Julie Unplugged:

Lessons from Samuel: My Thirteen Year Old Son Who Just Happens to Have High Functioningn Autism

He watches me watch him, secure in the awareness his Mommy loves him always and no matter what.

We don’t have to speak in the morning. We just enjoy quiet togetherness. In fact, Samuel is better at quiet togetherness than most adults I know.

We have always had silent morning rituals, very connected and simultaneously very separate.

If I had to describe what respect feels like, this would be it.

This afternoon I asked Samuel to watch my grandson - his nephew - Jaxon while I went to use the restroom. He did some baby-whispering while I was out of the space.

“Jaxon thought you were mad at him when you left him here.”

I scooped Jaxon up, “Oh, no, I wasn’t mad at you at all, little sweetheart,” I told my grandson. “I just had to use the restroom and I knew Uncle Samuel could watch over you well.”

“He just thought you were,” Samuel said, “He kept crying when you left the room.”

Samuel’s observations fascinate me.

I last saw Samuel cry this summer. He and I were crying, Emma was crying, a domino effect of one family member loving another family member so much none of us could bear for any of the others to carry the pain alone. Emma was doubly saddened because she hadn’t seen her thirteen-year-old brother cry in a long, long time.

If one of us hurts, all of us notices. Each of us offers love in return, a salve for the sadness in our uniquely inspired ways. We don't have to say a word. We have learned, from Samuel, the power of unconditional love and silent witness. We have learned the power of communicating without language.

We respect one another’s process and continue to walk this path created by love, always and no matter what.

He watches me watch him, secure in the awareness his Mommy loves him always and no matter what.

This is what loving respect and respect for love feels like.

Samuel taught me that.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

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Posted at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

You Can Do This: Find Freedom on Friday in a Five Minute Writing Quicky

How to find freedom in a 5 minute writing quicky

Ready? Set - Find Freedom in Writing Anything in 5 Minutes - after all, what have you got to lose? The answer - nothing. Five minutes writing -- GO!

I wanted to write something this morning.

I wanted to write something that sings, that makes readers say “hmmmmmm.” I know I can write that stuff, I’ve done it before but as I sat here at my keyboard my mind was pretty much undecided about which direction to take.

Before I gave up, which I must confess happens more often than you might think given my prolific number of words written daily, I glanced over to today’s morning pages and the words “flop down and do a quicky 5” caught my eye.

If I could write nothing else, I could set my timer for five minutes and see what flows off my fingers without thought, just writing and this, my loves, is what came of that setting of the clock.

I remind myself not to think for the right word, to just let my fingers go. Let my fingers go. Let my fingers be my eyes, my ears, my brain.

Catch what they want me to catch, receive it all.

I feel a tightness in my shoulders because of the height of my chair not being just right. I want to shrug and release but for whatever reason, I don’t. I just keep typing, like an automaton. I frown, wondering what is up with this?

I break the rules.

I take my hands from the keyboard, I stretch, deeply.

I readjust.

I write again. I close my eyes, breathe in and let go again.

Purple shoes with pink laces. Starbucks coffee cup with what is the Los Angeles downtown skyline. Braids of old sheets. A painting by my friend and Bakersfield artist, Nyoka. I wonder if she has had her baby yet. Plaster white against the light blue of my walls. A black out poem.

My life above my desk.

My hands, set free.

My timer, goes off.

Not literary or creative genius, it is worth so much more than the sum of the words and sentences here. I stayed in my seat. I showed up. I wrote.

I’m even going to publish on my blog.

Why?

Because when I do the things that make me uncomfortable it has something similar to the mythical "hundredth monkey" effect. I do something uncomfortable with movement in a positive direction and then, poof! It is like blowing a kiss of hope and a prayer to each and all of you who are reading and beyond.

You might say to yourself, “Julie is willing to sound like an idiot so that her process may continue and her world did not disintegrate in front of her eyes, I suppose I can try that, too.”

Best wishes, my loves.

We can do this. Each and all of us.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Fall and Winter, 2014 and beyond.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

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Posted at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Getting It Down: Throwing Words and Images Onto the Page, Freestyling like Morning Pages

Phenomenal.

Language isn’t quite rich or deep or colorful enough to define or even begin to shed the light on the processes I experienced yesterday.

Perhaps a new language would help.

Maybe this is part of the reasons I am enjoying the Art Journal Wisdom program from Connie at Dirty Footprints Studio. It goes beyond language into imagery and color and I find myself completely unconcerned - well, almost completely unconcerned - with results.

The timing is positively impeccable.

Even if I only have tiny snippets of time, I am investing them consciously and with that said, I need to move through this quickly for you in order to get to my next thing: time with my Grandson and then the two of us meeting Samuel and his classmates at the Kern County Fair.

Yesterday was about getting it down and getting it on the page. Those aren’t the exact words but you get the gist of it, right?

We started with morning pages - on mine I included gel pens in my morning pages notebook. I took questions from my program, 42 Days of Passionate Prosperity, and used them as a framework for my art play and life all day long. I then copied some of my morning pages work onto a prepped page for art journaling. I wrote -

The quote:

“live your life as a sacred art form”

The questions:

What wants to click into place?

What are you open to receive?

I did my morning practices of writing and reading and getting my babies off to school and right now, got myself to baby sit my grandson and let go of the questions. When I got home after a lot of living and quite a few conversations, I came back to the artful part of my morning practices: working on an art journal page.

Last night I sat with paint and did something I've never in my life done before: I painted a face.

I had to psyche myself up and I almost chickened out and painted a flower or some other symbol because my belief is "I am not good enough to paint faces" but I remembered Connie's voice talking about even if it looks like a three-year-old it doesn't matter.

And here is Matilde #1. She is still a rough draft, but aren't we all?

She is named after Pablo Neruda's third wife. She is the one who inspired his famous 100 Love Sonnets which made him legendary as a love poet. I have been studying both of them lately. I discovered just yesterday Neruda was quite a ladies man and even while married to the woman who inspired such poetry, he chose to spend time with another woman - her niece.

One writer referred to Neruda as a cad for this behavior.

Two days ago I would have believed the same thing.

Maybe I still do. Calling him a cad and being angry about his choice would certainly be in line with our puritanical culture. The thing is right now I am just getting everything down... letting go of whatever needs to be let go and sorting through the rest to get clarity about what significance remains.

I'm not even sure if that makes sense, but that is how morning pages work. We're just getting it down. And that's what I'm doing before I change my clothes, brush my hair and put on my Granny-Mommy hat and head to the Kern County fair.

Thank you for reading.....

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

What do you say when someone asks, "How are YOU?": Moving Beyond the Mundane into the Unexpected.

When the response to "How are you?" goes far beyond good or bad. It's bigger than that.

Sometimes the answer is bigger than the mundane.

Let’s take a break to actually think about that question, “How are you doing?”

How do you usually answer when people ask this question? I would guess most of us say either “Fine” or whatever that person wants to hear from us.

I had a phone call with my old friend David the other day. He asked me how I was doing.

I told David, “Quite frankly, my heart hurts today.”

I didn’t sound like Eeyore when I said it, I didn’t say “Woe is me”, I didn’t say “that person over there in the batting cage hurt me!” I simply said, “My heart hurts.”

David responded, “Is that good or bad?”

Without thinking I said, “It’s appropriate.”

Sometimes hearts hurt.

And it goes beyond good or bad.

It is bigger and more complex than good or bad.

I also know from how I have been processing my emotional and spiritual journey lately my heart may hurt and fifteen minutes later my spirit is soaring above the trees blissfully from an insight gleaned from having a heart that hurts.

See, therein lies the juiciness, the richness, the jelly inside the donut.

It is when we allow ourselves to be authentic enough to give space to our hurting hearts we grow. If we deny ourselves that process by cloaking it in whatever spiritualism or feel-goodism that is currently in style, we are like that chair without a leg: it just doesn’t work in the long run.

I may have sounded like I have been feeling like a victim here lately and believe me, that wasn’t my intent.

Life is complexly wonderful. Rumi talks about his field, one I enjoy inhabiting. He describes it like this:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

When the heart hurts, it is bigger than labels like good or bad. The world, and the heart, is too full to use language and to talk about. It simply is appropriate and waiting to be engaged, to be held, to be processed fully.

The heart is a powerful companion and collaborator. It wants to be felt in its entirety. I hear my heart swelling and singing in this moment and in that earlier moment.

It is beyond our comprehension, infinitely divine. I am grateful.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Day 1: Art Journal Wisdom Begins. What Wonders Will We Behold?

I have spent much of the last two weeks working on “letting go” as both a concept and as a spiritual growth practice. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been fun. And it has been exhilarating. And it has been remarkable.

My most recent rest stop along this journey is the Art Journal Wisdom free online workshop from Dirty Footprints Studio. I follow Connie on Instagram and have known of her work for years. This is the first time I’m actually joining her on something.

It is day 1 and we were to spend time prepping pages and gathering materials.

I decided to go with stuff I have lying around rather than go fuss with any new purchases.

I gave myself thirty minutes for this project tonight and… I prepped three pages made from junk mailings.

One is a collage of other used papers from the past, one other has a layer of recycled paint and then craft acrylic paint, wooshed over it. I don’t know the correct terminology but just from looking at the page I am sure you see it.

Vintage wallpaper, the Calendar Section Header from September 4, a photo collage and some John Donne. You never know what you'll find!

And then there was wooshed paint. :-)

The final page is wooshed paint in layers and a torn, painted dictionary page adhered with mod podge.

I love how the layer of modpodge (not in photo) gave a dynamic texture. Watch for later posts to see what I mean by that! ;-)

I am off to a just right start.

I sort of hope the Day 2 prompt pops up before I go to bed as they sometimes do. My OctPoWriMo post for tomorrow went live less than an hour ago.

Anyway, I digress.

I look forward to blissful discovery as I play in the colors of Art Journal Wisdom. I let go of any specific outcome AND whatever happens, I know will work wonders in my spirit.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

(Re)Writing Experience: How Words You've Written in the Past Reach Out to You Now.

Words written a decade ago speak to me now, a chance for the long ago me to give comfort to the now me.

My writing voice is wise, no matter when she speaks... as long as I am willing to listen.

"When gratitude and your heartfelt intention meet, the door to heaven swings open in greeting."

Julie Jordan Scott

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I was seriously invested in having a grouchy morning.

No one could stop the forward momentum of my peevish nature.

Not a soul other than myself, that is.

My own writing voice, in memory, plucked a line from nine years ago for me to chew on today. The line was birthed before autism, before John’s death, before penetrating absence and aloneness. These words were written by me before I experienced the grips of the infinite eight years of cancer, for me and my loved ones how many times? How many times? Before I had time to integrate the tumbling salt shaker of everyday life, separate from what I now know I am called to do and who I am called to be.

I let go of the tight grip on the grouch as I released the tension in my shoulders, down my spine, out of my hands.

I wrote these words nine years ago about gratitude and intention in a space of greatest good for others, never thinking one of those others would be my future self.

I settled into my seat and let that nearly decade ago version of me speak to and minister to the now me.

Heartfelt intention: grateful boldness, growth, awareness and creativity not in the abstract formlessness instead in the tangible, in the hand holding, in the “here it is, my homage assemblage.”

Even in the rewriting of the experience, a smile sits on my face. It isn’t a smug “I told you so” smile. It is a smile of thanksgiving. To quote a hymn I pray is being sung somewhere today, “Morning by morning new mercies I see.”

Phyllis Bottome wrote, “Feelings change facts.” Just as I was stubbornly committed to feeling grouchy, a deeper part of me nudged me to feel gratitude and honor deep awareness which waited to be heard.

What are you doing today to honor your deep awareness, that wisdom waiting for you to hear it?

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Register Now for The Time to ReWrite Your Life is Now: What Was, What Is, What is To Be.... a New Writing & Soul Growth Coaching Program to expand your creativity and improve your life experience.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661. 444.2735

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Ugly to Lovely in a Finger Snap: How the Power of Choosing Another Thought Changes Everything - -

"I know better than to choose that thought!” I wrote to my friend as

Changing thoughts happens in a finger-snap moment of awareness. Snap your fingers with the new thought and wham! Change happens. We just need to remember to choose better. Sometimes that may become a conscious daily practice.

we chatted using facebook messenger.

The thought, however, hovered. Words had been planted in my brain by someone who intended to hurt me by pushing a button I openly wear on my sleeve.

“I’m working on a poem called ‘Ugly’,” I told her, “Because that is something Maria (a one-time-friend) really drove home to me: that I am not pretty, I am not attractive, I am in fact unappealing visually....as if I need to be reminded.”

The first line of the poem goes like this:

When you’ve been ugly your whole life you get used to it.

One can pretend to believe beauty comes in different packages, in scarves and hairstyles and jewelry and just the right make up application, but then there is the occasional bold proclamation to the opposite.

Childhood memories merge with adult beliefs and even when we thought we had "processed all of that" when the right combination of venomous thoughts and lower than usual self esteem, we all are at risk of tumbling back into negativity.

I can still picture Frank, in fourth grade, gleefully shouting -- “Hey, Julie - You’re pretty… UGLY!” Then there was my dear friend. Bernadette, saying with kindness, “Julie, you aren’t that ugly.” I can still see the cracks in the sidewalk by my feet during that warm declaration that chilled the walls built around my heart.

Just today someone called me “Lovely.” I needed to hear that so much. No, we don't need someone else to affirm us into feeling better and yes, sometimes that is exactly what we need to affirm us into feeling better.

What is up with our resistance to hearing lovely and our perpetual agreement with thoughts from others tattooed into memory, especially proclamations that cause pain?

With the speed of a fingersnap and the kind words of another, I pivot into "Lovely."

Yesterday I sent a completely authentic photo of myself to my friend, Ernie.

I might not be conventionally beautiful, but Jaxon thinnks his Granny is pretty cool!

This is a silly and a completely unglamorous photo with no make-up, no posing, nothing but extreme joy in a moment of time with my grandson. It came with a warning of the unattractive nature of the image in comparison to my normal public persona.

When I asked if I had actually sent the photo (I wondered if my fear over my appearance blocked the send) my friend Ernie responded like this: “Yes, my dear you did send it and you are lovely….”

I am lovely.

I am not so-ugly-I-am-lovely, like a manatee, in Ernie’s eyes I am lovely.

I am choosing the thought, "I am lovely."

I am choosing that thought, "I am lovely."

I am lovely.

I.

Am.

Lovely.

Portrait along the upper edge of China Grade Loop, winding through the oilfields.

My friend, Jennie, took this make up free photo while we were chasing the sunset. It is on the secret road to my secret sunset destination. We never reached that exact spot, but the moments along the way were absolutely glorious.

Now before your mind focuses on my rant about “ugly” this isn’t about that even though it is. This writing is about choosing the lovely thought.

It is about choosing pure and right and holy thoughts that expand your senses, that allow you to think with depth and clarity to see what is true about and within you.

With practice, the beauty of all comes in and trumps the limitations of words we call “negative.”

Sometimes we muddle through in the manatee so-ugly-it-is-lovely but before you know it, the lovely is what remains.

I am choosing that thought, "I am lovely."

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Fashion Pumps + Words = A Writer's Delight

This weekend I finished my second pair of mixed media shoes. These pumps were a beta test and they are not meant to be worn, they are meant to be either simply decorative or perhaps to hold things - I see pencils, paintbrushes, pennies, or other assorted items in their future.

Mixed Media Art Shoes waiting atop a manual typewriter case from 1946 waiting on a hay cube. The perfect Bakersfield combination.

How would you use one of these shoes?

This wasn't my first pair of mixed media shoes. My first pair are Emily Dickinson canvas basketball style sneakers. They have poetry along the toes and the side. They can't be worn in the rain, but I wear them regularly. They are swoon worthy for the right people.

Shoes mixed media with Emily Dickinson poetry

These sneakers feature Emily Dickinson poetry on the "nose" of the shoe and along the soles as well. Perfect as Emily wrote about the Soul standing ajar... though I know she was not talking about "soles" of shoes, even those dedicated to her work.

I will be posting a DIY post sometime this week, showing the process I went through for the pumps. I've had requests to create a wearable version. My Emma and her friends are lucky because they can be my test shoe wearers. I'm not sure if they'll wear them in such a rural Bakersfield setting, but I couldn't resist taking the shoes out in one of my favorite spots at the Panorama Vista Preserve yesterday.

One the blue shoe, I painted the heel the same blue as the accent on the dictionary pages. On the neutral shoe, I covered the entire thing in dictionary pages. By the way, the Dictionary was published in the same year I was born. Paper back then was a different texture than today's books. I love working with it.

Do you notice the linings inside the shoes? The blue tinted shoe has blue heels and the neutral shoe heel is covered in dictionary pages from the 1962 Thorndike-Barnhardt edition. I doubt fashionable shoes are what the publishers had in mind back when they made this dictionary!

What would you like to see me try next with mixed media shoes?

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

One of Theatre's Gifts: Beginnings and Endings - A Circle, A Spiral, A Playground

In fifteen minutes I will get into my car and drive to the beginning of another ending.

I haven't always been comfortable with endings. Anger and stopping are two challenges I continue to negotiate. Getting comfortable with endings that happen naturally is among the greatest gifts theater has given me. Theatre is its own form of playground beyond the script and scenery.

I requested to direct a one-act play at Bakersfield Community Theater because I knew I wanted to be involved again and I knew I wanted to specifically direct again, but I was somewhat aimless and tired of waiting for something to walk to me from nowhere and swoop my heart up and whisper “Create me!”

I was blessed with two scripts and two casts.

I had few expectations beyond the act of collaborative creation and as always, my experiences were in excess of anything I could have planned. It is appropriate to be Dickensian, I suppose. It was both the best of times and the worst of times, right up to the disappearing M and M’s I bought for my cast for their final performance.

There were moments I felt completely deflated, like I wasn’t capable of doing anything right.

There were moments I felt nearly triumphant, like everything was just fine and I knew what I was doing.

Tonight even my pinkie toe is tired. It is as if all the stress in my life both in the theater and outside the theater was a balloon with a slow leak and all the energy from those moments is finding its way out of me, slowly.

Theater has given me the gift of timetables, beginnings, rehearsals and endings. When we tear down the set and put the props and costumes away we return the theater to neutral for the next beginning and rehearsal and ending to fill the space.

Joni Mitchell sang it like this:

“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.”

I’m blessed in this circle, in this playground, in this blank canvas of experience.

We all are.

What blessings have you counted today on your metaphorical playground, blank canvas, circle of life?

= = = =

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Authenticity in Courage -- Join the Writing Prompt: I am Brave Enough to --

I have hosted a series of blog posts with quotes, questions and prompts for over a year now. In the Let Your Word Flow series I have facilitated a-ha moments for others but I haven't worked many of the prompts myself.

I made a brave choice this week to stop being in a relationship with my best friend. Writing that here just caused my throat to tighten and the center of my chest hurt. I wrote yesterday about a breakthrough I had and I knew I needed to follow that insight with appropriate action.

Is it easy? Am I happy? Would I feel better if I continued how I have been going?

The answers are no, no and definitely no.

I definitely know how free flow writing would help me move forward in understanding if nothing else. I wrote in two different chunks. It is a work in progress, a definite first draft and I know I will stir it up and continue to write through this experience.

With that said, here we go:

And immediately I wrote….

I am brave enough to….

Start -- begin again wonder. I am brave enough to wonder and act upon the wonder that presents itself to me. I am brave enough to take action, wildly. I am brave enough to act audaciously. I am brave enough to take off my masks and write, play, dance and thumb my nose to convention. I am brave enough to be exactly who I am, unabashedly. I am brave enough to not call him, or text him or answer his calls. I am brave enough to grieve. I am brave enough to cry and grieve and yell. I am brave enough to feel angry and to express angry and to spit at anger and to cuddle and kiss anger. I am brave enough to act upon my anger with love. How to do that? I am not sure yet. I am brave enough to not know how but to begin, anyway. I am brave again to start again begin again even not knowing what is next or where I am going. I am brave enough to actually put on a blindfold and let ‘er rip… because I am brave enough to call a friend to text a friend to email a friend and request company along the pock-marked path. I am audacious enough to hand her a blindfold, too. I am fearless enough to invite an audience to watch me bobble and weave and take missteps along the way. I am fearless, audacious and brave enough to be polite and forgiving when they laugh at me and point and say mean things. I am powerful enough to know their pointing and laughing and saying mean things is about them, not about me.

Two hours later, I wrote again.

I am brave enough to…..

I am brave enough to continue to speak and act gracefully, to think before I speak and to love without boundaries yet while using boundaries as a comfort for myself and others. I am brave enough to know there is “no getting back at others” because I am the one who gets hurt by retaliation. I am brave enough to call on love and call to love and to use the residual anger to create rather than destroy. I am brave enough to have creative, conscious anger from this point forward.

I am brave enough to realize the process of writing these words is akin to prayer.

I am brave enough to breathe. To listen. To continue to move forward and to know looking back is just looking back - to recognize the beauty that lives there as well as the sheer ugliness. I am brave enough to grieve both.

I am brave enough to seek comfort and care that doesn’t hurt myself or others.

So - I am brave enough to continue to write into this prompt for the next few days or weeks or months or however long it takes.

= = = = =

I am brave enough to do that and to be there - with audacious courage and grace.

I hope you’ll join the adventure, applying this prompt in your life however it fits the best.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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September 28, 2014

Lessons from Samuel: My Thirteen Year Old Son Who Just Happens to Have High Functioningn Autism

September 26, 2014

You Can Do This: Find Freedom on Friday in a Five Minute Writing Quicky

September 25, 2014

Getting It Down: Throwing Words and Images Onto the Page, Freestyling like Morning Pages

September 23, 2014

What do you say when someone asks, "How are YOU?": Moving Beyond the Mundane into the Unexpected.

September 22, 2014

Day 1: Art Journal Wisdom Begins. What Wonders Will We Behold?

September 21, 2014

(Re)Writing Experience: How Words You've Written in the Past Reach Out to You Now.

September 17, 2014

From Ugly to Lovely in a Finger Snap: How the Power of Choosing Another Thought Changes Everything - -

September 15, 2014

Fashion Pumps + Words = A Writer's Delight

September 14, 2014

One of Theatre's Gifts: Beginnings and Endings - A Circle, A Spiral, A Playground

September 11, 2014

Authenticity in Courage -- Join the Writing Prompt: I am Brave Enough to --