Writing Prompt – Page 5 – Creative Life Midwife

Refresh Your Beliefs: the 2020 Version

July 22, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A teal tabletop flatlay with a coffee cup, paperclips and pencils. A new Way to Work with Beliefs While Living Your 2020 Pandemic Life

One of the most helpful writing prompts I have used with my students, coaching clients and with myself is “I believe.”

Lately as we have become more fractured and unfortunately too often stuck in the underlying fog of “us versus them” and “If you are one of them” (someone not like me) than I can’t talk (work, play. Collaborate, talk) with you.

This is why in the pop up #refresh2020 group that when I asked people about what they believe I qualified it like this:

Before you hit reply and respond with a lot of what you have said before please spend a few moments (or longer, perhaps write in your journal or go for a walk or listen to music or watch a TV show you love or have a conversation with this question hovering n the background of your mind.)

What do you believe – about what has been going on in your life right now?

What do you believe when you see situations that upset you, that you can’t control or influence?

What do you believe when you have been at the top of your game and the world and the people you love are praising you for no other reason than you showed up in the same space they are in?

What do you believe when you are lying under a canopy of stars or you were just in a car accident or are sitting in a hospital or close to death or just witnessed the birth of a child?

What do you believe when you can’t live like you always have before?

What do you believe when you are sitting in the rubble or are face to face with your greatest fear?

Finally, add any scenarios that will help you to move beyond what you might have written or thought before… allow it to simmer… and when you come back to the questioning space here – share examples from your direct experience about what it is that brings you to that belief.

Feeling back into what we believe is crucial to creating and living out our vision as we finish out this rocky, tumultuous, unexpected, confusing, beautiful, unwanted year of 2020.

Whenever I am invited to share my beliefs, a song by Blessid Union of Souls starts playing in my mind. Today, I would like to share a bit of that song with you. If you would like, watch the video.

Here is a change I made in my beliefs in 2020, a modification that is in alignment for my long standing belief that love is the answer, the quetion and the action plan.

Today I am thinking and feeling I believe in haiku. I believe in the power of daily creative practice and sharing that practice with a receptive audience. This makes me laugh – but my daily haiku practice….has shifted so much for me… and it was started BECAUSE…

(lyrics from the Blessid Union of Souls single “I Believe…”

Open up your mind and then open up your heart

You will see that you and me aren’t very far apart

Cause I believe love is the answer

I believe love will find a way

Before you leave this blog, I would enjoy hearing your first thoughts – not your final thoughts on this way of looking at what you believe in general, but choose one of the scenarios and make up a first draft response. Clarity, feeling better and healing are right at the end of your keyboard.

Julie JordanScott typing a love poem on the edge of a foothill of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is a writer, a poet performer, a Creativity Coach, A Social Media Whiz and a Mother of three. One of her greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet.

Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in 2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. Click the graphic below to join the Private Facebook Group to join the conversation!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Revised-Refresh-general-flyer-1.png

Saturday, In the Park: Better than the 4th of July

July 18, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

For writers there is no.... and a writer is using a purple pen on her open notebook to capture thoughts as she waits for a friend to call and go on a walk with her.

This week my friend Kelly and I started walking together even though we live hundreds of miles apart. She calls me and off we go, walking. This morning I felt even more ambitious than usual. I was in a new space for my haiku sunrise photo, so I started the day with an early walking start. The moonblossoms that called out to be photographed in the sunrise were in the distance.

When you are a writer, writing prompts appear out of your free flow writing.

I thought briefly I might call Kelly and say “Never mind, I walked today!” Then I thought, “I’ll go to that other park down the street and write while I am waiting for Kelly’s call.”

Mornings are literally the only cool-ish time in Bakersfield in the Summer. I enjoyed the mid-seventies sunshine and scribbled in my notebook. I was having so much fun in this “waiting” time so I wrote, “When you are a writer there is no….” and I thought “what a great writing prompt!” but my purple pen did not want to stop so I wrote “there is no waiting time. There is observing, listening, sniffing, reflection and awareness. There are toe dips into patience and scratching against buried treasure of thoughts. There is the occasional deep sinking dive bomb of awareness, there are tiny yellow flowers others don’t see. There are animals who get used to you and your stillness so they get closer and funnier so much so you almost hope whatever it is you are waiting for won’t show up after all.

When you are a writer, there is no waiting time: instead quiet moment in between are for discovery.

The phone rang and it was Kelly. Time for my second walk of the day. I included stairs and hills and wider smiles along with the huffing and puffing.

Another rich, rewarding start to my day!

How has your day been so far?

Are you ready to write from the prompt, “For writers there is no….”

How to Use Moments of Gratitude to Improve Your Life (and the lives of others)

July 8, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Gratitude is both tender, like a tiny shoot of a plant rising up, and fierce, like that same shoot that managed to push its way up through densely packed, dark and heavy soil.

Gratitude has been one of my faithful friends when other friends went silent, tunneled underground so I wasn’t able to reach them. Or maybe it was I who went underground and it was gratitude who lowered a ladder for me to climb up on.

Gratitude is one of the highest forms of energy available to us.

For these and many other reasons, today we began our time together in #Refresh2020 using gratitude and gratefulness as the focus of our first prompt.

It is a solid, deep and wide foundation for us to build upon as we move forward in 2020 with purpose and passion.

When we make that determined decision to “do 2020” differently, we aim to do it better. We can learn from experiences of gratitude. We can grow from holding space for grateful moments to continue.

What we know now that we might not have known in January 2020 is this:

Aspects of the world are chaotic. They may get even more chaotic, they may stay the same. We can’t say they will get better or worse or anything. We just know that around us, there is a whole lot of chaos and dissension.
We don’t know when the pandemic will be over. We don’t know when a vaccine will be available. We don’t know when it will be safer for people like me – with health issues – to function similarly to how we did in the past. This is similar to war-time. People have survived in times of not-knowing-when for generation after generation. We can do it now, too.
We don’t know how many more (metaphorical) shoes will drop. For now, I am considering it to be a centipede of many colors. I can admire the colors or I can go into my hole and complain about it or go into my hole and write a lot of stories about a centipede-free world. I would rather be out among the people, helping it to be a better world whether or not there are centipedes.

Our intention is to experience the rest of the year differently.

We are adding to our expanding knowledge about how to use gratitude as a tool. When we recognize the power of simply sharing and remembering experiences of gratitude causes us to be elevated to a higher level of consciousness.

When we continue to step into this awareness by taking aligned action, our personal satisfaction and rewards will be many. We will laugh more, get more tasks done with more ease – and we will lead a happier life.

Application: Take your list of five experiences you are grateful for and use them as creativity and conversation prompts.

Creativity Prompts

Video: Take 5 minutes and make a video telling the story of that moment of gratitude.

Writing: Take 5 minutes and write the story of that grateful experience. BONUS: Hand write the story in letter form and mail it to the people you were with who became “characters” in your gratitude story. Add individual thanks for each person. Here is an example from my list.

Conversation Prompt Tips: When you see a friend or family member begin to rant about how terrible living in this time of chaos is, let them wind down and start a new conversation about what experiences they are grateful for from 2020.

Warning: some will say “Nothing! There is nothing to be grateful for in 2020.”

In those situations you may turn and walk away (without a retort is best). Take a second breath and share one of your experiences. It’s an extra bonus if your gratitude experience includes them.

Intention + Passionate Action = Purposeful rewards

When was the last time you had a conversation with someone about being grateful, especially in 2020? How might you start that conversation?

Julie JordanScott is The Creative Life Midwife and one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in 2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. Click the graphic below to find out more and register to receive emails.

Join the conversation in our closed Bridge to the New Year Facebook Group

Let’s Share the Good of 2020: Visiting Family #Refresh2020

July 7, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Last year I repeatedly said I was going to visit my parents in Flagstaff. I was going to go to Flagstaff alone and it was going to be wonderful.

In April 2019, I was so burned out from care-taking and worrying and self-imposed pressure I decided I would go right after Samuel’s high school graduation. But then my volunteer activism continued to be heated and then the budget dried up and then…

There were a couple trips to Las Vegas to get Samuel to orientation and then to move him to school. His needs came first.

And then I almost died in October. No traveling then.

I considered somehow squishing it in post Thanksgiving but I really wasn’t feeling well enough for that much driving. And then there was the family adventure to the East Coast for Christmas which was excellent but completely stretched my post-illness abilities and budget restraints again.

In 2019, I never went to visit my parents in Flagstaff.

On our last night visiting with Katherine, my daughter, and Donald, her husband in December, we played a game which focuses on resolutions and goals, mission and vision (sounds like my ideal game, doesn’t it) where vulnerability and sharing stories are a given.

I stated again, “This year, I am going to visit my parents. Around my birthday, I am going to visit my parents. I can’t keep putting it off.”

My birthday is at the end of January.

January came and my birthday left and in February, something that felt like a miracle occurred. Emma and I drove to Flagstaff. She originally wasn’t going to come with me, but I decided it would be good for her to visit with my parents, too, so off we went.

Two older people and their twenty-year-old granddaughter visit at the
kitchen table, happy to see each other.

It was truly a fantastic experience. Having Emma with me helped me in numerous ways, but I especially loved hearing my Dad talk to her with his usual enthusiasm. No other grandkids there to compete, just her.

We didn’t rush around like we usually do, we simply visited and talked, talked and visited. Emma and I had a motel room and explored downtown Flagstaff with its vibe so aligned to us. We woke up one morning to snow and thoroughly enjoyed the Lowell observatory, just like we had when Emma was a little girl.

We made plans for our next visit, which we planned to make after picking up Samuel after Spring semester at UNLV but that didn’t happen because of Covid19. My mother was hospitalized in the Spring and there was no way I would put my parents at risk by visiting them as much as I would feel reassured if I saw them.

I am so grateful I finally took the road trip, that I took it with Emma, and that no matter what I will hold this memory close to my heart. For that, I am so grateful.

What is one (or more) experiences you are grateful for so far in 2020? Bonus: after you create a list, write about at least one of them for five minutes or more, like I wrote about one of my experiences of gratitude in this blog post.

Our #Refresh2020 prompt on July 7 requests we make a list of 5 experiences in 2020

This blog post was inspired by a prompt from #Refresh2020 – a 3 week initiative during July 2020 to intentionally explore our experiences of 2020 so that we may continue the year with purpose and passion, even and especially if chaotic circumstances continue to erupt around us.

We will be holding space for the unknowing and aiming for our best, even if we don’t know what that best is. If that compels you, consider spending the next month or so with us. Click the image below to connect or ask me any questions yo

Refresh 2020 is a Three Week Pop Up experience to address experiencing 2020 from a fresh perspective. Flowers are the frame, showing optimism amidst the primary unpleasantness that has been indicative of much of 2020.

Join the conversation in our private Bridge to the New Year Facebook Group

It happens everyday: are you listening?

July 4, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This morning I waited at a semi-rural intersection with my phone in hand, facing east.

It may have looked odd to people. I might have looked lost or confused until they got close when they would see my earnest face, observing, listening. My face would show something intense was either happening or about to happen.

I was waiting for the sunrise.

I almost didn’t want to write about this because it seems too soon, like talking about your new boyfriend before he has agreed to actually be your boyfriend or inviting people to a party before you ask the others in your household if it is ok to have a party.

The thing is – three days ago when I decided I wanted to take a few moments every day at sunrise to simply be with the sunrise, write a short poem and take a photo I didn’t realize how much I had been missing!

Tall grasess at sunrise - the sun is barely seen on the horizon and it seems as if the tall grasses want to listen and see the sunrise to learn its lessons.

Several years ago I drove for a ridesharing company. I would wake up at 4:30 to drive from 5 am to 7 am then get my son prepped and out the door to school. I would drive other times but these early mornings were especially favored because most of time I got to not only enjoy sunrise, I got to enjoy sunrise with someone else.

Most people were open to my unabashed sunrise love – or they were gifted at politely ignoring me.

Here’s the deal: when you are present to what is taking place – even something as ordinary as eating your breakfast cereal or choosing what outfit to wear that particular day – you open your senses to be surprised and delighted – and the edges of the simplest act become enchanting.

This morning I watched birds flying in the shape of a heart. I saw countless birds perching on tall grasses that didn’t appear strong enough to hold them. I noticed how grass looked gold when the sun light slanted at the just right angle.

Sunrise in Bakersfield: beautiful and enchanting, like sunrise in many other places.

When we are lost in thought about what’s next, hustling from one activity to the more important activity, we miss the beauty that was there all along.

Sunrise comes and goes so quickly, most people miss it entirely.

What lesson is the sunrise waiting to teach you?

Portrait of Julie Jordan Scott, Creativity Coach and Creative Life Midwife

Join the conversation in our closed Bridge to the New Year Facebook Group

How to Build Your Castle (and Live Your Truth)

May 18, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Build Your Castle. Live Your Truth! A sky at sunset with clouds in the air echo sentiments from Henry David Thoreau. This title graphic also suggests a fun introduction of living with vision through knowing your beliefs and gracefully taking aligned action as a result.

This week I am doing something radical, or at least feels radical.

I am taking a week off to regroup: to rekindle my love affair with the work I do (creative life coaching, facilitating groups on topics ranging from soul development to writing masterminds to social media how-to’s, speaking and writing). As I habitually do, I rose to the occasion when the pandemic came and people needed support – and I had what was needed – a zoom room, creative thinking and a deep desire to make a difference.

I created context and off we ran, meeting seven days a week at first. Then six days a week.

I was running out of sizzle and self-care so with my son’s return from college a perfect segue, I opted out of work-related activity for this week so that I may put my vision in place, like Henry David Thoreau said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

This week is about building the foundations for my castles.

I suppose things don’t “officially” kick off until tomorrow, but I have been deep cleaning, setting up systems and digging deep into my memories as I write, reflect, write and reflect. Tonight I am on laundry detail. I have been using my timer to keep track of “clean now, create next. Create now, clean next” and so far, I am seeing results.

My personal dreams have been on-hold for a long time. For me the quarantine and stay-at-home orders didn’t feel all that unfamiliar: I was used to not being able to do what I want to do. I would do whatever it took for my children to collect successes while I cheered them on, but my place was to step aside making sacrifices and rearranging my plans repeatedly.

Even though we are still staying-in-place, my heart is flying even now because I have gained so much clarity about what my gifts are, what my beliefs are and what my fears, blocks and barriers are that I am more excited than a child awaiting her birthday might feel.

The life shifting conversations started last week and became this video:

What “name” would you like to claim for yourself, like I claimed philanthropist and visionary and others proclaimed oracle, artist, creative and more?

What do you need to believe about yourself in order to fulfill on proclaiming that truth about yourself, loud and proud and sure… and how will you act in alignment with your truth and beliefs?

These are not small questions to answer, so please take your time – and if you would like to talk to me more about these subjects (or others) please don’t hesitate to send me an email or text or call me.

This graphic shares contact information in order to discuss the questions asked in the video and in the article itself. To call or text it is 661.444.2735. EMail is juliejordanscott@gmail.com

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, bestselling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Next week’s theme of Aware of Abundance #5for5BrainDump program will focus on using writing as meditation to focus and release blocks or an upcoming writing circle or writing for social media programs.

Revisit Your Opinions: Is Your Shadow the Enemy?

May 7, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A view of the beach at sunset time frames the quote "There is no light without shadow. Light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain." from Isabelle Allende. This begins the article about writing as meditation.

Before you begin to exhale your knowledge about different teacher’s concepts of “The Shadow” or “Shadow Sides” or anything with Shadow in its title that a wise person once said, remember back to childhood.

barefoot child at play in the playground, enjoying his shadow. Children don't see the shadow as a bad thing, but as a good thing.

Remember the wonder of your shadow. I remember my son laughing in delight on the playground, watching his shadow follow his silent command. Where his feet went, his shadow feet went.

This weekend I took a photo and I realized my shadow had the capacity of being a character in the photo that gave it an entirely deeper meaning as object being witnessed.

What would happen if you chose to return to pure enjoyment, without your intellect rushing in to explain?

What if you simply took time to enjoy your shadow?

One of the voice in my head hangovers I have heard since perhaps the moment I was conceived is “Whatever you do, don’t get “it” wrong.” It could be whatever I hold the dearest in that particular moment.

“Don’t fail” and “don’t fail’s” sibling ‘don’t try because if you try and fail…..’ and…. what?

I solved this conundrum in adulthood by holding a tiny bird in the center of my palm saying “There is no right, there is no wrong, there is simply ______” Most of the time I say writing.

I could put almost anything as that final word.

“You can’t get this wrong,” I remember telling my friend Josh when we were cooking dinner together. “It is impossible. With this, there are no wrongs, there are only different version of right.”

Samuel is still angry with me about what ‘could have been’ if I had been braver and allowed him to possibly experience failure.

He is possibly and perhaps probably right and perhaps probably wrong and we will never know.

I recently asked myself, “Would you do it over again?” and I said, “Yes, I would do it over again braver, taking more risks and not allowing fear to overshadow the light within me.”

In fact, I wish I could.

I wish I could get taken up into a science fiction life, step into a different dimension and come out with a who-knows-how different ending.

What I can do today, even without the science fiction ending, is to change my responses that might have swung into fears and whispered long-standing warning shouts of “don’t get it wrong!” today and tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow?

Take some time to create from this question. Don’t rush or push or make it into “I have to do this,” write to it because it feels good to do so.

This writing was borne from Meditation Month of Blending Poetry and Meditation. I meditated on the quote in the graphic from Ursula Le Guin’s poem “Leaves” and this morning, 24 hours later, wrote this brief essay in one “writing as a meditation” swoop.

The poem "Leaves" by Ursula K. Le Guin shares this line, "Might as well say I am the shadow," which I used to center my meditative practice yesterday. The tree is the mulberry in my front yard, where I livestreamed on Instagram Live and Periscope.

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, bestselling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Join her for #5for5BrainDump beginning August 10- to experience the freedom of writing in an online setting. Join the Facebook Group Word-Love Writing Community to meet other writers and explore writing more deeply.

She also hosts or writing circles and a writing for social media program.

How to Write About Your Life in 5 Easy, Meditative Steps –

May 1, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

May is National Meditation Month: We will be blending poetry and meditation to create, make and activate a more mindful, art-filled life. — To read the complete poem on the Poetry Foundation Website, please visit here.

In May we are blending poetry & meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life. I will be sharing my writings that blossom from the meditations as well as videos, images and other helpful tools for you along the way. Today, we are sharing free-flow meditative writing followed by 5 Steps to Making Peace through Witnessing Your Life with Writing – and in doing so, we circle back to where we started – with poetry and the words under the words.

Lavender blossoms surround the words "May is National Meditation Month" and here we are blending poetry and meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life.

Yesterday afternoon during the #5for5BrainDump which may be used as a meditative writing practice, the words that flowed were these:

The words under my words are… optimistic most of the time. They are like the comic I saw today that my friend shared of the three views of the heart: the optimist a big red perfectly Hallmark heart, a dramatic broken heart to proclaim the pessimist and an image most like a human biological heart for the realist. I most often refer to my words as optimistic realism but they don’t feel like that right now, when I allow the space to roam about my chest and up and out my throat.

The words under my words are are battling for control. My words under my words are slightly scratchy, that annoying base of the throat tickle – feel like I might be getting sick but because I know what my nervous cough sound like, I recognize this. I recognize this. They feel like, might they be a virus? Are we still allowed to say that word except for as in “Novel” or “Corona” or “Covid”?

My words above, below and beneath my words at eye level feel crusty and stale, grumpy and stagnant. They’re old and scabbed and calcified. Tainted and negative and not good. Not good.

This morning, before I turn to another daily poem, I revisted yesterday’s words and add – The words under my words are just right as they are – crusty and stagnant and stinky are equally rich and valuable as the flowing and soft gentle breeze on a hill wearing a gorgeous white lace dress with perfect hair.

Today and my words in it will be – as I allow them to be.

It is when I don’t allow them to be and me to be and you to be and the emotions that pop to be that my shoulders become like earrings and my gut becomes a roller coaster.

I trust my words, today, and I trust the leaning tower of ancient historical words to be more of a cradle that gently rocks me than a car spiraling out of control on a roller coaster. The word-cradle is in my breath and my heartbeat, my pulse and my womb, my brokenness and my sometimes polished exterior.

No need to battle and pretend there is such a thing as control.

Your words – under your words – spend time holding them close, with love and grace. Hold space for joy amidst the not-so-joyful and the belly laughter amidst the tears of sadness.

Now: A simple 5 step process for you to witness your life in words – all of your life – from a meditative, mindful frame of mind.

Day 1: a vase of irises shares how the words under words will be made more peaceful when we make peace through witnessing "what is" , blending poetry and meditation to create, make and live a more mindful, art-filled life.

We write from a place of peace: we don’t judge the writing as it falls off the tip of our pens or fingers on the keyboard or fingers on our screens. We allow the words to fall as they will without editing, judgment or forethought.

We are witnesses, not judges. We hold space for ourselves to enjoy the process regardless of what story our words are telling.

Step One has the irises in a vase and advises us to use clear, descriptive, sense based words. These words may be colors, flavors and other objective details rather than words like "amazing" or "nice" or "pleasant".

Write what you experience, not what your opinion is about what you experience. Instead of “It was good” or “I think it is pretty” write “The bright purple irises fill the glass vase with the twine tied in a bow.” “There was a hint of vanilla in the chocolate chip cookies” or “He was over six feet tall, which made my five foot four inch frame feel tiny.” Yes, there is some opinion in that final sentence, but see how it is supported in fact?

There is a beautiful shade of green, slightly mottled with purple on the other side of the vase of irises. Step 2 is "Write in snapshots or moments in time rather than large periods of time all at once. When you write in snapshots you capture the core of your story, of the "what happened."

You can practice this by taking actual photos of your life as it happens or looking at a photo from the past and writing about what was happening when the photo was taken. Immerse yourself back in that moment of with rich, sensory details. Once you master this, your writing will become increasingly magnetic and at the same time, connect you to your readers more and more deeply no matter what you are writing.

At the center of all good writing is a daily (or close to daily) writing practice. One way to stay in the witness is to make a list of what happened the day before during your writing practice time. When we do so, our subconscious mind will begin cataloguing details and your writing choices will become richer.

People often resist the idea of writing practice. It sounds like too much or a chore or something inherently unpleasant or without a purpose. When one tries and sustains this, it becomes deeply pleasurable and life changing in the most positive direction one might suspect. Try it for a small amount of time at first and see how it works. Experiment with different times of day and different methods of “containment” – I write in notebooks and other times on my phone and with my computer keyboard. Allow yourself to try different means and methods.

Step 4 invites us to lovingly lower our expectations. Rejoice in the perfectly imperfect and live outside the judgment zone when we are witnesses to our life.

Recognize what you write will not be perfect – part of the practice is to welcome the imperfect, the grammatical mistakes and the misspellings. Sometimes these are the most valuable parts of the growth experience. Enjoy the process for the sake of the process. Document the facts, not what you think of the facts. Begin to appreciate the imperfections with as much love and joy as the “perfections.”

Final Step: Revisit your daily (or whenever close to daily) free flow, meditative style writing once a week to glean life patterns, creative patterns and celebrate your growing awareness of witness.

Revisiting your writing is a deep pleasure as well as a method to note your progress. I can return to notebooks years later and wonder who this person was – while delighting in her moment-by-moment delight and discovery. Sometimes I long for her presence or find I have wandered off course and the past-me from my writing notebooks reminds me. The witnessing me of the past reaches out to the witnessing me of the future.

This is miraculous, just like you are miraculous.

You may follow along here on the blog as well as via social media. There will be different daily versions on different social media platforms. I suggest starting here on the blog and on Instagram for Instagram Live and IGTV episodes. You may see Facebook Live for 5 for 5 Brain Dump sessions at Writing Camp with JJS which may be accessed here.

Woman writing on the front porch of a brick home, — Write wherever you find yourself.

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, bestselling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Join her for one of her upcoming #5for5BrainDump programs or an upcoming writing circle or writing for social media programs.

How Seeing the Everyday, Ordinary Stuff That Surrounds You Differently Suddenly Become Magical

April 21, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

One of the earliest exercises I created for people in my writing programs is to pick up an ordinary object in their space and take a mere sixty seconds to experience it and describe the object. Once the object is noted, we check in regarding the experience.

pink balls of yarn are the basis for this quote from "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon. "Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come." This is Inspiration for National Poetry Month (and beyond) from Creative Life Midwife Julie Jordan Scott

Ordinary objects like waste baskets and water bottles come alive with close inspection. When a person takes time to notice differently, the associations, the appreciations and gratitude rises up oftentimes in surprising ways.

To read the poem “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon, click the link here to read it in its entirety.

To “let evening come” (or morning or midafternoon) in your own life, take a moment now to do follow the prompt and see what words flow as a result.

Pink yarn balls are above the writing in this image, encouraging people to write of this: "Write what you notice around your home, your yard, your street. Allow the ordinariness of objects and events in your ordinary life stir your words. Don't describe these objects and experiences as you always have. Let the overlooked details surprise you." by the Creative Life Midwife Julie JordanScott

To rephrase the prompt “Write what you notice around your home, your yard, your street. Allow the ordinariness of objects and events in your ordinary life stir your words. Don’t describe these objects and experiences as you always have. Let the overlooked details surprise you.

Take 5 minutes at a time and write, just write. Allow your pencil or pen or fingers on the keyboard float across your page.

In the comments, share one or two or three ordinary objects you might enjoy getting to know more clearly. Even this one simple action will enrich and deepen your appreciation for the everyday right now.

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.

Julie JordanScott has been writing since before she was literate by dictating her thoughts to her mother and then copying in thick crayons onto construction paper. She was a pioneer in epublishing and continues to reach readers through her blog, best selling books, greeting cards and her essays and poems in anthologies. Join her for one of her upcoming #5for5BrainDump programs or an upcoming writing circle or writing for social media programs.

Nothing and Everything is Just Right….

April 14, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

There is nothing perfect about this picture.

I am wearing lipstick, but no mascara or other attempts at beautification. I hadn’t even bothered to take a brush to my hair.

If you look more closely you will see there is everything perfect about this picture.

I am smiling, even though I am not wearing mascara, even though I haven’t taken a brush to my hair, even though I am slightly ashamed of the reality that in my privilege I was upset about going three days without a longed for chocolate croissant when people are lining up for sustenance and rightfully worrying about being evicted or mourning for losses that are incomprehensible to me.

Right now I am doing the best I can to trust myself to continue to do what I can to enhance the world in my little corner of it. I am hosting conversation circles, for one. I am posting honest and upbeat content to engage and evoke constructive curiosity in myself and others.

My porch is as close to the front lines as I get right now.

My porch is the front line right now.

There is everything perfect about this picture.

Now it is your turn to consider what is right in your life right now.

Prompt for Contemplation, Conversation & Creativity:

A blue sky holds this prompt for conversation, contemplation and creativity. "What is right with your life right now?" A pathway toward water invites you to look more deeply at the question and the prompt... "What is right in my life now is...."

Use this question to prompt contemplation, journaling, a blog post, a conversation, a poem or start a work of art in a new or renewed direction.

Please write in the comments your first response to the prompt.

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. Join the conversation by registering for free by clicking this link.

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