Julie Unplugged

Parents: Stand with Your Teens - They Will Grow Beyond Most Teen Misunderstandings

I have no recollection of what happened on this day four years ago.

What I know is this: walking alongside my now nineteen-yea-old daughter Emma through her challenges and victories has been satisfying, even moreso, in retrospect. As a parent, it is so important to remember you are in this with your child in the long run, not just in the moment.

Step back to a moment, five years ago....

Emma - my fifteen-year-old daughter -  just called me during her lunch period in tears.

She heard my voice and the tears and way-too-fast-to-understand speech started flowing.

This hasn’t happened in a while and my instinct is still to run to the school, scoop her up, bring her home and let her learn about negotiating socially later.

Instead, when she needed to get off the phone she quickly caught her breath, immediately sounded back to her normal self and hopefully is able to move along without losing any more of her day.

This has the makings of a very long weekend if she isn’t able to move along.

I may have to warm up the, “Sometimes you have to apologize for the misunderstanding instead of apologizing for what they want an apology for that you know you didn’t do” speech. She didn’t hear my “Do you know what it means to be positional?” speech at all.

I don’t even think she recognized how I slid into my “mental health” voice, the tones and cadence I used to use when my clients with severe mental illness were on the edge of escalating.

She is fifteen now and her outbursts have become more rare, but they are still there.

The absolutes gather steam, the hope balloon deflates and she is temporarily tossing about in the sea of teen pain and sorrow deeper than I can recognize right this moment.

None of those standard lines like “Things have a way of working out” or “It will blow over” or “If you just suck it up and apologize it will make your life so much easier” will work right now.

I just have to stay reasonably comfortable until 3:15 when I go fetch her from school and pray that between then and now something – anything – resolves favorably.

 

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© 2012/2016 by Julie Jordan Scott

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire.

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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming through the end of 2016.

  To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735

  Check out the links above 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.

 

 

 

Look: #FiveMinuteFriday Meets the Parent Trap Meets Kite Flying...

It’s #FiveMinuteFriday free write time! <—click to tweet this! 

Where a flash mob of folks spend five minutes all writing on the same topic and then share ‘em at LisaJoBaker.com.

Words from my five minutes on....LOOK

Look –

 I remember when I saw the newer version of the Parent Trap and my favorite moment in the entire movie is how the Dad looked at his first wife (the twin’s Mom) when he was in a romantic clutch with his much younger fiancé.

 I said to myself, “I want someone to look at me like that.”

 I could stop this blog post right here and say, “My son looks at me similarly, with pure love in his eyes,” or I could say, “It is not in the way someone looks at me it is in the way I look at them that counts.”

 That isn’t entirely authentic, though, because…well, it is THAT look I am talking about, not just a lackadaisical, “Hey how’s it going you’re looking great and mighty convenient” kind of look.

 I remember talking to a friend, Adam,  several months back about how my vision of God is like a dear, encouraging friend helping me to fly a kite. He is running alongside me, coaching me and up the kite goes.

 This would be miraculous because, top secret confession, I have never in all my years been able to get a kite to fly on my own, even with a human side coaching me.

 Adam reflected back to me about some of those things I have accomplished being LIKE flying that kite to God. That He is my kite flying buddy is a metaphor for other things I have managed to maneuver and if you talk to the average Jane I have done a lot that I would have thought was impossible.

 Adam said God would look at me like that…

 Well, Adam didn’t know my fascination was actually how Dennis Quaid looked at his movie first wife, but I knew exactly what he meant when he said that about my kite flying God.

 I can close my eyes and see that exact look.

 Timer Chimed…. (with tears in my eyes!)

 Five minutes: Over....

The guidelines for Five Minute Friday -

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

 

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!)

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She 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.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

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Little Julie-ism : No Teams No Winners No Losers, Just Play OR How to Help Your Teen Down Disappointment Road

When I was a little girl, my family would tease me about a lot of stuff, but one of their favorite Julie-isms to howl at was, “No teams, no winners, no losers….we’ll just play…”

I was the anti-competitor, especially in athletic events. I always felt responsible of whatever team I was on lost because… I’ll admit it… I am not very coordinated.

I was never anywhere near the fastest in races, either.

Somehow I passed this anti-competitive in athletics thing to my children.

This doesn’t stop me from being a recovering competitive person in other areas.

Today my daughter, Emma, got the word that she did not make the regional honor choir. This was a big deal for her, my little sweetheart who always feels woefully inadequate. She cried and then cried more when I went to pick up her brother.

I could hear the sobs starting as I walked to the car.

My heart broke.

My kids getting sad makes me soooo sad.

Even after I tell them no matter what happens, I will love them – unconditionally. Sometimes for a broken hearted teen or a confused tween on the autism spectrum, it just isn't enough.

I have been practicing grace lately which tells me there isn’t a race for better or best “against” anyone, just like for my children. My prayer is they will be the better and best version of themselves as they are, nothing more, nothing less.

I started Emma in voice lessons a few weeks ago, realizing while her voice is beautiful she doesn’t have the technical skills that would give her a better shot at her goal of being in the regional honor choir.

I never even had such a thing in high school.

I tell her she doesn’t have to rush, she doesn’t have to race, she doesn’t have to compete to be the best Emma there could possibly be because she is….

No one in the world remembers I actually made it into the semi-finals in the fifty-yard-dash in the whatever-extra-junior-rinky-dink Olympics when I was seven. They do remember, though, that I was one of the kindest, most compassionate little girls in my school.

Which one, I ask, is more important in the long term?

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!)

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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#31Days/ Day 8 - Missing Katherine as the Autumn Holidays Take Wing

Katherine confessed as I watched her face from six thousand or so miles away from me, “Yesterday was the first time I was homesick since I got to Edinburgh!” I couldn’t help but smile and feel a little satisfied.

“I just wanted to go home!” It was our apple picking/pumpkin collecting combination that got her where her draw to home meet her belly.

Autumn holidays do it for me, too.

Her Nana visited, we were broadcasting on facebook about our fun and there she was, looking out the window of her flat at a castle. She was thinking about going to a high school production of “West Side Story” in Glasgow, just the thought of which made me chuckle. She was having the luxury of hanging out with other intellectual religion majors and yet she missed picking apples in the Tehachapi desert and rummaging through splinter laden pumpkin vines to find just the right level of perfection in orange and green porch sitting friends?

I suppose it is possible. I suppose I would miss being with us, too.

I am listening to Celtic music and she is living amongst Celtic music yet she wanted to be here, sniffing the apple-cinnamon goodness rising from my crock pot.

I love being a Mommy. I love my babies, wherever and however and at whatever stage each one finds his or herself.

Tonight it will be back to homework and chores and wrapping up the day-to-day, but amidst it all the fond memories of yesterday will continue to hold us close. If we are careful and gentle with those near memories, they will stay longer.

Welcome, memory-love, welcome.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She 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.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

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The Value of Insta-Friends (or any friends) Who Make Us Feel Welcome ~

Today Lisa Jo Baker who is hosting both Five Minute Friday and 31 Days to Write Your Story asks us to write about WELCOME...

Have you ever met a person who just makes you feel as if you have known them forever? You can meet for five minutes and all of a sudden you find yourself divulging things you haven’t told anyone?

This can be bad or it can be awesome.

Now that I think about it, I tend to be that person, actually.

My beloved studies me, because he can’t understand how it works.

He tries to make friends and he does, but he doesn’t make insta-connections like I do.

Plus its one of those things I can’t put together in a step-by-step how-to, either. I don’t know how people “get” I will love them unconditionally right off the bat. I don’t know how people “get” that there words are safe with me. I just say “I am me, that’s how it works.”

I think a part of it is truly being friendly, meeting the eyes and smiling in them. Make a contact genuine and it is genuine. Don’t say hello and immediately look for the next person to talk to, say hello and take in the other person with your eyes and your heart.

My home is welcoming, too. The colors are not the average neutral colors and my furniture includes lots of family heirlooms, not stuff like everybody else has. There is art and photos on the walls, but not a Rembrandt or a Van gogh, these are local artists.

These are photos of my friends, my children’s friends, artfully unposed, me just capturing people in the moment doing their thing, not unlike many painters did and still do. Instead of stiff and posed they are kids walking down a path or blowing bubbles.

They are women sitting around a table writing, or people hiking, or people hugging, or people performing on stage.

I guess what people get is they want to be a part of whatever is going on because they intuitively know it isn’t a risk they are taking it is a desire they are bringing to life.

A quick look at the guidelines from the gypsy mama - Lisa Jo Baker who is also our ringleader!

 

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

Oh and Ahem, if you would take pity and turn off comment verification, it would make leaving some love on your post that much easier for folks!

OK, are you ready? Please give us your best five minutes on:

WELCOME!

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!)

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. 

Did you enjoy this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

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Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com  © 2012 by Julie Jordan

For the Love of Alice and Beth: Cat and Dog Siblings Sharing the Love

I came home from running errands today and was greeted lustfully by my two dogs, Walt and Beth.  As usual, I asked the question, “Hi!! Hiii! You want to go outside?” This always excites them so they run and run and run in circles but I noticed Walt ran through Emma’s room and to the door behind the kitchen. The door was open and my first thought was Alice, the cat, who is an indoor cat.

Ohhhhhh, no, I thought. The last time she got out, Samuel was so very upset. He cried and cried and wouldn’t rest until I came up with a plan: leave the door open during the night with her food dish full. “She’ll be back, don’t worry.”

He was worried, though. It took him a long time to fall asleep, tossing and turning and sniffling throughout the night.

The next morning Alice was there, at her bowl, munching away and Samuel shut the back door with victory, singing, “Mommy Mommy Alice is here!” For that moment I was the most brilliant Mommy in the world!

I don’t talk much about my fabulous Mutt, Beth.  When I found that door open, she proved to me once again how brilliant she is.

I ran around and shut the door and locked it so it wouldn’t get opened again (it probably was from the dogs, earlier when I was out. They can’t open it if it is locked. I must have forgotten.) I walked to the other door and there was Alice.

I am pretty good at being cool when I need to gently get a hold of a cat who would much rather be outside playing with her dog siblings than inside, climbing and playing and getting in my way at the table. We share quite the love though, Alice and me.

I said to Beth, “bring Alice to me.” I was very slow, calm and deliberate and every time Alice made a move, slowly as well, Beth circled around her and nudged her slightly toward me. “That’s good…” I said, quietly. We were all calm and pleased when I scooped Alice up and carried her back inside, thanks to Beth’s gentle shepherd skills.

In the photo, she is the one with her head raised high. The lower seated dog is Walt, great too, but not quite the lover Beth is... she tends to give everyone, especially her animal siblings, kisses in the morning.

Another fact is, after my melanoma surgery I can’t move very fast, anyway, and bending over is done with much finesse. Thanks to Beth, I didn’t have to move fast and the downglide to retrieve Alice was simple.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She 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.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

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It's 9 PM: Time to Pick Up Emma. Before Going on Auto-Complain on MomSchlep mode, remember...

It is Day 2 of Lisa Jo Baker's series 31 Days to Write Your Story.

I am writing 31 Days/31 Slices of Life with My Children and Me.

I didn’t want to pick Emma up from school tonight. I finally said, “Ok, Ok, I will get her” when the passive aggressive other person who might take that duty was being such a pain in my butt it just wasn’t worth it.

Samuel and I drove the ten minutes to East Bakersfield High School and I started thinking how much I missed Emma, how much I always miss my kids when we are separated. I don’t usually phone them because it hurts too much. My eldest daughter lives in Scotland for this Semester – part of her Junior Year Abroad, and I told her on Skype last Sunday, “Sometimes I pretend you are still at Smith in Northampton. That is only 3000 miles away, not 3,000 miles of continent and then 3,000 miles of ocean!”

My children know they are loved.

Emma had been at school today from 7 am for zero period PE to 9 pm doing her Newspaper…. What do they call it? It is the time they put everything together, “create the pages” etc…. oh yes, LAYOUT.

Last year at this time Emma was a complete neophyte, a goofy freshman.

This year she is a winner of a statewide journalism contest and the managing editor of the paper as a sophomore.

She climbed into the car and I asked my usual question: “How did it go?”

“Surprisingly enough it went really, really well. I am so much better at this stuff this year.” Naturally this year she is a leader, too.

I didn’t need to remind her of that, she knew it before I spoke.

She was wearing a new dress and feeling satisfied. I could almost feel her patting herself on the back, “Job well done, me.”

When she auditioned Saturday for Regional Honor Choir I told her, “If you don’t make it, don’t feel badly about it. There are more chances to audition in the future.”

When she got out of auditions she felt good. “I am glad I auditioned and if I don’t get in, there is always next year and senior year.”

I had prayed for poise and sure enough, she was full of poise and grace. The accompanist messed up her part of the Italian Arts song and Emma just kept going, 100% professional.

I might not have had the overwhelming desire to pick her up tonight, but upon reflection I think of Saturday night when she said, “I’ll go with you. I like hanging with my Mommy.”

I like hanging with you, too, Emma.

 

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!)

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. 

Did you enjoy this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

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Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com  © 2012 by Julie JordanScott