Thanks for my journals

I kept a pretty thorough journal from about age 10 to age 20. And apparently even before then, because my mom recently send me stuff she’d found in my dad’s shop, that I’d written at age 6 and 7.

After I got married and especially after I started having kids, my journal-keeping became more sporadic. A friend of mine likened her journaling to Sarah Prine’s from the book These Is My Words. Sometimes Sarah  would write several days in a row. Sometimes weeks, months, even a year or two would go by between entries. Sometimes she would write a sentence, other times several pages. The frequency or length or lack thereof didn’t matter, because those entries all still told the story of a beautiful life.

I’m thankful for the big box in my storage room that’s full of my childhood journals. It’s the first thing I’d grab in a fire. No doubt about it. I’m thankful for those reminders from past iterations of me that I’ve always had a beautiful life.