Do you keep a diary/journal? Is it helpful?

[RoundLikeaCircle]

Have been thinking about starting to write down my thoughts and feelings in a diary to see if it helps with stress levels. I’m hoping it might provide a means to offload negative thinking.

I’ve not written a diary since I was about 15/16y, so would be glad to hear about more grown up diary experiences and any recommendations on how / where to start.

🤗

I do, but stopped writing about what I felt as I thought my kids might find them after I'd died and it would all be horribly embarrassing. I am only 49 mind, and have no (as far as I'm aware) lurking diseases meaning I am liable to die early so I may well be over-thinking this. However, I do write down what I do each day as otherwise I forget. I have kept a diary since I was about 6 so there are masses of notebooks scattered around the house which I really must collate and potentially burn. I don't write every day and sometimes go for months or years without writing and then regret not having written.

How to start? Get a pen and notebook. Where to start? What did I do today. Then write three things you are grateful for. One day one of my things that I was grateful for was having made it through the day without killing the kids. You sometimes have to scrape the barrel but it's a useful exercise.

Have fun :)

Thank you @Libre2 - wow, that’s a lot of years of diary writing! I wish my mother or grandmother has written stuff down that I could have kept, I’d love to be able to read something now💞

I was thinking I might try and use a diary app on my phone, so I can write wherever I am🤔

I couldn’t cope with that - too old I guess - has to be pen and paper for me - far more therapeutic.

In 2019, when I turned 50 years old, I decided to keep an (almost daily) diary with the idea that one day I would give it to my children, and they to their children etc... as a family heirloom. I would absolutely love it if my great, great grandmother had kept a diary of her daily life documenting her worries and concerns, triumphs and problems and maybe some of the world events and domestic political happenings of the time. She would have been writing in the mid 1800s. I think that would be so interesting to read!

So I began mine in July 2019 as a work of witness to what it is like to be a woman, a mother to young children, menopausal to boot, in the year 2019 - 2020. I had no idea a global pandemic was about to hit so I accidentally chronicled the whole of the first wave of Covid as well. I'm really proud of this work and in the end published it (anonymously) on Amazon. 🙂