I am a voracious journal keeper and I have been since I received my first diary at the age of 10. It was white with tiny colored hearts and two matching keys. I started out by chronicling my dramatic ten year old life, documenting events like, “my cat had kittens” and “I got a letter from my cousin.” It’s truly adorable. Even at 10, I loved to write and found it cathartic.
By the time I was 12, my journal (a perfectly square little number with a teddy bear in a sweater on the front) was where I put every thought, every whim, every feeling, good or bad. I thought it was a safe place to say the things I could not or would not say to other humans and…I was wrong. My mother came across my angsty pre-teen journal when I was twelve and just so happened to open it to the page where I called her some nasty, nasty names. I guess one needs to have a seriously secret, hidden and padlocked type of journal for saying those sorts of things.
When my daughter, Ivy, turned 14, I gave her my diary from the same year in my life (green with white polka dots), thinking perhaps it would be helpful to her to know that I was once 14 and knew what it was like. Upon reading some of it’s pages aloud to her, I quickly realized by the look on her face that I was a much more ridiculous and pathetic 14 year old than I remembered. This was the age when I started sticking little mementos in the pages of my journal. This one had pictures of Ricky Schroeder, countless letters from penpals, leftover candy wrappers I scavenged from boys I liked and worst of all, a break up letter from Todd Swisher where he sharpied out the whole last paragraph. I remember holding that thing up to the light for sooooo long trying to see if he had said, “but maybe someday….” Jerk.
I have kept every journal that I penned, with the hope that one day some future descendant of mine will find them fascinating. In the meantime, they are stacked up in boxes, collecting dust. Every now and then I crack one open and have a good mortified laugh or cry at myself, depending on the year. My journal from 1992 is one I find particularly disturbing. I wrote in cryptic language like a Virginia Woolf who loved Jesus. I took myself as seriously as is actually possible. I anguished poetically over boys. I interpreted theology with a bizarre, whimsical grid. I made contracts with myself and wrote the most stupid poetry that exists. I am glad I processed this stuff in that book (blue) rather than out loud. I think if my mother had read THAT journal she would have been more upset than the time she read my bad words about her. The weirdest part about that journal is that I wrote it as if I was writing to my future daughter. Good Lord, sorry Ivy. I WAS INSANE!!
The journals after that chronicle illness, love, babies, losses, hard times, hopes and struggles. I continue to consider journaling one of the most important practices a human being can engage in. I recommend it in my songwriting classes and I do it every day. I used to encourage my own children to keep a journal as well but around about child number 3, I began to wonder if journaling was maybe not for everybody.
Every first grader has to keep a daily journal at school. You know those cool notebooks that have space for a picture above 4 or 5 lines that you write on? It gives them a chance to practice their handwriting and spelling while documenting some part of their own little life. I love it! My first two kids journaled well. They wrote about their new baby brother and their dog and snow. I loved it when those journals came home from school for me to read. I poured through every page and loved deciphering their brand new words with matching pictures.
When my third child brought his first journal home from school, I was so excited to read it! After he went to bed, I sat down at my desk with a cup of tea to take in his first official self-published work. The first few pages were sort of normal with pictures of stick guys playing on a stick playground and something about recess (his favorite subject). Then, about two weeks into the journal, I came across a page completely full of these upside down m’s. Seagulls! Birds! But why were they upside down? Tons of them flying together in a big open sky. What fascinating perspective must my son have to be able to envision upside down birds? He must be eclectic, unconventional and modern! I decided to ask him about it the next morning so I could see inside his obviously deeply artistic mind. When he was eating his breakfast the next morning, I brought the journal to him and said, “Tell me about this page of birds! It’s so beautiful, but why are they upside down?”
“Those aren’t birds. Those are butts,” he said.
What? Butts?! You made a whole page of butts, as in, 30 of them, and handed it in to your teacher? Oh good. I’m pretty sure she thinks we are all a bunch of pervs who show our butts to each other all of the time now. Thanks for that, buddy. I sent a nervous email to the teacher the next day, apologizing for the butt journaling and she just laughed it off. I bet she has seen more journal descecration than I knew was possible.
After all these years of championing journaling keeping my own practice at a fever pitch, I can now objectively identify the type of person who should perhaps, refrain from journaling, if even for a short season. Here is what I have determined.
People who should not journal:
1) people who want to write cuss words about their moms (or criminals)
2) 19 year old deep thinkers who are bursting with hormones and angst and want to freak their future daughters all the way out
3) people who want to draw whole pages full of butts
But really, who am I to say? How will we ever catch the criminals and cuss-daughters, if they don’t journal? How will we know if we aren’t crazy any more if we don’t have some point of written reference from a crazier time to reference? And above all, how will we ever get good at drawing butts if there is not room in our journals for a few rear ends?
I changed my mind, everyone should journal.
