As a teenager I speedily filled notebook after notebook with accounts of my day... tales of both disappointments and small victories mingled with hopes for the future. My first years of journal keeping were done in very generic spiral notebooks. Try as I might to use something prettier, I just didn't feel that I could be myself on the pages of a fancy book. Surely, one misspelled word or one unkind thought would mar its beauty. But on those wide ruled, blue lined notebook pages I could spill the truth. I could be me.
Today, I still love to write in a journal. In fact, I've learned that taking a few minutes to write privately is vital to my well being. You see, on my most fragile days I suspect that a peek inside my brain would reveal several tornadoes of various sizes and intensities, each one competing for a dominant position in my thoughts. If this scene sounds familiar to you, you know it can be exhausting. When life gets overwhelming, as it often does, priorities get mixed up, simple treasures lose their shine, and doubts often swell into unfounded worries.
But I've found that if I take a small block of quiet time to write in a journal, I can give those cycling thoughts from my head a nice place to rest. It is as author Flannery O'Connor said, "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say..."
Read my full article at The Creative Mama here.
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