the value of journaling
The very first client album I did was for a woman whose son was graduating high school. He lived with his Dad in Hawaii, and had for his 4 years of high school. She wanted to give him a “this is your life” type of album, chronicalling all the years he’d spent living with her in Texas.
We sat down together and sorted through years and years of photos, and ended up dividing the album into three categories, for the three houses they’d lived in while he grew up. She began telling me stories. And more stories. Every photo brought back sweet memories for her. Finally, she said, “Aren’t you going to write this stuff down?”
I reminded her that I don’t do the journaling for clients.
“Oh, but you HAVE to,” she protested. “I don’t have time. And besides, I don’t know what to say!”
I encouraged her to write it exactly as she was telling me. “Just put it on paper, exactly what you’d tell someone you were showing these pictures to. You know what to say - you’re saying it beautifully to me!”
“Oh, but I can’t. I just can’t write it in a scrapbook! My handwriting is horrible.”
“You’re handwriting is invaluable,” I argued.
“But I just can’t. I don’t have time.”
“We’ll figure out a way to MAKE time.”
“But what if I just tell YOU what I want it to say. You could write it for me.” She wasn’t giving up easily. But neither was I.
“Because,” I smiled, “then the stories will be in MY voice, and in MY handwriting. Your son doesn’t want to hear about his childhood in my voice. He wants to hear it in yours. He won’t care about my handwriting, but he’ll cherish every word written in yours.”
“I’ll pay you extra,” she said. “Just tell me how much.”
“There’s something magical that happens when you put your pen to paper,” I explained. “Once you start writing, you’ll find that memories come flooding back. More memories than if you just TELL the story. When you WRITE it, the emotions and the smells and the sounds… it all comes back. You end up with a story that’s ALIVE with memories.”
She wasn’t happy with me, and when I delivered the album, she tried to coax me into journaling again. My final words to her were, “Do it on the plane. It’s a long flight to Hawaii.” I gave her a black journaling pen and wondered if she’d actually do it.
Several weeks later, she came to me and said, “He loved it. He cried.” I was ecstatic. She was my first client, and I’d been second guessing myself the whole time, wondering if I’d lost a customer because of my passion about journaling.
Then SHE began to cry. “I didn’t want to give it to him,” she said softly. “After I’d written in it, I didn’t want to part with it! You were right. I needed to write those stories. I became part of that book, and it was the hardest thing to part with when I came home.”
I had tears too. She got it. She GOT it!
The value of journaling…. it’s priceless.
You can tell me the stories, and the places. You can describe them in great detail, with deep emotion. You can offer me big money to do it for you, but I won’t.
Because I want you to GET it. I want you to experience the magic that happens when you get over your fear and worry and self-doubt and BUSYness… and put the pen to paper. You may not be a writer. But you are your only family historian. It’s YOUR life.
Journal it.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:03 am
That is so true! It made me realize that I don’t have any journaling from my dad, just old cards and letters. So now you’ve caused me to add another item to my SB resolutions. I’m going to have my husband journal on pages this year, maybe/hopefully once a month. Another goal will be to have my brother do some journaling. Even if it’s in their sloppy scrawl, I will always know who it came from.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Oh, my!!!! This entry needs a warning at the top! Something along the lines of…”this one is a tear-jerker — get the tissues in advance so you don’t have to stop reading mid-entry to dry your eyes in order to keep reading” (as I had to!)!!
Wow! Your words are so powerful, and so extroidinarily TRUE, Stacy! Thanks for writing this. I am an obsessive journaler, but it’s soooo good to hear it from YOU…..my SS celebrity and scrapping hero!
I love it!!!!
Scraphappy,
Cathy / wilflower
January 11th, 2007 at 11:46 am
OK…maybe its the day, but you got me! I cried and I am still thinking about all the stories I need to write down. I too hate my handwriting and tend to journal on the computer…right now I have stacks and stacks that need to be journaled and I keep putting it off. I will journal more and I love the idea of having my DH do it with me.
This was wonderful! Thank you.
Tonya
January 11th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Well, I don`t feel so silly now for crying. I will journal….I will journal…..I will journal.
I don`t for all the reasons your client said, and I know I need to. Thanks for this blog.
January 11th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I was scrapbooking with some ladies and one mentionned how, for the first time, she was going to leave all of the journalling in that album until the end. She was having a difficult time scrapbooking - major “scrapbookers” block. She reasoned that it was probably because the pages she was working on were not complete and wouldn’t be until she returned to journal them. She had always been quite a speedy scrapbooker - feeling a sense of accomplishment once each page was finished. However, she was missing that little bit of joy and having completed a great page. I’ve learned … I too always left my journalling until another day (which of course, has never happened) until my TX trip - I am searching for more “empty” space to journal - I’m having a blast remembering our great visit to the great state of TX. Thanks for the extra push, Stacy.
Love ya
sue
January 11th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Really good post, Stacy. I tend to type my journalings because I like to edit as I go. But I have a tendency to over-edit. I edit out the emotion. You are right … there is something magic about writing with pen and paper. What comes out is more authentic, sometimes more raw. That is the part that I find difficult. I cannot mentally go to “that place” and conjure up the emotions with other people around, so if I’m going to a group scrap, I’ll do the layouts and leave the journaling for later, or I’ll write up the journal entry beforehand and transcribe it onto the page during the group scrap.
I stopped keeping a diary/journal because the only time I would write in it was when I was mad at my husband! And I’d go back and read it and all the bad memories of our arguments would come back. The entries would be months apart, but reading them all in a row made it seem like we were constantly bickering. I just never stopped to write in it when I had a good day. That is where you have inspired me. You write honestly and frankly about the highs and lows in your life.
I have been reading your other blog for a long time and Love Love Love what you have to say. We have a lot in common. Blessings to you.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I agree whole-heartedly.
One of my mom’s friends made the comment that it was amazing how I always had the exact amount of space I needed to tell a story on my pages (I don’t use journaling boxes most of the time — I just write directly on the page). My mom said she didn’t quite know how I did it.
I have a pretty big vocabulary, so I will substitute words that are the right size to fill a space, and when I run out of space, I’m done. I don’t think a page looks right without journaling on it, kind of like how a quilt looks unfinished without the quilting.
My scrapbooks are the journals or diaries of my life. Just like quilts aren’t quilts without quilting, journals aren’t finished without journaling. By the person telling the story, not an impartial narrator.
What I’ve always told people when they remarked that they can’t write as much in their books as I do is that they should write what they CAN. Their handwriting is so important to the people that will be reading it, even if it’s messy or imperfect or crooked. What matters the most is THAT the story gets told.
My mom has been working on her grandchildren’s books and was about a year behind on journaling them. These are pictures of things that happened with the grandkids when DH and I or DB and DSIL were not there. My mom and I have a very forthright relationship, so I said, “Mom, if you pop off tomorrow, how are those girls going to know the stories behind those pictures? WE WEREN’T THERE. Write the stories down, before you do another page.”
You know what? She did. All 5 albums are caught up, less than 10 days later.
Life is good.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Oh so true. I’m trying to journal as I go along, a change from getting this pictures on the page and then going back. Because I’m finding that I having a hard time getting motivated to go back. Thanks for the reminder
January 11th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Holy cow! This was beautiful! A wonderful reminder to me of how important journaling is! Thanks for sharing this moving story!
January 12th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I’m crying. I love it. I need this reminder, OFTEN, of why it is that I am making these books. It’s always been about the stories for me. The pictures just are there to help tell the story. When I am getting unsure of why I am spending the time or money on these books, I’ll come back and read this. THIS is why I scrapbook!
January 24th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
What a great story - makes me want to go home and write and write and write some more. If, God forbid, something happened to us, how else will people remember what we did, how we felt, what they mean to us. That child has a book FULL of his mother’s love, thanks to you. Thanks for sharing that - with her and with all of the rest of us.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 am
[...] I’d been lucky enough to have one job fall in my lap already. A woman came in to the store where I worked and asked if I knew anyone who scrapbooked. I immediately said, “I do!” Then she asked if I’d consider doing it for hire. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. The next day, I showed her my work and she hired me. (Incidentally, she’s the woman I blogged about a few weeks ago - the woman who journaled on the plane ride to Hawaii.) [...]