Julie Unplugged

#31Days of Living a Passionate Life, Day 2/31 - Choosing a Passionate Attitude

 

In October 2013, I am hosting an exploration of liiving a passionate life. On Day 2, we look at choosing your attitude via a conversation with my daughter and mother.

My sixteen-year-old daughter, Emma, was frustrated with me last night. My car has a phone which makes everyone a member of the conversation. My Mom called and I said, “Mom, great news! I don’t have melanoma again!” to which she responded, “Oh, Julie, that’s great!”

 

Considering I hadn’t even told her I had a biopsy last week I found this more than slightly surprising.

“Yes, it is great even though I don’t have melanoma again, I do have basal cell happier to have basal cell than melanoma!”

happier to have basal cell than melanoma!”

 

We went on to talk about how we were celebrating and on and on and it turns out Emma was seething in the back seat. This morning she told me with an angry face,

It is easier to choose a passionate attitude when life is going exactly as planned. Last Spring with Emma and Katherine (Emma on the right).

“I was so mad at you guys. You have cancer – you shouldn’t celebrate, this is going to be awful again.”

 

She even said the color of the ribbon for melanoma was black and that wasn’t even a fun color to wear, to which I quipped, “Basal Cell Carcinoma is so harmless, they don’t even have a ribbon.”

Suddenly, Emma didn’t mind our celebrating and she understood why we were jumping up and down with glee over the news.

This is how it is a lot when we “lose” our passion.

It isn’t that your passion has disappeared or is no longer functional, it is that you have chosen to look at life as if your passion doesn’t exist.

What if you shifted gears and looked through life’s veil differently.

A year ago I wouldn’t have understood about the different variety of skin cancers.

Now that I have lived the journey of melanoma survivor, I am able to make light of it not because it isn’t serious, it is because I am choosing to look through life with a different attitude. I’m a melanoma thriver, not survivor. My heart hurts for those who have had melanoma and weren’t so blessed.

I hear it regularly, after all, because when you have something like cancer, everyone tells you their worst case scenario stories.

These folks don’t mean to be  passion killers and it is up to us, people who are devoted to leading a passionate life to be passionate even and especially when it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world.

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I was so excited to find this challenge, #31Days hosted by The Nester. You still have a couple days to join. I'm doing the "Personal Endeavor" category with a whole bunch of other cool people.

Consider spending a part of your October with us!

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. 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! 

© 2013

 

 

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Nora, My Melanoma - One Year Later

I don’t particularly want to write about this but I don’t see how I can avoid it, either.

I might as well just throw it out there, sprinkled liberally, because it has hung around my neck like a noose for the last few days... "It's coming! It's coming!"

This is the anniversary of my melanoma surgery. I said good-bye to Nora (as I optimistically named my cancer) and didn’t know it at the time, but said hello to a scar that still shows more than I would like it to show even though she has reached maturity.

People tell me they don’t notice it, they can’t even see it and you must know that isn’t the problem.

I see it.

I notice it.

I feel it.

Whenever people’s eyes stray to my cheek, my belly flutters and I want to raise my hand to my cheek to hide it.

I haven’t seen it as a badge of honor, I have seen it as a reminder of my various shortcomings, as if I am getting a divine slap on the face for all the times I have been a disappointment in some way or another because God knows how many people I have upset over the years.

Don’t tell me no, no, no. Don’t tsk tsk tsk me. I am bearing my guts here, spilling them out over my desk. This is how I feel, don’t negate that or get out your bright pink feather duster so my feelings and my scar won’t make you uncomfortable.

99% of the time I forget it is there. On days like today though, the anniversary, I can’t help but remember.

I haven’t been talking about it aloud which is probably one of the reasons I feel compelled to talk about it silently with you, here.

It is lovely and coolish here in Bakersfield a year later. I am able to sit at my desk with the windows open. I can hear someone nearby vacuuming. I can hear the sprinkler-created puddles as more drops of water join them. I can feel my spirit telling my heart my face is fine and I may experience a similar situation one of these days, to be ready, to be courageous, to continue loving myself enough to speak up when I need to speak up.

I close my eyes to just breathe this morning, to allow myself to fully remember and be present simultaneously.

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  Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. 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!

© 2013

 

Such a Word: Yearning. Such a Deep Chasm. What an Incredible Gift.

This is me, three days after melanoma surgery last September. My tactic in 2012, after my melanoma surgery, was to shut off yearning.

I read the prompt from Meredith today for AugustMoon13  – all about yearnings: what did I yearn for last January, what do I yearn for now, what has changed? Or something sort of like that. I actually read it and closed it, read it and closed it, read it and closed it, which started my repetitive phrasing here and the search for quotes from women writers I respect.

 

This is actually what Meredith wrote:

                                Have you developed new yearnings so far this year? Let go of old ones?

Yearning.

 “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Yearning.

“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger

Yearning.

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath

Such a word.

“I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

Such a word.

“I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.”
― Amy Lowell

Such a word.

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”
― Margaret Atwood

Yearning is one of those words that is so deep – it is one of those words that makes a slow, careful incision in my chest, intentionally scoops out my innards and then leaves me hollow inside but all stitched up, almost like new again.

I found a quote from a writer who is not a woman and it was as if a hole was punched into that hollow shell.

“Unopened gifts contain hope.
”
― Jarod Kintz

Maybe this is why I have pushed my yearnings away or haven’t chosen to recognize them as such. If I open the gifts of my yearning, the hope, my warped belief taunts, will vaporize.

It is so interesting that AugustMoon13 arrives right on the year anniversary of my melanoma and very close to the two year anniversary of the darkest day of my life, September 30, 2011. On that same day, a giant sequoia fell along the trail of 100 Giants at the Sequoia National Monument.

My hypothesis is my heart was squeezed flat by my circumstance at that same moment that giant tree fell.

Because of my melanoma, I stepped aside from a lot of my usual activities and cocooned with myself and my children. I stopped my involvement in theater, I stopped working with coaching clients, I stopped teaching almost all of my classes.

Here I am, writing at Workhouse Arts Center. This was once a notorious prison where suffragists were force fed and held illegally. Now, it is a space for artists to thrive.

This choice allowed me the space to if not examine my choices with a searchlight and a magnifying glass, it did allow me to gently watch the unopened boxes accumulate.

 

That’s where I am now. Sitting here, surrounded by unopened gifts of hope which I now know will not vaporize, just like hope will not vaporize for you, either.

The quotes from all these glorious women writers appear to be written with the yearnings aimed at another human being to complete her in some way. My yearnings are not for another, my yearnings are for me to come even more deeply into myself and to continue to examine, gently, what I offer the world in me simply being me using the gifts of my unique circumstances and my one-of-a-kind way of looking at the world.

I look at the last quarter of 2013 with a completely different perspective I looked at the last quarter of 2012.

In 2012 I yearned to surrender and retreat, to not be compelled to be responsible to anyone or anything beyond myself and my children.

In the last quarter of 2013, I am looking toward the “What can I do with what I have in the circumstances I find myself in?”

I am facing at least one more surgery. I don’t want to retreat this time nor do I want to surrender nor do I want to fight. I want to stand, strong, with gifts opened and unopened, knowing each gift of yearning offers me and my world more light and love and hope and authenticity than I can put into words right now.

 

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© 2013

 

 

Courage: In More Ways than One

The butterflies in my stomach were unusual.

Sometimes it is most courageous to accept the emptiness and let the light in.

I wasn’t preparing for a performance, after all, I was preparing for a first rehearsal. The only audience would be my castmates and my director and each of them has enough going on to notice whether or not I was doing a decent job or not.

Then I remembered: I hadn’t had a first rehearsal in over a year. After my tiny role in Reckless  - a similar case where the Director asked me to fill in after someone else vacated a role – I walked into rehearsal after everyone else was settled.

On the counter in the dressing room from the last show I did.

This isn’t new to me.

This year it is the only way I could imagine doing a show: auditions are something I don’t want to do again for a while. If you remember my recent turn in VDay, I will remind you I have been a part of that movement for eight years: it isn’t the same as other roles.

I was prepared to talk to my Director beforehand.

Just in case she didn’t know or realize about my cancer. I wanted to “come clean” that my melanoma left a facial scar which I have been told repeatedly doesn’t show under lights and make up.

I believed that until in the last week two complete strangers asked me what happened to my face. Was it trauma, they wondered? Was it cancer?

My friends all tell me it is unnoticeable, but I trust strangers more than friends. Perhaps it is just that strangers notice more in the “not knowing who I am”. They don’t have a story attached to my name or a history attached to our relationship simply because we don’t have one yet.

My biggest fear with theater and my scar is it will distract audience members. They will wonder, “Was it trauma? Is it part of her character? Does the actor know she has that thing on her face?”

I normally have a fear of not doing well when I step on the stage. I normally worry about disappointing my director, that the moment will come when my director wonders why she or he chose to ask me to participate in the production. I’ve never been one of those conventionally attractive people anyway, so the scar just adds to my concern.

I was reassured: all was well, I didn't need to worry about my scar, I was told. I could start to quiet those voices of insecurity. It took a lot out of me to even bring it up to her.

Last night, though, all of those fears and inner voices left while I was in the midst of negotiating my script and getting to know my character, taking tiny steps into my relationship with her and who she is outside of me.

I remember when theater was a new – or shall I say renewed? – experience for me. I wrote about it all the time then. It was an all consuming passion, raging through every line I spoke.

I’m not sure how it will be this time.

The days will come and the days will go. I will learn my lines and my blocking. I will laugh with the cast and crew and perhaps there will be more momentary fear.  There will be dressing room stories. There will be that familiar “We’re in this together in this theater foxhole feeling” which I have been missing a lot lately.

Now that I mention it, wasn’t it a couple weeks ago I was missing theater so much my eyes filled with tears that stung my lids? The tears didn’t fall, they just sat there, frozen, wishing I would have the courage to get out there again.

Last night apparently my courage found me. She found me, actually, in more ways than one.

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This post is Number 14 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I fell behind due to my travels and am hoping hoping hoping to catch up. Please give me some extra TLC via commenting, etc - as I will need it as I write write write for the next week or so!

Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

In these last few days of the challenge I will be posting twice daily because of the traveling I did mid-month.

I'm so glad you are here!

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

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

Follow on Instagram

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Dear You, Who Hasn't Had Cancer

When I woke up this morning this was not on my list of "Blog posts to write" so I suppose that means I must write it here, today, now, before the urge wanes.

For those who thought I would offer more writing tips today, hang on until tomorrow. I will be back wearing my writing hat then.

For now, please read along - if you have had cancer, if you haven't had cancer.... whatever. And truly, I don't write for people to tell me what they usually tell me, knkee jerkedly "you are so brave" and stuff like that. I am like the many out there who simply do what we have to do.

I am grateful you are here, even if I sounded cranky just now. But let's get to what is more important. The letter, to you -

Dear You, Who Hasn’t Had Cancer,

Today I did a rather everyday thing: I visited my dentist. Naturally before you get examined you subject yourself to the necessary paper work.  You fill in the boxes and lines the old fashioned way: with a pen attached to a plastic clipboard with some strange silver necklace-pen keeper contraption they use in places like dentist offices.

I have always checked all the NO boxes.

No allergies

No heart problems

No seizure disorders

No diabetes

And then came the one I wasn’t expecting.

“Cancer.” I dutifully checked yes. I figured since the dentist would be working  near to my face, he likely will notice the snazzy heart shaped scar I carry on my left cheek. He will see closely puffy ridges where the heart of Nora, my Melanoma, lived. The form continued, "If yes? Where" I wrote  ”Melanoma on my face.”

I didn’t have any gush of emotion like people tend to expect from me. I have come to terms with having had melanoma and I have even come to terms with the reality my scar may never improve. I can style my hair and wear makeup so that it won’t show on stage, I am told. I just don’t think about it. My eighty-two-year-old father couldn’t see it, after all, it must not be there. Except for when I look in the mirror.

It reminds me of all those lessons in childbirth I have taken. I took Bradley and Lamaze and read every book I could get my hands on – all of it. And not a single one said, “You may start throwing up right before transition. Do not be alarmed, this just happens whether you are medicated or not.”

They don’t tell you your body may go from six centimeters to ten centimeters (and ready to deliver) in fewer than ten minutes.

They don’t tell you that you won’t always feel immediately love for your baby, to be patient for that love to take hold.

With Melanoma, they don’t tell you your dermatologist may not remember  you, even though he was the one who delivered the news, over the telephone while you are at the office of your son’s school picking him up one day.

No one tells you your relationship with your surgeon has many similarities with your OB/GYN. The appointments just keep coming and one time, he may be a curmudgeon and seem to be frustrated you sent him an email between visits and the next time he will praise your patience and even though you both know the shot he is about to give you probably won’t change anything, he’ll give it to you just to prove we have tried everything before he “will be so happy to do the revision surgery.”

It also reminds me of the time after my son was diagnosed with autism: don’t expect there to be a wizened sage sitting at the end of the phone line to listen to your wailing or just to be that someone to listen to you talk about it for the eighty-seventh time that day after you fear you have worn out the patience of all your friends.

Instead you will have people tell you, “You are still worried about that?” or “Your scar isn’t that bad,” or “Well, my sister had three melanomas removed from her face and she looks great.”

You will have people email you saying, “Let me know if you need anything!” but when you call needing something, they are never around.

You will also discover who your dearest friends are: they are the ones who are simply there. They will follow your lead with love. When I was recovering, for three days there was a nightly mini-party at my friend Jennie’s house who graciously hosted me during my early days of recovery

The oddest thing of all, second to having to check YES on a form at the dentist’s office, is having some dear friends tell me they are walking a lap or two in my honor at Relay for Life. I am not in a place where I want to go close to where that is being held this year. I just can’t do it yet.

Nothing about my experience with cancer has been what I would have expected.

I sort of like it that way. I just wish someone had written me a letter like this, so I at least had some notion of what not to expect or possibly, in your situation you might experience….

So that is why I write to you today.

If the day comes for you when you get a phone call at an unexpected place with the news of your biopsy, remember this letter, and know I am pulling for you. I’ve had my own cancer journey as you may have or have had yours.

Reach out to those who love you. Forgive those who let you down and shower the others – including near strangers – with praise and admiration.

You can get through this, whatever your  this may be.

With Much Love,

Julie

 

This post is Number 11 of 30 and was inspired in part by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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!

Expressing What Can't Be Framed with Words

This is me, three days before surgery to remove the melanoma from my face last September. Sarah Downie took a series of photos. So grateful!

I went to a workshop nine days ago that was aimed to work with women who were dealing with cancer and their stories.

I didn’t want to go to the workshop particularly, but I felt I needed to go so I went and I’m glad I went but damn, I resent that I have to be attending a woman dealing with cancer thing, especially when some folks just don’t get that dealing with cancer doesn’t end with the surgery or the remission or the end of chemo or the ending of whatever the person’s treatment has been.

Facts are facts: I will continue to return to my doctor every six months for skin checks. Recurrence is fairly likely, hopefully it won’t be overly invasive next time. I have gotten better at not simmering in it, but there are moments when I still poke a hot stick into my scar saying, “The place where the cancer was deepest continues to be a grizzled sight to me. It has only been five months, it has only been five months, it has only been five months….”

"Women Get Cancer" Mixed Media: 2009 & 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

I am pleased to see the continued processing from the workshop is coming out via art because words can’t express what I have to say about it most of the time. I don’t want to talk to friends about it. It makes me feel even more self conscious than I do now.

Women get cancer. I got cancer. I have recovered from cancer. Cancer doesn’t create who I am AND I may use my cancer to continue to express myself creatively. I never know when my creative process and product will be exactly what another person needs to see, to feel what she needs to feel, to get to the roots of what she needs to process.

May we all, collectively, feel better about our relationship with cancer. And if we feel a sense of resentment or whatever it is we feel, may we find people, places and projects which will help us to express the inexpressable.

 

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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  

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Changing Mind, Heart and Response - Another Chapter of the Healing Process

December 20 - What did you change your mind about in 2012?
Did you have a change of heart about anything? What was it, and why?

Those who have been reading me for a while know I have been dealing with melanoma this Fall. I actually have time calendared to deal with it through January 3, when I visit my surgeon again to hear whether or not I need an additional surgery.

I am open to either having surgery or not having surgery, primarily because of my change of heart and mind in 2012.

When I started my cancer journey, I landed the plane on my life coaching/personal development/training, etc business.

I also pulled the Theater Performance Train into the station.

I was in a tenuous spot. I didn’t know what sort of treatment I would need or what the recovery time would actually turn out to be for me. Healing is all individual. I hadn’t had a surgery since I had my tonsils out when I was six-years-old so I had no idea how to might work.

Day Four of Melanoma Surgery Recovery. Scar is covered with band aid.

I was happiest when I have maintained control over how much of my “new face” I show the world. I have done some contract work and have appeared as an emcee and done some poetry and storytelling performances, but these were all under carefully controlled circumstances. It was all carefully controlled by me, mind you, and my friends understood, mostly.

I never thought I would be comfortable with not providing my usual life coaching and teaching and writing process work with groups, but I was and I am comfortable with it. I made the choice and I am standing in that choice.

I miss the large scale absence of my work, but I am taking more time for writing, for art, for my family and it has worked out well.

Next up, though, is deciding when and how to relaunch myself, especially given the unknown of my January 3 surgeon visit.

My “rough draft” thought is to schedule some “open house” events via telephone. I found I could talk on the phone mindfully within three or four days of surgery AND I found even though it is tempting to run around town after surgery, I need to mostly just stay put and remember not to lean over at all. You have no idea how much pressure goes to your face when you lean from the waist!

I am completely cool with this plan and have no anxiety about it.

My heart and mind have definitely shifted into a more abundant, more self-loving, more REAL place. I haven’t just talked about it, I have lived it.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Scars, Wounds and Remembering to Fearlessly Flaunt Them Without Regret

From Patty Bechtold:

Reverb12 Writing Prompts:

The rewards and gifts I’m taking from this past year into the next are…

The wounds and battle scars I’m taking from this past year into the next are…

The gifts of my wounds are…

 My biggest “Big Wound Thing” from 2012 is my melanoma and the wound from my melanoma surgery which still isn’t absolutely right. It is on its way to being right, but as of now, no no no no no.

 Did I mention “NO!”

 Just after my surgery my friend Jennie said, “Oh, I bet the day will come when you will celebrate your scar!” She is right, to a degree.

 Perhaps in the months to come I will celebrate it more vociferously.

 I would venture to guess I am still too close to it and the reality of another surgery hovering about I feel like I am in the “Celebration Green Room” – waiting to be called to places before I “go on stage” to announce, “My scar celebration time is here!”

 The time before and after my surgery also strengthened my “No, not at this time,” button. I was able to turn things down, cancel commitments and create my schedule from moment-to-moment rather than month-to-month.

 It seems as if all my battle scars of the year harken from this one incident but I know that can’t possibly be true.

Digging more deeply: I have battle scars from being rejected via betrayal. Repeatedly. This particular episode coincided with my melanoma which only made it feel worse and like my melanoma wound, the scar is taking its time to heal.

 I have learned a lot about grace and unconditional love from this horrific chapter of my life. I would say I have integrated a lot of what I had learned about grace and unconditional love. I also believe this chapter is one that still has pages to turn in 2013.

 There is my Theater Absence Battle Scar which was at first by choice and then, later, by melanoma fate.

 I have learned how deep my love for theater is and I have also learned I need to work on production more, to put together my own projects from top to bottom and then bring them to the community without a particular venue being in control. 

Gifts? Tenacity. Grace. Truly Unconditional Love. My friendships are more supportive than I ever knew they could be. I am stronger than I ever knew I was. I am now a (and I abhor this expression) “boundary” setter and holder. I know the power of healing on an entirely new level.

 I have also remembered and will carry forward the strength in holding “Gratitude” and “I am completely pissed off about this!” at the same time. Some people don’t know this is true but 2012 has taught me this is completely possible. I have done it…. and am willing to continue to carry it.

 

These quotes from Carly Simon couldn’t have found me at a more perfect time. She is my favorite singer since 1973 (!), someone I wanted to actually become in high school. Well, I finally know her on a very intimate level through our shared experiences with scars.

“I just want to show off my scar proudly and not be afraid of it.”

 “My scar is beautiful. It looks like an arrow.” (Mine looks like a heart!)

 Her quotes are rising up in my world. I’ll create art with them.

 2012: You were a horrifically wonderful gift to me.

 2013: I am looking forward to what tortuous magnificence we will create together!

  Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

What I Need is a Conscious, Unfreaky Friday to Discover How Samuel Lives

My Sweet Samuel literally "up a tree" - Due to his autism, his senses are acute & he processes differently than I do.

Sometimes I wish I could step into my son Samuel’s body so I could experience the world through his senses and his thoughts for a day or so. I would think of it as a version of a highly conscious unfreaky Friday.

I know his senses are heightened and I know he has anxiety. I know his language processing is different, but I wonder how different?

Maybe there were moments yesterday that felt like he feels.

Yesterday  I had a sense of foreboding. This is not an uncommon feeling since my cancer diagnosis.

My affect was flat, each movement felt like a bigger commitment than I could manage.  I went to Emma’s school to drop off her change of clothes after a choir gig and every step was a marathon. I found my way into her choir room and then, I had to find her. I looked here and there and I rounded a corner and there she was, sitting in a circle with a group of friends, talking and happy.

They stopped talking when they saw me. Emma leaped up and hugged me, saying, “Mommy, you’re the best.” She couldn’t tell how close I was to crying. When I mentioned it later I said, “It is so weird, I feel like I need to cry but it isn’t like there is any sort of reason for it, I just want to cry.”

I attempted to explain it to a friend, this feeling of anticipation of rather than the best is yet to be, the worst is ready to drop on my head at any moment.

I tend toward the optimistic perspective. Pollyanna is my friend. I was writing gratitude lists long before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, but I have also come to know there is occasionally a tipping point that happens, that final nudge that pushes you off the, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing decently” ledge.

One of my primary areas of focus in 2013 is rebirthing my creative life coaching and personal development business. I have done very well in the past, but during my variety of lifetime movie themed situations, I let go of developing my business. This Fall, with my Melanoma and surgery and recovery, I haven’t taught any classes for my own business although I did continue doing contract and freelance work at the barest of minimums.

I said to my friend, “I think I have tapped into a very specific and quietly insidious part of my fear. Somehow I believe if I get as successful as I was before my avalanche of crises happened, I will have another avalanche of crises. There are no promises this one wouldn’t bury me,” I said, recognizing the whole time how ridiculous this sounds and how contrary to the way I speak, write and know much of the time.

One example was having constant fear for whatever Samuel may be encountering at school on any given day. I told my friend, “When he was in kindergarten they called me sometimes several times a week, asking me to take Samuel home because of some problem or another.” I paused. “It isn’t as bad now, but I am always on alert….especially after the troubles in fourth grade.”

Later in the afternoon my phone rang. It was the principal saying Samuel had been involved in an altercation and there were two other boys involved who not only got sent to his office, they got suspended for a couple days. He reiterated Samuel did nothing wrong, but he wanted me to know so I could see if Samuel would talk to me.

There was only one other time Samuel had a situation arise similar to this and it caused the other student to be suspended for five days.

This is the reality of his life. I can’t protect him twenty-four hours a day. We have chosen main streaming specifically because I don’t want him to be stuffed into a special ed ghetto where he is separate from all the neurotypical kids. He is smart enough to go to college and get a job someday where not everyone will be a person with autism. He needs to know how to relate to all people, even those who are rotten to him.

The other kids need to learn to befriend unique children. They need to learn the world is made up of many different forms and versions of human beings, not just Jane or Joe Average.

He also needs to have allies: teachers, principals, other students who are friends with him who actually like him.

I picked Samuel up from his after school program and he was in a great mood. He was happy and pleasant.

I thought, “Maybe he feels cared for by the Principal since Samuel knew the Principal “had his back” so Samuel would feel safer.” I’m not sure, but now that I know I will be able to talk to Samuel about it. My fear of Junior High has now increased, but my trust in his current school has also increased. The Principal has a new plan to insure there won’t be a repeat of this situation involving personnel being involved in monitoring the playground more effectively.

For the meantime, I need to remember I get to choose how I respond to situations that threw me so far off kilter when I set aside my business the last time because of crises in my personal life. I can choose to not be upset by it and calmly look at the facts as the intelligent woman I know I am.

Today, my mood is much better. There isn’t concrete in my feet. I don’t feel like I am about to burst into tears. I am taking care of myself well.

Sometimes I wish I could step into Samuel’s body so I could experience the world through his senses and his thoughts for a day or so. It would be a conscious sort of unfreaky Friday.

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Sc

 

 

 

Roaring through the Shadows via Write, Paint, Photo, Write, Roar again...Love it....

The prompt today is compliments of Patty Bechtold from the Living Deep Studios. It is a Reverb sort of process but with a slightly different approach. Go check it out - I think you will enjoy it.

During the past year I was thwarted by… 

I’ll call it the Big Ol’ Granddaddy of Juan de la Cruz and his dark night of the soul.

I started with this image:

Thwarted One: Art Journal Seeds for Reverb12

 

 and then went into the studio and came up with this:

Thwarted Two: Painted Melanoma Center in Shadow (WIP)

The circle is my cancer.

The grey is the shadow from my cancer.

Did I mention this is a work-in-progress?

Thwarted Three: Adding some music in a slide & some "germs" and "people"

 

The muddyness is my confusion around my cancer and how I am “supposed” to act now (knowing there is no ‘supposed to’ there simply is… but I also need to listen to those whiney voices and comfort them for just a second so we can work together… the speaker who is whiney… and myself because we occupy the same brain and being cooperative partners rather than jousting mates is a good thing, don’t you think?

Before this thwarting, though, I was still holding onto past stuff because… I got this somewhere in my mountainous reverbing – there is a part of me that is afraid if I get too successful with my professional projects that my life will fall apart… again. It’s been such a lifetime movie rollercoaster ride since my last feeling of consistent professional success.

I got up to make myself a cup of ginger tea and I got the nudge to free write on the five words that were on my original pencil image.

Ugly: I have a scar on my face now that I am conscious of most of the time. I still don’t have feeling in it like the other side of my face. It feels weird and it still looks weird. I feel as if the possibility of having another surgery due to it not healing right is just another way for the world to prove to me that I need to be punished. Punished for what, for being?

Ummmm. Your past choices haven’t been paid for yet and your continuing stupid choices….

Shut up.

Well?

No one is perfect. I have so far to go, but going as far to scar my face just doesn’t fit. This is a permanent disfigurement.

Well are you inferring disfigured people deserve to be disfigured? What about the girls in Juarez who get boiling oil on their faces. Do they deserve that?

Ugly is having a fight with myself. My scar, my wound, is for now in the shape of a heart. Some of my friends joke with me and say, “If you have to have another surgery just have your surgeon finish off the heart.

Yes, well, it isn’t their face.

Most people don’t even notice my scar. My hair covers a lot of it and often times people are unobservant. I need to choose to wipe away the negative comments that people said to me without thought earlier on in my recovery.

ROAR! I haven’t had a big bad ass breakdown yet. Nor have I had a break up with my face. I wonder if breaking stuff would help? Maybe create an art project of broken china or something so I could just smash stuff until I laugh.

Not a bad idea.

Or maybe it is a remembering of Helen Reddy's "I am Woman!"

Attachment: I need to not be attached to meaning surrounding either my cancer, my face, melanoma, more cancer popping up… I would love to hang out in that “eh, no big deal” camp where yes, I put sunscreen on daily, but I am not obsessed with every freckle that pops up. And besides, my doctors have my back. This is something I also need to remember. My care is good. They are… invested in my progress, not in making me uglier or more unhappy.

Fault: It isn’t my fault that I got cancer! This is like having a fight with ugly! It is no one’s fault. Melanoma happens. It may happen to me again. We will take care of it. Let my Pollyanna reign for a bit. And if I go back to having most of my business over the phone, that will be just fine, too. No one will be able to point and laugh or wrinkle their noses and say “Ewwww”… I’ve done it before and was successful. I can do it again and be successful.

I may choose how I respond to it, my melanoma. And how I choose to respond to my new relationship with my new face.

The final one is unforgiveness. I know I am the one I need to forgive. This has been a long road, me forgiving me. Perhaps the cancer adventure is to finally get it… that I may choose to forgive myself well or I may choose to swim around in a vat of psychic pain.

Now that makes my cancer seem like a gift. Interesting.

Remember how I mentioned Juan de La Cruz and his Dark Night of the Soul? I made this photo poster after pondering his being today. Feel free to pin it on pinterest or put it on faacebook or just copy it for yourself to enjoy.

 

Juan de La Cruz shares some Word Love... What Words Can Do for the Heart

My thwarter is a gift. Bring it on, after effects. Bring it on.

 

 

  Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot    

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott