Julie Unplugged

Wisdom from My Brother: Lessons He Taught Me

Today's prompt from the folks at Scintilla13  goes like this:

What talent do you have that your usual blog readers don't know about? Talk about a time when you showed it to its best advantage.

I have an exceptionally strong ability to "read" people. To hear them with my eyes.

I attribute this talent to my brother John. His verbal language skills were never all that great, but he and I connected deeper than language. Our communication was fully embodied and seemed, to some, ethereal.

It was a spiritual practice, now that I look back on it.

John taught me how to listen with my eyes as well as to catch that listening in the tiniest shift, sometimes in the movement of air or energy rather than anything other people might see or hear. Some people call this empathic but that doesn’t quite describe it.

It is sort of like “intuition unplugged”.

Sometimes when I work with life coaching clients I will ask them, “What’s going on with your shoulder today?” and from three thousand miles away they will report an injury or just a tightness within their muscles. This is more of the empathy way, but I also think of intuition as primarily from the gut.

I’m getting tangled up in words which is ironic because what I am attempting to explain has nothing to do with conventional language.

I remember when John was in the process of dying. Five of the six siblings were together: the largest assembly at his hospital. We wanted to talk with the doctors about John’s treatment when he had been sick for a few months. We were all chattering in the doorway to his room or rather others were chattering. John couldn’t speak because of his tracheotomy. I was listening with my eyes.

No one else heard his obvious to me plea, “I can’t see the tv because someone pulled the curtain in front of it. Would someone please move the screen so I can see the tv?”

I did. I also apologized verbally to John for not noticing it more quickly.

He rested his head against the pillow. That day confused him and it was the only time during his illness my Mom saw him cry. We were all there, but we were hovering about and we all left, including Mom, for this meeting. The only person left out was John.

The first time I noticed it was in college, when a group of young women were in my dorm room. There was one quiet girl named Monica who was sitting on one of the couches. This particular group of college women were very talkative, myself included. My eyes heard Monica had something she wanted to say. I said to her, “Are you feeling well, Monica? Do you need something?”

With that, Monica started to tear up.

She had been longing to be heard. My eyes heard her, first. In another crowded room with all sorts of chatter, I heard the one who needed to be heard with my eyes first.

I realize now not everyone can do this.

It is a continuing spiritual practice, one I need to remember. I practice with people, with trees, with birds. I slow down and bend my body - be it my ears, my mind, my eyes - and listen.

Are you listening, too?

Kris and Jimmy, where are you now? I'm sitting in an almond orchard in Bakersfield, California.

 

This post was inspired by the folks at Scintilla13 - Here's what they have to tell us:

We believe that who we are is informed by our stories. Here, we want to offer you a space to introduce yourself, and a guide to share your history and make some connections along the way. We’ll be offering daily prompts for two weeks beginning on March 13th.

 Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Happy St. Patrick's Day: To Some, Green is Just a Happy Color in the Crayola Box

I didn't truly realize how bad my relationship with the color green continues to be until I saw today's Stream of Consciousness Sunday prompt at Jana's Thinking Place.

Today's prompt:

What does green make you think of and how does it make you feel?

Little did sweet Jana know....

I can’t remember if I ever had a normal relationship with the color green.

Granted, I look at different shades of green in different ways. For example, if teal is considered green, then I would have to tell you, “Ohmigawsh! I love green!” but if you are talking about the garden variety crayola green, I would have to say, “No. No thank you, I am not a green

License - Creative Commons from Flickr.com Some rights reserved by Kara Allyson

fan.”

Miss Wick, my kindergarten teacher, made a heinous mistake on the first day of kindergarten which did not start our relationship well. For my cubby label, she gave me a name tag that declared “Julie” in that crayola classic green. I almost started crying out, “I am not green, Miss Wick, you have mistaken me for my sister! I am pink! Any shade of pink or some yellows but never ever green!”

The truth is, Miss Wick probably wished I was more like my sister. Perhaps she thought if she gave me this crayola green label I would magically turn into the tomboy, outspoken, rough and tumble sister Sue rather than the deer-in-the-headlamp-quietly-stubborn and would-rather-sit-on-the-steps-and-watch-than-play-that-old-worn-out-game-with-the-likes-of-you.

It all started with that damn green cubby label screaming “Julie, I know you hate it but face the facts you are GREEN!”

There is a family legend about the 26 inch Schwin Breeze I received for Christmas in the third grade. I raced right past the thing to get to my stack of gifts. Mom said, “Julie, didn’t you see your bicycle?” I looked over my shoulder as I admired my new Velvet doll and said, dismissively, “Isn’t that for Sue?”

My Mom feels guilty about that moment still, forty years later.

The thing is, that shiny Schwin breeze with my name hand lettered in white paint clearly couldn’t be mine because it was green. Sue likes green. We have established here my thoughts about green. Worse than just crayola green, it was an unlikely cross between hunter green and olive green, if you can imagine that combination. There was no glitter, no basket, no beautiful shimmery qualities at all.

That is why I thought it was for my sister.

If my Mom took note of what I liked, she wouldn’t have bought me that bicycle that got stolen from my backyard several years later. I didn’t even care that much.

I know green is supposed to be about abundance and prosperity and health and all that, but for me, that green that people get all googly-eyed about does nothing for me. St. Patrick’s Day was tough because I rarely buy anything remotely green unless it crosses over into that blue green realm of teal.

You can only imagine how I feel when people call my blue eyes green. Images of Miss Wick and unwanted bicycles float before my eyes, unforgivingly. “My eyes are blue, thank you for not noticing.”

Confession: This post took slightly more than five minutes to write. Rants tend to do that.

**********************

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post (in the sidebar). .
• Link up your post at Jana's Thinking Place.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love. 

Julie Jordan Scott is a Creative Life Coach, a Poet Performer, a Writer and a Mommy Extraordinaire. Stay in touch with her via twitter or facebook or you may always call or text her at 661.444.2735 to arrange a complimentary coaching session. Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Motherhood Quotes to Inspire, Delight & Invite Creative Mommying

Collecting quotes on a variety of subjects is a beloved hobby of mine. There is simply nothing better to get my creative juices flowing than a heartfelt collection of words from a variety of sources. This grouping is my gift to you. Read, enjoy, and leap off creatively.

“The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”
― Debra Ginsberg

“Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by humankind.”

― Howard W. Hunter

“I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway...let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.”
― C. Joybell C.

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”
― Dorothy Parker

“(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.”
― Jodi Picoult

“But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer 

 “In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.”
― N. K. Jemisin

“She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.”
― Nicole Kraus

“It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.”
― Betty Smith

 

 

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  Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

The Call of an Almond Tree was an Invitation to Transformation

Almond Blossoms Look Like Snow but They Feel More Like Heaven.

Their faces started popping up on facebook sometime last week.

I began to see photos of my friends in the orchards surrounding Bakersfield. These trees are in a lovely place in the bloom process which comes every Spring. It happens quickly. If you are a day late, the blossoms are all on the ground and then they very quickly return to the earth: fragrant dust whose appearance lives in the memory of those who take the time to notice.

This blossoming season makes me happy to live in Kern County.

I wanted to take new photos of flowering trees but more importantly, I wanted a new experience of sitting with solely and soulfully with myself among the almond trees.

It was just before sunset last Monday when the wind whispered in my ear, “Hey, Julie, everything is under control at home. Steal away, drive west….so I did. I left my home in Upper La Cresta in Bakersfield seeking what I heard were some incredible blossoms in orchards along Snow Road. I forget sometimes how far out that road goes but when I  got to a place that slightly resembled a dead end I knew I was onto something sacred.

It was a less smooth, almost dirt road I drove onto when I noticed a few  other cars parked alongside the trees.

Word was spreading. Other photographers were here. Some had special reflecting and light equipment. One was doing a shoot with a mother, father and toddler. I didn’t get too close to them, but how I wished I had done that with my children when they were little.

I thought of bringing my daughter out there, but here it is Friday and we haven’t had time. I know the magical moment has passed right as the wildflowers start covering our grassy hills for a different sort of enchantment.

The bloom and fall of almond blossoms  has a short window of time to enter into its secret safe haven. The scent coming to me from my sun open roof was compelling me to stop driving and and just be.

“Stop and step inside!” The blossoms whispered.

My purple ballet flat wearing feet stepped onto a carpet of softness, a sea of almond flower blossom petals lining the muddy ground with what looked, at first glance, like snow.  It was better than snow. It was warm and smells of rebirth and new beginnings.

It smells like waking up and being well after a long time not being well.

It smells like the wedding bouquet before it is taken on its journey down the aisle.

It smells like the first day of kindergarten, the last day of high school and the first day you moved into your dorm room freshman year.

I looked down the rows and rows of white and saw a tree, resting on her side.

This was a sight I had never seen: one fallen tree among many trees still standing.

I walked toward her soundlessly in the sacred hush of this sanctuary. I put my books and my portable lap desk at her feet and kneeled.  Her branches reached to me, defiantly blooming like all the other trees.

“See my beauty,” she said, her voice soft.

I breathed her floral scent deep into my belly. “I see your beauty, I smell your beauty. Your beauty is reaching into me.”

It felt like she, the tree, was asking me to carry her beauty with me.

I have to tell you, I love nature and I love experiences like this, but I normally do not feel as if I am having a conversation with a dying tree.

This is a moment that will live on in me and in my words.

I rested myself underneath her, scooting as much of me as possible underneath her tilted branches.  The ground was wet and muddy underneath the blossom blanket, but I didn’t care about getting slightly cold and damp, this tree was allowing me to be her witness.

Nothing would stop me from living such a privilege she offered me.

I closed my eyes and prayed.

I felt the sun dappling my face in different areas as it moved toward the horizon. I waited and prayed wordlessly. It was at a point beyond language, beyond translation, beyond understanding.

As darkness began to fall I sat up and wrote what I could. Only a few sentences could speak through my pencil. I prayer-wrote thanksgiving to the absent orchard owner.  I prayer-wrote profound gratitude for the tree herself for inviting me into such an intimate time in her life.

I stepped out of the orchard a different woman than the one who stepped into  the orchard less than an hour earlier.

Transformation doesn’t have to be a lengthy process, it only has to be one met willingly with an open heart and a listening ear.

My final gratitude is for myself, for offering myself to both the will and the listening.

What calls to you today? How will you respond?

=  =   =

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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The Summer of '77: Fleetwood Mac, Roosevelt Stadium & Jimmy from Jersey City

This post and all the laughter and fun it brought up in me (and perhaps in you as well) was inspired by my friends with the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of prompts so you will become a more talented storyteller while being involved in a phenomenal community of other storytellers. There is still time to join the creative souls with the Scintilla Project. Simply click here.

Does your memory do this, too?

A doorbell to your past rings and you are swept up in a long ago moment you hadn’t remembered the day before or even the month or even years before. That’s how it happened for me.

It was an early-ish morning, meaning the children were tucked away in school and I was free to do my many theater chores. I was producing Steel Magnolia’s at the time and for reasons my memory is fuzzy on, I was at Hancock’s Fabric in its old location. It once lived in a run-down shopping center that was, for the most part deserted. Now it is even more deserted.

Roosevelt Stadium Circa 1977 when the Indians Played. Its condos now.

It strikes me now as how nebulous many of the details are: I can’t remember precisely what car I was driving at the time, I can’t remember my exact purpose for being at the fabric store, I just remember hearing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” because in that instant I was transported from my car in the early part of this millennium to the Summer of 1997 at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. I was waiting for a Jersey City Indians AA Minor League game to start with my friend, Madeleine at my side and a quirky guy named Jimmy who was from Jersey City leaning over the bleachers beside us.

 

He was singing along with Fleetwood Mac in his scratchy, very New Jersey accent, “It’ll be here, better than before, yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone…. Ohhhhhh, don’t you look back.”

This is Kris Yoder, the player I had a serious fifteen-year-old crush on. Ha ha ha. I never knew he made it to "The Show" with the Braves!

I have the kind of memory that does that: when I am not expecting it I evaporate from the present and find myself plunked down at a different place, in a different time, and the me now is living in the body of the me of whatever date and time I have landed within. It is the wiser, older, less cute and heavier me arriving inside the form I wore at fifteen-year-old when I had an active crush on one of the players and was entertained by the other people who wound up at Roosevelt Stadium along with me: friends and strangers for the moment as well.

 

There was the cop, the requisite accent included, who asked “Where do you lovely young ladies live?” and when we answered, “Glen Ridge.” He said, “Where? I don’t know where that is but it must be God’s country.”

Do you recognize Tom Cruise here in the short oh so short cut off jeans? Pretty funny....

He would know who Tom Mapother was, but Tom moved to Glen Ridge that summer and before high school had ended, he had become Tom Cruise and appeared as in Brooke Shield’s Endless Love  playing her brother, Billy. Ian Ziering of the original 90210 was in the film, too, with a higher billing than Tom. Irony lives and breathes in the credits of old movies. I believe Tom had started filming Taps as well, but I could have the timing wrong because Tom and I were like ships in the night. He moved into God’s country right when I moved out.

 

Nonetheless, the cop made me smile and Jimmy made me smile more. He was a skinny boy, a year younger than Madeleine and me and he was always happy to see us. I never even thought of crushing on the fourteen-year-old peer of mine.His voice singing the then ubiquitous Fleetwood Mac song was just icing on the cake. I can still hear it. I hear it now, the smiling voice of Jimmy from Jersey City.

I was happy then. Life was simple. I knew every day I would sit at a big table in the cafeteria with nine of my closest friends. As I write this more than thirty-five years later, my daughter who now attends Smith College in Massachusetts is on her way to spend Spring Break with one of those nine girls who is now a lawyer living in Maine.

I don’t know how long I sat there, in my car, while actually within the confines of Roosevelt Stadium in the Summer of 1977, but it brought me a deep level of contentment.  Even in the rewriting of the moment those feelings return. My belly goes soft and my mouth settles into a sigh-filled smile.

 

Kris and Jimmy, where are you now? I'm sitting in an almond orchard in Bakersfield, California.

 

This post was inspired by the folks at Scintilla13 - Here's what they have to tell us:

We believe that who we are is informed by our stories. Here, we want to offer you a space to introduce yourself, and a guide to share your history and make some connections along the way. We’ll be offering daily prompts for two weeks beginning on March 13th.

 Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Talk about Taking a Risk: When Your Mentor is a Completely Surprising Not a Surprise at All.

Today’s NaBloPoMo question from BlogHer goes like this:

Who out there in the world would be

the best mentor for your ideas and goals?

You want to talk about risk? My response to this question feels like a huge risk to put out there for all of heaven and Earth to see.

I almost don’t want to answer this because my response sounds really cliché. Seriously, over the top cliché.

The thing is, once I asked today’s NaBloPoMo question, I couldn’t wipe the cliché response out of my head. I’ve thought it over and here’s what I’ve come up with: cliché is only bad when we say it out of complete lack of creativity.

My response to this prompt is completely truth-filled and nothing less.

My first thought was “I have no idea” and then I remembered when I was pregnant with my son and on my own raising my two daughters, I chose to see God as my partner. It helped me through a lot of dark days. I spent a lot of time chatting with God then, just sort of “hanging out” in nearly constant prayer and communion.

Times change and I don’t do that much anymore.

What I have discovered is that when I do “hang out” with God and include Him in my choices and actually ask for his advice on things via prayer and contemplation, everything in my work and my life improves.

Since I am a creative entrepreneur, who but the Creator of the Universe would be the perfect mentor to bring my (I should say our) ideas into fruition.

There. I said it. I wrote it. And now I am even going to hit publish!

 

How Memories of a Dusty, Long Ago Sunrise Brought Me Clarity Today

Somehow Emma got to be a fifteen-year-old young lady!

It was before six-thirty yet this morning when I received a text from my friend, Michelle. “I saw you were out and about…” she wrote. If I use foursquare, people will find me.  My secret early morning trips to the grocery store alert my friends I am open game for communication.

The only problem was I was in a hurry to buy food for fifteen-year-old Emma’s lunch.  I find a peculiar joy in making her especially tasty lunches but lately I’ve done mostly peanut butter and jelly. This makes me more than slightly sad.

Yesterday I made her a past favorite, penne with pesto sauce, but it came home only half eaten.

I figured today it would be a BLT minus the T on flatbread.

Naturally I started late and even texting about scheduling a hiking adventure with Michelle didn’t get in my way. “I must make Emma a lunch she will love, I must make Emma a lunch she will love, I must make Emma a lunch she will love.”

My biggest fear in life is failing as a Mother. It is my most important “job”. My children are the best artwork I ever created. I never, ever want to let them down.

I flashed back to sunrise on August 20, 1997. I was in a hospital room overlooking a tumbleweed filled field, watching the ground squirrels play.  Emma was less than a day old and was resting on my shoulder. “I will never leave you, Emma. We are in this together.”

Six weeks later I was back at work from eight-to-five and I thought my then work-at-home husband was going to be her caretaker, but the day I went back to work was the day he found a daycare provider for my tiny little baby.

Right then, I felt I had lied to her when she was less than a day old. The lie continued in a variety of ways and it hurt me enormously every time I wasn’t “in it” together with this little one who looked more like me than any of my other children.

She is also my quickest to both frustration and laughter. She is a whirlwind typist, a gifted writer and has such an active social life my head spins. This year alone we have hosted three parties, countless study dates and two teen sleepovers in our home. Emma says her friends love me and love being in our unconventional home.

Nonetheless, I still had the itchy residue from The Lie. It sat there, alertly, waiting to catch me repeating myself. I needed to change the rules. I wrote her a letter.

Dear Emma,

There is still a sorrow cloud that sometimes forms above my head which rains on my shoulders when I think about the times I have let you down, the times I have not been there for you like I wanted to be there so badly.  I felt horrible missing the night time performance of “The Wizard of Oz”, but I did see two day performances and I did see you on television.  I know, this isn’t the same as seeing the biggest performance of all. I hated missing the first day of your first period because I was out of town. Mostly I miss the times I spaced out, huddling under depression so I was just not checked in and being the Mommy you needed me to be.

I get such joy seeing the young woman you continue to become.

I cannot promise that I will be with you whenever there is a big event or a surprise event in your life. What I can promise you is I will do my best to support you to the very best of my abilities. Sometimes my best is better than other times, as I am sure you understand now.

I love you so much. Your disappointment may fade, but it is forever tattooed on my memory.

I hope you will forgive me for my failings. I hope I can forgive me for my failings and the times I lied when I didn’t even know I was lying. Perhaps these are the most heinous lines. “I didn’t mean to” doesn’t cut it with me.

I love you,

Mommy.

Emma sent me a text me this morning during her Algebra class which she shouldn’t do. “I forgot there is an assembly today. I need my choir dress, tights and shoes before lunch.”

I may have told an unintended whopper of a lie when I broke that long ago promise I made to the her as a newborn when together we looked at the sunrise, but I strive not to break it anymore. Sometimes this even includes something I abhor:  making tedious repeat trips in my car when I would rather be doing my other non-Mommy related life work.

I will forgive the past and continue to do the very best I can for her and with her.

My Emma. 

= = =

This post was inspired by the folks at Scintilla13 - Here's what they have to tell us:

We believe that who we are is informed by our stories. Here, we want to offer you a space to introduce yourself, and a guide to share your history and make some connections along the way. We’ll be offering daily prompts for two weeks beginning on March 13th.

 

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

The First & Last Job I Had as a Mom (and will never have again.)

Last weekend I was at a writing workshop – this time as a participant, though I am oftentimes a leader at the same venue. One of the other women who I met last month asked me, “So, what is it you do?”

I responded like I often do: with a comma laden stream of consciousness “I do this and that and those and them and these other things…” followed up in my next breath… “oh, yeah, and that too.”

I wasn’t always this way.

Once upon a time in my first and last job as a Mommy I was a Deputy Conservator. My first day on that job was October 24, 1994. Yes. I remember because the entire time I was there it felt like a place I was sentenced.

I did it for all the right reasons: I was supporting my husband who wanted to start his own law practice. I had the job of being the “Good Wifey” and providing health insurance and meals on the table for my family.

On paper, the Sentence/Job looked perfect. I would be working with folks with severe mental illness as what is often called a Public Guardian. I was to make decisions much like a parent would for her child except this is the one position outside the criminal system that will insist people live in a specific place and take specific medicine and have a specific budget which I manage for them, as measly as most of their money was – primarily a cap for SSI and sometimes Social Security kicked in as well.

The only people I served were people the court decided had so much interference from the symptoms of their mental illness they were neither able to provide themselves with food, clothing and shelter, they also couldn’t accept third party assistance.

Most of my clients loved me. I loved nearly all of my clients.

Even the ones who threatened to kill me.

The whole death threat story has become legendary. When I had worked for the county for four and a half years, two of my mentally ill clients threatened to kill me. They had very specific threats with very specific ways to implement them.

I was scared. Beyond scared. I had been going to therapy for the first incident – I had broken out in hives, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t enjoy myself – and then the second threat happened. It got worse. I would pace and talk too quickly and not be able to sleep. I still had hives.

My co-workers and boss were reasonably helpful, but my boss was more condescending than I can put into words. He is one of the few people in this world I don’t care for at all. I’m over detesting him, that doesn’t serve anyone but mostly I just don’t want to ever encounter him again.

In fact, it wasn’t the death threats that made me leave my job, it was the way I was treated by the bureaucracy where I worked that felt even more hazardous to my health and safety. Taking time off and going through the process of a mental health leave gave me a lot of courage and a lot of insight.

I was finally a self advocate.

I was finally breaking through other people’s expectations of me into the me I was always meant to be.

I have had jobs in the past. I have had many first jobs. The job I had first as a Mom is also the last I will have as a Mom.

Now I am many things, some of which I have put in a non-list list.

I am a quirky personified comma lover. I don’t have a job, I have a wardrobe labeled, “clothes for the things I love to do which sustain my life work and my family.” Attire: a writing dress, a poet performer beret, an advocate suit, a professional  expert  back pack, blogger pencil eraser, a Mommy nurses hat/life crossing guard stop sign and of course the requisite compact suv to drive around far too endlessly, an artist’s smock adorned with paint, mod podge and spray adhesive  because I often get these on my hands which I then wipe on my smock.

Back in the old days, I had a commitment to a job with a boss and all the benefits.  Now, my only job is being me and doing the best I can with what I have in any given moment.

I am blessed.

= = =

This post was inspired by the folks at Scintilla13 - Here's what they have to tell us:

We believe that who we are is informed by our stories. Here, we want to offer you a space to introduce yourself, and a guide to share your history and make some connections along the way. We’ll be offering daily prompts for two weeks beginning on March 13th.

 

Are You Ready to Risk & Rock & Roll?

Today from BlogHer's NaBloPoMo:

If you didn't have to be concerned about money or expertise, what would be your ideal job?

I never want to have a job again. I do have my ideal life work is exactly what I do now (write, teach, create art, life coach, speak, Mommy… ) but if I had all the money in the world to promote myself (and the time, remember yesterday’s bullies!) and a personal assistant to work with me on the stuff I don’t like to do, I could be helpful to so many MORE people.

I would like to do MORE of what I do and LESS of what I don’t want to do.

It is pretty simple:

1. Eradicate Belief Bullies  (I wrote about this yesterday) by Taking Passionate Action
2. Follow up according to the results of #1
3. Find more new and creative ways to rock the world that are uniquely me.
4. Continue to tweak, revitalize and restore.

Are you ready to see it happen?

I am ready to risk & rock & roll!

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Art Heals & Helps: See How it May Help You with the Grief Process & More

I use my entire body when I create art.

 

I call this photo "Prayer Hands" because the Process felt as if I was praying the entire time.

I call this photo "Prayer Hands" because the Process felt as if I was praying the entire time.

My favorite method is not to use a brush or a pencil, if at all possible.

Sunday I created a piece I call “Dividing Line” at a Grief-Art workshop at the Art and Spirituality Center at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield. The piece doesn’t feel finished yet though it will be on display in an upcoming art show. Perhaps, like grief and like the General Assembly at the United Nations, it is never finished, it is just experienced differently.

I closed my eyes in the making of it.

I started in a much more organized manner. I didn’t know what I was doing with pastels as I have never used them much in the past. I started with a white pastel on the black paper. I moved it back and forth, soon discovering I liked to use the chalk on its side more than using it like a pencil or pen.

It was a large piece of paper and I was using my non dominant hand. Up and down and all across the page in circles and colors and sweeps. I crashed into the end of the table cloth and my chalk seered down the edge, tracing the stitching of the table cloth.

It jolted me.

I adored it.

This is how I have been taught to grieve: behind a line, behind a veil, in a space where no one else might be made uncomfortable by the rawness of my emotions.

How many times have we heard it at a funeral? When the family members are stoic and showing no emotions, we say “Oh, they are doing so well!” Maybe we should say “Are they on too much medicine to feel the service? Will they remember it at all? Do they have a safe place to express their loss?”

Yes, we all grieve differently.

I am a loud, active, deep feeling, very reflective griever.

I respect each of our methods of grief.

What was difficult for me when I was younger is I never had any grief models. I was never allowed to go to funerals. I didn’t get to talk about loss or death. I remember when the call came in that my grandfather died, I was with my mother. I looked at her with an odd, six-year-old excitement, “Should I go tell Daddy?”

I still don’t know how he was told.

I still don’t know how he responded. He was in the midst of a worsening relationship with alcoholism though.

I do know when I facilitated my brothers Celebration of Life nearly forty years later, all the grievers stood in a circle, holding hands, as we remembered John. Katherine, my daughter, said my father’s hand shook with grief as she held it. I am so grateful he was able to express his grief and I am so grateful my daughter was able to fully witness it without fear or anxiety or judgment.

If I had been faced with raw grief like that at her age then – fifteen – I would have been frightened. I had no exposure.

Now I feel like a grief expert of sorts. It isn’t a title I enjoy claiming, but I do value it as an integral part of who I am as a member of the human community.

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