Words saved my life.

Writing righted my life.

And now I don’t want to stop.

I know that I will never stop writing. My journal is where I can lay my burden down, my journal is where I can explore how I feel, where my fears are coming from.

My journal is the garden where I plant my seeds of ideas, my seeds of who I want to become.

My journal is where I do serious work, and it is where I frolic and play!

Now, this is a L O O O O O N G article! It’s definitely going to be a “get a cup of tea and put your feet up” kind of article, but here are the bullets points I’m going to cover …

So, what exactly is a journal?

A journal is your story, your history, your present moment.

It’s a gateway into who you really are and how you really feel.

It’s a place to play and a place to get down to some serious work.

Keeping a journal, whether you do it every day, once a week, or only in moments of strong emotions, (whether they are good or bad), can be so many of these things, and it can be so much more. (By the way, my personal advice would be to do it every single day … each day builds on the day and days before.)

Keeping a journal is meditation; it’s a place where you can open up a dialogue with your inner self, or your inner child, or your inner crazy-person-who-just-needs-to-rant!! (She used to show up in my pages quite a lot in the first years/decades!)

For me, keeping a journal has always been my link to myself, a place where I can be my true self, and a space for me to explore what I might become.

Journal writing is also sometimes called “expressive writing”, and it is creativity in action, and that is always good for you.

Mental Well-Being

Expressive writing has many well documented emotional and physical health benefits, and keeping a journal is recommended by psychologists and therapists, as well as by all of us who have ever used journaling to help us through difficult times.

As Ruth Ozeki, author and Zen Buddhist priest says …

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I’m a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

You can read about how my journaling journey began when I first did The Artist’s Way creative recovery course back in 1998 in Tiny Transformations: The Artist’s Way.

The First Time Round

The first time I went through the Artist’s Way 12-week program (because I’ve actually done it three times over the last twenty-something years … but more about that another day, methinks!), I did not know what to expect. At All.

I mean, all my friend said was, “I think you need this”.

Need what??

But I opened it and started to read. And I immediately felt a resonance with what Julia Cameron said …

Many of us wish we were more creative. Many of us sense we ARE more creative, but unable to effectively tap that creativity. Our dreams elude us. Our lives feel somehow flat. We hunger for what might be called creative living.

That was me. Right there. I knew I wanted to be creative. I knew I had it in me to be creative. But I didn’t believe in myself enough to voice that, even to myself.

The main tool in what Ms Cameron calls her “spiritual path to higher creativity” was a thing called Morning Pages … three pages of stream of consciousness writing every morning … basically – keeping a journal.

It changed my life. Keeping a journal CAN do that.

I’ve Always Been One for The Gold Stars

Not that I ever put any pressure on myself or anything (that’s a joke, by the way!), but if I’m going to do something, I HAVE to do it RIGHT. My husband calls this my need for The Gold Stars, and he’s not wrong!

So, I decided that I would do the Artist’s Way “properly”, I would follow each step, do all the tasks each week, and NOT read ahead to what was coming up the next week. I was very disciplined about that. I so wanted it to work, that I knew I would give it my very best shot.

Following the Program

On the last evening of each week, as I did the final tasks, the summing up of how the week had been for me, I would write about all the feelings that had come up for me during the last 7 days; all the ideas/words/thoughts that had come pouring out onto the page. All the emotions that doing the tasks had brought up … fears, anger, pain, self-doubt … self-realisation.

And then I would turn the page to the next week’s chapter … And here’s the mind-blowing thing …

The next week would invariably be looking at one or all of the feelings I’d just been writing about!! This blew me away! I had been so disciplined, I didn’t “cheat” by sneaking a peak at what was coming up, hell, I didn’t even look at the Index at the start of the book!

I remember so vividly writing about all the anger that had bubbled up in my morning pages one week, about how angry I was at how I was being treated, how angry I was that I was not allowed to be myself or have my own opinions.

And then turning the page to read about how we can turn anger into fuel.

Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it.

Julia Cameron

It took my breath away. Literally.

I gasped.

Then I cried.

Then I read.

Then the next morning I got up and I wrote five pages about my anger.

Still Following the Program

That was week 3 and by that point, I was completely hooked by the Artist’s Way, by the process, and by Julia Cameron’s skills.

I started to think that if she could be so spot on about my feelings, about my lack of self-belief, about my fears, then maybe she could also be right about all the good stuff too!

Maybe she could be right when she said that there really was a creative life possible for me. That the dreams I’d had as a child of being a writer might be actually come true.

Who Knew Writing Could Be So Invigorating?

I threw myself into the process. And I felt so alive, so invigorated, by all the things that I was writing. I had so many epiphanies in my pages in those first twelve weeks of writing; so many moments when I actually sat back, flabbergasted, and thought, “Wow, so THAT is where that feeling comes from!”

I also had some moments where I literally thought, ”Holy Shit!! I did NOT know that was how I really felt!”

But it wasn’t easy. In those first couple of years, the more I wrote, the deeper I delved into myself, the more open the dialogue with my inner self became, then the harder my external life became. The time I spent writing and reading was resented. The feelings I was voicing were denigrated. I was belittled for thinking I could be creative. (I told you I was in a pretty dark place at that time).

The Dam Broke

But I didn’t let that stop me, I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to.

A dam had broken, a dam that was high and deep and had been years in the making.

And the words flowed out of me and onto the page at such a rate, that when I think back on it, I get an image of smoke coming off the paper, cartoon-frantic-writing style!!

By about week five, I had finally admitted to myself that I had ALWAYS wanted to be a writer. Since I was a child, books have been such an important part of my life. I cut my reading teeth on sci-fi and fantasy … a brother seven years older than me meant that I was exposed to Asimov, Dick, Tolkien, et al from a very early age … I’d read Lord of Rings (for the first time!) by the time I was 8 or 9 years old (I’ve read it about half a dozen times since!). And I knew that I wanted to write.

Finally in my morning pages, I was able to own that dream. I was writing! And it didn’t matter to me that no one would read it, the very act of writing was so liberating for me that it was all I needed to do. Someone else reading my words would be a brilliant bonus, but I was writing for ME!

My First Poem

By week seven, I’d written my first poem. That came as a total surprise to me!

My earliest memory of being truly happy was when we were camping in Glen Etive. I must have been about seven years old, and we were walking up the glen, following the course of the river. These rivers that tumble from the Scottish hills are amazing, so clean, so cold, rushing over glacial rocks towards the lochs or the sea.

I remember lying flat on my belly on a smooth rock, with the river roaring around me, and the trees and the hills enclosing me in this secret world, and being so incredibly happy that I wanted to stay there forever. (My ambition at that time was to become a hermit, and Glen Etive felt like the perfect place to build my hermitage!).

My first poem since English classes at school literally fell out of my head and onto the page in week 7, and it was about that day in Glen Etive, the rushing river-roar, the smooth rock beneath my belly, the total happiness I felt.

There was more crying at this point, but it was such happy crying, actual tears of joy. I had to phone the friend who’d given me the book … “I’ve just written a poem,” I gasped. “Yep, that’s a poem alright!!” was all she said!

Righting My Life

By week ten or eleven, I had enrolled in a local creative writing group! Holy Moly … there I was, reading my writing out to total strangers!

By the end of the 12-week Artist’s Way program, the habit of writing each day was firmly in place. And I didn’t stop.

And here I am, well over 25 years later, still writing.

I wrote this article in the pages of my journal.

I do all my thinking on the page, sorting out my emotional “stuff”, figuring out what it is that I want, dreaming my dreams.

Journaling also allows me to delve deep into my own psyche, to finally face my darkest thoughts, to accept my feelings and myself.

Writing saved my life, I truly believe that.

Writing has allowed me to right my life!

And writing set me free. And I will never stop.

The Story Continues

Thirteen years after I had started journaling, and when I had a pile of A4 hard-backed note books as tall as myself (I’m five-foot and one inch tall, just for reference! 😉), I made a momentous move in my life. I left Ireland, where I’d lived for almost 20 years, and moved back to the UK (to marry the love of my life). Before I started packing up my home ready for the move, I had a pretty major operation, which forced me into six weeks’ bed-rest, and I thought it was a great opportunity for me to read all of my old journals, to see if there was anything I wanted to keep. (I was going to be moving myself, in a car, so I did not have space to take everything!).

As I started to read, I could feel so much pain in those early journals. Pain, suffering, anger, resentment, anxiety, victimhood … interestingly, way before the Gene Keys, I was witnessing all of my Shadows at play in those 13 years’ worth of inner work. I knew there had been massive breakthroughs, and huge shifts; but there was also a lot of negativity. I did not want to bring that negativity to my new, love-filled, shiny, happy life. So … I burned the lot of them! Holy shit, but that felt good. 🔥 Talk about a cathartic experience!

Since I started this new chapter of my life back in 2013, I have kept my journals!! They are precious receptacles for my inner work, for my breakthroughs, for my rich inner world. I discovered the miraculous truth that I can do remarkable inner work, even when I’m really happy! I used to think I had to be feeling shit about myself and my life, for the words to flow, but I write even more from this happy place.

As I write this article, I am nine and a half months into a year-long program called Devoted, created and guided by Hayley Curtis.

Devoted has been a deep dive into my Gene Keys Golden Path, in the company of 12 glorious women. Hayley gives us workbooks for each of the spheres, and she is a master of the art of journal prompts.

This is such a gift to me, because I like nothing more than posing myself questions in my own journaling as a way getting the journaling juices flowing.

Having these insightful, laser-focused quotes from Hayley is just perfect, and I have filled three journals so far (well, almost three … I am 7 pages from the end of the third journal, and journal number four is waiting on my desk!).

If you would like to use prompts in your journaling, either as a starting point, or as a portal into deeper contemplation, then check out our Bite-Sized Bravery posts ... we liberally sprinkle them with questions and prompts that you are going to love!

Before Devoted, I worked one-to-one with Hayley, travelling through my Golden Path. That filled over five journals. I had already filled almost a whole journal with the writing I’d done, inspired by the journaling journeys inside Hayley’s membership.

These are the journals I have filled since I entered Hayley’s world on 26^th December 2022 …

Journaling is My Genius

For the first 25 years that I was journaling, I saw it as “therapy” … the expressive writing that helped me to sort my shit out. It was a healing journey, but it was also incredibly personal. I would not share my writing with anyone, apart from when the odd poem would fall out of my head onto the page.

When I started my bookbinding business, I would often journal out ideas for marketing posts and social media content; but essentially, my journaling itself, the real, juicy inner work journaling, was just for me.

Once I had started to work with the Gene Keys, and had become really grounded in Hayley’s membership, she invited me to be a Guide in that space, so I started to take the things I had been journaling about and turn them into articles for that space. This is something I continue to do, because I am still a Guide, along with Meghan, in Gene Keys Unleashed with Hayley Curtis.

Journaling, I have realised, is my genius! Sharing my voice and sharing my inner work journey is my higher purpose. This work, this writing, this sharing … this is what I am here in this life to do.

Now I’m Journaling for this Cauldron as well as for Myself

It was out of that journaling journey of mine, combined with Meghan’s inner work journey with the Gene Keys, and the pure bloody synergy of our work in Devoted, that this wonderful website was conceived and created.

Now I’m journaling, not just for me, not just for the contemplation of my Gene Keys, not just for my own inner work and personal growth … I’m journaling for YOU, dear reader!! I’m journaling about concepts and ideas around my own Gene Keys work, that I can tell YOU about, that might help you find a way into your own inner world.

This work is deep work; this work can be hard and challenging. This work can take time, and you need a healthy dose of patience, and a great big helping of gentleness with yourself. Oh, and honesty, you need honesty by the truck load!

But man alive, it is worth it! There is nothing I have ever done that helped me in the way that journaling has (and believe me, I’ve tried just about every alternative therapy you can name!).

I have transformed my life, my Self, I have transformed everything, and I’ve done it all by starting with that blank page of my journal.

And if you’re scared, because you don’t know what you’re going to fill the blank pages with … just pick up the pen and start writing, even if all you can think of is … “I don’t know what to write” … and just keep writing. The words WILL come.

As Julia Cameron says, “Leap, and the net will appear.”

After more than two decades of journal writing, to sit down at the blank page is such a joy for me. I use the journals that I create myself, because I love the feel of my fountain pen flowing across the soft cartridge paper.

For me, the blank page is no longer scary, it’s an invitation.

An invitation to be with myself, an invitation to BE myself.

So, here is my invitation to you … show up at your own blank page … dare to start, and allow yourself to fall into your own inner world as words fall onto your page.

You WILL be amazed! Trust me … I’m a journaler.