I have been pulling off a great acting job for years. People tend to think of me as a real goodie-two-shoes: using bad language or “talk smack” or heaven forbid say something of a sexual nature, people can’t believe it.
*Gasp*!
Why, our Julie Jordan Scott doesn’t think of things like being mean and hating or getting so angry she uses bad language and wait – isn’t she a nun?
I am cynical today because it is the anniversary of one of my biggest mistakes ever. I’ll be paying off those moments of wildness for the rest of my life.
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.
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As I sat to write today's Summer Blog Challenge, I realize I have never told this story this completely. Every time I tell it, write it, share it, I almost don't... for a number of reasons. Then I reminded myself. I am a storyteller. The stories I share are a gift to the world. I have no way to know who needs to read this exact story at this exact time and if I don't share it, they won't hear it. I am meant to share it. With that, here is my response to -
How did your child get her name?
I wonder if other people feel compelled to answer with paragraphs of back story in response to questions or do they have the ability to just spit out the answer?
My spit out answer goes like this: Katherine was named for a dear friend of mine who cared for me while I was pregnant with my long awaited baby. She went with me to ultrasounds, doctors appointments and took phone calls from me whenever I was scared or anxious.
Plus her Dad’s name starts with K so it felt like I was honoring him, too.
That’s the spit out answer.
The longer answer includes these bits of backstory:
I tried to have my first baby for three years. THREE YEARS seems so impossible now, two decades later. Being pregnant was a dream come true: it was a fantastic pregnancy. I had no morning sickness, I had a deliriously happy family. We had bought our first home, Ken passed the bar exam on the first try: it felt like I was living in an altered state of wonderfulness. I couldn’t be happier until that snowy day in February.
I think I knew it at 8:30 in the morning when I felt what reminded me of a menstrual cramp except it wrapped around me from back to front, from bottom to top.
“Braxton-Hicks,” I insisted. “It is only Braxton-Hicks.” I was six weeks early, after all, Braxton-Hicks contractions were normal.
Shortly after that I started to have very slight bleeding and the “Braxton-Hicks” continued. They weren’t painful, I was merely aware of them coming and going just like the blood would come and go. My doctor’s office reassured me, telling me to lie down on my left side and call if it got worse.
I called some people to not be lonely. People offered to come to me, I told them “No, no, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, everything is fine!”
It wasn’t fine.
Ken got home from work at about 7:30 and the Braxton-Hicks no longer felt like Braxton-Hicks. He wanted to take me to the hospital. I refused. I wanted to take a shower. Totally irrational… sounds like a woman in labor, right? I got into the shower and only reported half of the contractions that came, not all of them. They were pretty consistent at about five minutes apart or less.
When I got out of the shower I added vomiting to my labor dance and Ken stopped listening to me.
“We’re going to the hospital!” he said. I don’t remember dressing. I didn’t take anything with me, I just silently agreed. I know I wore black maternity pants. I don’t remember the shirt, though I think it was a red Motherhood maternity top my friend had given me.
We started driving from our home in Pine Mountain Club, which is about an hour from the hospital in Bakersfield. I stared at the clock, timing the contractions without telling Ken what I was doing because I didn’t want to scare him.
Fifteen minutes into the drive they stopped. I started breathing. It seemed to be over.
I relaxed my shoulders.
It was on the freeway on-ramp my water literally sprayed from me, like a fountain, all over the dashboard of the car. I stayed silent. I don’t think either Ken or I said a word.
Now I knew I couldn’t deny it.
I put my feet on the dash so I was sort of rolled up into an upward facing fetal position, my bottom hanging half off the front seat. No more pain, only the compelling need to bear down. I felt my perineum heat up. I knew from my three years of reading what that meant. I had a flash of pride for my body being able to do this.
I bore down. My baby’s head was released from my body.
I screamed. With tears in my voice I said to Ken, “Can you call an ambulance?”
Ken countered, “There is no time!” We were in a rural area. There were no cell phones then. It was just the three of us in a black Friday night hurtling toward the hospital. I felt the need to bear down again. The rest of her little body was released from me.
She was somehow, thought I didn’t know how at the time, somehow not coming from the cradle I made with my lower body. I held her there as we continued.
“Our baby is dead,” I said, with no emotion.
Ken kept driving. When we got to the hospital he ran inside and a large group of people came running out with a wheelchair which somehow I got into. They got my clothes off without me doing anything and somehow without me having any awareness, I was lying on an exam table in the room where they usually take rape victims as well as, I guess now when I reflect on it, women with gynecological or obstetric emergencies.
One of my doctor’s partners came into the room. He took a moment and then said to me, whispering in my ear with great compassion, “You had a girl.”
I never held my daughter. She was whisked from the room in a tupperware like box that had blue liquid in it. I saw the outline of her body inside the nearly clear container. Still now, twenty three plus years later this sight makes me cry.
They took away the black maternity pants which were covered in blood and gave me scrubs to wear home. I threw them away, too. I got more cards then I could count. I hand wrote thank you notes to everyone who wrote to me, including my friend Katherine's grandma who said, "I have never gotten a thank you note like this before."
Twenty-two months later on Christmas Morning I gave birth to my Katherine. A three hour labor, again unmedicated, this time with a living baby born three weeks early as a reward.
My friend Katherine was going to be there at the birth but again, I was in denial until I was at the hospital “to get checked” that I was going to give birth. Who gives birth on Christmas morning?
My Mother told me she knew it was Marlena, my baby who died, and God, conspiring to give me an unforgettable Christmas gift.
Marlena’s sister, Katherine, is now waiting to go to University of Edinburgh in Scotland for the Fall Semester.
Her namesake, Katherine, died of breast cancer four years ago. She was only forty-six years old.
That is the backstory of how my eldest living child got her name.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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Women are ready to govern Brazil and, more importantly, Brazil is ready to be governed by a woman.” Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil and Mother of Paula Rousseff de Anauja
Forbes, Inc. has been a friend of mine lately, primarily for their lists of Powerful Women,Youngest Power Women, Wealthy Women. Today I looked to see if the 2012 list of power women had been released.
It didn’t surprise me to see Hilary Rodham Clinton on the top of the list. I remember when my daughter, Katherine, was a toddler and Clinton shook her hand after a speech at Jastro Park in Bakersfield. People didn’t know who either she or her husband were that day long ago.
What surprised and delighted me was seeing the Brazilian President listed as Power Mom Number Two. Yes, Dilma Rousseff – a name I didn’t know until today – is the leader of this large South American nation. I had no idea. How embarrassing – yet fantastic - to discover!
I literally giggled when I read this quote from UPI “Dilma Rousseff, a 63-year-old grandmother and former urban guerrilla who spent three years in prison, was sworn in Saturday as Brazil's first woman president.” Read more about her inauguration here.
Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying, "I don't come here to extol my biography, but to glorify the life of each Brazilian woman," Rousseff said. "My supreme commitment is to honor women, protect the weakest and govern for all."
President Rousseff spent several years in jail when she was a radical opponent of the military dictatorship which dominated Brazilian politics in the past. During those three years in jail she was tortured and tormented by her jailers. After her release, she had a daughter, Paula (now an attorney) and traveled to the United States for more education.
She returned to Brazil as an empowered leader who used her radical background as a badge of honor, even as she has become more conservative politically.
Do you know about the latest success stories in Brazil?
Went from being a huge debtor with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to a creditor. The economy in Brazil has been thriving for the last two decades and continues to grow.
This may seem to be a strangely antiquated accomplishment for those of us in the United States, but for Brazil this is huge: By late 2012, electricity services will be available for the first time to 12 million people living in the country’s rural areas.
Rousseff’s government is working toward improving Brazil’s educational system all the way from early childhood education to college-level education. They are adding universities and technical schools and not only aiming to educate the elite, they are now targeting education for all. Rousseff believes this will be one of the ways to build a middle class in Brazil.
I wish I had the chutzpah to run for office.
I don’t, but perhaps you do and will.
Learn more about Dilma Rousseff and other power women. The inspiration from these women who COULD BE YOU may be exactly the invitation you need for your future in leadership.
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.
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Today's prompt from #BlogFlash2012 - A Different World
I don’t know what woke me before six this morning, but once it smacked me on my forehead I had no choice but to get up and face the day.
I started coffee and took a book out to the front porch and the quiet, rare crisp August air, I was grateful for these moments of solitude for reflection.
It is otherworldly, this experience of my front porch in the morning. I am able to welcome the sunrise: today she was like a diva, stomped from the front door into her dressing room without stopping.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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The birth order books confused me when I read them as a young parent. I was the fourth child, the second daughter, I was supposed to be a jokester, charming, immature and more than slightly irresponsible.
I didn’t get it.
I wasn’t like that at all.
What the birth order books didn’t remember to tell me was when you are in a large family that has separate artificial components, your birth order will be dwarfed by your order within your subgroup. Clear as mud, right?
There are six children in my family. The first three were considered the big kids. The second three were the little kids. I was the oldest of the little kids which was a lot more of my identity than being the second daughter. My older sister was then the youngest of the big kids.
It felt topsy turvy at times, but it was as if my sister and I had switched roles: she was like the youngest in the family and I was like the oldest in the family. She was the one who was more of a jokester. She was the one who spoke out raucously.
I would never say anything I thought my upset someone or go against the rules. That might cause attention in my direction and there were few fates worse than that.
Consequently I heard more of My mother’s famous lectures than I had my mother’s lectures directed at me. She had an entire encyclopedia of speeches. There was one that started like this: “Respoooooooonsibility.” She was quite the orator, using different fluctuations in her voice for emphasis.
The one I remember my sister receiving the most was, “Think before you speak.” It was never enough to speak the proverb, Mom had to sing at least a couple verses of her lecture before Sue would be let off the hook and I would be able to come out from under the invisible rock I would climb under as Mom strode into the room, frustrated and tired herself.
I wonder what my children will tell their children when they receive the prompt, “Mom always used to say….”
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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When I saw today’s prompt from the Blog Dare I knew immediately what I wanted to write but then I thought confessing to this as the source of my last big belly laugh might be taken wrong, but then I thought… many of us have silly little brother memories and after our The Great Southwest Road Trip, my daughters and Samuel and I will laugh about this for years.
We will probably share it with his future girlfriends, too.
The prompt was simply, I laughed so hard:
It started innocently enough. A slightly unusual smell would overtake the backseat of the car and slowly waft toward me in the front. Whichever sister was sitting next to Samuel would say, “Ewww, what’s that smell?”
If it was a color, the smell would be a faded mustardy yellow: sort of like Gulden’s mustard. It was overweight and putrid.
After it consistently happened several times the first couple days and was usually accompanied by squelched giggles from the little brother of the family, we figured it out.
Samuel was gifting us with Silent But Deadly Farts.
None of my children had heard this expression before. Samuel had quickly become a master of SBD’s.
Sometimes he even delivered them to hotel rooms. On one occasion when I was either out at the car or perhaps getting a cup of coffee, all three children were doing that famous sibling bonding on the bed. All three children were sitting up and happy under the quilt in the middle of rural Utah. They looked so nearly All American Family before times got weird when Samuel decided it was the perfect time to introduce his sisters to the famous “Dutch Oven”.
He created an enormous SBD and then lifted the quilt. The girls reportedly had to get off the bed because they couldn’t breathe with that horrifyingly bad stench eminating from it. Samuel laughed and laughed and then they laughed and laughed and then I came back in the room and we all laughed and laughed.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t done this since we got home.
A part of me hopes this is just an eleven-year-old-boy-smelly-fad-that-passed but another part of me misses the raucous laughter that came as a result.
My kids may not remember how gorgeous the view was while standing on Weeping Rock at Zion National Park. They may not remember the awe opening moments standing in Pueblo Ruins from the 13th Century at Mesa Verde. The legend of the Spider Woman in Canyon de Chelly may become a fuzzy “What was that again?”
The laughter from Samuel’s Silent but Deadly Farts will never be forgotten.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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I couldn’t help but fall in love with Gold Rush writer Dame Shirley, who was called Louise (Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe) by the people who knew her.
Her place in literary history came from the letters she wrote to her sister, Molly, who lived in Western Massachusetts. Louise entertained her family as she made a life with her young husband first and last in San Francisco with two years in the early 1851 and 1952 along the gold mines of the Feather River northeast of San Francisco where young couple moved because Mr. Clapp was in ill health.
Louise’s writing became a powerful link to the lives of the women of the California Gold Rush.
I especially enjoyed her letter to Molly telling about when she actually tried on the occupation of Gold Miner. “Nothing of importance has happened since I last wrote you except that I have become a mineress; that is if the having washed a pan of dirt with my own hands, and procured therefrom three dollars and twenty five cents in gold dust, (which I shall inclose in this letter) entitle me to this name.”
Her letter continues to share she would rather not continue as a miner. She realized the male miners were hungry for female companionship while doing this grueling work. The solution, they thought, was to hand a new mineress a pan to sift through that was heaped with gold as an encouragement for her to continue because “it was such easy work.” They knew better AND they wanted more women around!
When she and her husband returned to San Francisco, she wasn’t happy about it. She wrote in her final letter: “My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life: I leave it with regret.” Her husband was tired of California completely. They divorced, he moved to Hawaii and eventually back to the eastern US and she added an “e” to the end of Clapp forever becoming Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe and happily stayed in San Francisco.
Her colorful letters were first memorialized via a magazine called The Pioneer in 1854 and 1855. Famed California writer Bret Harte later published fiction that bore a stunning resemblance to the stories Louise told in her letters to Molly.
Harte was her primary detractor, criticizing her letters when published in The Pioneer. Interesting, isn’t it, that when questioned about the similarities between her early letters and Hart’s later work when she was a teacher in San Francisco in later life, she stood beside her frenemy saying, “Oh, no he didn’t plagiarize my stories. He was unconsciously recreating what he had read from my letters and meant no harm.”
She taught for twenty years before returning to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she was born. Another irony from Dame Shirley’s life was she rekindled her friendship with Bret Harte’s estranged wife in New Jersey. She actually lived in the boarding house of one of Mrs. Harte’s nieces when she died in 1906.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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Summer Blog Challenge Prompt August 15. What is the hardest part of parenting?
I could go Pollyanna today and say something like, “Hardest part? Why, parenting is all a cake walk in the park and the kids always adore your every choice and sit at your feet, wondering how they got so blessed to have ME as their Mommy!”
That is only partially true, after all.
The hardest part of parenting for me is the continually need and practice of letting go.
It is ironic, because that is such a huge part of parenting: we raise our children to be confident enough to fly on their own wings, not on ours.
My children, for the most part, do this.
I’m thinking this morning how much I have been looking forward to the first day of school.
This is true for the most part, but it is also very difficult for me to not know how things are faring for my child. I jump at every ring of the phone. I worry my child will need me and I won’t be able to know telepathically.
I think a big part of that worry is knowing more than likely my child will come home that first day excited about the new year and all the promise it brings.
Or in Katherine’s case, it is she will come home in December, so happy to have spent her Fall in Edinburgh.
There are other tough challenges along the way, but watching them leave and being detached from their outcomes… that is the most difficult moment I face as a parent each and every time.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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I have so many books I have written sitting in Word Docs and notebooks and blogs and articles I use to keep me warm, like a quilt, somehow afraid to stitch together and watch fly away into other people’s hearts and minds.
The irony is people ASK me where they can “get” my books.
“Oh, I’m in poetry and essay anthologies. I have a couple ebooks…” my voice trails off.
They want a book, a real bound book with pages to turn and margins to add their thoughts in purple ink.
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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First, take a nice deep breath. Feel where your muscles are tense and relax…. Again… deep breath and relax…. Deep breath and relax….
I remember when I was a new parent all I wanted to do was be the absolute best parent that ever was for my daughter. I did everything right: breast feeding only, cloth diapers only, spending days cuddling on the sofa just idly watching television never putting her down and of course please don’t forget attachment parenting times a bajillion.
What I have learned in the twenty years since then is your baby will love you whether you are the perfect super parent or just a parent trying to do his or her best in the moment.
I found a better strategy is to do what is best for that particular baby in that precise moment.
This morning I read about gold mining in the 1850’s. Yes, I know – not your usual reading and yes, it is relevant. Just listen – it is a brief analogy. It was a letter from a woman known as Dame Shirley who lived and wrote glorious letters home to her sister in New England. My favorite was a letter she wrote about when women joined men in mining.
The men loved to have the women around, so they would encourage them by passing the women plates that were pre-filled with gold dust to encourage women to continue mining. It wasn’t easy work and most women approached mining as if going on an afternoon picnic, especially when the gentleman miners proved to them how simple this work was!
Truth is, the work was hard and rarely was it very fruitful for the average miner, male or female.
They spent hours sifting the “ordinary dirt” from the gold dust.
This is what I think will help you most in parenting after discerning what is best for each child in each particular moment. Take the advice you receive and sift through it. There will be gold dust for you in other people’s words, but it is best if you find it yourself.
It is best if people don’t give you so much that the muddy water makes it impossible for you to sift out the advice that is right for your little ones.
Let’s go back to the beginning:
Take a nice deep breath. Feel where your muscles are tense and relax…. Again… deep breath and relax…. Deep breath and relax….now love your baby with all your heart every day.
Forgive yourself when you fall short of what you think is “The Super Mom” or “The Perfect Dad.” Just being you and doing the best you absolutely can is what will fill up your children’s love sippy cup now and for the rest of their lives… and for your Grandchildren, too. Imagine that!
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 leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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