Journals & Diaries (part 3)

These journals are pretty special.

I began writing in the first one on the top row the day this little one was born.  Each journal entry is written like a letter to her.  It was filled by the time she finished elementary school.  The tan one with the daisies holds middle, junior, and high school.Then the purple one started when she left home and moved to college.

I began the blue one on the bottom row the day this little one was born.  Again, each entry is written as a letter to him.  The black and brown one began with middle school and continued through high school.  The green one starts when he left home and moved into the college dorm.

A lot of life stories are in those six little books.  

I suppose that someday I'll give them to the kids. I don't know. I don't think I want any advice on when that should happen.  I'll know when the time is right for that.

I am so thankful that I began these and that I've kept them up through every phase of their lives.

I would absolutely encourage anyone to keep a book of letters to their child(ren).  So what if you didn't start the day they were born.  Start when they're three or when they start school or when they begin junior high or when they leave home.  If you do, you'll be glad.

Journals & Diaries (part 2)

This piece of furniture sits in our bedroom.
Look closely. What do you see?
(Ok, not too close... I guess I should have dusted before snapping a photograph.)
Let's see... there's a television... some folded blankets... a few photographs... and journals and diaries and journals and diaries and journals.

If you didn't already read Journals & Diaries (part 1), you might want to click and read that first.

It's important to me to choose the just-right journal.  It has to "fit" for the way I feel about life at the time. It has to "feel" right; I mean literally "feel" as in "touch." I have a writing friend who once asked me, "Why do you hold journals like that and rub them that way when you're choosing one?" I'd never realized I did that, but I didn't stop.  It just needs to feel like where I'd want to pour myself for the next 3-4 years.

When I look over the covers of all of my adult journals, I notice a lot of greens, cool colors, soft florals.  (I don't know what was up with choosing that red harsh one.  Maybe it was during a midlife crisis period!)

There are so many reasons I write or keep a journal.

• I can keep a record of important events, hold on to things I don't want to forget.
• It's habit.  It's what I do.  
• Laura Ingalls Wilder did it.  Then after she was 60, she told the stories of her life in books that I loved to read. She's one of my heroes. I've always wanted to be like her. 😊
• Writing in present tense captures the very essence of now... Stories told "in the now" have so much more power than "I remember when" stories.  Memories have a way of rounding the edges... the hard becomes easier... the sad isn't as raw... the angry isn't as harsh... the joy isn't as sappy... the turmoil isn't as big a deal... 
• Writing is therapy.  I believe writing is the physical act of organizing thought. When going through a mess, sitting down and writing about it often helps to work it out.  I have noticed that there are some times when I literally avoid writing because I'm not willing to work through it yet. I don't want to put the energy into thinking clearly about whatever it is.  
  

Some of my journals, like these, had a specific purpose.  
In 1998 I became a part of the National Writing Project and was active in it for many years. 
These journals are filled with quick writes, reading responses, and regular journal-type thoughts, opinions, and ideas.
Another difference is that every entry in these has been read and responded to by a writing partner.
As a co-director of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project Open Summer Institute for several years, one of my favorite things was reading and responding to the participants' daily journal entries.
True, you write differently when you know someone will be reading it. It's a different but powerful kind of journal writing experience.

If any of those reasons sound like good ones to you, start!  You don't have to have started when you were 8.  Start now.

Journals & Diaries (part 1)

Writing in a diary or journal has been a part of who I am since... well... since... I actually know exactly when it began... January 1, 1973. I was 8.

• January 1, 1973 - I watched the orenge bole parade and traist in my coloring Book. and got mad at ↻.
• January 2, 1973 - I had a good day at school.  But after it. I got mad.  I didn't watch Big Vally.  And thats Bad.😕

And, I was faithful to continue writing in that little blue diary from 3rd through 6th grades.  I went through spurts of writing daily, then forgetting, then getting back to it, then skipping a while, but always returning.

• August 24, 1975 - Karen is at college I'm by myself
• August 24, 1976 - Mom cut my hair. I went to the dentist got a tooth pulled & my teeth cleaned. we played in the jim. Karen C. might move.
• August 25, 1976 - I was at school all day it served a terrible chillie, slaw, carckers, and pie.

For the most part, I documented events.  There wasn't much outpouring of feelings and emotions.  There wasn't much therapeutic examination of thoughts. I was a little girl... a kid who wanted to put pen to paper... already a writer in my heart.

Then came junior high and high school...

I filled a whole book for each of 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, & 12th grades.  And there are even a few loose pages folded inside those high school books when the small page just was not enough to explain the whole... the whole... the whole...whatever it was that needed explaining.  

Inside these six little books you can read what was spilling out of my teen-aged mind to fill the pages . 

Yes, there's still a documenting of events, but there is way too much plenty of drama emotion and spewing a deluge of feelings and opinions.  There's also evidence of teen-aged hopes, dreams, and expectations. I rarely, basically never, missed a night of writing before I went to sleep. 

I wonder... could journal writing be the reason I have such clear memories from when I was young?  Maybe because I relived it as I wrote it down?  Just an thought...

These three hold my college memories.  Hmmm... interesting that there are occasional sentences written in shorthand... ha ha ha...  Too secret for regular English, I guess!

It seems, however, that something must have happened in the middle of the little green one. Suddenly I stopped writing completely.  For the first time since 3rd grade there are pages and pages and pages that are completely blank.  

Well... something did happen.  I met a guy... ahhh... sigh... I was just so busy being crazy in love with that guy that there simply was no time to write! Nothing... not even an occasional page.  

(Oh, well... I got to keep that guy.)  

I guess he made up for keeping me from writing by buying the blue calico journal to get me started again. 

**I know I wrote 1-22-84 on the first page, but I know it was actually 1985. 

From that point forward, I haven't been a daily journal writer, but I've been a consistent journal writer.

My friend, Sandra, encouraged me to write about why finding my mother's journal was so meaningful.  I thought it was going to be one post, but I think I may have enough for a whole series of posts about journals!

We'll see what's next!