Pen to Paper
Writing is so good for the soul. Many of my blog posts were written by hand long before they made their online debut. This one included. I've been keeping a journal since I was 11 years old. Most of my journal entries are rather lame, just a recount of the day's events as told by a boy-crazy tween girl but as I got older some of the most impactful moments of my life are written on the pages of a journal now packed away in a box somewhere. Tear-stained pages with poems about darkness. Paragraphs gushing about sleepovers, high school dances & first dates. I've written many, many pages about my dreams for my life. Some words have never been spoken aloud, but they do exist on the pages of my journal if no where else. There are pages that tell second by second the night I met my future husband. Journals kept during road trips and vacations. I try to capture even a fraction of how I felt during those days: carefree and happy. I love being able to go back and relive those days. Sometimes I write prayers and praises. And then there are pages of me yelling at myself for being lazy and fat and unmotivated, only to come back days later to apologize to myself for all the hurtful things I said. I have separate journals in which I write letters to my children that I will give to them when they are older, chronicling the big milestones in their lives. I hope that I pass on the habit of journaling to my kids. If I give them nothing else, at least I will give them a tool of how to cope and deal in a constructive way.
Somewhere on a bookshelf is a journal that my very best friend and I passed back and forth when we were younger with entries recording our day to day lives when we found ourselves living apart. Her and I share a passion of writing. We both know that it helps us tremendously in dealing with life and working through our problems. I know we have both written letters to people that we will never send, but just writing the words helped us put closure to difficult situations. I always say that if something would happen to me, she is responsible for making sure my journals are taken care of. She expects the same of me.
As I have gotten older I've journaled less and less which makes me sad, but with my new endeavor as a blogger, I hope to record more. More of the joys, the fears, the disappointments, the moments of pride and of despair. I've started to schedule in a journaling time. This seems very rigid and counter-creative, but in this season of my life when we are gone every night at one activity or another, I need to schedule in the me time. Part of my me time is journaling. My husband has always respected my journal, and he knows that when I sit down with it, I will be lost for a little while but I'll be back. I've invited him to read it. I have nothing to hide from him, but he always declines. He knows that I need that outlet just for me.
Writing is therapeutic. When I sit down to write and my favorite gel pen hits the paper, it's off to the races for my brain. I release thoughts and worries that I've held onto. I let myself be candid. It's refreshing. My journal is my old friend. She's always there with a listening ear. I don't always walk away with a solution to my problems. If only it were that easy, right? But it helps. It definitely helps!
In acting classes I took in college, we would do an exercise where we'd sit down with our journal and start writing about nothing and everything- anything that came into our minds. We were to just let it happen. Sometimes we would start with a word and go from there. This is a great way to to get the writing juices flowing. And you would be surprised what comes up in one of these sessions. I haven't done this exercise in a really long time, but I'm thinking today is a good time to try it again. Will you try it with me? You don't have to share it with anyone if you don't want to but maybe it becomes the start of the world's next best seller. You never know!
However it happens, randomly or planned, writing is essential in my life. I will continue journaling as long as I can, and even if no one ever reads my tales, writing served it's purpose in the moment.
~S
