Thank you for this post. You’re inside my head. I have stacks of unused notebooks. I do use the online Day One journal to jot down thoughts during the day, or noteworthy events, or my daily finger-stick glucose readings.
You also reminded me of a heartbreaking scene in “Everything I never told you” by Celeste Ng where a daughter dies by suicide and in the aftermath, her mother looks for answers in the girl’s bedroom and pulls down the journals she has given her each year as gifts, only to find nothing in any of them.
I have just finished reading Permission. Thank you. It was simply what I needed to read at the right time. So was this article. I'm currently delicately excavating my way through a decade worth of journals as an archaeologist might a dig. I know what it will cost me if I dig too deep, too quickly, too roughly. These are sacred artefacts of a past self and they need to be treated with care. Like you I am also surprised by what is omitted. I know the timeline and scour the pages, for chronological validation, but she chose not to write. Sometimes I have even written "I cannot write". My sister died two years ago at 52 and I still cannot bring myself to journal it. Those unwritten pages speak so loudly. I cannot read a trace of what I feel because I cannot feel it. Yet.
Thanks for all this. This last part is so relatable. I've kept a journal since I was nine or ten and in 2018-19 I typed them all. I've noticed I didn't and don't write about the hardest things, such as my mother's illness and death when I was eleven, or fights with romantic partners. Or even today if I have a stressful conflict with my husband. I don't want to relive it. But the journals allowed me to create a detailed timeline of events of my life month by month, and I can hang upon it the things I remember that I didn't write down. It's almost as if the bad events are outlined by negative space in the writing.
Interesting, but no—It would never occur to me to type them up. Some of them (the older ones) are filled with broken thoughts and visual drawings, so that would be impossible. Also, I don’t think that all memoirs are meant to be re-typed (at least not for me!)-
I write in those cheap Mead Composition books you can purchase in drugstores even grocery stores. All the precious journals I’ve been gifted are mostly blank. When we moved last year out of our home of almost 30 years I pulled a recycling bin up to the door of my office and threw most of them away.
As a lifelong journal failure (which you're making me reframe), I loved reading this. I was also pleasantly surprised at a couple of jolts of synchronicity. Your proximity to the Son of Sam murders is akin to my connection to the infamous Cullen Davis Mansion murders which I happened to write about and publish last week. And a writer friend I made on Substack just sent me a copy of When Women Were Birds. I had never heard of it before, and now I am doubly excited to dive in. Permission is also in my queue. My reading list at the moment is an embarrassment of riches. Thanks for sharing.
Years of forgotten, mostly empty, well-intentioned journals of all sizes and shapes are thanking you for bringing them (and their erstwhile author) in from the cold.
Thanks for this. I've been writing in a journal for almost 50 years and always say that it saved my ass. I had a painfully dysfunctional relationship with my mother, for one thing, and writing in a journal was my way of working through and processing things I didn't know how to deal with. I never gave it much thought until a few years ago. I started reading *about* journaling---research on its benefits, and other ways of approaching it---and a light went off in my head about how important it had been to my development and (emotional) survival. I began to create an online workshop on journaling because it suddenly felt imperative that I do so. I initially wanted to call it "Hardcore Journaling" to differentiate it from what I'd seen out there--I didn't end up using that title but I still kind of wish I had. I held a Zoom workshop in May of last year, then developed the material a little more and gave a two-night in person workshop this past February. I'm not a seasoned teacher---I've given a handful of art workshops over the years, and that's it. And wow wow wow---what a revelation it's been to witness the myriad ways people approach writing in their journal. Their assumptions, their attitudes, their fears.
I understand what you mean about being retraumatized by writing about "the thing that happened". There are certainly major occurrences in my life that I've never really written about. I told the people in my workshops that sometimes you won't be able to write about something for a long time, if ever. That said, I believe that for the most part, what you leave in your head and don't write down can become distorted, not to mention torturous. That's been my experience, at least. There can be terror in bringing it forth, sure---but the rewards are incalculable. There's no formula.
I was first introduced to your writing when someone sent me your post "The Notebook on My Desk" from September 2023. I've added a link to that piece on a resource page I started on my website for journal and notebook writing, among other things. I'm going to add a link to this post on that resource page as well. Thank you for your great writing!
I read this with a huge “oh” of recognition. My journals—even from bad periods in my life—are full of gaps and silences. I often go weeks or months without writing, and when I do write, there’s a litany of dailiness. As a historian who uses women’s journals to understand their lives, I’m coming more and more to see how limited they are as a source. And how little we can ever really understand about the lives of the ones who are no longer with us to fill in the gaps on the page.
I have kept a journal since I was 11. There are many years of blank space when as I look back, I just couldn’t write what was happening. It was to exhausting. And also….my journal has been my best friend. I am amused and amazed at the things I wrote as much as what I didn’t write. I use my journals as I write about my youth much truth is found there. I can’t yet reread anything from the past 10 years that will have to wait for another time, when I look back on my early 50’s and think, “oh how young I was”.
What a lovely thoughtful and fascinating look at the ways in which what we don’t share in our journals can be the most tender, vulnerable stories best lived in the blank space. I understand how writing of certain events can re-traumatize as your own journals revealed, Alissa. We keep ourselves safe the best we know how and something that means refraining from a written record and meaning-making when it’s too soon to look that close. I have kept journals all my life, since age 10, and have them all. I reread them from time to time & am also struck by how much isn’t there. For the past several years I’ve kept morning pages that range from the mundane to the occasional creative ground and are often very therapeutic for me. I don’t feel terror around journal keeping—seemingly, but your essay makes me think more deeply about what is not being written down but rather still kept safe and close where I don’t have to look too closely…yet.
Wonderful essay. I’ve never got into journaling although sometimes I think it would be a good thing for me as I tend to have a poor long term memory. Or maybe not a good idea? I’ve suffered my own share of trauma, a lot of which I’ve conveniently forgotten the raw details of. For instance, when I was around 21 my sister ‘reminded’ me of something we had suffered. I told her I couldn’t remember any such thing - then it all came back to me. A journal would perhaps make it much more real and have made it harder to move on, I’m not sure?
Thank you for this post. You’re inside my head. I have stacks of unused notebooks. I do use the online Day One journal to jot down thoughts during the day, or noteworthy events, or my daily finger-stick glucose readings.
You also reminded me of a heartbreaking scene in “Everything I never told you” by Celeste Ng where a daughter dies by suicide and in the aftermath, her mother looks for answers in the girl’s bedroom and pulls down the journals she has given her each year as gifts, only to find nothing in any of them.
I'd forgotten that scene in Ng's novel. Wow, yes.
That scene has stuck with me since I read the book years ago.
This makes so much sense to me. And explains some of why I can never quite commit to a journal practice. Thank you!
I have just finished reading Permission. Thank you. It was simply what I needed to read at the right time. So was this article. I'm currently delicately excavating my way through a decade worth of journals as an archaeologist might a dig. I know what it will cost me if I dig too deep, too quickly, too roughly. These are sacred artefacts of a past self and they need to be treated with care. Like you I am also surprised by what is omitted. I know the timeline and scour the pages, for chronological validation, but she chose not to write. Sometimes I have even written "I cannot write". My sister died two years ago at 52 and I still cannot bring myself to journal it. Those unwritten pages speak so loudly. I cannot read a trace of what I feel because I cannot feel it. Yet.
I've always wondered why I've never been able to keep a journal. And now I think I understand. Thanks for this.
Thanks for all this. This last part is so relatable. I've kept a journal since I was nine or ten and in 2018-19 I typed them all. I've noticed I didn't and don't write about the hardest things, such as my mother's illness and death when I was eleven, or fights with romantic partners. Or even today if I have a stressful conflict with my husband. I don't want to relive it. But the journals allowed me to create a detailed timeline of events of my life month by month, and I can hang upon it the things I remember that I didn't write down. It's almost as if the bad events are outlined by negative space in the writing.
This sounds like it would work for me!
The timeline? It has been so rewarding building that and using it for memoir. Do you have journals you're thinking about typing up?
Interesting, but no—It would never occur to me to type them up. Some of them (the older ones) are filled with broken thoughts and visual drawings, so that would be impossible. Also, I don’t think that all memoirs are meant to be re-typed (at least not for me!)-
Thank you! I'm so sorry, I thought I was replying to Polly.
No problem! That’s so weird—it came as a direct response to me! Apologies!!
I write in those cheap Mead Composition books you can purchase in drugstores even grocery stores. All the precious journals I’ve been gifted are mostly blank. When we moved last year out of our home of almost 30 years I pulled a recycling bin up to the door of my office and threw most of them away.
As a lifelong journal failure (which you're making me reframe), I loved reading this. I was also pleasantly surprised at a couple of jolts of synchronicity. Your proximity to the Son of Sam murders is akin to my connection to the infamous Cullen Davis Mansion murders which I happened to write about and publish last week. And a writer friend I made on Substack just sent me a copy of When Women Were Birds. I had never heard of it before, and now I am doubly excited to dive in. Permission is also in my queue. My reading list at the moment is an embarrassment of riches. Thanks for sharing.
Years of forgotten, mostly empty, well-intentioned journals of all sizes and shapes are thanking you for bringing them (and their erstwhile author) in from the cold.
Good lord those photos look so much like mine (not the book covers, tho, congrats). Piles of them. 1976 - forever. Half filled. Ink stained.
Thank you. I have so many that are blank.
Thanks for this. I've been writing in a journal for almost 50 years and always say that it saved my ass. I had a painfully dysfunctional relationship with my mother, for one thing, and writing in a journal was my way of working through and processing things I didn't know how to deal with. I never gave it much thought until a few years ago. I started reading *about* journaling---research on its benefits, and other ways of approaching it---and a light went off in my head about how important it had been to my development and (emotional) survival. I began to create an online workshop on journaling because it suddenly felt imperative that I do so. I initially wanted to call it "Hardcore Journaling" to differentiate it from what I'd seen out there--I didn't end up using that title but I still kind of wish I had. I held a Zoom workshop in May of last year, then developed the material a little more and gave a two-night in person workshop this past February. I'm not a seasoned teacher---I've given a handful of art workshops over the years, and that's it. And wow wow wow---what a revelation it's been to witness the myriad ways people approach writing in their journal. Their assumptions, their attitudes, their fears.
I understand what you mean about being retraumatized by writing about "the thing that happened". There are certainly major occurrences in my life that I've never really written about. I told the people in my workshops that sometimes you won't be able to write about something for a long time, if ever. That said, I believe that for the most part, what you leave in your head and don't write down can become distorted, not to mention torturous. That's been my experience, at least. There can be terror in bringing it forth, sure---but the rewards are incalculable. There's no formula.
I was first introduced to your writing when someone sent me your post "The Notebook on My Desk" from September 2023. I've added a link to that piece on a resource page I started on my website for journal and notebook writing, among other things. I'm going to add a link to this post on that resource page as well. Thank you for your great writing!
Thank you!
I read this with a huge “oh” of recognition. My journals—even from bad periods in my life—are full of gaps and silences. I often go weeks or months without writing, and when I do write, there’s a litany of dailiness. As a historian who uses women’s journals to understand their lives, I’m coming more and more to see how limited they are as a source. And how little we can ever really understand about the lives of the ones who are no longer with us to fill in the gaps on the page.
I have kept a journal since I was 11. There are many years of blank space when as I look back, I just couldn’t write what was happening. It was to exhausting. And also….my journal has been my best friend. I am amused and amazed at the things I wrote as much as what I didn’t write. I use my journals as I write about my youth much truth is found there. I can’t yet reread anything from the past 10 years that will have to wait for another time, when I look back on my early 50’s and think, “oh how young I was”.
What a lovely thoughtful and fascinating look at the ways in which what we don’t share in our journals can be the most tender, vulnerable stories best lived in the blank space. I understand how writing of certain events can re-traumatize as your own journals revealed, Alissa. We keep ourselves safe the best we know how and something that means refraining from a written record and meaning-making when it’s too soon to look that close. I have kept journals all my life, since age 10, and have them all. I reread them from time to time & am also struck by how much isn’t there. For the past several years I’ve kept morning pages that range from the mundane to the occasional creative ground and are often very therapeutic for me. I don’t feel terror around journal keeping—seemingly, but your essay makes me think more deeply about what is not being written down but rather still kept safe and close where I don’t have to look too closely…yet.
Wonderful essay. I’ve never got into journaling although sometimes I think it would be a good thing for me as I tend to have a poor long term memory. Or maybe not a good idea? I’ve suffered my own share of trauma, a lot of which I’ve conveniently forgotten the raw details of. For instance, when I was around 21 my sister ‘reminded’ me of something we had suffered. I told her I couldn’t remember any such thing - then it all came back to me. A journal would perhaps make it much more real and have made it harder to move on, I’m not sure?
Thank you, Elissa, for your vulnerable, brave writing. I, too, have found it impossible to journal certain important life events.