Julie Unplugged

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!

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Places Left Behind: Ancient Ruins & Memories of My Grandmother's Grandmother

This Summer as my children and I wandered among the ruins at Mesa Verde National Park as well as Canyon de Chelley in the Navajo Nation my heart kept insisting, “These are not ruins, they are simply places left behind.”

“These are sacred memories, not something ‘ruined’.”

Ruin means destruction, to harm beyond repair. In my eyes and heart when something is ruined it is junk, unworthy of being patched or pieced together for anything worthwhile.

On the other hand, I find places that have been left behind by other people to be completely inspiring. I love being where others have been and are no longer there. I hear their voices rising from the floors, I feel their fingers reaching to mine from the walls.

The wind sings their songs, the leaves show me which path to take. These are not ruins, these are dear friends, like we used to say in the 70’s, that we haven’t come to know yet.

Sometimes ancient ruins, places left behind, are left in small scraps: a pile of rocks here, a can of sardines, there. Once my father found a tin can left behind from the turn of the 20^th century as we walked around the high desert in Northern Arizona. I hadn’t even seen it but his well trained eye for objects left behind found it right away and put it back for others with keen eyes to find.

I am reminded of the words of Terry Tempest Williams. She wrote “Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them.”

Perhaps this is why I love places-I-don’t-see-as-ruins-but-instead as places left behind.

These places belonged to my sisters in history, to my aunties, my cousins, my grandmothers grandmothers. This is the thread I feel. If my memories were a quilt, it would include these memories that don’t live in my intellect but live in my genetic blood memory and in my gender.

When I visit, I honor them, just as when I visit “ghost towns” in Gold Country here in California or investigate a chimney in the middle of nowhere just to breathe in the air and ask it what I am – and what I am not – seeing in the places left behind.

 

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Do you have a lot of stuff to get done but can never seem to find the motivation? We have a solution - Get stuff done while having lots of fun at Passion Activator Friday - November 16, 2012 Check it out!

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

The Bright Beginnings: Art Every Day Month 2012 - Poetry, Pendants and Presence

I’m still playing with how to post my art this year. I used to aim for as close to 9 pm possible here on the West Coast, but with my recuperation from surgery, my ebb and flow is different than in past years. I am going to try, at least for a few days if not the entire month, documenting the days Art on the Day AFTER I do it, so this is actually Day 1’s creative flow, not Day 2.

Even though the day didn’t seem to start with the greatest creative prospects, I realized how artfully I live. It was artful to go out without a band-aid and allowing my facial scar to be seen. Yes, I got some odd comments but I was able to respond to them gracefully.

I spent much of the day in a downtown coffee house with my friend, grading papers. This is a process that is at times so boring it gets detestable. I solved that dilemma by taking time to do some free writes in between the relentless grading. I use paper I have painted or dyed, circle three words and write using those words as inspiration.

I loved it.

I was also mentally preparing throughout the day for my poetry performance at night.

I am a poet performer and again, the thought of standing in front of an artsy group reading my stuff is daunting enough, but with my new scar? I wasn’t sure how I would feel. This was, after all, the first time in ten weeks I have performed without a band-aid covering my facial woes.

Good news: it went well.  People enjoyed my work, I did some collaborative, audience participation stuff (which I think folks have come to expect) and we all laughed and joked and there was lots of time to talk and share and get to know some other artists/poets better. AND! I wrote a fresh new poem which I will post on my poetry blog later today.

Finally, I created something very exciting: my first Women’s Sphere/Word-Love Pendant Necklace. The chain will not be what is on it permanently, but I wanted to wear it to my performance. The face you see is Colette, a famous French Actress/Writer/Poet and reknowned voluptuary who was eccentric and well loved by many and naturally despised by some. She wrote Gigi, the Claudine novels and many others. She died in 1954, 8 years before I was born. I adore her.

The words underneath her face are written by Katherine Anne Porter: she was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who was also an Actress at one point. I used pages from one of her short stories I found in an old text book, dyed them pink and randomly printed the faces of five women authors on her words.

You will see other pendants AND a lot of other word-love and women's sphere goodies here throughout the month. I look forward to getting to know you AND for those from past Art Every Day Month activities - I look forward to an enriched relationship in November, 2o12.

 

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© 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.

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In the Remains of the Fire: Lessons from George Sand & Writing in Community

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

George Sand, also known as Armandine Aurore Lucille Dupin

I wrote this poetic piece of prose during an afternoon of writing with friends. We had been working with the words from who we called "The Two Georges" - well respected women authors who chose to use men's names: George Eliot and George Sand.

We told stories around a circle and created a collaborative story and in between circles, we wrote.

Once again I am reminded of the power of writing with others, both for the passion in the moment and most importantly in the what comes next.

I find truth in the remains of the fire. Not in the flames, but the remnants of wood, the coal grey scratches on my hand as I let go. There are the tingles of pain as I breathe it in, the repetition of the now missing fire into my chest.

I have to pause.

I have to ask my heavenly father-mother about the fire’s path, now that it has died, now that the fire no longer breathes.

What can be made from this no-longer fire?

Truth lives in the what’s left, not in the romance of the heat or the momentary kisses and skin against skin, the wooziness of being there in the fire in just that moment when up the smoke goes, up around heaven’s chimney, the shouts of climax, the pleasure of the otherworldlyness.

The truth vibes in the messiness of the charred wood and what we find from that. Sometimes it is stuck to our shoes, left unswept on our floors, stuck in our hair. The truth lives in being willing to sit amidst the rubble and not quickly, giddily push it away to make more room for more fleeting moments of ecstasy but instead…

Be there for the almost wordless wonder that is born when I release my addiction to the fire and instead, learn to play with the dust it left behind, to not cry when I wash my smoky sweater but to laugh at the profound meaning of what the deposits of those flames left against my skin.

= = = = = = =

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

This is my ninth post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge. Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  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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Sometimes the Best Solution to Getting Words on the Page is Leaving the Page Behind - Inspiration from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anne Eastwood and Anais Nin

I have attempted to sit in my seat and write for an hour now.

I have written roughly five hundred words which for me is the usual for thirty minutes.

I have been wandering away consistently, though, taking on what I call “short attention span keyboard” and I’m not exactly certain why.

The why doesn’t even matter of course, what matters is what will I do about it with multiple writing projects hanging in the balance, how can I sustain them and my overall happiness with the craft if I don’t stay put and write?

I look up from my desk and see Anais Nin looking down at me. 

I see photos of Alice Eastwood, a woman naturalist who was so passionate about her work she astonishes me. Plus I need a hat like she is wearing in the circa 1900 photo. Susan Glaspell is up there as is the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a postcard of a woman levitating above her lawn which my friend sent me because she said it reminded her of me when I write on my porch.

What should I do, wise women, when I am having trouble sitting still to write?

Anais says, “Do something that honors the hunger of your senses,” as she takes a puff on the end of her very long cigarette holder.

Alice says  succinctly, “Climb a tree.”

Susan says even more succinctly , “Improvise.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman says, “Don’t be too rough on yourself. Do what you feel the urge, right now, to do the most.”

I plant my face in my palm.

Charlotte continues, “Obviously in this precise moment, writing isn’t it. You are excused for the next hour. Make some good.”

And with that, I shut down my computer, grabbed my dogs’ leashes and headed out to one of my favorite outdoor haunts very close to my house.

It was a tremendous choice.

The next time you feel completely stuck behind a brick wall of words and think what you SHOULD do is chain yourself to your key board, consult some of the writers you admire the most.

I did use my senses to see, to smell, to feel textures. I took photos, I talked to people I met along the path. I enjoyed my dogs.

I didn’t climb a tree, but I honored and greeted several.

I definitely improvised.

I took a break.

I came back and I wrote.

Try it.

PS – If you are unfamiliar with the writers I mention here, use your favorite search engine and seek information about them. Each is a fantastic woman writer who could teach each of us a lot.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

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© 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.

 

Lessons from The Trees. May Sarton. And Nora.

“Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go. ”

May Sarton

I have a girl crush on May Sarton. Many of her words remind me so much of mine. I can imagine myself sitting with her sipping coffee or wine and chatting but being too embarrassed about my… well, not nearly as wise as her….to say much of anything. I imagine sitting with May: the fire is shouting her cracks and giggling with us, the smell of applesauce cooking fills the air and I even notice a cat wandering around purring and finally sitting in a windowsill to watch the birds fly past or nibble on seeds May had put in the bird feeder that morning.

On one of my New England trips I visited the far-out-of-the-way hamlet where she bought her house and is now buried, Nelson, New Hampshire. Many people within forty minutes of this town don’t even know it exists.

I loved it because as we drove, people waved on the sidewalk-free streets, smiling, assuming the only people who visit here are those who belong here. I like to think I did and do belong there.

 

I imagine after a few moments of just being together and enjoying the scene around me, I would talk to May about my recent cancer surgery for melanoma and my ongoing recovery.

I am closing in on four weeks since my surgery to remove my melanoma (I call her Nora.)

. I never gave much thought as to what my scar would look like or how my face would feel or how long the pain would last. I just knew it was going to happen and I would recover.

I am still recovering. My wound is better in most places but there is – at the core of where the cancer was – a lack of healing. I have learned how to sport a fabulous scarf and also how to trim the sticky edges off large sized band-aids so the tape doesn’t get in my eyes or tug on the outer edges of the heart shaped stitches.

I still cry randomly.

Yesterday I was driving and I brushed something off my face and realized, once again, there was no fine feeling in my right cheek. I could feel a slightly pressure, but it was almost like my fingers were brushing something off someone else’s skin. Or actually, like fingers brushing something off a mannequin.

The skin just doesn’t feel real.

So I cried. And it is ok. I don’t cover up in front of my children, either. Emma has adopted the question I ask her, “Do you want to talk about it?”

When I shake my head no, she doesn’t push. When I start to speak thirty minutes later, she listens.

May asks me the ways I have learned to imitate the trees I cherish.

1. I have learned to grant myself permission to sit things out I would normally attend. Stay rooted at home and the homes of people who love me.

2. I have learned to take time to rest. Lots of it. A season of it, even. Staying home, cocooning, doing more home based tasks is a good thing.

3. I have learned how to request help as an art form instead of something to be embarrassed about doing. You can’t reach the limbs you need to trim to stay healthy.

4. It is ok to be cranky. Really. Even if it looks like the cranky mood has no apparent cause, just let it out. It will feel better. Drop your leaves when you need to drop your leaves. So what's the big deal, someone else - with legs rather than roots - has to rake them up! Wait for them to teach themselves ways to love it.

5. People will come out of the woodworks to help if they know you need it. Raking, weeding, forging trails, watering you when you need it. On the other side, those who don’t know what to do or how to help love you, too, they just feel awkward. Be sure to make that completely fine, too.

I am still learning to sit like a tree as May advises me. I still need to buy a hat with flaps that cover my cheek so I will be comfortable going out during the day to some of my beloved nature spots.

I may even go to Yosemite this week end.

I will listen for more of May’s lessons there.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

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© 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.

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Women in Literary History (and me) from A to Z: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Eleanor Estes

I spent much of my time last night with Eleanor Estes and Emily Dickinson.

Both women are fine company for a woman writer of today.

I was dying pages of Emily’s poetry and ironing pages of Eleanor’s book, The Middle Moffat, to use in future art projects. It was so meditative and so much fun and a great compliment to the photo editing I have discovered, the project that says, “Oh, I can be so close to them visually….”

Here’s what I mean.

When I was a little girl my writing hero was Laura Ingalls Wilder. I adored her. I still do, actually. I have read about the controversy, that it is her daughter, writer Rose Wilder Lane who wrote the Little House Books, that Laura was simply the inspiration. I have heard that stuff and I don’t even care about it.

I love Laura for the character in the books and also for the woman who lived a rather tough life yet came out, in the end, an individual who contributed to society.

I created two photos of us yesterday and today. Can you see me in this one? I am hiding amidst the trees, writing. You and I are among the few who know (and I can secretly appreciate) the photo of me I merged with Laura was taken in Emily Dickinson’s garden.

I also feel compelled to spend time with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who rebelled against her parents and married one of her fans and correspondents, Robert Browning, and fled to Florence so she might feel well. Together they had a son they named, appropriately, Pen.  Well, his actual complete name was Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, but Pen seems so much more like his parents than all those official sounding names strung together.

Elizabeth reminds me my love for my children is fierce, perhaps more now that I have cancer and am fighting back. I remember her husband’s line, “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.”

One of my latest heroes is Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who fought depression and won. It was an ongoing battle, raged throughout her life, but she won. She won! Without medicine!

She is also a mother of a daughter named Katherine. She changed the world with her words. I merged these photos of us and the outcome gives me chills.

Some of you will recognize Eleanor Estes and others wonder why her name sounds vaguely familiar.

She was an award winning children’s author, born in 1906, when one of my grandmothers was six years old and one of my grandmothers was two years old. She became a children’s librarian after she graduated from high school in Connecticut.

I imagine the books offered a lot of inspiration.

Just like her books offer me a lot of inspiration today. I was dying pages from The Middle Moffat  last night, reading words and admiring the illustrations. I enjoyed, too, the words and characters named Nancy and Jane. My mother is named Nancy and her good friend was named Jane. It helps make me feel so familiar with Estes and her work.

What women writers will you spend time with today?

What writers in general will you spend time with today?

Let me know how it goes - I would love to hear from you.

 

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot

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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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© 2012 by Julie JordanScott

Creating Paper Flowers: Another Way I Practice Feminism

I attended a twitter chat recently and met some incredible women there. One of the take aways for me was the concept of "practicing feminism."

I have been walking around living the question, "How am I practicing feminism today?" It has helped me consciously create opportunities to talk about equality of women in literary history or anything simple that is walking the walk of feminism and not just talking about it.

I have enjoyed it so much - and then I realized something that made me even more excited to practice feminism in a tangible way.

For the past fourteen or fifteen months I have been working on a body of work called “Women’s Sphere.” Each work of art focuses on images and language about women’s roles and how women’s lives have been played out across the last few centuries.   I share images and language illustrating how things have changed and how things are still so similar to the way they were hundreds of years in the past.

When my daughter had a tea party for her fifteenth birthday, I gave a little speech about  for centuries women have gathered and used tea as their “reason for gathering” but in small groups like this, women learned, contributed to politics and business, eduction, human rights and more. Mostly they gained power and built power between women.

I had made such an effort to make it an ultra-feminine day.

I realized some people might not have gotten the woman – power – feminism I was teaching these high school aged girls who had donned gloves and hats and pretty dresses .  One young woman  came dressed with a dress shirt,pants and tie in a more masculine look which everyone welcomed, too.

I was reminded through Emma's tea party that my Women’s Sphere pieces were primarily lamenting some of the “cultural expectations” of women and seemed to downplay some of the glorious aspects of being a woman.

The stereotype is men get together to watch football games. They scratch themselves, burp, tell stupid jokes and share stories of sexual prowess.

The stereotype for women is we sit and gossip and talk about fashion and glitz and glamour and who is looking better and who has the better boyfriend or husband.

I was never into the whole glitz and glamour scene or the gossip scene, but I have always loved very pretty, conventionally “girly” things, so why should I assume these are not “Women’s Sphere?” objects to create?

I changed that this past weekend when I started taking my painted papers and crafting them into flowers. I am having FAR too much fun and after another evening at play, I have come up with some “second generation” flowers.

You’ll have to watch here as they develop. I figure they will make a reasonably priced piece of art for women (and men!) to purchase that will introduce them to the concept behind Women’s Sphere as well as share about the papers that have been repurposed and the woman represented in each particular flower.

It doesn’t get much more fun than this.

What do you think of my Women’s Sphere flowers?

 

 

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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

 

 

Will the Feminists in the Room Please Stand Up. Ummmm, please? Anyone?

I refer to it as my “Normal Rae Moment.”

It happened when I took a course at Bakersfield College: Introduction to Women in American History, even though I have my degree.  I took it as what I call “my non-chemical anti-depressant.”

I needed to be sure I had to show up someplace beyond schlepping my kids around and being home. I figured if I had paid for the class, bought the book, and starting going to classes I would be compelled to continue. I knew on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 I was expected to be in my seat, two rows from the front in the middle.

I didn’t expect it to be so life changing. I only took this class because Ethics of Living and Dying was full before I had the chance to register.

I worked harder in that one class than many of the classes I took when I was earning my B.A. thirty years ago. I was devoted. I talked about what I was learning to my friends all the time. I was taught in the old school way. We didn’t learn social history. We didn’t learn about women’s contributions to anything important. We learned about wars and presidents, basically.

This was different.

I also identified myself as a feminist. When I started this class I had been involved with the VDay Movement started by Eve Ensler to Stop Violence Against Girls and Women, partially through using her script “The Vagina Monologues” to raise money for local community groups.

I never gave thought for a moment about whether my fellow students of women’s history defined themselves as feminists or not.

I can’t remember what the occasion was, but I was busily writing something in my notebook when our professor, Ann Wiederrect, asked “How many of you are feminists.” I raised my hand and kept scribbling.

My professor said, “Julie. I see.”

I put my hand down and my head up.

I was the sole person in the class who defined herself as a feminist. I was dumbstruck at first. How could none of them call themselves feminists? Were they still stuck in the stereotype that feminists were all man-hating, camouflage wearing butch women who shook their fists at “the rest of the world” and marched around occasionally spewing man hate into society?

For whatever reason, I had a photo of my daughter tucked into the back of my notebook. It is one of my favorites and had been entered in an art show in the past so it had a suitable name:

Feminist, Age 10.

When it was my turn to speak my words came out in flames. My words and I were steadfast, slow-burning, hot but not scorching, passionate but not condescending. “This is my ten-year-old daughter. She is a feminist. She wants to be seen as equal with everyone regardless of gender” and other things which got lost in my fervor.

I passed the photo around, said a few more words and sat down, still mystified.

When the class was over, most participants – even the sole man in the class – were newly identified as feminists.

Average, run-of-the-mill community college students who finally understood just the tiniest spoonful of feminism and for some, were left thirsty for more. Like I was and am and will continue to be.

For reference, feminism equals “movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation, and oppression”, including but not limited to oppression based on race, sexual/gender identity, disability, class, and age.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot

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© 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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Power Mom Dilma Rousseff: Inspiration from Passionate Women in Leadership, Part 4

Women are ready to govern Brazil and, more importantly, Brazil is ready to be governed by a woman.” Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil and Mother of Paula Rousseff de Anauja

 Forbes, Inc.  has been a friend of mine lately, primarily for their lists of Powerful Women, Youngest Power Women, Wealthy Women. Today I looked to see if the 2012 list of power women had been released.

It hasn’t, but on my way to looking for that list, I stumbled across the Forbes list of 20 Most Powerful Moms of 2012.

It didn’t surprise me to see Hilary Rodham Clinton on the top of the list. I remember when my daughter, Katherine, was a toddler and Clinton shook her hand after a speech at Jastro Park in Bakersfield. People didn’t know who either she or her husband were that day long ago.

What surprised and delighted me was seeing the Brazilian President listed as Power Mom Number Two. Yes, Dilma Rousseff – a name I didn’t know until today – is the leader of this large South American nation. I had no idea. How embarrassing – yet fantastic - to discover!

I literally giggled when I read this quote from UPI “Dilma Rousseff, a 63-year-old grandmother and former urban guerrilla who spent three years in prison, was sworn in Saturday as Brazil's first woman president.” Read more about her inauguration here.

Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying, "I don't come here to extol my biography, but to glorify the life of each Brazilian woman," Rousseff said. "My supreme commitment is to honor women, protect the weakest and govern for all."

President Rousseff spent several years in jail when she was a radical opponent of the military dictatorship which dominated Brazilian politics in the past. During those three years in jail she was  tortured and tormented by her jailers. After her release, she had a daughter, Paula (now an attorney) and traveled to the United States for more education.

She returned to Brazil as an empowered leader who used her radical background as a badge of honor, even as she has become more conservative politically.

Do you know about the latest success stories in Brazil?

1. Went from being a huge debtor with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to a creditor. The economy in Brazil has been thriving for the last two decades and continues to grow.
2. This may seem to be a strangely antiquated accomplishment for those of us in the United States, but for Brazil this is huge: By late 2012, electricity services will be available for the first time to 12 million people living in the country’s rural areas.
3.  Rousseff’s government is working toward  improving Brazil’s educational system all the way from early childhood education to college-level education. They are adding universities and technical schools and not only aiming to educate the elite, they are now targeting education for all.  Rousseff believes this will be one of the ways to build a middle class in Brazil.

I wish I had the chutzpah to run for office.

I don’t, but perhaps you do and will.

Learn more about Dilma Rousseff and other power women. The inspiration from these women who COULD BE YOU may be exactly the invitation you need for your future in leadership.

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

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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