Just Before the Journal
Oftentimes it’s the nuanced feelings that draw us to the journal without our full awareness that this is what we are being led to do. “Book leadings” as I’ll call them here, are the teastained woman’s spiritual prompts to journal. They are the subtle discernment that just below the surface there’s something greater to be explored. It’s the glance that’s beckoning you to turn and fully face something; the mouthed or hushed statement that you tilt your ear and come closer to listen to what’s been said. These are the nudges that go unnoticed and unnoted due to anxiety, stress, nervous system “freezing”, overwhelm, busyness or just not taking them seriously, but they are the beginnings of a rich gospel you MUST put into writing. Our journals are where indescribable things receive their names, are given utterance. And this comes from tending to the stuff that’s come jusssttt below the surface, hovering like a dead body or floating, barely submerged like a branch of peppermint in a cuppa bush tea.
The leadings we receive are unique to each of us, emerging like wildflowers from different scenarios, convictions, memories, realizations and circumstances. Sometimes navigating them takes careful inquisition— like transplanting a seedling, removing it from the soil so as to not damage the roots… It’s careful, delicate business, transporting the hint of a notion into a book through the sentence, the paragraph. Your stillness frames the train of thoughts, preventing you from forgetting and helping you get the blood of your words into the body of your book. As I mentioned, often these latent inklings to write are buried, hushed, or forgotten. Sometimes they feel so heavy we dissociate from the moment to which they’ve been assigned to communicate into us for transcription from their long journey through invisible realm into your discerning soul and through your handwriting… The odds are narrow, but this is your role as a diarist: catching with the book what cannot be grasped with the hand.
Here, I’ve compiled a list of questions you can ask yourself in the midst of a dense placenta of emotions, to clarify what needs to go onto the pages of your book…
What do I need to process? There may be something you shrugged off whose effects are residually impacting the your mind, nervous system, heart and spirit. Once I had to get real with how learning the white girl at my job made nearly $2/hr more than me was affecting my mood at home. This journal entry led to a deep delve into the definition of injustice. Often, the words you are afraid to write lead to the gospel you’ve been entrusted to preserve. New definitions for new days.
Where does it hurt? Sometimes the event itself is not the journal entry, but the tendril of nerves connected to different places of the soul that has you feeling this or that way. But where? Are you hurt by what was said or who it reminded you of? Are you happy you had your baby or glad to see your mother’s laugh while holding the infant? Are you happy to see your uncle or angry at the system that incarcerated him? Are you upset at your aunt or afraid that she is being mistreated by her partner? Trace the things you are feeling: that’s the source of the richer narrative.
What am I remembering? There are days where you might not know what to do with yourself and you have to sit still to detangle your memories and plait them into orderly strands with your entries. Go into the archive of your thoughts and give each memory some sentences. You watched that film, had that dinner, then it was that thing your mom said, that glance from the lady in the shoe department, that smell on wednesday and that book you finished sunday… comb it all out, plait it into the book.
What am I angry about? You’re angry at something— it may be that you’ve just been told or conditioned to believe it’s not anger at all. Something you’ve been dealing with or wading through that you have ancestral recourse for; that you have every right to be enraged at has been fraying you like the hem of a garment; like a run in a stocking… What is it? Document the systems at work to that event, that dialogue; the politics to what was implied; the scheming that went into what transpired; the premeditated nature of what seemed to be said or done so casually. You became aware of the alliance they formed; you’re aware that a perpetrator was protected; you know if it were a Black person the outcome would not be so hospitable… There are MANY things Black women have been told to grin and bear, and unfortunately this means that, ancestrally we’ve built up a tolerance to things and people that should be burned down, told off or assassinated (I ain’t censoring on my website. But for legal — NO, I am NOT saying to go kill someone), cursed, slapped, disagreed with, rebutted LOUDLY, cussed out, punished, etc. And this means we live with a network of anger that zings within to be acknowledged and acted out— often we cannot. But we can write the sentencing, the indictment and the punishment in our journals. Until scales of justice get balanced in real life, we can render judgement in the books we write. This does not eradicate the anger, and it should not; BUT, it eases the rage…
Who’s the devil? This is altlough entry to write. Because so often in our lives, we are hoping to have allies and friends and caring communities around us and it’s the journal pages that help reveal to us those who might not mean us as well as we thought they did. It’s in the journal, where we are able to get clarity about certain situations as we are breaking them down line by line, and suddenly it becomes very apparent who has been working against us, or the reverse engineering of certain conversations to create certain outcomes within your life. They say that the devil is in the details and the truth is that the details get broken down into digestible pieces We start documenting the characters, the situations, the emotions, the day-to-day happenings, and the feelings That won’t leave our spirit alone… Sometimes what’s calling us to the journal is The spiritual discernment that says you need to find out who the devil is so that you can Bring change to this season that you are in.
What do you need to process? Sometimes we forget to feel our feelings out and honour their voices, which costs us necessary entries. I am often guilty of allowing things to stay in my head until it’s too late, when solutions and other revelations could have come to me in writing a while before. We get comfortable with delaying our healing because this society has endless resources, products, events, venues, sugary foods and pharmaceuticals for those who remain broken and in chaos. The moment we decide to process and pursue true healing/self-exorcism (yes), is the moment we have less to draw from in this world.
What are the array of emotions that structural racism creating for you in this moment? I dont think we give racism and prejudice enough credit for wreaking havoc on our emotions. They are a wave eroding at the stones of our being, wearing us down, redirecting our crestivity, changing our focus, and as Toni Morrison proclaimed, distracting us. While we’re wncouraged to quell anger with “that’s just how they are…” we have to
