Re-Reading My Old Diaries-And What It Taught Me.

My mother was an avid keeper of journals.

Sometimes I would see them strewn about the house; an old notebook or a little, cute red diary. Sometimes I would take up journal writing as well, but never with the same enthusiasm as my mother. I had nothing against keeping diaries, and at times I even wished I would do it more. But I never felt satisfied after writing in my diary. It was a chore to me, a chore that I did repeatedly in hopes of bettering myself and my life in some way.

My mother would try to encourage my siblings and I to write in journals more often than we did growing up. To her, it was important to touch base with yourself and your thoughts. To further encourage this habit, she would buy us beautiful leather bound diaries for holiday and birthday presents. But I still couldn’t quite grasp the concept, even as a moody teenager. I was thinking all of the time, and I knew exactly what I was thinking all of time. What difference did it make if I wrote it down on paper? More often than not, I was left feeling more discouraged at the end of a journal entry than when I first started the journal entry. But like brushing my teeth, or doing my homework, it was something I did because I felt it was the right thing to do. A way of taking care of yourself. I suppose I think this way because my mother had…