As a kid I would journal. I would write all my woes. I would write prayers to Jesus.

It would be about what I thought I should need. Feeling wrong. Feeling sad. And I don’t remember feeling that great afterwards.

As a teenager I wrote even more…and it got darker…and I expressed my depression through it. It was deep and it’s interesting to look back on as a work of self expression at that time in my life.

But I was always frustrated with journaling.

I didn’t necessarily want to record the mundanity of my life in any given moment.

I thought I was ‘supposed to’ write how I was feeling and thinking…but it never really made me feel better…so over time it became something I just dropped…

…and it made me sad.

In college, I was sitting at a coffee shop, with my older sister and our mutual super close friend, and I forget who had come up with the idea but it came to the conversation that we should write ‘stream of consciousness’ (which I thought I had done in all my previous writings), but THIS time, it was going to be FUN.

We would pick a SUPER random topic, not deep, just spontaneous first word that came to someone’s mind.

We all agreed to write it at the top of the paper and then start a timer and just put pen to paper and see what flowed out…until someone was done…and then we were all done.

And then we read them aloud.

It was a deep moment in my life. The richness of each our words and thoughts that came streaming through was so beautiful and unique to each person. There was awkward steps amidst the flow like any stream of consciousness would have.

It felt vulnerable.

And I loved it!

So began a renewed sense of writing I’ve had ever since…writing blogs here and there, musings on social media, and deep thoughts to myself.

And then I hit another plateau…

I have been into ‘personal growth’ if you will since I was a kid.

And I have always wanted things, fun or not, to be ‘practical’. To have a purpose.

And though my new writing flowed and felt self expressive, I started craving a NEW desire…

I wanted to go deeper with myself.

To face myself…and I didn’t exactly know WHO yet…or what parts…and it felt vulnerable.

I don’t remember it being a specific day or even time in my life…but gently as I stepped into greater Embodiment and Somatic understanding in my life…

…as I gained a new found relationship with my body, and understanding of how it held traumas deeply buried

…I realized I needed a form of communication within ME.

And thus began the next deepening of trust, of grounding NOT just into life, but into a gentle, loving relationship with the smaller, child parts of me…

…that I had abandoned most of my life because I didn’t know how to talk to her, to them.

…I had run from the pain.

And through my own healing journey and as I trained and then started facilitating the same for others,

the way I could communicate through writing became one of conversation with myself.

With my inner child.

The world of deepening the inner relationships blew wide open.

My trainings in Embodiment continued and took me into the paradigm of IFS (Internal Family Systems).

I sit here now, after just having an excited conversation with my sister about aspects of me that have NOT had much of a say in a long time…that I am EXCITED to be in conversation with, to collaborate with, to get to know more, to understand and get curious about.

Journaling has become a language between me and all the inner parts of me, of all ages, and I can’t wait to KEEP this way of communicating up. I’ve led clients through this process but I’m seflishly MOSTLY excited about my own parts and process.

Getting creative with stuff we’ve felt stagnant around can sometimes just create some wondrous new ways of experiencing ourselves and life. CHEERS!