Rosalie Deer Heart - Harvesting Your Journals : Writing Tools to Enhance Your Growth & Creativity

Praise for Harvesting Your Journals This is a book that honors the journey and the winding path of any of us trying to write our way home. It is a playful, sincere, and encouraging guide to mining the past for revealing patterns. Beneath the clutter of everyday thoughts, Alison Strickland and Rosalie Deer Heart find seeds of wisdom in the private journals theyve kept over time. Revealing their own process of writing and growth, the authors share lessons theyve learned through journaling, both alone and in creative collaboration. An inspiring book for anyone eager to reap what theyve sown and harvest the wisdom theyve gained through the years. Jan PhillipsAuthor of Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity Every bit as valuable for men as it is for women. A great resource. Im eager to start harvesting my journals. Alfred DePewAuthor of The Melancholy of Departure and journal workshop leader This book is a great idea! Finally I have something to offer when my students ask me, What do I do with all these volumes? Christina BaldwinAuthor of Lifes Companion: Journal Writing As a Spiritual Quest and Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture

Also by Rosalie Deer Heart:

Healing Grief: A Mothers Story

Soul Empowerment: A Guidebook for Healing Yourself and Others

Also by Alison Strickland:

Why Cant He Be Mine?

Washington, DC: A Look Around Our Nations Capital

Getting Rid of Robert

That Doggone Dog!

HARVESTING YOUR JOURNALS

Writing Tools to Enhance Your Growth & Creativity

Rosalie Deer Heart

AND

Alison Strickland

HEART LINK PUBLICATIONS

San Cristobal, New Mexico

PUBLISHED BY: Heart Link Publications

PO Box 273 San

Cristobal, NM 87564

EDITOR: Ellen Kleiner

BOOK DESIGN AND PRODUCTION: V. S. Elliott

COVER DESIGN AND PRODUCTION: Christinea Johnson

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Jan Phillips

BACK COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Ted Coulson

Copyright 1999 by Rosalie Deer Heart and Alison Strickland

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles or reviews.

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Printed in the United States of America

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heart, Rosalie Deer, 1944

Harvesting your journals : writing tools to enhance your growth and creativity, by Rosalie Deer Heart and Alison Strickland. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

Preassigned LCCN: 98-73268

ISBN: 0-9651576-2-8

1. Self-help techniques. 2. Diaries Authorship.3. Creative ability. 4. Self-actualization(Psychology) I. Strickland, Alison. II. Title.

BF632.H44 1999

158.1

QB198-1173

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For journal keepers everywhere...

In Gratitude... W e wish to acknowledge our twenty-year friendship, which has deepened through the process of writing this book together. In spite of the challenges and frustrations that arose, as they do each time two people agree to birth a creation together, we always listened and supported each other as we wrote our way home.We delight in acknowledging our four readers, who generously offered their time, critiques, and love as this book took form: Mel Marsh, Virginia Laken, Elaine Bowman, and Nancy Wilson.We also extend gratitude to Jan Phillips, Susan Tiberghien, and Eunice Scarfe for mentoring us through the beginnings of this book.Many thanks to our book-birthing team: Ellen Kleiner, our editor; Christinea Johnson, our cover designer; and SunFlower Elliott, our production wizard.In addition, Rosalie expresses appreciation to her partner, Michael Bradford, who offered her the solitude to write, open arms when comfort was needed, and sharp eyes for proofreading. Alison extends gratitude to her husband and partner, Ted Coulson, who believed in her and cheerfully gave unfailing support each step of the way.

Contents

Preface

T his book took root as we culled through forty years worth of combined journal writing a project we decided to undertake in the midst of a rambling poolside conversation one autumn afternoon. What? Youre actually going back through all those dusty journals?our friends asked, upon hearing of our commitment. Why would you want to do that? Fair question! And one we occasionally asked ourselves as we worked our way through the process.

Here are our answers. In the beginning we wanted to do it because we had scattered lots of thought seedsin our journals. We hoped to see which ones had grown into hardy plants and which had withered and died. Of those that languished, we wondered if they had simply decayed as a result of our changing perspectives or if, out of neglect, their shoots had returned to the soil, perhaps fertilizing other crops.

We had also planted many questions in our journals and wanted to find out which ones were annuals, flowering for one season only; which were perennials, reappearing season after season; and which were evergreens, seemingly always with us, growing larger year by year. We wanted to see how answers had emerged, blossomed, and seeded new questions, and to look for answers that proved so true they became principles that guide us still.

In addition, we wanted to deepen the grasp on our personal histories and map the turning points of our lives choices made, paths followed, trails abandoned. In the process, we hoped to uncover the patterns in our lives which, like those of crop circles, can be seen only from a distance.

Now we can truly say we found all that, for we discovered new meaning in the seemingly random events of our lives, subtle strands we had not noticed in the busyness of the weaving. With this discovery came a much greater sense of direction, coherence, and purpose than wed had before.

While sifting through the yellowing pages, we also came upon unexpected bounties. Rereading the old entries seemed to pollinate the journals we continued to keep; even stories, poems, and books sprouted from those seeds planted long ago. Page after page had us reliving precious moments, recovering long-buried memories, appreciating the many ways in which we had ripened over time. In response we deepened our conversations with ourselves and others, further cultivated our friendship with each other, and perhaps more than anything else, developed enormous respect for journaling.

We trust that the experiences, tools, and strategies described in the chapters of this book will help you trace the growth of seeds planted in your journals, whether you have a huge stack of them or only the beginnings of your very first one. We hope that as you harvest your journals you will gain new appreciation for the changing seasons of your life, where youve been, and where you yearn to go. We encourage you to use your journals as a rich resource for growing memoirs, essays, or anything else you long to create. And if in the process you celebrate your journey and find new purpose in your writing practice, this book will have more than served its purpose.

Introduction H ave you ever asked yourself if keeping a journal is worth the time and effort it takes? Do you feel an urge to reread your journals, but at a loss about how to begin or what to do with the material youve dug up? Have you tried rereading your journals, only to give up for one reason or another? Would you like to gain fresh insights into yourself? Do you seek inspiration for new creative work? If any of these concerns have crossed your mind in recent months, it may well be time to harvest your journals!This book is designed to help you each step of the way. As such, it contains some unusual ingredients. You will find, for example, a plenitude of writing exercises marked by stalks of ripened wheat to help you discover more about yourself and your life while working with your journals. You will also come across selected journal entries we unearthed, as well as writing we did based on these entries and on the exercises. Along the way you will find dialogues as well, to illustrate the processing you may undergo, both internally and externally.The following dialogue, for instance, revealing the story of how we embarked on our shared interest in journal keeping, will give you a quick peek into who we are.Next page