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Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Invite Your Buried Dreams to Return to the Open

October 11, 2022 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A question mark and some faces below the question "Why are you waiting? Invite Your Buried Dreams to Come Into the Open."

“I feel like I’m cheating,” I said to the other women in my mastermind group, “because I’m a performer.”

We were talking about going live on a social media platform: Facebook live, instragram live,

YouTube, LinkedIn or whatever places one may go live. The women were collectively complimenting me but I wasn’t receiving their compliments, I was shaking my head in denial of my gifts.

Maybe it is because I have done live theater for many years now and have been horrible on stage at times and have done some pretty embarrassing and frightening things like making sound effects I certainly wouldn’t want my parents or siblings to hear, wearing a bathing suit on stage – if you know me you would figure why that horrified me.  I also clearly remember what it felt like to be typing away on stage left when the chair I was sitting in broke. 

These are just a few live theater failures I have experienced in front of paying audiences. That doesn’t even begin to say the missed lines,cues or near misses on wardrobe malfunctions. 

What most people now don’t know is there was a thirty year gap in my stage experience. I stopped acting because I was an eleven-year-old with the role of (to that point) lifetime that got rave reviews except for the person I most wanted to impress. 

Thirty years later, I took an acting class not because I wanted to because I was never, ever going to go on stage. Theater and performance weren’t my thing. 

My interest was in improving my voice because of my radio show.

My voice was paramount but the class got canceled. I was offered a chance to take the acting class, instead.

Remember, I never wanted to do theater. My kids did theater, not me.

I had a lightbulb moment. I realized I could take the acting class to practice my voice until the voice class was offered again.

I figured what the hell. Why not?

I was aggravated about playing Improv games. How annoying, I thought. My acting teacher decided to be secretive about it and whispered a scenario to my scene partner,  a teenage girl. 

He looked at me and said, “Your job is to say no to whatever her request is. Keep it as realistic as possible.”

I can follow instructions, even if I had no idea what I was supposed to be saying no to at first.

In less than a minute I discovered I was supposed to say YES to taking my daughter off life support? My acting teacher did not realize he had touched a very deep scar in my spirit.

My scene partner was pushing and pushing and pushing and I was escalating and escalating and escalating. I remember my hands were rising and my shoulder was holding on and holding on and holding on.

At the time, I thought angels had surrounded me whispering, “let go, Julie, you can so this, just let go… drop your hands and let go…”

I took their advice and crashed through the present moment into a transcendent moment. When I came back up for air, I knew the art  I had abandoned thirty years ago wanted me back.

This dream, this love, was buried so deep inside me I wouldn’t allow myself to hear it. 

When I go live, however, that side of me has been known to come roaring back – sometimes because of synchronicity due to the subject matter. Recently on Instagram Live I have been doing improv topics combined with storytelling.

Rather than telling you what happened, I will share the video clip.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Julie JordanScott 📝🎭🎨 Creative Life Midwife (@juliejordanscott)

I wonder if you have something you do really well that is a sign you have a dream buried inside, asking to be heard and experienced again?

Any inklings?

I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Woman hugging a cartoon tree - white with black polka dots

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Follow on Instagram to Watch IGTV exclusive videos, stories and posts about writing and the creative process.

Let our Words Flow Writing Community: the only one missing is you! Join us in the Private Writing Group by clicking here.

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Filed Under: Creative Life Coaching, Creative Process, Video and Livestreaming, Writing Challenges & Play Tagged With: acting, improv games, improvisation, Livestreaming Video, theater skills

Fall in Love with Video and Live-Streaming: From Fear to Freedom

June 25, 2021 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A screen shot from a livestream video reminds me of the early days when I had more fear than freedom with video making and live stream video. Now, I love live streaming and I hope you will, too!

Not long ago I livestreamed every single day, sometimes more than once a day, for four years straight. I loved livestreaming for many reasons: the friendships that were born, the skill set I built, and the access to ‘instant research’ and “rough drafting” of content I was trying out.

I started wondering why I stopped live streaming, especially since I found so much joy there.

Toward the end of Samuel’s senior year, I became overwhelmed stirred up with disappointment, longing, and grief about the end of this significant phase of my life.  

When we dropped him off at  UNLV I started falling into a funk which I didn’t recognize at the time, The life that tumbled around me that season and for the seasons after that gives me a clearer perspective of why I stopped.

October 2019 brought me the gift of Valley Fever, a hospitalization that nearly killed me and the start of a long physical recovery period.

Toward the end of my recovery, the Covid19 pandemic and stay-in-place orders started.

A year and a month later, my friend was murdered. Her funeral was the first large group event I attended. Masked. Sitting with a handful of friends and speaking up for the positive nature of her life.

In the days before my friend’s funeral, my father died.

Immediately after that until last week my siblings and I were immersed both in funeral planning and helping Mom decide where she would most like to live. 

A-ha: Reflection cured the live-streaming and video mystery.

This is why I haven’t been live streaming lately, but what kept coming back to me has been “I always felt better after I livestreamed consistently.”

I also noted my YouTube channel was much less active. I no longer regularly offered even short YouTube videos and rarely checked in with my previously made videos. I have the skills, but the motivation wasn’t there.

It was like my video – love – balloon had deflated so I put up a tentative new video trial balloon in my private Writer’s Facebook group to see if any of my closest creative friends would be interested in gathering to explore video-making in the privacy of the facebook group.

Enough people are interested to give me the energy to do my best. That is what I am promising: only my best. We will be in this together, collaborating and cheerleading and the intention is to enjoy the video making process.

Let’s Transform Video Creation Fear to Freedom to Make Videos Playshop Adventure Challenge

I am still working on dates because I am still traveling back and forth to Arizona and home to help Mom during her transition, but it looks like it will be sometime after July 4th. 

Some of what will be included:

  • Basic skills teaching and practice with coaching and feedback geared for creatives, especially those who write or journal.
  • Foundational clarification of the purpose, mission and reason why participants would like to use video. 
  • Prompts people may use for the videos plus tips on how to take the prompt and relate it back to the participant’s “why” for live-streaming.

It will run for 10 days with 5 prompts and 2 option livestream trains where participants will practice live streaming either in the group or on their own facebook page and we will all join the livestream to support and help one another practice what it is like to have an active, conversational livestream – it helps make it less scary to have friends “in the house.”

I made this short video in 2018 – when I was still going live every day. I look forward to the increased energy and excitement once again.

If you have an interest in participating, head over to the Word-Love Writing Community on Facebook where all the fun will happen. 🙂 

By the way, if your knees are knocking at the thought of this, that’s a good thing. Mine are, too, actually. It will be fun listening to the chorus of our knees knocking like a chorus spread out across videos across the world.

Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, Writer, Speaker and Mom extraordinaire who loves working with creative entrepreneurs, artists and healers to get their words written on the page, spoken in their videos and shared across social media platforms with confidence. She has learned the power of daily consistency and currently is on day 191 of 377 days of tree hugging!

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Filed Under: Business Artistry, Creative Adventures, Creative Process, Goals, Video and Livestreaming, Virtual Coffee Date Tagged With: livestreaming, Livestreaming Video, video, video content creator

Connect: Keep the Channel Open – to Your Past Self & Your Present Wisdom

August 5, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A dancer, along with the words "Keep the Channel Open" a nugget of wisdom offered by Martha Graham and continued in this blog post by Julie JordanScott

This is the story of how Facebook Memories reminded me of something and may remind you of something you said or did or made that is still relevant and rather than just let it pass by, you decide to reach into that memory knowing the message is meant for someone right now.

Are you the someone waiting to hear this message?

Flashback to a moment in time from four years ago, complete with a video LiveStream with a lot of excellent content toward the bottom of the page.

Mixed media art of a girl climbing a tree with the Martha Graham quote, There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost."

I wrote for five minutes (yes, a #5for5Brain Dump!) on the topic of “Keep the Channel Open” which is the foundation, the grounding and the divine inspiration behind this quote.

I primed myself by repeating in my mind “Keep the Channel Open….Five minute write….”

As I often do, I took a deep breath before beginning to write.

“Keep the channel open, Julie… keep the channel open.”

This quote has meant so much to me, to remind me why it is important that I do my work – that I engage with the people who might be served by my work and to just keep doing it, even when kerfuddled or bewildered, like I feel today.

Keep the channel open when bewildered or kerfuffled, which I don’t even know whether it’s a word or not.

Keep the channel open even when tired, because sometimes keeping the channel open means going to sleep. Sometimes it means laughing out loud at something ridiculous, like Cameron’s cartoon character version of answering the phone today.

Keep the channel open may mean reaching out to friends and saying, “I’m not feeling well,” and instead of believing somehow they will hate you for the rest of your life, they will receive your words with grace, thinking “How may I come alongside Julie so that she may feel better and more capable tomorrow?

Keep the channel open may mean looking at someone with a wide open heart, even if that person has hurt you repeatedly.

Keep the channel open so that you will be the patron saint of “alive and well and present and warm. And feeling loved, even and especially while fast asleep.”

Keep the channel open so that you may be superbly human and transparent, fiercely super powered so you may take on any challenge with panache. And…

There is applause coming from inside my computer from my timer saying “your writing time is up!” which makes me laugh. Remembering this will keep my channel open!

After I wrote this, the “channel stayed open” and this livestream was created.

LIVE on #Periscope: Daily Passion Activator: Prosperity Through Keeping the Channel Open #PeriGirls https://t.co/Up0eJwHJ3o

— Julie JordanScott (@JulieJordanScot) August 5, 2016
Click on the link that starts with pscp.tv to watch the video from this exact date in 2016.

I watched this video and felt so deeply connected to so much of what I said. Last week I was back at Hart Park in the middle of the day because I was stuck in what felt like a hopeless block. I saw this same spot where I broadcast. It is almost as if the past me was waving to me, inviting me to come close to the memory. To remember about keeping the channel open, again and again and again.

More writing prompts from this memory are open as I continue to keep this channel open today – and in next week’s #5for5BrainDump session. To participate, join the Word-Love Writing Community Facebook Group where the conversation and livesteam sessions will be accessed in a safe, private writing community.

Portrait of creative life coach and creative life midwife Julie JordanScott

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. Access the visionary prompst from the mid-2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. 

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Filed Under: Writing Prompt Tagged With: Livestreaming Video, Martha Graham Quote

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