I thought I’d re-share a blog I wrote many years ago, because the themes seem like they might be helpful again today…
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“The guinea pig pee-ed on my lap.”
“I sent eight Valentines cards and received one. From my dad.”
“My best friend told me I’m not her best friend anymore.”
These were the more riveting of the hundreds of early teenage journal entries, dutifully written every night. Written in the fear that if I didn’t document it, it hadn’t really happened. I’d forget it, loose it. The moments would be erased and worthless.
Heaven forbid.
Books and books of tightly packed scrawl; meticulous records of a very ordinary life.
After taking a much needed break from this obsessive ritual, I rediscovered it later in life as a more reflective, freeing and life-giving tool. Over time it has become a creative and healing space for me. A place to think through, articulate and process how I feel.
In recent years I’ve felt challenged to be more vulnerable with my friends and community. I’ve realised that vulnerability is not about sharing personal information about my life; It’s about allowing someone to see my soft underbelly, my weaknesses, my confusion, the parts of myself and my emotions I would rather they didn’t see. The parts, in fact, I’d rather didn’t exist.
Sharing that part of myself and trusting that rejection won’t follow. The surprise that often comes is that instead of the distance I expect to result, the relationship in fact deepens.
But for me there is another barrier to this vulnerability, in addition to the fear of what people think of me. In order to share how I truly feel, I first need to know how I truly feel.
And often I don’t.
Often I am blissfully unaware of my own emotions. People ask me how I am and I answer that ‘I’m fine’, or even that ‘I’m really well’. And I’m not lying. I genuinely think I am.
Sometimes I’m aware of some discomfort under the surface but I’m not sure what it is. It’s in my journal writing that I am able to access that disquiet; see it, explore it and hopefully face it and deal with it.
Sometimes I feel paralyzed by my emotions, as if they are a messed up ball of wool inside me. Sitting quietly to write can be like gently pulling out each string, laying it down in a line to see it for what it is. And there on the table it loses its power to hold me hostage.
My books of scribbles become a place of conversation between my head and my heart. Sitting around the dinner table of my journal, my head is like an older, articulate child, overshadowing my heart: a stuttering, hesitant younger sibling, struggling to articulate what they have to say. The older child butts in to speak on behalf of the younger but needs to be told repeatedly to give space for them to speak up for themselves and discover their voice.
I try not to write ‘I think I feel…’ or ‘I should…’ – that would be my head answering for my heart. Instead I write, ‘I feel…’ and wait patiently for the shy voice to stammer towards an answer.
Sometimes it takes time but I need to hear what it has to say, if I am to have any chance of unravelling the ball of string and being able to be vulnerable with others.
For me, my journal is also an invaluable part of my personal faith journey. The pages contain prayers and conversations with God and more importantly, what I believe he is teaching me and saying to me.
I write not just what happened but how it made me feel and how it challenged me; not just what I see but what that made me think of and the connections that makes with events of the past. I write about what themes are forming, what I am learning, how I am growing.
At the end of each year I take one big sheet of paper for the past year and write what I’m grateful for, what the challenges were and finally some key words and phrases for the themes of what I learnt.
On another sheet for the coming year I write about my hopes and dreams, my fears and then finally I reflect on a word or two that represents something of an invitation to explore in the coming year. You can read a more detailed description of this process here.
Another little tool that’s been really helpful to me in the last year or so is this lovely little ‘check-in’ graphic. I don’t do it weekly, but just when I feel the need to take time to hear my heart and find a bit of peace and resolution in the churning emotions. Maybe you can scribble it out on a piece of paper by your bed. Friends of mine have also used it around the family dinner table.
In the book ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls, as the main character sits on her big double bed, “she drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it’s going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.”
When I read this a wide smile broke out on my face, as the character voiced my own thoughts. I certainly have a weakness for beautiful notebooks. I find that a deliciously bright or beaded cover gives me such delight in picking it up to write.
But although the gorgeousness of the outside feeds my inspiration, on the inside it’s the opposite. If I keep it too neat I find I get writing constipation. My journals these days are scruffy, full of scribbles and doodles, with scraps of paper taped in; bulging books with a deliberate lack of preciousness, which allow me to be free and creative. They aren’t for display. They are just for me.
My journals need to be a place with no rules, expectations or restrictions, a safe place where my stammering heart feels welcomed at the table.
Mother City Murmurs 