I think there are two types of journaling (possibly being conflated by our readers). One is more akin to the Artist Way or Morning Papers where we write anything and everything to extract, develop or clear our mind of creative debris. Then the second is called expressive journaling which is meant to unearth the subconscious, free repressed rage and relieve pain by teaching ourselves to feel our emotions. For the latter, there are studies showing that ripping up expressive journaling is actually more productive for healing because it creates a separation to your thoughts, a barrier to rumination, a very Zen outcome. So, at the risk of sounding pedantic, I think it makes sense to have two different kinds of journals and make individual decisions for their journeys.
Oct 23, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I’ve started and stopped countless journals over the years and have gone back through some old ones to jog my memory about certain details of my daughter’s early days with illness, for my memoir-in-progress. It was painful to jump back into the rawness of my unfiltered younger self.
I still love journaling as a way to untangle, as Suleika put it. I’ve tried Liz Gilbert’s technique of writing a conversation between Fear and Love and it’s been enormously cathartic.
As for what to do with my old journals, I will probably slip many into our shredding box for our yearly purge of files that get destroyed on a truck in our driveway. But I will keep writing new ones. I may include a note in the front of any I keep warning that these entries were often me at my most troubled and not a complete picture.
I came across a packet of love letters my mom wrote my dad in the beginning of their relationship and halfway into one realized they were R rated and not something I’d be able to unsee. More importantly I knew they were never intended for eyes other than his (he’s been gone 11 years. She is in memory care). I am destroying the packet, unread by me. My siblings don’t know about them. It’s my gift to my mom.
I seem to come from a different place from many of the stores chronicled here. I have journaled since I was a small child, starting by filling in the tiny squares in the calendar I got every year at Christmas. Some of these have even survived, interestingly enough. I also have a funny story of being in second grade and getting in a bit of trouble for what I wrote ... served the teacher right for reading what was clearly not meant for her eyes as it was within the sacred pages of my kitten guarded diary ... I started out with that word as the first one in my lexicon for writing!!
Then I started seriously journaling as young adult to record my travels. These are full of drawings and quotes and my experiences in other countries, along with the inevitable untangling moments of trying to understand those emotions that come to us all as we grown and gain in wisdom. It helps us get to where we want to go. A second important pillar of why I journal besides the knowing that I must, is the fact that my family has inherited Alzheimer on my maternal line. I have always considered my journals to be as a memory bank for use in the future to help me bring back in focus a history whose vibrancy may be blurring at the edges. As I do not have kids, I have sidestepped the dilemma of a loved one reading something that will affect them. I am pretty sure I am ok with strangers reading them I think which is a tremendous confession coming from an introverted soul.
And in this space, where this very important question has been put in front of us by this prompt, I would like to offer another perspective in thinking about what to do with a journal. As an historian, I feel my journals can be an incredible record of the amazing times I have lived through, the places I have experienced and a bit of a common woman perspective of history. Journals are, by nature, very personal and we look at them through the protective lens of our own attachment to them. But as a historian I think they have the potential to be incredible stories left for others. I have in my possession a slim black leather notebook from the turn of the century that chronicles the journey of a young girl traveling by train to her relatives for a summer visit. Written in beautiful cursive in a dark green ink, it is a wonderful glimpse into the thoughts of a girl at that time and how the dynamics of her family worked .. just a glimpse of a brief moment for sure, but valuable just the same.
So I guess what I would like to put out there for us to discuss is, can we not broaden our horizons of how to view our journals and reconcile the value of having a collective feminine voice that chronicles the good, the hard, the difficult. Why do we think there is no value in our path to wisdom. Why do we feel shame enough around our human struggle to want to hide them in a fire. Cultures have always had oral histories that take on the flavor of each generations storyteller. But our written stories retain the beating heart of the writer. I know how much I love to read the letters of women who went through the civil war, or participated in the marches for equal rights, and the incredible personal value of being able to see the daily struggle that laid the foundation for the civil rights movement ... It teaches us how to build on this human right in the present day and how to take it further down the road. I especially love those who wrote outside the arena of society changing national movements. Female voices have great value I think and I would like to start the conversation of how can we keep the collective wisdom of women for the future generations. Because we all build on those who came before us if we are lucky enough to get to meet them. I think this has become so evident in these last couple of years, as we are starting to resurrect the stories of some incredible women who have been lost from our collective memory because someone else was curating the story. I would like to suggest we start to rethink the value of telling our struggles.
I recently found my high school journals ugh! Why was I so obsessed with boys in the 70s? I wanted to share them with my angsty 14 yo granddaughter: no interest! What? When I go I hope they are found by my loved ones and devoured to know I was young, human and vulnerable. My outward persona is put together, organized in control. My inward one is a tangled mess. But this prompt gives so much to ponder. We recently were given love letters between our departed parents. We knew they loved each other deeply but the sweetness, the tenderness and their struggles with us made them become young and alive. In one my mom says about me “what a doll …I can’t believe she is ours.” It felt like a big heavenly hug. And now I’m such a doll to everyone in my family!!! They can’t believe I’m theirs!
I have kept a journal on and off through out my lifetime. I am now 71 yrs old. The journals I wrote back in my earlier yrs from 1970-1990 are filled with angst, relationship addiction, the stress of raising 3 kids on my own and working while going through nursing school. I looked through those journals a few years ago and noted the incredible journey I had been traveling over the years. What came through my writings were the pain of losing my mother at the age of 8, the family being divided and the search for love and belonging. Although much of it was sad(desperate at times) I also found my indomitable spirit and a belief that joy would emerge. After many years of counseling, a 12 step program and finding a meditation practice, I am grateful to look back on my life and celebrate the journey I have been on. As far as my journals, I burned most of them. If my kids did find those journals after my death I think they would appreciate the struggles and the joys I encountered and still encounter in my quest for healing and wholeness. My journals today are mostly filled with gratitude for gifts and teachers I have found along the way. Katie
My mother was a devoted journal keeper and a soulful wordsmith. She filled probably upwards of one hundred notebooks with the details of her inward life. At 69, she developed dementia, which robbed us all of her poetry (some of it published in literary journals), her insights, her humor and her ability to create beauty in any setting. More importantly, it robbed her of the freedom to express herself as she wanted. When she died at 77, we knew that the trunk at the foot of her bed was full of her journals. We also knew that her stated wish was for my father to burn them. It took him a long time to carry out her wish, and the temptation as great to have a long sit, read through them, and reconnect with her. I didn't. I knew that her battles with depression, her marital struggles, the constraints she felt in her life as a mother (beginning at 18) were relieved by daily writing--a sacred ritual never intended to include others.
I have often kept myself from journaling out of fear of hurting others, such a loss of self-discovery out of a very common dilemma that I could have opened up to friends about just as you're inviting us to do here. I'm now going through separation from my husband of 34 years. The decision is mine, arrived at through several years of help from a spiritual director and a therapist. I know that writing will not only help me navigate this new territory of singleness and agency, but also that I'll want to be able to reflect in a few years on how I processed all this change. This space is giving me the courage to get back at journaling. Thank you.
I don’t journal as a regular practice. However, I have begun to write in response to prompts here, or in response to essays, both here and in E. Aquino’s writing on Substack. I love it when I do it. What the whole question of what to do with journals has given by me, is another way of considering how to curate my belongings. Aging and illness have been catalysts for the thinking about - though not only that. I’ve also been thinking about how to cull what is not necessary. What I have come to love are these Sunday morning forays into my mind’s eye after reading the “Sunday Drop” of this journal. Thank you for them, Suleika and company. With many thanks to everyone who participates . Much love to all. Be well.
I keep two journals. One that I want my children and grandchildren to read. It is filled with little pieces of my memories of childhood and motherhood and everything that goes along with daily activities. The other journal I call my feelings journal. It is filled with my rants, my sadness and depressions, my anger, my fears and my tears. It is a journal ( more than one) that I do NOT want anyone to read. It is where I bare my soul- all the good and all the bad. I will burn it.
Anxiety is more of a constant playmate of mine these days and I wonder why that is. Guess what? While visiting journal pages I wrote in my 20’s and 30’s anxiety was as much a part of my life as it is today. The only difference being that - during the days of raising and home schooling two children in the wilds of British Columbia, putting up hay by team and wagon, growing enough food to last 200 days of Winter and chopping and stacking 8 chords of wood - there was literally no time left in a day to actually act out the anxiety I scribbled across the pages of my journal under the soft glow of the kerosene lamp.
Where as today, I have more time to ponder and wrestle with the who, what and whys of anxiety in a way that drives my husband nuts and he wonders what is causing me to be so different than I used to be. I began asking myself the same question. And, I must say it was a huge relief to revisit my younger self in those journal pages from years ago and discover that anxiety and I have been playmates for years. I am not going nuts. I now have the time to revisit and recreate a different relationship with it. And, it is through that exploration from past to present that I realize the value of keeping my journals. They have been a comforting balm for my anxious filled soul.
It will be interesting to address today’s prompt as to whether or not to archive or burn them. Hmmm, great question.
I keep my journals for my own reference, and refer to them often. I have always said to my husband that he's absolutely welcome to read them if he ever wants to, and I'm not afraid to leave them behind when I'm gone (although I don't have children so I'm pretty sure they'll end up on a bonfire by whoever it is who is dealing with my stuff). That's fine by me - my journals are a living part of me while I'm living, and I don't see them offering anything to the wider world in their own right afterwards.
“when the ego is swaying between conscious and unconscious impulses” is to me the place where poetry grows. I was never able to keep anything in my vagrant childhood. But in that space of lack I found solace in my own ability to create. In my imagination. I understand the desire to protect others and ourselves from our darkest and often deliriously random fears and preoccupations. Still. A big part of me believes that if more journals were brought out of hiding, dredged out of the collective unconscious into the dimming light of our cultural life we as a society might evolve more than we have thus far and in accepting ourselves begin to accept one another.
I no longer keep a personal journal, stopped in my early twenties. I kept my journals for many many years, re-reading them a few times. During our most recent move I found them and read through one last time. Too many memories from a deeply painful period of my life that I hated reliving. I was pregnant with my son and realized I never wanted him to see these, so they were destroyed before we moved.
I did however keep my first journal (around age 8), and have shared it with most of my family. Too funny not to share (I recall a post written while mad at one of my sisters and describing how bad I thought she smelled haha). I also keep a mini daily journal for my son to read one day, it’s all about him. Tiny memories, funny firsts and day trips...I think he’ll appreciate it some day.
When we would move (which we did nine times before I was 16), Dad would announce, "There is a weight limit for the Army moving us-first thing to go, anything paper-it's not a necessary item". And so, out went letters, journals, school assignments...except for a few pages which I hid away in my hard case, avacado green, Sampsonite. Those pages, those sacred pages, are old now...they contain unrequited love, a list of books he recommended I read (which I did), things he said, and I will forever keep those, with a note on top to my daughter, with the history behind them. I have thrown journals away over the years past my BRAT years, always fearing "someone" would read them and know my innermost angst, longings, fears, angers...they are mine, all of those emotions. Would they have made writing easier now? Perhaps, but I see the world through the lense of my life ...all 61 years...burned into my soul. As a highly sensitive soul, once written, once experienced, it is not forgotten. I don't want my daughter to read them and so if they are on my computer, I will trash. If they are on paper, I will burn. If I like the "lines" I will incorporate them in my writing in one way or the other.
When i moved last year, i discarded 30 years of journals after curating notes for a novel and some dream documentations. The rest of the writing was mostly working out relationships. I felt lighter and only have had a passing regret when I foolishly tried to rekindle a relationship. But i have continued to journal and am now into year one and a half.
Once I “mine” a completed journal for possible stories or poems or a few good lines, I lock it away in an old blanket chest in my attic, along with my late mother’s notebooks --which have immensely helped me fill in numerous gaps in our lives, so many family memories once lost to Alzheimer’s, now regained. I have no children, am an only child myself. So why keep them? For future civilizations? Can they be composted somehow, their words sprinkled in the dirt like seedlings?
I think there are two types of journaling (possibly being conflated by our readers). One is more akin to the Artist Way or Morning Papers where we write anything and everything to extract, develop or clear our mind of creative debris. Then the second is called expressive journaling which is meant to unearth the subconscious, free repressed rage and relieve pain by teaching ourselves to feel our emotions. For the latter, there are studies showing that ripping up expressive journaling is actually more productive for healing because it creates a separation to your thoughts, a barrier to rumination, a very Zen outcome. So, at the risk of sounding pedantic, I think it makes sense to have two different kinds of journals and make individual decisions for their journeys.
I’ve started and stopped countless journals over the years and have gone back through some old ones to jog my memory about certain details of my daughter’s early days with illness, for my memoir-in-progress. It was painful to jump back into the rawness of my unfiltered younger self.
I still love journaling as a way to untangle, as Suleika put it. I’ve tried Liz Gilbert’s technique of writing a conversation between Fear and Love and it’s been enormously cathartic.
As for what to do with my old journals, I will probably slip many into our shredding box for our yearly purge of files that get destroyed on a truck in our driveway. But I will keep writing new ones. I may include a note in the front of any I keep warning that these entries were often me at my most troubled and not a complete picture.
I came across a packet of love letters my mom wrote my dad in the beginning of their relationship and halfway into one realized they were R rated and not something I’d be able to unsee. More importantly I knew they were never intended for eyes other than his (he’s been gone 11 years. She is in memory care). I am destroying the packet, unread by me. My siblings don’t know about them. It’s my gift to my mom.
I seem to come from a different place from many of the stores chronicled here. I have journaled since I was a small child, starting by filling in the tiny squares in the calendar I got every year at Christmas. Some of these have even survived, interestingly enough. I also have a funny story of being in second grade and getting in a bit of trouble for what I wrote ... served the teacher right for reading what was clearly not meant for her eyes as it was within the sacred pages of my kitten guarded diary ... I started out with that word as the first one in my lexicon for writing!!
Then I started seriously journaling as young adult to record my travels. These are full of drawings and quotes and my experiences in other countries, along with the inevitable untangling moments of trying to understand those emotions that come to us all as we grown and gain in wisdom. It helps us get to where we want to go. A second important pillar of why I journal besides the knowing that I must, is the fact that my family has inherited Alzheimer on my maternal line. I have always considered my journals to be as a memory bank for use in the future to help me bring back in focus a history whose vibrancy may be blurring at the edges. As I do not have kids, I have sidestepped the dilemma of a loved one reading something that will affect them. I am pretty sure I am ok with strangers reading them I think which is a tremendous confession coming from an introverted soul.
And in this space, where this very important question has been put in front of us by this prompt, I would like to offer another perspective in thinking about what to do with a journal. As an historian, I feel my journals can be an incredible record of the amazing times I have lived through, the places I have experienced and a bit of a common woman perspective of history. Journals are, by nature, very personal and we look at them through the protective lens of our own attachment to them. But as a historian I think they have the potential to be incredible stories left for others. I have in my possession a slim black leather notebook from the turn of the century that chronicles the journey of a young girl traveling by train to her relatives for a summer visit. Written in beautiful cursive in a dark green ink, it is a wonderful glimpse into the thoughts of a girl at that time and how the dynamics of her family worked .. just a glimpse of a brief moment for sure, but valuable just the same.
So I guess what I would like to put out there for us to discuss is, can we not broaden our horizons of how to view our journals and reconcile the value of having a collective feminine voice that chronicles the good, the hard, the difficult. Why do we think there is no value in our path to wisdom. Why do we feel shame enough around our human struggle to want to hide them in a fire. Cultures have always had oral histories that take on the flavor of each generations storyteller. But our written stories retain the beating heart of the writer. I know how much I love to read the letters of women who went through the civil war, or participated in the marches for equal rights, and the incredible personal value of being able to see the daily struggle that laid the foundation for the civil rights movement ... It teaches us how to build on this human right in the present day and how to take it further down the road. I especially love those who wrote outside the arena of society changing national movements. Female voices have great value I think and I would like to start the conversation of how can we keep the collective wisdom of women for the future generations. Because we all build on those who came before us if we are lucky enough to get to meet them. I think this has become so evident in these last couple of years, as we are starting to resurrect the stories of some incredible women who have been lost from our collective memory because someone else was curating the story. I would like to suggest we start to rethink the value of telling our struggles.
I recently found my high school journals ugh! Why was I so obsessed with boys in the 70s? I wanted to share them with my angsty 14 yo granddaughter: no interest! What? When I go I hope they are found by my loved ones and devoured to know I was young, human and vulnerable. My outward persona is put together, organized in control. My inward one is a tangled mess. But this prompt gives so much to ponder. We recently were given love letters between our departed parents. We knew they loved each other deeply but the sweetness, the tenderness and their struggles with us made them become young and alive. In one my mom says about me “what a doll …I can’t believe she is ours.” It felt like a big heavenly hug. And now I’m such a doll to everyone in my family!!! They can’t believe I’m theirs!
I have kept a journal on and off through out my lifetime. I am now 71 yrs old. The journals I wrote back in my earlier yrs from 1970-1990 are filled with angst, relationship addiction, the stress of raising 3 kids on my own and working while going through nursing school. I looked through those journals a few years ago and noted the incredible journey I had been traveling over the years. What came through my writings were the pain of losing my mother at the age of 8, the family being divided and the search for love and belonging. Although much of it was sad(desperate at times) I also found my indomitable spirit and a belief that joy would emerge. After many years of counseling, a 12 step program and finding a meditation practice, I am grateful to look back on my life and celebrate the journey I have been on. As far as my journals, I burned most of them. If my kids did find those journals after my death I think they would appreciate the struggles and the joys I encountered and still encounter in my quest for healing and wholeness. My journals today are mostly filled with gratitude for gifts and teachers I have found along the way. Katie
My mother was a devoted journal keeper and a soulful wordsmith. She filled probably upwards of one hundred notebooks with the details of her inward life. At 69, she developed dementia, which robbed us all of her poetry (some of it published in literary journals), her insights, her humor and her ability to create beauty in any setting. More importantly, it robbed her of the freedom to express herself as she wanted. When she died at 77, we knew that the trunk at the foot of her bed was full of her journals. We also knew that her stated wish was for my father to burn them. It took him a long time to carry out her wish, and the temptation as great to have a long sit, read through them, and reconnect with her. I didn't. I knew that her battles with depression, her marital struggles, the constraints she felt in her life as a mother (beginning at 18) were relieved by daily writing--a sacred ritual never intended to include others.
I have often kept myself from journaling out of fear of hurting others, such a loss of self-discovery out of a very common dilemma that I could have opened up to friends about just as you're inviting us to do here. I'm now going through separation from my husband of 34 years. The decision is mine, arrived at through several years of help from a spiritual director and a therapist. I know that writing will not only help me navigate this new territory of singleness and agency, but also that I'll want to be able to reflect in a few years on how I processed all this change. This space is giving me the courage to get back at journaling. Thank you.
I don’t journal as a regular practice. However, I have begun to write in response to prompts here, or in response to essays, both here and in E. Aquino’s writing on Substack. I love it when I do it. What the whole question of what to do with journals has given by me, is another way of considering how to curate my belongings. Aging and illness have been catalysts for the thinking about - though not only that. I’ve also been thinking about how to cull what is not necessary. What I have come to love are these Sunday morning forays into my mind’s eye after reading the “Sunday Drop” of this journal. Thank you for them, Suleika and company. With many thanks to everyone who participates . Much love to all. Be well.
I destroyed all of my journals years ago. So wish I had them to read now. I love what you’ve shared on this topic. Thank you, friend.
I keep two journals. One that I want my children and grandchildren to read. It is filled with little pieces of my memories of childhood and motherhood and everything that goes along with daily activities. The other journal I call my feelings journal. It is filled with my rants, my sadness and depressions, my anger, my fears and my tears. It is a journal ( more than one) that I do NOT want anyone to read. It is where I bare my soul- all the good and all the bad. I will burn it.
Anxiety is more of a constant playmate of mine these days and I wonder why that is. Guess what? While visiting journal pages I wrote in my 20’s and 30’s anxiety was as much a part of my life as it is today. The only difference being that - during the days of raising and home schooling two children in the wilds of British Columbia, putting up hay by team and wagon, growing enough food to last 200 days of Winter and chopping and stacking 8 chords of wood - there was literally no time left in a day to actually act out the anxiety I scribbled across the pages of my journal under the soft glow of the kerosene lamp.
Where as today, I have more time to ponder and wrestle with the who, what and whys of anxiety in a way that drives my husband nuts and he wonders what is causing me to be so different than I used to be. I began asking myself the same question. And, I must say it was a huge relief to revisit my younger self in those journal pages from years ago and discover that anxiety and I have been playmates for years. I am not going nuts. I now have the time to revisit and recreate a different relationship with it. And, it is through that exploration from past to present that I realize the value of keeping my journals. They have been a comforting balm for my anxious filled soul.
It will be interesting to address today’s prompt as to whether or not to archive or burn them. Hmmm, great question.
Thank you for a terrific post!
I keep my journals for my own reference, and refer to them often. I have always said to my husband that he's absolutely welcome to read them if he ever wants to, and I'm not afraid to leave them behind when I'm gone (although I don't have children so I'm pretty sure they'll end up on a bonfire by whoever it is who is dealing with my stuff). That's fine by me - my journals are a living part of me while I'm living, and I don't see them offering anything to the wider world in their own right afterwards.
“when the ego is swaying between conscious and unconscious impulses” is to me the place where poetry grows. I was never able to keep anything in my vagrant childhood. But in that space of lack I found solace in my own ability to create. In my imagination. I understand the desire to protect others and ourselves from our darkest and often deliriously random fears and preoccupations. Still. A big part of me believes that if more journals were brought out of hiding, dredged out of the collective unconscious into the dimming light of our cultural life we as a society might evolve more than we have thus far and in accepting ourselves begin to accept one another.
I no longer keep a personal journal, stopped in my early twenties. I kept my journals for many many years, re-reading them a few times. During our most recent move I found them and read through one last time. Too many memories from a deeply painful period of my life that I hated reliving. I was pregnant with my son and realized I never wanted him to see these, so they were destroyed before we moved.
I did however keep my first journal (around age 8), and have shared it with most of my family. Too funny not to share (I recall a post written while mad at one of my sisters and describing how bad I thought she smelled haha). I also keep a mini daily journal for my son to read one day, it’s all about him. Tiny memories, funny firsts and day trips...I think he’ll appreciate it some day.
When we would move (which we did nine times before I was 16), Dad would announce, "There is a weight limit for the Army moving us-first thing to go, anything paper-it's not a necessary item". And so, out went letters, journals, school assignments...except for a few pages which I hid away in my hard case, avacado green, Sampsonite. Those pages, those sacred pages, are old now...they contain unrequited love, a list of books he recommended I read (which I did), things he said, and I will forever keep those, with a note on top to my daughter, with the history behind them. I have thrown journals away over the years past my BRAT years, always fearing "someone" would read them and know my innermost angst, longings, fears, angers...they are mine, all of those emotions. Would they have made writing easier now? Perhaps, but I see the world through the lense of my life ...all 61 years...burned into my soul. As a highly sensitive soul, once written, once experienced, it is not forgotten. I don't want my daughter to read them and so if they are on my computer, I will trash. If they are on paper, I will burn. If I like the "lines" I will incorporate them in my writing in one way or the other.
When i moved last year, i discarded 30 years of journals after curating notes for a novel and some dream documentations. The rest of the writing was mostly working out relationships. I felt lighter and only have had a passing regret when I foolishly tried to rekindle a relationship. But i have continued to journal and am now into year one and a half.
Once I “mine” a completed journal for possible stories or poems or a few good lines, I lock it away in an old blanket chest in my attic, along with my late mother’s notebooks --which have immensely helped me fill in numerous gaps in our lives, so many family memories once lost to Alzheimer’s, now regained. I have no children, am an only child myself. So why keep them? For future civilizations? Can they be composted somehow, their words sprinkled in the dirt like seedlings?