BHC Program on Journaling

Last Sunday we had a BHC program on journaling. Roger gave it, with his desultory storytelling style. Sometimes he digressed off the topic but he was speaking of his own memories, some of which very definitely should end up in a journal of some kind.

I mentioned that journaling has been shown to help women with metastatic breast cancer survive longer, and that it can be helpful in all kinds of ways. I also mentioned blogs and the ease of keeping a journal online, protected by passwords or other types of privacy if necessary. What I like about online blogs is that they can be embellished by photos and links to other websites, and now even videos (though, I don't anticipate putting videos on this blog anytime soon).

I mentioned also the most famous diary in the world, Anne Frank's. It was Anne Frank's diary that introduced me to the concept and gave me the idea to keep my own. Her diary shed light on the Holocaust, even if there are some anti-semitic liars who want to deny it ever happened. It also showed me that in other times and places, and even under the most difficult of circumstances, a teenage girl was a teenage girl. She fought with her mother and favored her father, and had her first (and only) love affair with the boy upstairs.

I've kept diaries on and off since I was 11 years old, and I've destroyed quite a few of them. A few years ago I destroyed hundreds and hundreds of pages, ripping them up in a Burger King, because I was afraid someone would find them and read them someday. Now I keep a blog that is open to the public, go figure!

Sometimes I've kept specialized journals, a travel journal for instance. Another example would be the journal I kept when I was pregnant, for a psychology experiment. The purpose was to explore bonding between the mother and unborn child, and whether a difficult pregnancy would interfere with it. I did have a difficult pregnancy so maybe I didn't bond optimally with Jason before he was born but I feel I bonded with him just fine afterwards.

I have so many memories and should probably try to put them into a book. Or, I could write them as separate articles and try to publish them, like "Mom's Egg Creams." That's another thing on my to-do list, write my memoirs. I think everyone should journal, because we've all got a story to tell.