Welcome to my blog..


"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty

When I started this blog in 2011, I was in a time of transition in my life between many identities - that of Artistic Director of a company (Apocryphal Theatre) to independent writer/director/artist/teacher and also between family identity, as I discover a new family that my grandfather's name change at the request of his boss in WWII hid from view - a huge Hungarian-Slovak contingent I met in 2011. Please note in light of this the irony of the name of my recently-disbanded theatre company. This particular transition probably began in the one month period (Dec. 9, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010) in which I received a PhD, my 20 year old cat died on my father's birthday and then my father, who I barely knew, died too. I was with him when he died and nothing has been the same since. This blog is tracing the more conscious elements of this journey and attempt to fill in the blanks. I'm also writing a book about my grandmothers that features too. I'd be delighted if you joined me. (Please note if you are joining mid-route, that I assume knowledge of earlier posts in later posts, so it may be better to start at the beginning for the all singing, all dancing fun-fair ride.) In October 2011, I moved back NYC after living in London for 8 years and separated from my now ex-husband, which means unless you want your life upended entirely don't start a blog called Somewhere in Transition. In November 2011, I adopted a rescue cat named Ugo. He is lovely. As of January 2012, I began teaching an acting class at Hunter College, which is where one of my grandmothers received a scholarship to study acting, but her parents would not let her go. All things come round…I began to think it may be time to stop thinking of my life in transition when in June 2012 my stepfather Tom suddenly died. Now back in the U.S. for a bit, I notice, too, my writing is more overtly political, no longer concerned about being an expat opining about a country not my own. I moved to my own apartment in August 2012 and am a very happy resident of Inwood on the top tip of Manhattan where the skunks and the egrets roam in the last old growth forest on the island.

I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.

As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.

I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.

I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.

Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.

For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani

In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.

In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!

And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Memorial for Tom

Tom's memorial service today at the Maritime Museum was very beautiful.  I will write about it all more at a later date but this was my contribution (said through many tears and with a few asides):


How is it even possible to sum up 33 years of life with a person?  It isn’t.  This is the merest sketch of a relationship so profound, so entirely unexpected and serendipitous it defies easy description.

When I first met Tom, I was 16 and my mother had just told me in a ride home from boarding school that they were getting married.  This came as a bit of a shock and not one that pleased me.  So, for a good few years, Tom had a surly, know it all teenager with low self-esteem on his hands, which is not pretty.

The miracle is that he didn’t abandon me no matter how hard I tried to push him away (mostly through a campaign of passive resistance in the form of The Eternal Sulk).  Nor, crucially, did he put up with all my b.s.

In other words, he modeled something of which I had little experience: boundaries.  I did not respond well at first.  But eventually he won me over through sheer relentless generosity and goodwill.

I cannot list all of his generous acts without taking up the rest of the service, but one moment stands out because it seems so ‘Tom’ as I knew him and also marks the time when I began to trust him.

At a particularly low emotional ebb at college after directing a particularly grueling show, and after having applied for then rejected the opportunity out of fear of going to study art in Italy, Tom and my mother took me out to brunch.  Out of nowhere, Tom said: So, do you want to go to Florence after all?  And I said, surprised by my own answer, Yes!  My mother attempted to interject with some practical concerns but Tom said, “No, it’s OK, we can handle it.  She should go.” 

I did go and that year changed my life in many ways.  I had never left the U.S. before and was able to travel throughout Europe, learn photography and experience a whole new world, which was something of course that Tom was passionate about doing himself.

While I had had achievements before I met Tom, in many ways my world was very small.  His presence in my life expanded it in so many ways, I cannot conceive of where I would be now without him.

I will fast forward to the recent past for time’s sake.  When I finished my PhD in 2009 on how theatre can be an act of philosophy, he and my mother both read it – a miracle in and of itself.  But Tom went even a step further and read the philosophers cited in my thesis in order not only to understand my work more but also to allow these ideas to affect his own already considerable spiritual/philosophical journey.

And of all the places we met, this in adulthood was probably the most profound.  As anyone who knows Tom knows, this was one of his most special gifts, the ability to hear, listen and really see you.  Even if there were conflicts initially – and we did have conflicts – that was not the end of the conversation.  He would make the extra effort to understand before judging.


On every level, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, this was deeply important.  It’s such a rare gift to have anyone in your life ever that you feel really gets you and it’s even more rare for that person to be a step-parent.

And of course emotionally the most important role he played in my life was as a father.  While I spent many years resenting this, in the end I loved him for it.  I had so wanted my own father to play this role, but he simply could not.  Somewhere along the road to accepting this, I accepted Tom.  Had he ever abandoned me along the way, I don’t think that would have ever happened.

I am so honored that I was there when Tom died and was in the room to feel the waves and waves of loving energy come towards me from the foot of his bed, so strong it almost moved me backwards.  But I am so sad I could not tell him when he was still conscious how much I loved him back.

But because some part of me believes he is here with us now, I will say here: I love you, Tom.  I know you are with me in my heart even as I rail against your absence from your chair in the study.

No one else would try to read French post-structuralists and buy me a stuffed lion named Harold to greet me in my bedroom after my second marriage began to unravel.  No one can ever replace you.

But go well. 

I know only this and that is that you are free.  This knowledge gives me great comfort and joy as you did in life and do even now.  You are off the wheel of suffering because you did the hardest thing of all: you lived a good life as a real human being.

Thank you for showing us how it’s done and thank you to the Universe for the great good fortune of you.

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