Marriage Undone

My first regular journal emerged after my boyfriend died my senior year of high school. Since then, I’ve continued to journal almost daily and frequently have more than one physical notebook for the purpose.

Journaling is an especially useful activity in the midst of any crisis, simply for the cathartic release. But journals that start in the midst of a crisis also offer concrete evidence of your growth and healing. Re-reading a previous year’s journal can be eye-opening, and I find the holidays a perfect time for this personal reflection.

You don’t have to be a writer to keep a journal. The only audience is you - you don’t have to worry about spelling and grammer, you don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of your opinions. You can write as little or as much as you want, and you can be 100 percent honest. (Do find a good hiding place for your journal, so you don’t worry about curious and/or concerned friends or family members giving in to the temptation to read you personal ramblings!)

When you start a journal in the midst of a crisis like separation or divorce, your entries are likely to be sad, angry, frustrated — generally reflecting your negative emotions. This is where I find it is extremely important to have more than one journal. Dedicate yourself to a “gratitude journal”. Make an effort to write something you are thankful for, every day. The entries do not have to be long. Just an ongoing list will do. Of course you can use the same physical notebook for your rants and your praises, but I find that dedicating a separate physical place for expressing my positive feelings forces me to give those emotions daily attention.

Journals can be quite fancy and expensive, and I love to have a beautiful “book” for myself. But I also tend to procrastinate about writing in a “nice” journal. I tend to want to wait until I have something “important” to say before I scribble in a pretty book. For that reason, I prefer and recommend a plan composition book - I like the old-fashioned marble hardback notebooks that our English teachers made us use in high school, but any sort of book with blank pages inside will work.

The important part is not the where you write, just that you do it. If you’ve never kept a journal, you’ll probably be surprised how much it can help your state of mind - both in the present and down the road when you re-read and see how far you’ve come.