Journaling allows us to process our daily lives. It helps us see patterns that we are taking part in physically and mentally, and most importantly it allows release.
Don’t hold back in journaling. These are your private thoughts and they need voicing and validation. No one ever needs to read them – or you can turn them into a creative efforts. Some of my students have begun painting, writing, or even baking to express their creative outlets.
During this time, my writer friends and I are journaling to keep track of an important time in history. Maybe these will be records of human thoughts and feelings during a very difficult time in our society – much like The Diary of Anne Frank.
Some are doing dream journals as well.
In a few years, this will be forgotten, swept under the rug, or rebranded. Our society, our children, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren will need real life, first person examples of what was happening internally and externally.
I teach topics that deal with slavery, suffrage, native American relocation stories. We read first person accounts. These allow my students to understand critical happenings in our society not from our history books who are written by the victors or the historians recording political acts, but by the people who went through and dealt with racism, oppression, and death our history has reaped on individuals.
Journaling seems more important now than it ever has before.
It can be anything you want it to be, look like anything you want it to look like. Let it be private and burn it later. Or share it.
A number of people have mentioned the book Love in the time of Cholera to me lately. Ron Terranova, fellow writer and Poe lover, reminded me Shakespeare had a very fertile writing period during The Black Plague.
els like we’ve reached the point of all those 80’s sci-fi movies in which people stay inside, afraid to go out, and resist human contact.
“no where to sit, no where to stand, hey there’s a table, this table is ours..” followed be hard looks and threatening body language by anyone from people who look like they would murder us for the chair or even the blue hair squad.
I found myself surrounded by strangers talking about art. They were all from a local art school and I enjoyed their interpretations and expertise.
I’ve always chuckled at those dating profiles that read: No baggage.
and control of our emotional center, these things need to be sussed out. We need to realize when we get upset with the cashier for not giving us the correct change, it’s not the mistake we’re upset with. It’s something deep down inside that we feel someone wronged us, cheated us, was unfair with us. We take it out on the cashier, but the poor underpaid soul most likely made an error and the feelings we are feeling are from something deeper.
Noreen Lace 
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