It all starts with a journal

Hi Everyone.

Sometimes I write in my journal - sometimes a lot and sometimes a little. But always it’s cathartic. Journaling helps because I get to take thoughts out of my head and deposit them onto a safe space on the page. The page then holds everything for me, instead of me needing to hold it myself. Suddenly, my load, my chest, my life feel lighter and things seem simpler somehow. *insert sigh of relief*

Recently I’ve been wondering if others might benefit from reading what I process on the page. Sometimes these journal entries are random questions to contemplate. Sometimes they are just a couple fragments of thoughts, organized haphazardly into nearly-illegible bullet points. And sometimes they are longer reflections and emotional processing of things that have happened in, around, for, and to me.

I used to put so much pressure on myself to write full, complete, perfect narratives in my journal. And since I rarely had the time to catch my journal pages up on the last several months of my life, I hesitated to start writing. Then it hit me: I realized that my journal pages are not easily confused and they need no historical information to simply hold space for my current experience. Then the words started to flow, sometimes seemingly from outside of myself.

Several weeks ago, a phrase randomly popped into my mind and I wrote it down on a sticky note in the middle of my workday:

“Scared but still do it”

I don’t think I fully understood how this applied to my life until now - until I started feeling the urge to share more of myself here. So here goes nothing. I hope you find these offerings helpful as we navigate this complicated, beautiful, loving, painful, gorgeous and wild life together.

Love,
Lisa