What Do We Put In Our Journals?

"So we begin where we are.  The important thing is to begin.  And then to continue.  Not every day, but when the spirit moves, or the belly, or the heart.  And not only when we are miserable, but also when we are wildly happy."

- Alfred DePew.

Alfred DePew suggests that we whine, explore, wrestle, wound, betray, cavort, seduce, abandon, suffer, heal, celebrate, lie, lament, justify, trick self, and come to truths.  We should circle, repeat, spiral, show jealousies, manias, dark thoughts, deny, obsess, despair and, yes, show some self-pity.  All this, he concludes, leads us to insight and grace.  Who would not want such?

We can fill our journal full of art expressing our woundedness, our grief, our peace and solitude, however we feel to express such at the moment we open our journal.  We are human beings.  We are made of much.  

Whether it is thought, a quote, a collage, a ticket stub, a painting, a poem...  Whatever a journal becomes, let it be full of your wonder and wander and wrestling, to be sure. 

I think I spent most of my life pinging and ponging off walls and barriers and falling down and brushing myself off and beginning again and AGAIN AND AGAIN.  To many, it might look as if it had been pure chaos.  To me, I realize, as I age, I was learning some danged good lessons.  A time for everything!  For, amidst it all was great love and being greatly loved.  As I come to my endings, I realize I spent a great deal of time being who I was not.  Right from early months I was sent off into the world, without contact and content of bone and blood to keep me close.  I had no blood and bone models and understanding of who I was, so I was many things.  In the workshop with DePew, I reaffirmed I moved due to chaos, inner or outer.  I have known that about myself for a long long time.  I work hard to change that.  That is a pattern in my life that I need to change.  Journaling helps me to understand myself more, both the dark and light sides of self.

What would you use as theme, as filler, as reasons to journal?  Are you willing to be real and raw and beautifully seek, earnestly, the core authentic Self?

©Carol Desjarlais 8.14.19