Encouragement

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."   — Anaïs Nin

 Back years ago, as I started really getting into keeping my journals I read a book titled, "The New Diary" by Tristine Rainer with a foreword by Anaïs Nin, that gave me the encouragement that I needed to begin my process of journalling to work my way through my past toward healing and understanding...to find the "me" beyond the mother, wife, friend, and any other titles that I may have went by.

Much of what I learned was that journalling can take on many simple forms, that there are no strict forms to go by.  A journal can contain, lists, sketches, doodling, anything that helps to get you from one place to another.

My own journals took the form of writing down my days, not only the physical things I do but more-so my emotions and feelings. I "talked" to my journals as if they were a living person, expressing everything I thought and felt, even to the point of asking questions.


I also had a second, tandem, set of journals that I wrote in a few times a week, where I put to paper my past...every bad thing that had happened to me from the time I was a child through to the present time.  


I talked about the sudden death of my mother, being molested by an uncle, being raped by a school chum.  I talked about the Hell I went through in my first marriage, the problems I was having in my then, second marriage.  I put to paper, all my highs and lows, my shame, anger, hatred, love, curiosities, everything...between these journals.


Over the years I'd held back so much that I was getting bogged down mentally and emotionally that these empty pages that I filled day after day for several years, helped me to get through the hardest of times.  I began to see the real "me" appear.


With my third marriage, I didn't feel the need to journal and never attempted to journal again until after my breakdown in 2001, after my divorce and a relationship which ended a mere 2 months after it had begun. But I found it really hard to write down my thoughts and feelings, my mind was such a jumbled mess of tangled thoughts which had no direction. My spirit was crushed...my desire to do anything...seemed to have disappeared.


Although I don't journal today per se, I am finding myself through my blogs and through friendships that I have made along the way.  The broken woman has refound her footing in this life and is healing, a letter, a blog, a conversation at a time.  I know now the direction that I want my life to take...and I am starting to love the person that I am...becoming!