The Art of Journaling--Holding Space for Myself Through Words

Published on Medium.com 8.13.19

I have stacks and stacks of old journals. Some have pretty covers that urge me to reach out and pick them up. Others are plain little books that seem drab and unworthy of holding the written treasures of my life. Sometimes I use a simple spiral notebook to record my thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, the vehicle in which I take my written journey isn’t all that important.

When the need to write calls, it doesn't matter where I write, just that the page is blank and willing to hold my thoughts and ideas.

My journals have been my safe space to "talk" about my life and the feelings I have as I navigate the ups and downs of daily living. Filling empty pages with my feelings, hopes, and dreams has always been my personal home-based therapy.

When I write, I have the opportunity to purge my mind of negativity and find clarity in my thinking patterns. As I practice the art of daily journaling, I begin to recognize my own toxic thoughts.

With recognition comes the ability to change.

For the past couple of days, I have been reading my old journals. Whenever I am feeling down or in a depressive funk, I pull out an old journal and become reacquainted with a younger version of myself. Often, reading about my past lifts my current mood and allows me to consider how far I have come in my own life.

The two journals I picked out of the stack this past week were from 2011 and 2012. At that time my husband and I were living in a rural setting trying to run a Permaculture homestead with chickens, goats, llamas and a multitude of gardens. We would sell produce, eggs, and raw goat milk shares to members of a local food co-op.

Back then, I was having some success selling my watercolors at the Farmer's Market every week. I was thrilled to be painting and selling my work. My youngest children were so little then at two and three years old. My older girls were sixteen and nineteen and in well into the throes of their own teenage angst.

There were ups and downs during that time period. My husband hurt his back working on an Earthbag llama barn and was barely able to move, let alone work on the homestead. I had to take up the slack and take care of the animals and gardens. I also had to run the household and take care of the children. It was not an easy time. Because my husband was unable to work as much, our financial situation quickly began to falter. I was a stay at home mom without an income at that time. It was rough, but I got through it. We got through it.

Now, as I clean my house of unwanted clutter, I ponder my stash of old journals that hide in boxes under my bed. What do I do with them? Is it time to let them go and release my past for good? It seems like the symbology of tossing out my old journals might require some sort of personal ceremony. I am not sure what that looks like right now. Maybe I am not ready to let them go just yet.

Reading and rereading my old journals shows how resilient I have been when times have been tough. My journals also contain so many memories of children's birthdays, goat birthings, abundant garden harvests, and our connections to the local community. They are full of poetry and an occasional sketch. Stuck in between the pages are ticket stubs, photographs, dried wildflowers, and my children's art--tangible evidence of happy times. The journals are my life in words, contained in little bound books, which I can go back to again and again when I need to.

Writing works as a creative meditation that brings me back to myself. 

When I journal, the mind chatter stops and I focus on what I am feeling right now, in the present moment. The emotions come out onto the paper and I have a chance to think about what it all means on a deeper level.

The patterns of unhappy thinking in my journals have not surprised me, but my ability to bounce back from my depressive episodes quickly has. What did I do?

Through my journaling, I was able to release the negative thoughts that swirled in my mind and set them free with positive affirmations. 

My spiritual gurus--Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Byron Katie--always show up in my old journals. Their teachings have brought me out of my negative funk time and time again, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

Positive affirmations go a long way. I have pages and pages of one sentence affirmations. Maybe writing the words over and over again helped me to believe them.

"I love and approve of myself."

"I trust my intuition."

"Right now, at this moment, I am okay."

Journaling has kept me present in my own life. Through writing, I am able to keep my emotions in check and counterbalance the negative with positive.

I don't know when I stopped my daily journaling practice. It might have been when I went back to college to get my graduate degree and time became such a valuable commodity. I was so focused on the external things that were happening in my life that I forgot about my inner well-being. I fell back into the depression that has been ever-present at the edges of my mind. I got stuck in the "pain body" as Eckhart Tolle refers to that state of mind that feeds itself on negativity.

I have been so trapped in my own mind cage of sadness and despair that I couldn't see any way out.
The mind chatter is all negative. My inner critic is relentless in reminding me what I do wrong and what could go wrong if I try anything different.

But my inner critic is not to be trusted! I have learned to dismiss the negative self-talk and replace it with positive affirmations. I learned this by reading numerous self-help books, but also by cementing those ideas through my journaling.

Journaling has been my lifeline in times of turmoil.

It's time to go back to my daily journal. It's time to revisit positive affirmations and simple gratitudes. I need my journaling practice like I need fresh air. It keeps me sane.

My boxes of old journals under the bed have reminded me that today is a new day and it is never too late to start again. When you live with depression you have to hold that idea next to your heart and take it out and remind yourself.

Every single day and every single moment I have the opportunity to simply begin again.

I am looking forward to reestablishing a writing relationship with myself.

Now when I look at my old journals, I realize that I am not ready to discard them. They are filled with negativity, sure, but they are also filled with joy and so much hope. Those prose filled pages hold the weight of my struggles with myself; they tell the story of who I was, who I am and who I want to be. They are old friends.

I could leave the journals in boxes, hidden under my bed, but I think it would be more appropriate to take them out, one by one, and thank my past self for having the courage to express herself through words. I am proud of my words. I need to give them the reverence they deserve on a shelf where I can see them and remember my stories.

Today begins a new chapter in the book of my life. Every single day I get to turn the page and start again if that is what I need to do.

Welcome back, my beautiful words! I can't wait to get to know you as you fill the empty pages of my new journal. This next chapter is going to be absolutely wonderful!

© K. A. Bennett 2019. All rights reserved.

Conquering Self-doubt 8.1.19

Conquering Self-doubt 
Published on Medium.com 8.1.19

We all have moments when self-doubt creeps into our lives. Some of us who live with the symptoms of depression experience this more often than not. Self-doubt combined with anxiety is a strong combination that fuels procrastination.

This past week I have been trying to finish something, and I am happy to say that I actually did it!

Spurred on by a call for art for a local art show, I managed to finish a piece I have been procrastinating about for more than a year. I also created an entirely new piece. Those were major accomplishments for me.

I have been isolating myself socially for about two years now. I have been afraid to put myself into a public setting where I might have to actually have conversations with people. Real conversations.

I have gone to a few art shows where the conversations have been trivial, and that suits me fine for now. I have personally been having issues with sharing too much of my own struggles inappropriately. I embarrass myself and make people uncomfortable. This is not the key to strong social networking.

As a result of my inopportune need to spill my guts in front of unsuspecting potential friends, I have not allowed myself to interact with others on a very frequent basis. The trauma to all of us is just too much.

Entering my art in a local art show was a big step for me towards getting out of my self-imposed prison of solitude.

I finished the art, which was the first step. The second step was actually taking my art to the gallery and leaving it there to be hung in the upcoming show. That was hard. I almost didn't make it.

I tried to come up with all of the reasons why I should not enter the show. The entry fee was too expensive. My art is no good. I wouldn't finish in time. No one wants to see my art anyway. I might have to explain my art to strangers. That's a big one.

This particular show is about suicide awareness, which for me means shedding light on all of those things that make me unhappy. While I am not in any danger of taking my own life, I have had thoughts about it in the past, and still wonder what I have to contribute positively to the world. Why am I even here?

My art pieces explore my emotional issues on a deeper level. I have always used art as a therapeutic tool to discover things about myself on a deeper level. I have used art to express my moods and fears. So putting my art, this particular art, into a public setting for others to see was an act of courage.

I conquered my self-doubt and did it anyway, knowing that I don't have many opportunities to show my art. I procrastinate my way around almost any chance I could utilize to become more known as an artist. I want more recognition. Wouldn't it be great to sell more art? But at the same time, I don't want to have to explain myself to others. I don't necessarily want to talk about my artwork.

Ironically, the part I like best about attending art shows is talking with artists about their work. What does it mean? Why did they create it? Is there a deeper meaning that goes beyond the surface? Artists are wonderfully deep people and I enjoy spending time getting to know them.

But me? I am still pretty sure no one wants to talk to me or get to know me. I know this stems from just coming out of a relationship with a man that never really had an interest in me as a person. I was just an accessory in his life. My childhood was similar. My parents had little interest in me and my sister absolutely wanted to avoid me at all costs.

My self-esteem has been pretty nonexistent for my entire life. That's nearly half a century of just putting up with myself without giving myself the attention that I could never get from anyone else. I see a pattern.

Putting my art in this art show was validating. Not because my work will be seen by others, but because I found the courage to do something for myself. My creativity has been my only constant. And in spite of the fact that most of the important people in my life dismissed my artistic tendencies as trivial, I persisted.

My creativity is one thing I really like about myself. My work may not be as good as others or good at all, in some cases, but I keep on creating regardless. I am a creative person. I have to create. I have to use my mind and my hands to make things. Even if people don't understand my work or it doesn't resonate with them, I still have to make it because creating makes me feel whole.

This particular art show resonates with me because of the funk I have been in for so many years. I get it.

Depression is hard to live with--get out of bed every morning and function--hard to live with. It is difficult to talk to others about what is going on in your head when you are in the grips of depression.

It is difficult to explain to people you haven's seen for years why you just dumped a load of emotional garbage into their lap when you don't understand it yourself. (Actually, it's about never being heard, and the overwhelming desire or need to just have someone listen and validate your feelings.)

So yeah, maybe I have some ulterior motive about entering my art in this show. Maybe I am looking for validation of some sort. Maybe if people see my work they will see me, or at least a part of me.

I don't want people to think I live in a dark place all of the time. My art for this show is not all of who I am, but it is a piece of me and tells the story of my journey in some little way.

I think art does that. It takes us on a journey into another place, both as a viewer and as an artist. Without expression, who would we be? Who would I be?

When I took my art to the gallery for this exhibit, it was with trembling hands that I filled out the intake paperwork. I was anxious. I was in the clutches of my own self-doubt and my inner critic was wreaking havoc on my mind.

But if ever there was a show I need right now, this is it. I need to conquer my own self-doubt and be a part of the artistic community around me, not as a bystander, but as a participant. I need to show my self-expression. I need to share my message.

I still have time to procrastinate going to the opening tomorrow night. I will be anxious and downright afraid of getting negative responses to my work. I know that won't happen. The art people in my town are wonderful, caring beings who fully understand that artists see and live life a little differently than the mainstream. For that I am thankful.

I hope I decide to go to the art opening. I need to see everyone's work. I need to see how other artists cope with the subject of depression. I need to see hope hanging on the wall. I need to experience that journey as a viewer into a different perspective so that I might gain some perspective on my own life.

If I don't go, I will never know how my work looks hanging next to the talented artists that surround me in my community. I will not get to be a part of something bigger than me. I will not get to feel the loving energy in the room when such a sensitive subject as suicide is tackled.

Everyone's life is worth something. Everyone matters. Each expression of creativity is unique and should be appreciated as such.

We can't let our own self-doubt hold us back from reaching for a dream, from striving to heal and become better, or from sharing our stories. We all matter. We all have worth. Our voices deserve to be heard.

Love is the answer.

Climate Change Apathy -- A Personal Story 7.24.19

Climate Change Apathy — A Personal Story

I am extremely disheartened by the apathy in my country. Not only is there a lack of compassion towards people (re: migrants fleeing violence and climate change — i.e.climate refugees), but there is a seemingly huge disinterest in solving the climate crisis.

People continue to go about their business of supporting capitalism with little to no thought about what the capitalist paradigm has done and is doing to our planet. Certainly, there are the naysayers who don’t even believe in climate change, although with the hard science to back it up, I am not sure why that is still an issue. Maybe denial. If people continue to live in denial they don’t have to take personal responsibility for anthropogenic induced climate change. Is that it?

The bizarre weather around the planet should be setting off alarm bells. Everyone should be paying attention to what is happening — if not in the world, then in their own communities. The flooding, the superstorms, the abnormal heat waves, and frigid cold spells are telling us that something is going on with our climate.

It is going to get worse before it gets better. Personally, I am very afraid. So much so that for the past twenty years I have been trying to find a suitable place to land to create a sustainable future for my family.

My husband (now ex-husband) and I started growing vegetables in our back yard as soon ad we started cohabitating. When we bought our own house, we added chickens. It only took a few years to realize that we wanted a larger space to garden and maybe keep goats for milk. Our lovely house was more expensive than we wanted to deal with long term, so we sold it and moved to the country.

Our entire homesteading experiment was a learning experience. (Read about our homesteading experiences here: https://onelittlefarm.blogspot.com) We got our goats, learned to milk them and make cheese. We sold eggs, milk, cheese, vegetables, and plant starts through the local food coop. It was never enough to support our family financially, but our diets had changed for the better from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to one that was mostly organic and made of real food.

We had about two and a half acres at our country home. We kept chickens, goats and I got two llamas in the hopes of utilizing their fiber and teaching them to pack. Some of our neighbors were supportive of our endeavors and I often gave farm tours of our little homestead. My husband taught classes in chicken keeping, gardening and other homestead skills. Life was almost good.

We had our ups and downs as a family with two small children and two teenagers, but we were getting by and building our dream. Until they (horrid Big Oil Industry) started fracking the land around us. This was never disclosed to us when we bought our property. Perhaps none of it started before we signed the mortgage, but it was a deal-breaker for us. We couldn’t stay there when we knew the potential harm that fracking could cause to our family and to our homestead. We became climate refugees--migrants looking for an environmentally clean place to live.

We ended up bouncing around the southwest, renting houses with acreage so we could keep our livestock and have room to garden. Some of our rentals were nightmares and some were a dream. We rented an Earthship outside of Taos, New Mexico for a little over a year and that was one of the best experiences I have ever had. That’s a story all its own.

Needless to say, we had to find our own place that we could put down permanent roots. Renting did not give us the ability to really do the things we wanted. We bought land in New Mexico and in Colorado, thinking each time we found our place to be. We even grew hemp on our property the first year it was legal to do so in Colorado. But code regulations or finances eventually sent us back to a city to look for a stable income. It turns out that not many people were really interested in our homesteading classes or organically produced food — not enough to support our family financially. Capitalism was killing us.

When we were in Taos we tried to belong to a community barter system and timebank with less than successful results. Everywhere we ended up, we struggled to make ends meet and decided we could move back to the city and try to make a go of our homestead in an urban setting. We had to sell off all of our livestock because the city we chose would not allow anything, not even backyard chickens.

At that time, I was pretty disillusioned with our homesteading endeavors anyway. We were spending more in organic feed than we could justify. Nothing was balancing out. We couldn’t find organically grown hay or alfalfa, although those crops were not sprayed as far as we knew where we bought it. I was tired.

Country folks seemed resistant to organically produced crops. A lot of people raised cattle for their livelihood and were not interested in changing things in how they ran their operations. We did meet a few organic farmers and were delighted to do business with them when we could. Sometimes we had the opportunity to learn from them as well, and that was the silver lining in our rural living experiment.

Everything my husband and I did for the past twenty years was geared toward living sustainably and trying to create some place our children could have to make it in a quickly changing world. We were afraid of what the future looked like, knowing most of the people we encountered were in denial about the climate or resistant to change. No one wants to give up their comforts. I get that. We experimented with off-grid living. We hauled our own water. We lived off of power from the sun and the wind. We ate the food we produced and grew in our gardens. We reduced our consumption and learned to live without. We boycotted consumerist American holidays (almost all of them) in an effort to resist cultural capitalism. We lived frugally and simply.

When we moved back to the city we were inundated by the capitalist culture. The lights, the stores, the spending, the cars…it was insanely overwhelming. Culture shock. Our homesteading past became our little secret, shared with only a select few. Most people we encountered were not interested enough to have conversations about Permaculture or how we could use community building to create sustainable local change. It was depressing. In the jobs we did find, we both continued to work towards being a part of creating sustainability in our community without necessarily advertising our own personal beliefs. People are resistant to others who are different than them. (Note the immigration crisis). As a family, we started to fall back into mainstream American consumerist culture and as a couple, we grew farther apart.

I am a cultural anthropologist by education and I have a Masters in Cultural Resource Management. My husband got his Masters in Sustainable Community Development. We have both studied Permaculture for years and at some point, my husband got his certification in Permaculture Design. Certification is expensive and I opted to get certified in other things like Life Coaching and Art Therapy.

Because of our educations and experience, you would think that we would garner some respect when we talk about climate change and the solutions towards combating the devastating crises coming. people just don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to take action in their own lives to slow the changes that are coming.

The apathy scares me more than anything. The polite stares and the nod and smile attitude I have gotten from people over the years has weighed heavy on my heart and mind. Before I went back to Grad School, I decided I would become a minister and start a church for the planet. Eco-spirituality. I am not religious. I don’t believe in any god anywhere, and I think leaving everything in the hands of some mythical being is a human cop-out. I respect people’s belief systems, sometimes. When people start hurting others or the environment and justify their actions through their religion, I have to personally denounce said religion as hypocritical nonsense.

Most of us know right from wrong. In my mind, taking care of the planet we live on and treating people with compassion and respect is the right thing to do. I wanted to base my church on that ideology. I had a church blog ( https://greendesertchurchfarm.blogspot.com) and wrote many a sermon on living as our higher selves because I firmly believe that if we heal the hurt within ourselves, we can heal the cultural hurts and in turn heal the planet from the wrongs we have done.

I gave up my church idea (I had like seven followers) and pursued my Masters because I thought if I had the credentials people would take me seriously. In my graduate work, I turned every paper and project into something about sustainability or social justice in the hope that at least my words might trickle into the minds of my cohort and subtly cause a change in their own actions and lives. I was very much trying to implant mind viruses everywhere I went, knowing that when enough people finally believed, things would begin to change (The Hundredth Monkey idea).

Not much has changed over my lifetime or the past ten years. Sure, there have been a few subtle changes: mainstream media now reports on climate change more often than they ever did ten years ago; people I know that used to brush me off are now bringing attention to some of the climate crises they see happening around them; the beloved little community I have chosen to live in is trying to go greener through active promotion of electric vehicles (my then-husband played a big part in that), recycling and creating its own city power company instead of being trapped and beholden to energy giants. I guess any good change is a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, we are running out of time, which has been true for many years, but I feel the urgency upon me again to do something — to shout from the rooftops that humanity (and all species) are in dire straights unless we do something now.

But what can we do when nobody is interested in even hearing the problems? What can we do when people are blinded by capitalism and stuck in their day to day just trying to make ends meet?

Sigh. I still believe that humans have the capacity to solve the problems we are facing. It may be far too late at this point to do much about the climate changes coming, although it would be great to stop this runaway train right now. We may be at the juncture where we have to choose adaptation over ending climate threats. But maybe through adaptive practices, we can lessen future impacts so that humans can survive in a hostile climate environment.

The answers are all around us. Yes, we need to heal ourselves so that we can heal others. We need to look at alternatives to capitalism. We need to live more sustainably in every way. We need to build more sustainably and change building codes to fit new, greener practices. We need to teach and practice Permaculture in our communities and in our own yards. We need to give up everything that is contributing to climate instability. This is where it gets hard because people just don’t want to give up their comforts or change what they know. But we have to if we want our children and their children to survive.

Taking responsibility for ourselves, our own actions and emotions is a big tenet of Life Coaching. With my recent divorce, I have been living in a san and dark box of my own making — victimhood. I blame my ex-husband for a lot of what has gone wrong between us. It doesn’t matter. Obviously, we could not overcome our differences enough to remain together. I am responsible for me and he is responsible for himself. What do I choose to do with that?

I vow to get back on track. I want to finish the food forest I have been creating in my urban yard. I will continue to homeschool my children so that they are exposed to many ideas and belief systems and are not indoctrinated into the American capitalist culture. I will continue to recycle and shop at thrift stores. I will continue the reduced shower schedule to conserve water. I will continue to work on my house to make it more sustainable. I will walk more and drive less. I will continue to heal myself from my own childhood and relationship traumas so that I might begin to help others to heal themselves too. I will focus more on being the change I want to see and use my voice to educate others instead of whine about my own personal emotional crap.

Apathy. Maybe I fell down that hole too and forgot that every individual can make a difference. I want to care. I do care. As the world continues to move in ecologically unfriendly ways outside my front door, I will remember that I can choose to live differently and teach my children the skills they will need to survive in a rapidly changing world.

What can I do today?