Our New Year's Journaling Challenge
Six creatively inspiring prompts + more
A New Year’s Journaling Challenge
Last March, I sent out an installment of Dear Susu called “Love in the Time of Cancer,” where my beloved maman Anne Francey and I tackled the question, “How do you keep going?” It was from a community member named Terri, whose daughter was undergoing treatment for leukemia, experiencing setback after setback. Terri said she wanted to write, but couldn’t. “I find that I have shut down a great deal,” she wrote. “This journey is taking quite a toll on my being.”
My mom said she related to that. She recalled how exhausted she was during my first bout with leukemia—how she even avoided friends. Once she tried to go to the movies, as a kind of escape, but it was terrifying, as if all her own fears and mental disarray were magnified on the screen. Every day she wondered, “What is going to make me feel better?”
The answer came by surprise. One day, as she was leaving the hospital, she realized that at a certain point in her walk home, she felt like she was coming up for air. It was always in the same place: in front of a shop with old antique Buddhas in the window. Someone else may have read it as a mystical, spiritual experience, and maybe it could have been, she said. But to her, it was the beauty of the objects. It was art.
“I have always believed art is essential—but at the same time, a luxury,” she said. “And it turns out, it’s not. It’s a way to access the universal when our personal circumstances are too difficult. For me, it’s how I’m able to feel a little better. I need art to get through.”
We’ve used this insight as the inspiration for our New Year’s journaling challenge. We’ve curated different pieces of art for you to consider—poems, paintings, songs. Each has its own tailored prompt, but the general idea is that the piece will be a springboard into journaling (or drawing, painting, playing an instrument, dancing). You can record what you thought or felt, what you saw, what you sensed. You can write about the stories that came up, the connections you made, or the visions that came to you.
You’ll find six prompts below to inspire you for the rest of the week; we’ll send out separate emails for next Sunday’s live journaling session and also the recorded conversation. May you feel inspired and connected. May you explore the unexplored and express the inexpressible.
Wishing you an inspired week of journaling,
Suleika (& Carmen & Holly)
Links for our live journaling session:
Notes to Self by Rachel Cargle
Thank you for this.
I have been reading Jack Kornfield's, A Path with Heart, and the following reminds me of what your mother may have experienced He wrote,
"I encountered a powerful image of the connection of these two teachers [Buddha and Jesus] in Vietnam, during the war years. In spite of active fighting in the area, I was drawn to visit a temple built by a famous master known as the Coconut Monk on an island in the Mekong Delta. When our boat arrived, the monks greeted us and showed us around. They explained to us their teachings of peace and nonviolence. Then they took us to one end of the island where on top of a hill was an enormous sixty-foot-tall statue of a standing Buddha. Just next to Buddha stood an equally tall statue of Jesus. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling. While helicopter gunships flew by and war raged around them, Buddha and Jesus stood there like brothers expressing compassion and healing..."
Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart (pp. 40-41). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I think that art, both the experiencing of it and the act of creating, can be a way of empathizing with what we see and experience enough to try to bring it to life and share that feeling/experience with others.
To a new year of connecting...
It is my birthday today, and to start the day immersed in a beautiful poem that touched my heart was magical. So many images and phrases I connected with. I read it out loud several times, and I copied Nye’s poem into my journal and it is one I will return to. I shared it with my children too - felt like a gift for the new year to share it with them. Very happy to be here.