Thank You!
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I sit at my desk
Silently writing and
Preparing to write
The space in between
the words on the page
Are as significant
As the letters themselves
Strung together, into
Drops of meaning
The silence
Held together
with scent
Rising up from
the pillow you
gave me on
My birthday
It smells of love
and truth and
Inexplicable laughter
Black, menacing figures
in the distant coming close
And undying unending
unfinished gratitude
unfolding
© 2009
Julie Jordan Scott
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Pre-PS - In this week (and next week's) Writing Camp we are learning about Memoir & Life Writing. I remembered vaguely an exercise where I wrote a one page autobiography at some point. I couldn't remember details, but I vaguely remember a college professor somehow finding this blog post and using it as a text in his personal narrative class as an example for students to follow.
Enjoy reading this brief journey down the road marked, "This is Your Life, JJS" and see what you find of YOUR life reflected in mine.
This is an exercise from Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice by Christina Baldwin.
One Page Autobiography:
Written on February 24, 2009
1961/62. Conception and birth. I was born on a Monday morning, right after Sunday disappeared into the history books. It was the second time I disappointed my mother. I was born at 12:25 AM Monday, January 29, 1962. It was dark but it wasn’t stormy.
My brother was born 13 months into my life, changing dramatically the shape of every moment after his appearance here on Earth. He continues to shape it after leaving Earth.
My Dad drank. I learned to be well-liked and offensive to few, using food to block any nasty thought about to burst from my mouth. “Wait, here it comes! Stuff a donut in to block… oh there, safe. Phew! That was close. Mmmmm. Sugar.” It took a Bonding event for V-Day just a couple weeks ago to make that connection. Wild.
My pen was occasionally scathing and humiliating when my oral language was silenced by food. I started my educational experience in Glen Ridge, NJ and finished high school a world away in Dana Point, CA, where I lived for only 3 years but calls me still.
I attended University of the Pacific, which is where I refound and then relost myself, chose a husband and began a lengthy career in acting. Not officially, I dumped that in the fifth grade. My acting was pretending to be happy, for the most part. I put music, writing, art, and color on the shelf and became a wife and unquestioning provider.
Los Angeles and Law School (not for me, my furthering-of-myself was a “down the road, later" thing) and home ownership (thanks to my diligent savings) followed. One child’s birth-death, agreement to raise someone else’s child, movement to a place I never wanted to live, a second child’s birth, a career I never wanted, miscarriage, pets, a third child’s birth, death threats at the job I never wanted, deliverance from career thanks to Divine intervention, husband left us (that whole Divine intervention thing and no longer pretending can be frightening indeed.)
I settled into my unconventional, uncareer life. Art, activism, and my third living child was born, oooops! My mother finally had her Sunday’s child and I had a brand new cause: Autism Activism. Renewed focus on equality. Incredible daughters. Art-Life. Me.
© 2009, 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again soon. Find details by clicking this link.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
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I was being called to completion.
I could feel it, that annoying mosquito that won’t be swished away.
Finally I gave into it rather than fight it.
I reached up, to the top of my refrigerator, which is where I store my watercolor painting supplies. It is a safe place where I figure my children will not be compelled to either look or destroy a work-in-progress.
My watercolors are most definitely about works-in-progress rather than an “all at once, keep at it until it is done” approach.
Both work, mine is by necessity rather than brilliant invention.
Today, I pulled her down.
It took about 45 seconds to become angry because somewhere, somehow, someone had moved my brushes.
I had finite time to work on this project so I filled a cup with water and dipped my finger into the water and then into the paint and onto the page.
“Limitations be gone!” I instructed myself and the thin air as I began to paint.
As I moved color and water across the page I realized this must be a divine thing, this painting without a brush. This finger-painting-meets-watercolor exploration I have never heard spoken of in any book or website I have visited for instruction.
I painted and I got angry.
I got angry at the subject of my art: myself.
Angry at the scenario it pulled me into – this necessity to paint with my fingers. The child-like-ness by necessity thanks to the brush gremlins invading my space.
I plugged my thumb into the black and started fingerprinting myself onto the paint and onto the page. Angrily I printed and printed and printed and a-ha after a-ha after a-ha met my thumb, followed the flow up into my heart, underneath my eyelids and my tears flowed, meeting the water in the cup, meeting the water on the paper.
My anger gave way to relief which gave way to gratitude.
My tears married all three as the color married the paint and the page.
I paint to express what can not be held in words. Through putting the paint on the page, more words pour forth, more words that were held more deeply inside me are given permission, and room, to be expressed.
My painting is drying now, waiting, to see if it is finished, if it is ready.
I have an idea it will probably say much more to me as the days roll forward.
This is the sort of essay that is published in Daily Passion Activator, the ezine from Julie Jordan Scott. Subscribe today for free.
© 2009
Julie Jordan Scott
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Please read through the essay and then,
at the conclusion - there is a request
for your thoughts and opinions.
It would mean a lot to me if you would
take a moment to respond.
Did you read last week when I wrote
about a message, a feeling,
a line of haiku that came to me while I
had a massage recently?
The message was a simple seven
syllables long yet it continues to
speak to me.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
it commanded me.
This morning I wrote my morning pages
and my entire being felt like a quivering
mass of swirls.
It was like a tornado of whistling cat-calls
of words, battling for my attention.
A purple and green swirling mass of thoughts
came through me as my pen hit the paper as
the sun serenely made her
first appearance of the day.
The now-familiar command filtered
through the morass.
“Don’t let your love go unspent” it
commanded me.
Additional truths poured through
my pen onto the page.
Love grows as we spend it.
Love is the truly infinite commodity.
Love is the greatest teacher
of abundance.
When You know love abundance, you
will know prosperity.
When You know the with-holding of love,
you will know lack, intimately.
When You know the never ending wellspring
of divine love "spent" through humanity, then
intimacy with infinity will be expressed in
you and through you.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
The command is yours, is mine, is ours.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
My writing for the next several issues of
Daily Passion Activator will
focus on these truths, specifically.
I will add grounding and focus and
questions and quotes for us to
explore them more deeply.
I have a distinct feeling there is
more to come but what form that
is, I do not know.
I would love, love, love to hear your input.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
Talk to me.
Share with me, with us, with
yourself on a deeper level.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
Love grows as we spend it.
Love is the truly infinite commodity.
Love is the greatest teacher of abundance.
When You know love abundance,
you will know prosperity.
When You know the with-holding of
love, you will know lack, intimately.
When You know the never ending
wellspring of divine love "spent" through
humanity, then intimacy with infinity will
be expressed in you and through you.
“Don’t let your love go unspent”
Suddenly the swirling mass of thoughts
is becoming both a mattress and a quilt,
a lullaby and a lover, a waterfall and
the waves of the ocean, a raft a
canoe and an ocean liner.
I am feeling my level of intimacy
with infinity increase.
Are you?
Intimacy with infinity: don’t let
your love go unspent.
Activate Your Passion.
© 2009
Julie Jordan Scott
This essay was originally published in Daily Passion Activator, the ezine from Julie Jordan Scott. To receive the follow up essays directly in your email box, subscribe today for free.
Dear Ones,
I have started my second year
of self portraiture. Yesterday
was Day 4 and I did some very
candid self-snapping while my
friend Ginn and I discussed
a collaborative project.
I would love to hear your
input as to which of these
photos speaks to you of me.
Here is the photo album
where you may see them:
Click here to go to the photo album on Flickr
If you are on Flickr, feel
free to comment right there,
on the Flickr page.
If you are not, feel free to
write to me here at
I would love to hear your
insights and the reason why
(and how) that particular
portrait speaks to
you... of me.
Click here to go directly to the photo album on Flickr
With Much Love and
Passionate Gratitude,
Julie
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It is true. It was the morning of February 14 and my children and I were eating breakfast at McDonald's... a splurge for Emma's friend who spent the night at our house.
I was snapping photos, random, goofy, "this is my life I click as I live it" photos that bear my signature... when I spotted him across the glass wall that separates the play area from the eating area.
Who could resist this face? Certainly not me.
I just got up to get a coffee refill and pour myself a bowl of Special K. I blew a kiss to Samuel on the way and he wiped it from his face. How adorable is that?
I keep waiting for the big storm to materialize and so far it hasn't, at least not here in Bakersfield. I expected to awaken with the residue of my overgrown palm trees straddling my house but so far, nary an 80 MPH gust.
I was hoping to go hiking today, but we will have to wait and see. Probably the second I get Jane, the trusty explorer, loaded up, the rain will begin.
Some of you know Mom was on her way here Friday to see Katherine in "Grease" - she made it as far as Tehachapi before she had a car accident and elected (wisely!) to turn around. The best part of this was I was able to immediately plunge into my warehouse of friends, family and heart connections to create plans X,Y, Z and 8.
I started year 2 of self portraits on Saturday.
My unconventional favorite thus far?
It looks like I am standing on the edge of "What's next?" and for now, that edge is the best place to hang out.
Thanks for being here with me.
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Yesterday morning Emma announced to me, “I have lost
my glasses. I can’t go to school.”
I responded the only way I could, “You are going to
school and when you come home, you will have a job to
do. You will look for your glasses.”
I walked into the room with my hands on my hips,
the ever and always maternal way, and did a cursory
glance underneath her bed. “Where did you
wear them last?”
“I thought I put them on my desk,” she said, but
a look and a nod to the desk and the immediate
underneath of the desk showed no bright pink
spectacles. I pulled the bed away from the
wall and peered under its edges.
No glasses. Lots of clutter and excess stuff,
however, to be sifted and sorted and laundered
and thrown away.
I dropped a very angry, glasses-less Emma off
at school. She proclaimed she wasn’t speaking
to me and phoned me several times throughout
the day begging for respite from her near-sighted
unseeing day of education. I would not relent.
I was reminded of the words of Simone Schwarz-Bart.
“Every day you must arise and say to your heart, I
have suffered enough and now I must live because
the light of the sun must not be wasted, it must
not be lost without an eye to appreciate it.” Emma
might not be able to see well, but she could see.
The fact that her glasses were missing was something
we would have to deal with within the parameters
of the time available. She could not miss school.
Together we looked for her glasses after school. We
moved her bed around the room and I found many
“long lost” beloved items. We found a Hollister-brand
t-shirt, several missing brassieres,
three (!) hairbrushes.
Still, no glasses.
I washed the clothing, and Emma put the hairbrushes
and a variety of cups and bowls she had stashed under
her bed into the kitchen sink for processing.
Next morning arrived and I handed her some now-laundered
fresh clothing to wear on another sightless day. I
pulled up her top sheet and my hand hit
something plastic.
A pair of bright pink framed eye glasses, waiting
the entire time right where Emma had more than
likely worn them to sleep. “Look!” I said, handing
her the glasses.
She smiled, widely, and balanced them on the bridge
of her nose, sight restored.
I smiled back at my daughter wearing her favorite,
until the glasses went missing also gone, Hollister
t-shirt. Today she would be early to school, newly
showered and content even without her perfect vision.
We had both learned a few lessons in these twenty
four hours of items lost and found. The hands-on-hips
maternal me morphed back into the arms open, holding
close her children maternal me as I cuddled with Sam
and just like yesterday, stroked Emma’s head and
face before she left me for another day at that
never-easy-place-to-face, middle school.
I returned home and wondered for a moment how
the glasses which were so close to view could
have remained hidden in the sheets of Emma’s
bed for a full twenty four hours. Was it just
a matter of not being careful in the practice
of bed making or was it that we were supposed
to step back, the two of us, from “normal”
sight and for twenty-four hours experience
a different way?
It was Blaise Pascal who said, “In those matters
seemingly removed from love, the feeling is
secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly
live for a moment without it.”
Yes, I think for whatever reason we were meant
to see and experience love differently in
these past twenty four hours. I know I enjoyed
the view enormously. I am guessing Emma would
begrudgingly in that pubescent manner of hers,
would agree with me.
Think over your past twenty four hours and
discern a space or place where you experienced
matters “seemingly removed from love.”
What will you do to see that moment differently?
Activate Your Passion.
This essay was originally published in Daily Passion Activator, the ezine from Julie Jordan Scott. Subscribe today for free.
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