Why Keeping a Messy, Eligible Journal Is the Best Thing I've Ever Done.

We live in a hectic, non stop world. As much as we may want to stop and smell the roses, we are not always able to find the time. Just over two years ago I was go, go, go, I had a hard job which paid great money, with no children my husband and I could splurge on anything we wanted, without worrying about monetary consequences. Inevitably the long hours and stress caught up with me. I kept telling people I would find a new career, but when you are working fifty plus hours a week there is no time to do anything much more than work, eat and sleep.

So there I was, full of inner turmoil, and yet, still unwilling to stop and look at what I was doing to my mental, emotional and physical health. I started going to doctors looking for them to tell me what was wrong, why couldn't I get to sleep, but also why once asleep I couldn't wake up? Why did I always seem to be suffering stomach and digestive upsets? Why was I suffering permanent tension headaches and frequent migraines? 

Finally a doctor told me it was, very mild anxiety, nothing to worry about, just meditate more often and things will be fine. So I meditated, and meditated, I tried mindfulness, guided mediation, hypnosis, floating in water. If it was said to help anxiety I tried it. I kept on ignoring the increasingly obvious warning signs, as long as I showed up and did my job, no one else seemed to care anyway. I fell into the trap waiting for many of us with "high functioning" chronic or mental illness. I didn't look sick, so nobody, not even myself realised how sick I was.

So after about two years of being told not to worry by doctors, and racking up sick days I couldn′t explain properly even to myself I ended up in a very dark place. You see, there was nothing very mild about my anxiety (which we now know followed me from childhood), and to make it an extra big ball of no fun at all, major depression decided to join my very morbid party. I went from high functioning to an almost comatose mess practically over night.

Watching Netflix on my laptop, or playing games on my phone became my daily crutch, an escape from a reality I wanted nothing to do with. As the days went on I became more and more despondent, and a greater danger to self. Eventually I found myself being admitted to the Cairns Mental Health Unit, a place which saved my life by starting me on a two year long quest to find my self acceptance and inner peace.

My first moment in the MHU was traumatic, I had to give up all devices with cameras, goodbye laptop, so long phone. 

I was distraught, how would I write without my laptop? 

How would I live without internet and text messages?

One of the nurses suggested I could be old fashioned and write by hand. So I began putting my thoughts down in blue ink on blank printer paper. My husband and friends all caught on quick and brought me notepads, journals and pens. So I wrote, in blue, black, red, purple and green. I wrote poems, thoughts, and how my day progressed. I wrote letters to my loved ones which I never shared. I started writing in different journals for different things.

I had a recovery journal, to write about my treatment and diagnoses, a daily journal to write about mundane boring things, a dream journal, a spiritual and emotional journal, a shadow journal, and a journal to write about my childhood and past traumas. So many books and so many colours, but I really did begin to feel so much better. The more I wrote, and the more my hand held the pens, the more at peace I began to feel. There is something utterly cathartic about the physical act of releasing your thoughts. 

As time went on and medications kicked in, I dropped the number of journals down and also decreased the fervid scribbling which filled every moment of my days.

Nowadays I keep a dream journal, a shadow work journal, and a regular journal. I don't write in them every day, but it is a regular occurrence to find me sitting outside with a cup of tea and my journal. It is a calming experience, and one which brings a great sense of inner peace and relief to my soul. The benefits of journaling are easily garnered, the very the act of connecting mind to pen and pen to paper brings a deep sense of harmony. A busy mind accepts the ime you need it to quiet down as long as it knows it has regular moments to get the crazy thoughts out.

Today, journaling is quite a fashion statement and if you are the creative type you can get some pretty fancy pages going. Writing for emotional health or inner peace however, is not about how pretty you make it rather, it is about telling your truth, and letting your soul have a voice. Your journal is a place you can write how you are feeling everyday and over time be able to track personal patterns and behaviours.

Writing honest accounts about how you feel and where your life is going can be a great way to solve problems and discover your soul's purpose. Looking back at months gone past is an invaluable way to track your progress through challenging times and see how far you have come. It does not matter how neat or messy the pages become, at times I can not even read my own writing and that is perfectly okay. Its not about having a show piece to brag about, rather an inner peace journal is about getting the emotional baggage out of your head, which keeps us in turmoil out.

Journaling is a way to tell someone (even if is just ourselves and the divine) our fears and secrets. It helps us feel heard in a world which is increasingly deaf to our pain and suffering. It is so much better to get festering thoughts out and onto paper where we can read them back to ourselves and steal the destructive power they have over our psyche. Picking up those pens was the best thing I ever did and I promise if you grab pen and paper and start writing it will be the best thing you ever did to find your own inner peace as well.

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Severing the Conection Between Yourself and a Friend Can Be as Painful as Any Romantic Breakup

Nothing is more heartbreaking than the end of a relationship. There is a grieving period, and a need for closure which may never come to pass. When this affinity is romantic in nature everyone is there to help you and give you their advice. Support is endless. But what about when a platonic relationship breaks up? Who do you turn to when the person you are separating from is the usual place you would find solidarity and support?

Breaking up with a friend can be life shattering. You still have a grieving period, you still may never have closure, but there is much more to a friendship bust up than that. You lose the person you went to for support, you are no longer on good terms with someone who knows many, if not all, your dirty little secrets. If it was a messy break up and you are out to hurt each other you both know all the buttons to press to get maximum reactions. If you've been friends a long time there will be mutual friends involved as well, and they won't want to take sides. Your other friends are telling you to get over it and move on and stop talking about it, but just like a romantic break up, you need to talk about it to process what happened, how it went wrong, and how you will move on with your life without the other person.

You go through all the same emotions, blaming the other person, being angry, being sad, feeling alone and finally accepting it is over. Yet to the outside world it isn't something of great importance. For the two people severing friendship though, it can be a catastrophic event. As someone who is currently going through the tremendously painful experience of ending a close and once sacred friendship, I thought I would share some of the wisdom I am garnishing from this tragic life event.

Some friendships come to us for a season, all friendships come to us for a reason!

It is much too easy to re-write the past through anger, bitterness or hurt. Making the other person out to be something bad and someone you are glad to be rid of. It is much harder to see the relationship as the blessing it was. the fact of the matter is what you had was real. The support and help you gave each other was real. If we really do look at a relationship as something with seasons then eventually what has been sown needs to be reaped. This is not a bad thing, by moving on we can actually plant new seeds and grow as a person and allow the other person to do the same.

Moving in different directions is not a good or bad thing, its just a thingwhich happens. Friendships are born from having things in common, they are sustained by emotional and spiritual needs. When this emotional and spiritual connection becomes unbalanced a few things in common is not enough to glue the friendship together. 

So how do we find out we have an unbalanced connection?

When balanced a relationship is give and take, one side may give more or take more but there is a general cyclic flow to the nature of emotional, physical and spiritual support. When one person stops giving it the friendship will wear away over time. Eventually the relationship becomes lopsided. You may think this is the fault of the person who is only taking, but it isn't.

In every tango there is two people. If you are willingly giving to someone who never returns the energy you are just as complicit in the unbalanced nature of the relationship. If you have fed someone over time, without demanding an equal exchange, the friendship is given an unspoken acceptance to continue this way. If you then suddenly stop giving, and want to take something back there is no room for this in the relationship and so the friendship must either weather a storm or end.

Some friendships can weather any storm, and in these instances the connection comes back with time or hard work. It may not be the same connection it once was, but it is still two souls who see each other as sacred. Other friendships can not weather the storm and the two souls pull apart. It can be messy, hard, scary or it may be acrimonious. The friendship may be only a barren season, or it may be forever, only the universe and her Fates can possibly know at the time. No matter if the break up it is mutual or messy, it is going to be painful. Let yourself process the loss and grieve, explain to your friends how you just need to talk about your feelings the same way you would if it was a romantic break up. Keep in mind how special this person once was in your life and let the kinship be remembered as the sacred experience it was. 

Move forward in your life by thanking the universe for the lessons and experiences you received throughout the time you shared as friends. Have the grace and integrity to let go of the hurt and anger without letting it paint a good thing with hate and spite. When you lash out at the other person you are hurting yourself more than you hurt them.

Most importantly though, forgive yourself for eventually moving on without the other person, it is the right thing for both of you, no matter how much it hurts at the time.