Your journal is a private, sacred place. No one need be allowed to visit, if you don’t want the intrusion. This is your place, your sanctuary to explore your feelings, your successes, your hurts, your celebration of life!
Sometimes, the blank page causes people to steer away from the simple act of journaling—that is, putting down on paper what one thinks or feels. Then comes along the idea of embellishing that journal, which may cause some to raise their hands and say, "No way!"
From the start, let me assure that you don't have to be a writer or an artist to journal. To illustrate my point, let’s begin at the beginning. Before we all learned our ABCs and how to connect them to create words, we were drawing. We drew our parents, our pets, our house, cars, trees…the list was endless. We were in the pre-verbal stage. Our symbols were not connected to letters or numbers, but instead were pictures.
Today's journal
Today, journaling is more than just taking note of the weather or the log of the day’s work. Instead it has taken on a whole new role—and never so much as the one it takes as a visual journal. Now we're not bound by words alone, but have the liberty to use visual objects to tell our story or express our feelings.
We are FREE to do whatever we wish between the pages of our books—be it a full page of words, drawings, paintings, collages, magazine cut outs, photos, found objects and so on. According Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, authors of Journal Revolution, there is
“A beat within you and it is more than your heart. It’s the sound of your personal rhythm, the words you shout in our bones, the leaps you dance in your dreams, the grief you hide behind your smile…Rise up and Create.”
Unlike the written journal where the words matter the most, the visual journal takes on a life of it’s one. Several visual journalist will say they don’t know why they pick a picture of a piece of fabric to express themselves, but once they do, they are certain it was the right choice for that day, for that hour, that moment.
When was the last time you meditated or for that matter, just sat down on your sofa without any interruption—no television, no radio, no Internet, no video games, no spouse, no roommate, no children…. When was the last time you lived in the present—thought about nothing but what was right in front of you. There’s no past, no future, just NOW.
If you journal at all, you know that you are in the ever-present and that’s the greatest gift you can give yourself. That’s why we journal. Not only does journaling keep us in the moment, it also relieves stress, reduces anxiety, aids us with our anger, gives us a chance to voice OUR feelings and engages us on a journey to our true selves. It’s a healing experience. Thus, you live one page at a time—not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today.
It’s more fun than scrapbooking.
Recently I heard that there are some scrapbook enthusiasts who are beginning to add journaling to their work. I say, great! One of the things that’s always puzzled me about scrapbooks is that the creator has lots of lots of pictures and nice little sayings, but what is really being said. How does the “author/artist” really feel about the birth of the baby, the wedding, the trip, the holiday and so on. By adding words to those pictures, the scrapbook can become not only a nostalgic record (as well as a fun thing to create), but also a real take on what was happening during all those events.
Visual journaling is somewhat like scrapbooking, but taken much, much further. The process can stem from the written word, but can also have it start with the visual and go from there. But what’s most important is that the journaler is true to him/her self.
Ready to jump in? Join us every second Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Bring your heavy-duty sketchbook. All other materials supplied. $25.
