Journaling inspired by The Frozen River

I keep up with the journals because I enjoy it, but also because it my job. One of the duties of my profession. As a midwife and a healer, I am witness to the details of my neighbor's private lives, along with their fears and secrets, and--when appropriate--I record them for safekeeping. Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal.

In The Frozen River (aside: this book lead to very fun book club discussions) , Martha Ballard practices journaling for over 30 years. Impressively, until her wedding day, Martha is illiterate. Her husband educates her and encourages her to write.

This is how Ephraim shows his devotion, making sure that I always have something with which to write. On our wedding night, many years ago, he gave me the first leather journal, identical to the one on my desk now. He said it was a place to keep my thoughts together in one place, and his only request was that I not let it sit empty.

The entire murder mystery is enriched by Martha's journal entries.

Inspired by Martha's practice, I picked up my abandoned journal and committed to write in September. I'm pleased to say that I've been journaling almost every day this month. Like for Martha, the process has become enjoyable. I like looking back on my day and recounting the things I did, the people I met, the mood I was in. Unlike Martha, my journal entries often start with an evaluation of the day ("It was a good day", "a bad day", an "unproductive day" etc). Perhaps, it's better to start with the weather like she does. (Also perhaps, starting with the weather was more natural for her because she lived in the late 1700s in colonial New England, on a ranch, where her day was drastically impacted by the weather).

I also started to flip through my old entries. What events have I forgotten? What kind of person was I? As she says, my memory is fickle but my journal entries tell me exactly what I was thinking about a year ago, a month ago, and sometimes a week ago. They are useful in weekly reviews where I face an empty text editor asking myself "what did I do last Monday?" and in yearly reviews when I delightedly think I don't even bother with the thoughts that haunted me earlier in the year.

Literacy is a relatively modern ability, especially for women. Reading this book made me realize that I take my education for granted.

It 's such a privilege to keep a journal, to evaluate my life in my way, to be able to commit by life to pages. My digital footprint could tell someone what I did, what I watched, and maybe allow them to infer my thoughts from the content I consumed. In a journal, I choose what I write, what thoughts I give importance to, and what I wish to waive as thoughts that "don't serve me"1. Until I read this book, I took for granted my ability to etch my life in such a way.

What power this is! I believe that the inaccessibility of journaling made women easier to control because they had no avenue to evaluate their thoughts. They had less clarity setting the rulebook for their thoughts and lives and resorted to definitions set by others (religious bodies, governments, men, others). They were privy to the winds of their external world, bending in the direction the world swayed them.

Today, fortunately, even without journaling, we are empowered to have original thoughts through the books and online content we consume. We can (kind of) set a different path for our lives with the content we choose. However, the set of content, albeit large, is still limited. We are susceptible to the algortihm, what platforms choose to show us. Also what someone else chose to share will rarely be relevant to your experience. I don't think any amount of new content will empower you to take action on becoming a different person as much as journaling will

So, for now, I'll continue to journal everyday so that I look back on who I was and look ahead onto who I'm becoming. Let's see what the future looks like but I'm optimistic.

More essays about journaling:

Footnotes

  1. In her famous interview, Olympian Eileen Gu talks about exacty this. How analytically analyzing her thoughts and actions in her journal helps her become exactly who she wants to be. "I journal a lot. I break down all my thought processes. I think I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking and I kind of modify it because it's so interesting: you can control what you think, how you think, and therefore control who you are and especially as a young person... with neuroplasticity on my side, I can literally become exactly who I want to be" ↩