Category: Columns

Conversations with Barb and Jann

The Power and Joy of Journaling

The other day I was going through an old childhood trunk I call my Trunk o’ Memories when I came across some of my trip diaries from the ‘60’s. My husband and I sat down, read through them and had a great laugh. Back in the day, my frugal mom would put $25 in an envelope for each day of travel, all road trips, of course. That $25 covered all expenses for me and my mom and dad, including gas and the motel. I duly recorded said expenses in the diary and some days we even had a buck or so left over to add to the next day’s envelope. The diaries brought back so many memories of the places we visited (mostly the northeastern U.S. – we were from Toronto, Canada), the ‘60’s era, my thoughts at the time, and the weather. Yes, I also recorded the daily temperature and precipitation.

I had forgotten about those diaries this summer when we embarked on an epic family road trip where I once again kept a daily diary. This time I tapped away on my iPad in my Pages app. I call it epic. Think eight people in a GMC Yukon SUV, three of them six years old and under, on a road trip up the California coast to Portland, Oregon, and back. We stopped along the way (many times), had some fun and some not-so-fun adventures, went through a lot of diapers, laughed and cried (sometimes it was me), and I duly recorded it all. Yes, including the weather.

What I’d done back in the day and now, was journaling. As I wrote in my journal before bed last night, I realized that I have always journaled. But why? Why did I feel the need to record the daily routines, the life-altering events, my thoughts and feelings, the weather? I’m sure it was not just to place these things in the historic record, to be read twenty or thirty years from now.

Remember that secret diary with the tiny key you kept as a teen, the one your bratty little brother read excerpts from to all his friends? You snatched it from his grubby hands and wrote that night,

Dear Diary,

I’m going to strangle my brother and stuff his body into his stinky gym bag!

That was journaling. Admit it. You felt a darn sight better after venting. And so, that’s why I journal. I feel better afterward. I throw down on the page my innermost thoughts, my deepest feelings, loves and hates, hopes and dreams. For my eyes only.

I think everyone knows this about journaling. But when I was researching the subject, I came across a website that listed no fewer than 100 benefits! Check it out at www.appleseeds.org/100_journaling.htm.