(Written in 2013) by Tamika Greene
In my 11th grade year of high school, journaling was introduced to me in a creative writing class, and it opened up a whole new world in a form of intimate, alive, and vivid personal communication for me. The experience was like being transformed into a new dimension of dynamic awareness in a novel way of self-expression. Being exposed to this new form of communication seemed like landing on a different planet that I was extremely comfortable living on. After completing my creative writing essays in this class, I felt like I could conquer the world and that there was nothing that I couldn’t do as long as I believed. After getting two A’s in a row on two creative writing essays, when I had started with C’s and B’s on those same two assignments, my confidence increased like a 10.0 earthquake on the Richter scale. I was 16 years old then, and now I am almost double that age plus more, and I still have many of my graded assignments from that class in a safe place that I revisit from time to time, after 19 years. That makes my eyelids recede from my eyeballs in awe and astonishment myself. After taking this class, I knew I wanted to write as a profession. Some of life’s blows discouraged me from pursuing this passion, but now I am getting back to my life’s center and going after, vigorously and persistently, my heart’s deepest desires.
Since I took that class, I have at least 80 completed journals that I use to express my deep-seated emotions. There are times when I used journal writing to express emotions that feel like my heart’s bloodshot red tears. Then there are times when I have communicated my life’s highest summits on the sun of triumph. When I feel comfortable enough, I even document my most silent secrets in a black abyss. These are imageries or metaphors to represent some of the thoughts and emotions I have expressed in my journals over the years. My best times of journaling are when I am able to express times of exuberant joys that come from a waterfall flowing from a river of gratitude.
After taking you to my dreamland, let me bring you back down to earth with plain and simple English. The point in sharing my experiences above is to show that there are great benefits of journal writing and to show how my writing skills have improved because of it. Journaling, in particular, is a type of personal writing that allows you to express anything you would like confidentially, without ever really allowing anyone else to read it. Because you usually only read it, it can be as personal as you want it to be, as secretive as you want it to be, as open as you want it to be, and as happy as you want it to be. There are no restrictions or limitations on what you can write about because no one is grading you and no one is judging you on what you write about. It is even right in this case to be wrong. Nothing can be wrong when writing in a journal. You have the freedom to write anything you want. There are no rules or regulations when writing in your journal or anyone telling you what is the wrong or right way to write. You have the liberty to write what you want and how you want freely, with no limitations. You don’t have to worry about grammar, sentence structure, or spelling because no one usually reads it except you, unless you are especially particular about those things. But it’s not meant for you to seem like you’re in school. Relax and be comfortable with it.
Journals have also been called diaries and cognitive behavior therapy. You can choose to call it whatever you like. It is a book of lined paper or a typed document that you can use to express your deepest thoughts and emotions of your heart about any situation. Journaling, in general, is a form of self-expression through writing in a personal book. It is extremely personal and, like I said before, no one usually reads it except you, so keep it in a personal, exclusive place where no one can get ahold of it except you. There are some nosy people who may try to pry into your personal business by reading it if you leave it lying around in a public area. Therefore, keep it in a place where no one can get to it except you.
There are many benefits of journaling. Some are to clarify thoughts and to make thoughts more real. Other benefits are to release emotions in a cathartic manner as therapy to heal. It helps to develop your writing skills and/or make you a more improved writer with practice. You can tell a story within your journal, whether it’s true or false, and even write poetry within it as well. Your journal can be used to record important ideas, events, and notes. It helps you to keep a record of your thoughts to reflect on your thinking process in the past compared to your thinking process now and how it has changed. I review my previous journals at times to examine some thoughts and ways of thinking in the past that caused me to be happy. After reflecting on my thinking pattern I had in the past, I try to apply that same thinking pattern to my current life.
You can use journaling as a form of expression when no one is there to talk to or to hear you except the Lord. You can use it as a means of communicating prayer to Jesus Christ. It makes my life a little easier to live because I am living it through communication with my Creator by my side, which helps to strengthen and empower me to face each day and to accomplish and manifest His will in my life. When I use it in the form of prayer, it gives me power to do the things I want to do as opposed to when I don’t pray. Prayer through journaling has given me strength and power to complete great accomplishments like a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree with honors and scholarships. Consistent and continuous prayer helped to give me strength to accomplish this while being diagnosed with an illness that, based on statistics, would prevent me from graduating junior high school. But not only did I defy statistics, I went exceedingly and abundantly above and beyond what statistics said I could accomplish, to say the very least, by graduating from junior high school as salutatorian, graduating from a very rigorous and accelerated high school on a college campus ranked as one of the best high schools in the nation, graduating from an accelerated college program, and completing graduate school. I accredit that all to strength and power from prayer and a gift in academics from the Lord. When I don’t pray, through journaling or through verbal prayers, I feel weak, weighed down, not myself, and bound up, and my schoolwork, job, and life are affected negatively by not doing it regularly and consistently. When I pray regularly and consistently using my journal, I usually feel free, happy, successful, ambitious, motivated, and inspired. I feel this way when I write things honestly, sincerely, and genuinely from my heart to the Lord instead of writing things that I “think” the Lord wants to hear with a pretentious façade and in a religious way. It is a way that I connect intimately, specifically, and prayerfully to my heavenly Father through Christ Jesus. I even record what the Lord speaks to my heart in my journal. Journaling has been my coping mechanism for 19-plus years of my life. When I don’t journal, I feel incomplete, not myself, and like something is missing. When I write in it from my heart, I feel whole, content, complete, and totally myself.
Journaling, as I mentioned before, can be used as a catharsis to release bottled-up emotions in order to bring healing, wholeness, and peace in my heart. You can express deep thoughts and feelings of your heart or any thoughts or emotions that you don’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone else at the time. It can be a means of venting emotions, such as frustrations, anger, hurt, then forgiveness, and even to express joys, successes, and triumphs. For me, journaling is also like purging my heart of all the things that I can think of that I have been holding on to or that I need to express. As a result, I am stronger and able to handle life’s challenges more easily because I am not carrying the weights and burdens of life on my shoulders anymore.
Now, here is my invitation for you to start journaling. It may seem unusual at first if you’ve never done it before. But with practice, you’ll be more comfortable with it. Or your writing just may flow naturally, and you may feel totally comfortable with it because you may have done it already in some form or another. Or writing may be one of your gifts as well. You may even use it for a purpose that is not mentioned in this article. You may think of ways to use a journal that I have not thought of. Just be free to express your heart and innermost thoughts as a way to release, purge, and heal. Or use it in any other way you choose to. You can buy a journal for one dollar at a dollar store. I have found some as cheap as ten cents each with a teacher’s discount. Or you could get a fancy one that is specific to your personal style that may range from $2.00 and up. The type of journal you want to purchase is up to you. I just want to share a form of writing that has helped to greatly change my life, and hopefully, it will greatly help to change yours as well. And if it is not writing that you like, or you are not interested in doing this, find what you like, do it, enjoy it, and express yourself to the fullest through it, and share that with the rest of the world with faith and no fear.
Copyright ©2025 Tamika Nate` Greene
