Journaling Changed My Life
In April 2010 I returned to my parent’s home after living away from my native Dublin for almost seven years. In that time, I had lived in Spain and then moved to the West Coast of Ireland and, although I had driven from Mayo-Dublin many times before, the particular journey to Dublin on that miserable wet day was very different. With my three children in the back of the car and my belongings all in plastic bags in the boot I felt really and truly at rock bottom.
I had come through a divorce and had no money, no-where to live, no job and Ireland was in the middle of a recession. I had stripped my life bare, often in unconscious unawareness of what I was doing, but now I was making the conscious decision to start completely a fresh. As I faced the many internal and external struggles that came with turning my life around, journaling became my ‘solid foundation’ on which I began to rebuild my life.
In those years, as I journaled, I grew conscious of my inner emotional blocks, and I moved ‘out of my own way’ and stepped through some serious hardships and fears. One of these hardships was overcoming major anxiety around money. I was not able to sleep at night, going over how I was going to make ends meet, while picking my life to pieces in my head, trying to figure out how I had allowed myself to get to where I was.
My family and friends were a great support but ultimately at forty-one years of age, and as a mother of twin teenage boys and a lovely little girl, I knew I had to take responsibility for my own life. For too long, I had turned myself inside out trying to please everyone in my life except the most important person: me. Coming from the first generation of Irish people able to get legally divorced, I had to step out from the shadows of generational and societal conditioning and conformity and discover who I ultimately was, and figure out what I really wanted in my life and where I wished to be.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Socrates
It was the simple yet profound tool of journaling that helped me stand on the ‘balcony’ of my life, becoming a conscious observer as it unfolded in front of me. Journaling became my best friend as I pulled apart the unceasing negative chatter that bombarded my head daily. It was journaling that opened the space for me to heal my wounded heart and tap into my subconscious mind, finding my Inner Child. It was through those precious pages that I found a ‘safe space’ to explore what I wanted to create in my life. And it was journaling that became my portal into the field of pure potential, giving me the chance to examine, reflect and meditate on myself and my family as we grew into strong, powerful people.
You have to understand, at that point in my life I felt limited, constrained and constricted by lack. Lack of power, lack of money, lack of self-esteem. Journaling helped me to open the door into my imagination allowing me to actually think that I could have something better. Journaling gave me access into a beautiful green field of limitless where everything was possible.
With love,
Jx
