Do you journal?

Have you ever wanted to journal, to put your deepest thoughts in written form, but just don’t know how to get started?  I have found that journaling can be a key component of the healing journey as well as an amazing ride of self-discovery.

I’d like to share my journaling experience with you. I made a list of 30+ personal attributes (see below).  I have listed them in a very specific and personal order that was meaningful to me.  I chose the first category on my list and then I just started writing

I wrote more from my heart rather than with my mind.   I file my writings away and look at them once in a while.  It`s amazing to see changes in what I wrote then, and what I understand now.  Sometimes I find that I see things much more clearly now, and I have a hard time believing that I actually wrote what I did, way back when.

Here’s a list that I use:

The Secrets To A Good Life

• Love    
• Joy    
• Peace    
• Patience    
• Kindness    
• Goodness    
• Faithfulness    
• Humility    
• Self-control
• Faith   
• Honesty
• Healing    
• Forgiving    
• Thanking    
• Appreciating    
• Hope    
• Intuition 
• Searching    
• Learning   
• Growing
• Purpose
• Confidence
• Determination
• Perseverance
• Compassion    
• Befriending    
• Listening   
• Understanding   
• Giving    
• Hugging    
• Playing    
• Smiling  
• Laughing    
• Dreaming    
• Creating

Maybe you’d like to try journaling. You could start with the same list.  Add to it.  Subtract from it.  Rearrange it in a meaningful order that makes sense to you.

Do you currently journal?   

What approach works for you? 

In what ways have you benefited from your journaling?

• hope for a good day

• hope for visitors

• hope for the small things that make life good to live

• hope to go outdoors

• hope to be pain-free.

Hi JennJilks

Thanks so much for your post.  It was very insightful.  I hope that we hear more from you on Virtual Hospice.  I am a hospice resident support volunteer. 

The part of your post that touched my heart deeply was “hope for visitors”.  Sadly, some hospice residents do not get many visitors – some, none at all.  As a volunteer, I feel especially drawn to these people. 

I might not have known them for their entire lives, but I am there, now, in the moment, to “companion” them on this journey. 

It may seem small, even futile to some outside observers.  But to me, and I hope to the recipient, it seems like the most important thing in the world at that very moment.

- eKim