Bakersfield – Creative Life Midwife

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….”

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.

She didn’t simply come back to life, she came back to being fully alive.

January 4, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

While texting is convenient and as much a part of our lives these days as breathing, lately I have found myself “forgetting” my phone at home when I go out.

This wasn’t the case when I was texting my friend Parker the other day. He was bordering on lecturing me via text, at least that is how it appeared to me from my screen. He thought I was roaming about in unsafe zones near my home where unsavory people might venture in the early morning.

I declared this in my text response “I refuse to be afraid. I’ve been afraid for too long when I stopped doing what I love to do most. If I die, I die. Not a big deal. We’ve had the dress rehearsal already. I won’t live by being afraid, I would be dead-while-alive. I won’t have it anymore.”

He thinks I am having some sort of post-near-death experience break down but actually, I am having a post-near-death experience breakthrough, one day at a time.

Alongside the Kern River as it runs through Bakersfield, new trees have sprouted in the last few years.

This morning I was walking alongside the Kern River in the same space where I went when I lost my brother. I went there before to howl with – and befriend coyotes with my friend Coryn. It was the place I found the courage to love the darkness. Today it was barely light as I took photos in newly minted day. No one else was around.

It is much less quiet these days: a new freeway buzzes over it to the east and from the last couple rainy years new, spindly trees have remarkably taken root. I am not sure if there are as many kit foxes and coyotes as there once were.

I didn’t spend much time there this morning, but each moment was precious. The top of my lungs felt tender and achy as they do when I overextend myself. That’s simply a component of healing and one I am more comfortable with – and can’t solve until my next pulmonology appointment.

This park is part of the Kern River Parkway - a lovely bike path experience stretches wide across the town - and makes getting from CSUB to Oildale and Bakersfield remarkably quick!

I laughed to myself because there was no one else there to hear. How marvelous to be this alone in such rich, poignant solitude.

Mary Oliver sprang to mind. She would know this feeling. Her words whisper-shout

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”

She has been ever present in my mind as we are coming up on the anniversary of her death. What an honor to hold onto her words.

I looked into the sun, rising up above the trees and imagined wings sprouting from my back.

This is what it feels like to be alive in the early morning.

Daily Making Diaries: Four Months Until Katherine’s Birthday & Christmas!

August 25, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This post was written #5for5BrainDump style which means – it was written using stream of consciousness writing for 5 minutes. No editing or forethought of content. Images were added later. #5for5BrainDump writing is meant to be an exploration of personal growths and a mini a-ha incubator… a collector of insights and awarenesses written on purpose… for no purpose.

It was a divine call today, I hadn’t even thought of stopping at the park on my drive home. I thought I would stop at a parking garage and take some panorama shots of metro Bakersfield. It was an ugly-sky-morning and I thought that was what I was meant to capture.

I am focusing on daily making, a practice of daily creativity because I know in doing this – a determined crafting of something – it will positively impact my entrepreneurship. It activates different parts of my mind that have been lying, dormant, waiting for me to shake myself back into life.

I decided I would purposefully capture images not at my ultimate destination of the moment, instead to capture scenery along the way. Interesting how yesterday’s imagery informed today’s choices.

I felt led to a park instead of a parking garage.

I did a fair share of stretching and bending and posing which felt almost yogic which felt great and was a response to my slight whining while I was getting ready for bed, “I need to stretch my hips more, this is ridiculous” and even though this morning I didn’t have “stretch your hips” on the list, there I was, stretching my hips as I squatted to get this, and other photos, so that I might tell the story the imagery was calling me to tell.

Even writing this feels awfully intimate and not entirely safe.

Two seconds and my five minute writing session will be over.

The bells ring. I’m awake. I’ve been uncomfortable enough and thrilled enough this morning.

The River: My Restorative Friend & Forever Companion

August 17, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

“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.