. He and I left the restaurant.

We sat in the car, both nervous and upset, both unable to verbalize what we were feeling and thinking.
I wrote in my journal that night,

I am in that weird state of wanting to cry and not being able to cry, not being willing to feel the deep feelings required to squeeze them out, plus it is Emma’s birthday and I still need to get through the cake part.

Emma doesn’t remember it being uncomfortable or unfortunate. It was just Samuel being Samuel and I was just Mommy being Mommy and she was just Emma being Emma.

This year I haven’t gone to school to collect Samuel’s schedule. I haven’t been up for the fight I predict will happen even though last year started without a hitch. The ending was a bit rocky and there was a lot of wonderfulness in between but unfortunately my nerves veer between swaying towers of what actually did happen and what might have happened and might still happen.

I wonder what parents go through whose children don’t have special needs?

I don’t remember my mother ever being nervous at the start of the school year.

I have two more first days of school and then, I’ll be done with K – 12 grade. Four students through high school, three so far started college, one has a master’s degree and one is still attending.

Ten years ago I knew it might be difficult, but I wasn’t prepared for the storm that would hit me and continue to loop back at the start of every school years with several spurts of thunderstorms in between.
This year I question whether I have the advocate dancing in my veins anymore. I’m tired. I’m disillusioned. I’m on the verge of feeling defeated.

Normally I would close an essay with a ra-ra tune of “and everything turned out…” and yet that optimism has been slowly dribbling out of me month by week by day by hour.

Forty-eight hours from now Samuel’s Junior Year in high school will have started.

We will get through whatever needs to get through and I am going to hope, pray, act and believe in the best.

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

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Tales of a Gratitude Convert: How Writing A Love Letter to My Eyeglasses Caused a HUGE shift

by

There was a time when I would describe myself as a “Gratitude Convert”. I had been wayyyy over the top cynical about what I called the whole “phoneys with their attitude of gratitude nonsense!” yet several years ago all that shifted.

I am now a proponent of gratitude from the first hand knowledge of its power in my life. Period.

My practice isn’t what it used to be, though.  I can’t even explain why.  Yesterday and today, I “got” gratitude even more deeply, even as a long time gratitude practitioner. I am thinking I will Re-Start my practice by doing exactly what I did yesterday. Read on to see what I mean:

I read a prompt yesterday when I was in a moment of “I want to write but I just don’t feel inspired by anything!” and voila, my purple eyeglasses caught my attention.  I wrote for sixty seconds. I didn’t come up with anything particularly brilliant, but it – and they – helped me to see into gratitude a bit more deeply.

You know, feeling meaningful gratitude for those every day, mundane items in our lives that we would function less well if we didn’t have them.

I decided to pull the prompt out and write a thank you/love letter to my eyeglasses. Before you read my love letter, find something of yours that is right there, within an arm length. Set it beside or in front of you as you read my love letter.

If you want to feel even more deeply, read my love letter aloud.

Beloved Eyeglasses,

You tirelessly sit on the bridge of my nose, asking for nothing but the occasional cleaning. You help me to see things I could not see without you. Even now, as I get more mature and take you off and leave you places carelessly, you don’t complain.

You never get up and leave me. It is I who consistently leave you.

I feel your generous smile when I put you back up there, straddling my nose, aligning with my ears, fulfilling your sole purpose: to help me see.

Oh, beloved Italian purple eyeglasses, Katherine keeps telling me to get a new pair, that you don’t work as well as you once did for me, that I shouldn’t have to take you off all the time but… I can’t bring myself to switch to a different pair.

Sure, there have been others. My first pair fell into the Delaware River when I was canoeing after my mother warned me, “Don’t go canoeing with your glasses on!” and 

then, there was the time when we sat at the optometrist and I, in a brief moment of prepubescent rebellion told my Mom to just shut up about my going to camp by myself and how brave it was – “Shut up with your praise, Mom!”

You must understand, Purple pair of eyeglasses, this was the back-then equivalent of saying “the “F” word you, Mom…” My glasses have all made me feel braver, I suppose, because with you, I can see.

Without you, everything is blurry.

I remember one spiritual friend of mine insisting glasses are not a real need, that I could use my mind as a visual corrector instead.

I didn’t argue as I don’t usually. I nodded and listened and knew when I have you in my life, my life is simply better.

Oh, beloved purple eyeglasses.

It took this moment for me to see what is right here, in front of my face.

I love you dearly.

Thank you.

Your now even more grateful owner,

Julie

 My eyeglasses are my friend, nearly lifelong friend. Eyeglasses have been a part of my profile since I was in sixth grade and could no longer see the chalk board. I didn’t always wear the same purple pair, but I have always had some always-ready-to-serve eyeglasses close at hand.

I had brief flings with contact lenses and these days, I use them differently, but oh, my glasses. How I love and appreciate the work you do for me.

Writing this love letter meant so much more than just adding them to a list of gratitudes.  I love my gratitude lists and may write them again in the future. For now, I am going to write gratitude love letters to all those mundane, overlooked, underappreciated aspects of my life I normally don’t even notice.

Maybe you’ll even feel compelled to write gratitude love letters along with me.

Try it out. Start with 5 minutes of love for something ordinary.

If you post something – an instagram post, a blog post, anything – please send a link my way. Maybe I’ll end up writing a love letter to YOUR love letter.

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

It Feels So Good (To Finally Feel Better)

by

Today is the first day in many days I woke up feeling good. Revisiting old works-in-progress, writing new poetry that weaves old in new, combining household chores with wild creativity in the AND space (rather than either-or)How do I forget how good this feels?

I posted a flat-lay of my calendar and hints of my creative process and knew, just knew, I needed to spend five minutes in stream of consciousness, free flow brain dumping to make the day even better.

I’ll admit it: part of this is an invitation for you to create alongside me – so if you’re willing – keep reading and prepare to write, too.

It feels so good to….

Set my timer for five minutes and know I can completely give this time over to my creative process.

It feels so good to listen to classical music just because I like it and not worry about anyone judging my taste or think anything other than “wow, this must really make Julie feel good to listen to classical music!”

It feels so good to have my diffuser going as I listen to classical music and write. It feels so good to ask myself questions and have conversations not with my higher self but with this self – the me that is right now inhabiting this imperfect body in this scratchy time in our culture that sometimes looks like thunder storms are brewing and then I remember, “I sort of, no not sort of – I enjoy thunder storms.”

It feels good to smile, gently, truthfully – and feel it get wider as I think “Mona Lisa, in my imagination anyway, would be proud.”

It feels so good to have conversations over breakfast with Emma and Samuel, to invoke Samuel’s creativity and watch his non-poker face as I mention his gifts in the way of seeing. “Samuel is a really good photographer” I say and Emma says, “He has a really good eye. I don’t.”

“Ahhh, practice will help that,” I tell Emma. “I’m like you. Samuel is a natural.”

That just feels sacred and holy, moments we would often brush aside as we exfoliate our memories and our presences.

It feels so good to reorganize and tidy up a bit. It feels so good to put my hands in the suds as I wash dishes and clean the counters not in an angry “Oh I have to do this and I hate it” but “oh, I am so glad this will look so bright in a few minutes and the way this stuff smells….mmmmm” and yes. It all feels so good.

I hear the applause on my timer peter our and it tells me this particular moment in good times writing is over.

I am grateful I took the moment. I am grateful you are reading. I am grateful for feeling better this morning than I have for a long time.

Now, your turn. And now you write….

=      =      =      =

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.

 

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

How to Write Anywhere from Random Inspiration, an Old School Pencil plus a Sprinkling of Word-Love

by

I wrote the majority of the poem below at one of Bakersfield’s quirkiest fast food drive-thru windows. They make fabulous veggie breakfast burritos, so my intent to feed Emma and take a moment or two of solace was met when I stumbled past my to-do list for a moment of writing play from a page of a college text book published the year I was born.

I wrote with a very appropriate yellow, number two wooden pencil. I wrote in cursive and asked my sixteen-year-old son if he could even read cursive. “Kinda,” he said from the back seat as I showed him my fledgling work of art.

Any tiny slice of these moments this morning would never entered into the minds of the faculty of Louisiana Polytechnic institute when the pored over the just right content and the most highly regarded readings for college freshman who were born while Europe was being flattened by hate and might and fervor.

When this writer-poet-word-lover started making art and word prompts from book pages purchased at library book sales and SPCA Fundraisers, word-lust and art collided to create… what you’ll find below.

By the way, a fun way to create writing prompts on the go is to use a daily newspaper. Circle three words from an article and use those words to inform your content in a poem or a paragraph, a tweet or an Instagram story.

Now, for this poem:

Blue Waltz and Brillcreem – (She loves  the words exactitude and abstraction together)

 

Exactitude met abstraction in two lines in a 1950’s textbook

staunch and quirky, measurable and a running-off-the-table’s edge

puddle straddling similar yet always slightly or eons apart concepts,

Can you see them? free range and structured words abandoned,

unpolished: abstract exactitude – sweet and savory, Abbott and Costello

letters whose sole aim was to assist today’s dead or nearly dead then adolescents figure

out what language really meant.

Language: still alive and forever

captured because this poem is being written now, decades later

and you are in fact reading or hearing this

language habadashery, stitched earnestly into a semblance

of something – hopefully not completely unpleasant.

The wonder, the strength of the academic lust mixed with brill creem and

Blue waltz, cardigans and denim, cuffs turned up at the bottom –

Nothing but ephemera now. Intangible abstraction, once fragrant

Exactitude mixed with optimism and blind hope-filled ambition

###

It isn’t brilliant poetry AND yet it felt so good to write. The process opened me to some fun language I may continue to play with perhaps as a stand alone prompt or two or perhaps, I’ll take this poem on a “revision date” and feel full with it.

My bet is YOU have writing that would benefit from a revision date as well.

I just had a thought we might create a time of “revision date night” and pull out works such as these to fine tune and prepare for publication. Definitely worth considering.

I’ll close with a video I just created to inspire your writing using the sense of smell. Since this post was inspired by a drive through window and this video was inspired by the smell of pancakes, let’s move there for a moment 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.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Writers & Creatives: Passionate Detachment MAY be Your Best Friend –

by

I started writing this as a five minute brain dump (#5for5BrainDump) and then discovered… I hadn’t started my timer. Nonetheless, I loved the content so here it is – unedited and raw but about ten minutes worth.

I wrote from the quote you see below –

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached. ”
― Simone Weil

Passionate Detachment is a theory/term I made up roughly fifteen years ago from a conversation with a painting contractor while we talked about small running backs one hot day in Bakersfield.

I’m sure there are similar concepts but I enjoy the paradox and how it sounds, the variety of vowels and consonants.

Passionate detachment: going for your goal with all you’ve got and not being attached to the results of your efforts. Be entranced, delighted and full throttle, like the five-foot-six-inch high school running back who puts his head down and runs right through the huge defensive linemen and heads toward the end zone without worrying about the two-hundred-pound tackle launched in his direction.

Sports analogies work in the US.

It is the painter who splashes paint for hours on end on her masterpiece, not concerned with commercial endeavors yet knowing if this painting resonates with the right audience and her art dealer gets this painting in front of the right people it will change EVERYTHING and yet she just goes for it – she may have visualized and strategized and held countless meetings but the bottom line is she loves how the paint smells and how it feels to move it on the canvas, how the expression on that face she just created reminds her of her first grade teacher, Miss Foley, when she told her “Happy Mother’s Day” with the sweet purity of a seven-year-old who loves her single-not-a-parent-yet-teacher-who-obviously –loves-children.

Passionate detachment says “I will go after success AND I will do what I love, regardless of how wacky some people may think I am in doing so.”

Passionate detachment says, “Make that slightly offbeat declaration about your plans on Facebook in front of everyone you know (and a few people you met once in passing who friended you) and then, by gosh and by golly, take action in the direction of that wild dream no one thinks you will ever really do.

Passionate detachment says, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I am going to start because I know Plato once said something like ‘The beginning is the most important part of the work’ and if I just talk about beginning but don’t actually start, it is worth nothing. And my vision and I are both worth a  whole lot of something so here… I…. “ and then, the passionately detached person takes that leap.

She moves her pencil on the blank page. He makes that phone call to that investor he met while riding pool on Uber in Los Angeles. They sign that contract to rent that space for the event they have wanted to hold and place the ad and talk to five more people than they’re comfortable speaking to because they are passionate and they are detached. They know they are worth every action and their vision is worth every small and not-so-small risk.

They are passionately detached.

(Sometimes brain dumps are interrupted by phones ringing and sometimes they end with applause.)

How do you create with passionate detachment?

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Choose to Be Awake: Laughter, Meditation, Writing (& Writing Prompt)

by

Last night I sat in a group meditation and had the unbelievable desire to roll around on the floor laughing. In my heartful imagination I was, in fact, rolling around on the floor, laughing. My mind took over, though, believing this was wholly unpleasant for all the others gathered stoically on the floor so peacefully.

I held my laughter in my smile and in my mind, probably not being the perfect meditator sitting with my mind and heart wide open like…

Yet my mind is wide awake and open when I roll on the ground laughing “hysterically” isn’t it?

I sit at my desk and laugh a bit to see how it really feels to laugh even jovially.

(My free writing genie says “How many ways are there to laugh? How many ways are there to describe a ‘brand’ of laughter? Good prompt, dear one, good prompt!)

When I laugh my core gets a workout, automatically. I don’t have to think about it and today, I think to put my hands on my belly not to hold it but to almost worship it? Dare I worship my own (the culture I swim in says too round) belly?

I think I’ll try that again. How about you try it with me.

Hands on belly and…. Giggle, laugh, chuckle.

I notice when I “try” to laugh, the top of my belly shakes a bit but when I am suddenly caught with a memory that turns the laughter toward truth, more of my body is involved. I throw my head back and my hair tickles my shoulders. I can smell the perfume I grazed my skin with after I curlved my hair. I can feel the shaking in my thigh and down my shoulders to my elbows and my hands atop my belly accept the ride like my children did as babies when we played, “I had a little pony and his name was Jack” and they mimicked horse riding in my lap which almost always lead to celebrations of laughter.

After our group meditation I told Lindsay, our leader,  there was one point I had a near overwhelming desire to roll around the floor laughing.

Her response, wide eyed and smiling, “That would have been great!”

Remembering the words of William Stafford “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” that inspired this writing today.

“For it is important awake people be awake,

Or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep:

The signals we give – yes or no, maybe –

Should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”

Your prompt:

Today I choose to be more awake to….. write for 5 minutes without editing, judgment or forethought. Simply write, let your words float across the page. And if you feel like laughing uncontrollably at any point, permission is always granted here. There are no rights or wrongs, there is just writing.

Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

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.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

The Struggle is Conceived in Your Mind and Cemented in Your “Buy In” + Lack of Intentional Action

by

Please, please, please may our lives move beyond memes and into three dimensional living?

I am trying to not be a pain in the derrierre. Truly. But there are certain lines I just can’t cross.

I have taken a stand against foul language as well as violent language. If marketers or even brilliant people say they have a killer program or they want to slay or kick (usually a version of a donkey) or the like, I just won’t consume that product.

So I felt a real “ick, no won’t get there” vibe with the word “struggle” and when a challenge I am in focused on my ideal client’s struggles and writing struggles into being so that I could slay them I just had to say no.

I am choosing not to do that.

I decided first I would try to play nice. I would do some research on synonyms for struggle and all would be well and I would transform my thoughts.

The exact opposite happened.

Synonyms for struggle all lined up with violence and battle and difficulty and all of those not-Julie-isms I realized there is a reason for this disapproval. There is a reason none of this sits well for me and I get blocked by it.

When I say I am aligned with peace and justice and equality and love, I need to use language accordingly.

Instead of struggle, I will choose to create with the word “Challenge” because that – my friends, is something I thrive on.

Why?

A challenge may be won by many.

A challenge may be embraced collaboratively: there doesn’t have to be one big kahuna, there may be a tribe standing in a circle and singing “kum-bay-a” as they reach the top if that fits.

When I was a kid my siblings teased me mercilously because I didn’t want to play the family softball games. “How about no score keeping this time?” I would offer up. “What if this time we don’t have winners and losers?”
Back then it was because I didn’t like having responsibility for making my team lose, but little compassionate sweet hearted Julie is still alive and well in middle-aged Julie.

I challenge you to pay close attention to the words you are using and the way you are using said words.

I challenge you to aim towards being the most successful person you may possibly be and perhaps even gathering a few others up in your reach and inspiring them to be ridiculously successful, too.

I challenge you to laugh, to love, to sing, paint, dance, hike, build others up with abandon. Wear tie-dye if you feel like it. Wear a three piece suit or carry a personalized Coco Chanel bag.

Or create a vision of yourself in your ideal place. Dream wide and deep and colorful.

Let’s do this – whatever your this is.

The world is waiting.

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

How to Create Positive Stories: Slice of Life to Spectacular Living

by

Take your everyday life experiences and turn them into story moments. Why get angry when you may spin a positive tale and just feel better?

I texted. A quick response was sent in return.

I texted again, this time, no response. Repeated again, no response. Again I waited.

I could have chosen to get angry and upset. I could have made a fist and dramatically tossed it around lamenting my student’s irresponsibility and my own, for waiting until the last minute to wash the PE clothes my son forgot to take to school and here I am wasting my time instead of being productive and OH MY GAWSH this is horrid….

Instead of fretting, I created a positive, silly story.

I created. I made something – I made the waiting fun instead of annoying.

This is what storytellers do. We don’t wait for “the big thing” to fall into our laps, we walk around scouting stories. We connect with people, ask questions, laugh, and engage. In today’s world, we sometimes use social media to further the process along.

Here, a day in the life – that goes awry when… the forgotten PE clothes faux pas comes to light.

Here it is, briefly, in this short video – my morning, before the clothes were discovered at home. And then, after my exchanges with the folks at school.

Can you relate to these vignettes? Here’s more of the specifics underneath the brief video.

The time came when I had to go into the school office. I stood, waiting to chat with the secretary and noticed it. A proclamation from the Assistant Principal declaring leaving items for students was banned. I held the PE clothes in my hands, carefully hidden contents in a bag that has now been banned from the state of California.

My first hurdle: the discovered proclamation and the secretary.

My strategy: provide a solution, be polite and pleasant so I increase the chances of getting my way.

“Good morning! My son left his PE clothes this morning and I need to get them to him.”

She looked at me blankly, “Unfortunately we have a new policy….” she directed her eyes toward the letter I had noticed from the assistant principal.

“Oh, does that mean I can’t go to the Dean’s office and leave them? I’ve done that before this year…” I attempted to look non-chalant as I lobbed strategy number one her way.

“Go ahead then,” agreed the secretary, sounding perhaps slightly disgruntled.

“I have done it since November, I didn’t know about the policy,” I said, commiserating with her.

“No one does,” she lamented. “No one.”

I signed in, happily. Took my picture to get my badge, happily. I commented how much I liked my photo and joked more with the secretary.

My strategy worked! I was in!

Off to the Dean’s office.

Hurdle: Their allegiance with the administration may cause them to balk at my request.

Strategy: Pull the austism card if necessary. Be extra polite and understanding. Smile.

“Good morning!” (Upbeat voice, smile.) “I’m sorry, I know the policy about not dropping things here for our students but…”

“What policy?” asked the friendly Dean’s Office secretary.

I explained the policy and she, surprisingly, didn’t seem to care much and asked my student’s name. I told her. 

“Oh, I know Samuel!” she said happily. 

“Yeah, he turns his phone off at school, he follows the rules to a T so I couldn’t even let him know I’m here.”

“You’re fine! I’ll take care of it,” she said. She also told me about a special class they’re starting to help special needs students. She had a connection with me and wanted to share.

“That’s such a great idea,” I continued. “I bet parents will find real value in that.” (Sincere thought.)

I literally skipped back to the office to check out with my new best friend, the secretary.

The end of the story is I made an important connection for my volunteer work and parenting. I plan to go back tomorrow with some materials for my Parent Club AND I imagine myself to be a positive highlight to the ever undervalued secretary’s day.

While I was in process of creating this post I created even more story, shared my #5for5BrainDump on snap chat which I’ll repurpose into other promotions which will help the world get better when people continue to communicate more clearly.

This is SUCH perfection, all in quick, fun, quirky slivers of storytelling. I’ll take it!

I could have chosen to be angry, frustrated, mad at my child and myself and the school and instead, I created a win-win-win-many times over win again – just like you may, too.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest