Why should you keep a journal...

I started to keep a journal at thirteen, I felt the need to confide my feelings and my thoughts down to paper. I did not know it then, but by doing so I provided a useful map to a better understanding of myself.

I kept all my journals, and sometime when I am trying to remember certain things or events in my life they serve as reminders. However, they were most useful at showing me the repeating patterns I have created over my life time. When you put something down on paper you can not deny its existence, especially when you are the author of both your life and journals. By realizing these life patterns through my journals, I embarked on a journey of changes. After all, if you keep doing the same things you have always done then you will always get what you've always got. At some point in a life there are only so many lousy outcomes one can take. On the other side, you hold on to the good stuff.

My journal was my confident, it was where I made sense of it all. Ok, I must admit that some of the entries I made as a teenager were lacking in depth (and some of my adult entries didn't make the Hall of Fame either), yet when I read through some of the passages I wrote, I can find a window looking into my emotional state. Like all teenagers my feelings were raw and I didn't understand the mechanics of it all. I rediscover the naive girl I once was, the dreamer, the idealist and, the artist.

Through the years a long list of joys and sorrows are filling the pages. Agony of the heart going through a painful breakup. Loneliness, misunderstandings, judgments, and self-pity, you find it all. The joy of achievements, the joy of motherhood and its mishaps, the doubts and the courageous decisions, the unconditional love, the passion and the dark side of the soul. It is not a novel, but it is a life.

Through journal writing grows a better understanding of the self. Sometime it can force you to take a good look at yourself and realize the different dimensions you carry within yourself. It allows you to choose the parts you want to invest in, or better comprehend. It is a Legacy to oneself, a precious gift. One that will help you remember your journey through an overstuffed memory bank that your brain will become over the years.