Keeping Journals

I'm no stranger to journals.  I have kept them since I was 14.  They are the way I make sense of whatever is going on with me.  I've written about family, about love, about loss.  I've written when I was angry or hurt or depressed or just plain confused.  I have written when sentimental and even happy, but mostly it's the tough times that inspire me to write.  I've written down my dreams and later found they were telling me things I wasn't consciously aware of.  But all those journals were written just for me.  They were never public so I could be messy or ungrammatical or mean or thoroughly pissed off. 

For me, this blog is a different kind of journal.  I am still writing about very personal issues.  And I am still being honest.  But it's not the unvarnished truth.  I edit.  I consider the words I will use.  I consider that someone else might read this.  Now currently there is no indication that anyone but me is reading this.  But this is a public sphere and ya never know.  Someone I know just might read what I have written.  It makes me think really hard about what I will write.  I don't want to tell all the gory details.  They are not important.  What is important is the emotional truth.

Retuning to this blog started because I was tired of being stuck.  Writing in my private journal was not moving me forward.  It didn't get me moving.  And it didn't tell me what is going on with me.  Somehow editing out the details, the despair (which I just didn't want to put out for anyone else to see) is allowing me to see what is true for me.  It's a slow go, so I don't know if it will unstuck me.  But it sure is nice to notice that each day I have a further insight and I take one more step toward wholeness.