Mary Ann
When you write in your journal, it is a safe place to share your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and emotions – the good, the bad, and the ugly! It is like putting gold into a treasure chest. The treasure is valuable and precious to you. What is written is for you alone. It is your treasure.
I have kept journals for most of my adult life. It is mostly in fits and spurts. When I am traveling, I document the journey, and I love rereading them reliving my adventures. I have written them during challenging times of my life. Journaling was cathartic and was a type of self-therapy healing an injured soul. In a way, it saved me.
When I went to work in New York City, I recorded my daily life. It was a unique experience that was a gift in the last stages of my career. I have a box full of journals to reread that chronicled those special years. Sweet memories!
I do keep a dream journal and record dreams that I can remember. The dreams are usually distinctive and often have a message in them. I can see patterns in my life. This is not done daily, only when I recall the missive. Often the dreams are freeing from redundant patterns in my life, my choices.
I am a nature journalist. I write and draw the entries of plants and animals I observe. It is one of my favorite activities, and it gives me the gift of peace. This past Christmas, I was given a nature journal by Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows. It is a weekly diary of what you see in your own backyard. It imitates Renkl’s Crows which is stories of her backyard observations. So far, it has been snow, snow, snow. Not much action.
Journaling is something that I do enjoy, but I have a dilemma regarding it. What do you do with them after you written them, especially if they are highly emotional, and your treasure is exposed? The nature journals or the travel journals are nice to keep. They are not soul baring for the most part. However, the ones from my divorce were deep–water treasure, a portal to a damaged heart and soul. I didn’t want my children to know some things about their father or did I want them to know what I wrote about them or how hard it was financially. I tried to protect them, and what good would it really do if they knew? I think it is best to reread them and then shred them. You see how you grew from the lessons your learned. It is freeing to put the experiences in the past, and you are lighter letting go to have a soul at peace.
Silver Sage Sisters 