Journaling Change

If it's Tuesday, it must be time to journal.   How many of you journal?   Have you ever jotted down your day on a calendar?   That's a type of journaling...and a great many of us do that.   I enjoy journaling, but my problem is that I began a journal, then another, then another and it takes a long time to get back to the first journal.   

Remember my fabric journal, I'm still working on it....

Well, I have begun another journal which reflects my life and I am calling it 'Journey of Change'.   This is the beginning of a cover, see anything different for me...

Compare it to this page from a previous journal...

My favorite colors center around orange...I'm not really a 'pastel' person, but if you look at the picture of my new journal, you can see that my cover is done in pastels...CHANGE!

I actually did the cover on watercolor paper.   What's nice about that is that the markers do not bleed through to the other side.  So far, I have used colored pencils, markers and powders...

Here's a close-up of the banner...

And here are some of the pages that I've prepared to use for the journal...

By the way, how do you like my colored pencil holder...it's a planter that I purchased on sale...really cheap...at a craft store.   And it works better than I thought it would...  

A great prompt for journaling this week is change!   What is changing in your life?   What would you change if you could?   What does change mean to you?   Stop and think about the word 'change'!   How would you depict 'change'?  A photo?   A drawing?   A piece of prose or poetry?

Remember, there are no rules in journaling.   You express your ideas however you want to.  Nor do you have to share your journal with others.  In some cases, you may want your journal to be private, for your eyes only, and that's okay.

Your journal is your journal.   Period.   No ifs, ands or buts.   It is yours to design and fulfill however you choose.

For the next week, think about the word 'change' and what it means to you.   Then try a journal page (more if you want) to depict that meaning in whatever medium you want.   What do you have to lose, or better yet, what do you have to gain?  "If you try it, you might like it."

MY JOURNEY OF CHANGE...

I won't say that I have adjusted to a single life.   I still feel like part of a couple.   I will think of something to share and then come up short knowing that he is not here to listen, but I share it anyway.

Sometimes I cry when I think of him and other times I laugh.   But mostly I am just taking one step at a time.   

I have been reading books on grief.   Many of them, even the well known ones, I find are of no help to me.  One book, 'The Truth About Grief:  The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss'', has been the most helpful at this point.   It is a book written more for study than comfort.   But the way it has helped me is to understand that grief does not necessarily follow the popular cultural understanding. 

Of most importance is that each person grieves in a way appropriate for them and there are as many ways to grieve as there are snowflakes in a winter storm.   For me, as I am working through this change, it is very comforting to not have to live up to some artificial standard of grieving.  What do you think?