An Unexpected Pick-Me-Up

We recently had a bad afternoon. Big picture, nothing is really wrong. But sometimes small things pile up, and we were all dysregulated when we got home from an unexpectedly long appointment. My two-year-old loves to sit in our bedroom next to the big bookshelves, so she found a spot and was pulling books off the shelves. My older daughter and I were hanging out when she spotted my five year journal and asked me to read her some of the entries.

We probably spent the next 15 or 20 minutes reading (slightly edited) entries of different days. She’s a beginning reader and wasn’t interested in trying to decode the text, so it was easy to just read the parts I felt comfortable sharing with her. It was incredibly soothing to remember good days, bad days, and all the moments in between from the past year and a half, and it really brought perspective in a moment when we all needed it. My daughter and I loved reminiscing about all of the different things we had done, and it really helped to turn our afternoon around.

Have any of you kept 5 year journals? If so, have you ever found it gave you a boost to reread it in a hard moment? I’ve only written in one for the past year and a half, but so far I like the routine.

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