The Five Year Journals
How I learned to map my inner world.
transits: spring equinox; new moon in pisces; venus (aries) squares jupiter (cancer)
card: the moon
I wish I hadn’t destroyed the diary I kept in middle school. I tore it to shreds soon after finishing it because as satisfying as it felt to narrate the world, the notebook was like the dirty evidence of an internal self that I was too ashamed to own.
Today there are 23 notebooks collected over a period of five years. From dream interpretations and ancestral messages, to tarot spreads and nature walks, these journals have become my most valuable possession. The pages, in all their raw and slightly incoherent glory, have allowed me to form a real relationship with my mind, and become the architect of my own reality.
When I think back to my middle school diary all I can remember is a burning feeling of humiliation. Now I wonder what wisdom, captured through the prismatic vision of an unruly 12 year old, was destroyed when I ripped those pages apart. I suppose this is my way of trying to get it back.
Year One (2020-2021)
The first journals are constricted and critical. I spent a lot of time criticizing the people in my life, my parents mostly, but also religion and academia. This was the year I stopped going to church every Sunday. The tone in these is angry and self-righteous.
Many of the observations are hyper-individualist and self-centered, they seem like a form of self-protection. There is a lot of blind hope, a feeling that I must keep going because I will find a way out, even if it’s by sheer force.
At first they read as navel-gazing, but for the first time in my life I was learning how to regard myself as an individual. I was high while writing most of the first journal, and I can see the feelings slipping through my fingers. I keep trying to address each thought without being able to hold on to the one that came before it. The entries are brief and repetitive.
When I was forced to be sober, I began to interpret my dreams because I could actually remember them again. Painting visions from my dreams became a new escape. In these journals there are a lot of quotes and affirmations from other people, mostly random neo-spiritual accounts on twitter. There are a lot of complaints about social media.
3/15/21 - 9AM: Last night I had a dream I was at school, in one of the creepy grand houses. A group of us was there studying late and we stumbled on a conspiracy. The building was using the body of unconscious students to power itself. It was doing something to them.
Year Two (2021-2022)
During this time I returned to my college campus in Western Massachusetts for senior year. These journals are rife with fear and anxiety due to race and class. The transition from urban to rural often put me in a heightened state of mental agitation. I felt paranoid and unsafe.
There were more people around for me to criticize, not just my family, but friends, classmates, and professors. The judgement began to shift though. I wasn’t just seeking to hurt other people by saying mean things, I was trying to understand them. I was gaining more distance as an observer of others.
3/1/22 - 8AM: The thing about a place like this is that people aren’t thinking. We are consuming and producing “knowledge” without actually thinking. The sheer volume of things, and the rate at which we’re made to consume and produce, makes it so that no one is actually thinking, only giving knee jerk reactions to materials that a group of old people decided was important.
The writing itself is less jagged and flat. My handwriting is better, and the thoughts are longer. I started being able to connect different experiences and assemble them into larger themes. The pace is less urgent and more reflective. I took more space and time to put the pieces together. I began to write gratitude lists and take note of the things I enjoy. I started to paint and write about nature.
After graduation the journals became about disappointing my parents’ expectations. The tone is lonely and defensive. What followed was an isolating and seemingly empty period, especially without the support of my previous religious beliefs, but there was a lot beginning to take root under the surface.
Year Three (2022-2023)
Faced with the painful loss of old friends, routines, and identity, a deeper sense of self was growing. I became more aware of my physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. In these journals I wrote a lot more about my physical body, noting when I was sick and what I did to feel better. I was more attuned to my energetic body, and went out on walks when I needed to ground.
I began to recognize my own spiritual abilities, and those reflected in my family. By the time I turned 23 I’d received three tarot decks as gifts. These journals are full of tarot spreads, and astrological observations. There are no more dream or nature paintings. There is a significant decline in self-criticism, replaced with more gratitude and self-compassion.
2/9/23 - 11AM: I was out on my walk and I just felt so beautiful. Life gets so much easier when you learn to be on your own side, when you stop denying the power and the blessings that are naturally yours, your inheritance! And what you have earned through your lived experience; when you stop denying your right to joy, ease and comfort. I don’t have the answers to everything, but I feel that there is so much potential for lightness and healing, and I want to share that feeling with everyone.
There were more references to internal power and agency. A lot of physical changes were arising, which taught me to become patient with my emotional changes as well. I got sick and experienced chronic pain for the first time.
There were medications and invasive procedures. I learned a new kind of fear, not the kind that is anxious and self-made, but the kind that holds you with a cold grip when something completely outside of your control is happening inside you. I was desperate enough to learn how to sit in silence. After each meditation I wrote down the messages that came through in the voice of my ancestors.
11/28/23 - 9AM: Stubborn. You are afraid to be wrong. There is wisdom in being wrong. Your expression should not be a shield, it should be a tunnel. It should help you to see. Floating takes practice. You are afraid to expose yourself, but you know how wise it is to live exposed. It’s okay to be afraid.
Year Four (2023-2024)
Things changed when I started doing The Artist’s Way and writing morning pages. At first I was very resistant to writing in a stream of consciousness for thirty minutes. I did not want to relinquish control. But as I engaged in the exercise, my handwriting changed from tiny and constrained, to larger and more relaxed.
The new spaciousness between the words reflected what was happening in my mind. I let loose and became disinterested in my previous setting-the-record-straight style of linear narration. I paid more attention to patterns in thought and action. It became easier to describe intangible things.
9/16/24 - 10AM: At first I was annoyed that we were being forced to pray- but then I realized that it would probably help me realize some things about the period in my life when I couldn’t say no, and had to believe in what I was told. I wondered when the actual moment was that I stopped believing in my mother’s god. I think it was a gradual shift.
The writing became more present and descriptive, filled with mundane detail. I started to become responsible for my own feelings and actions. There are still complaints about others, but they are fewer and far between. I became more focused on words themselves and how I use them, in writing, speaking, and thinking. I was concerned with my habits, with how to divide and spend my time. I analyzed my routines and tech use.
I was still very self-demanding, and this was my workaholic year. Until I was hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury in the summer. The journals became an anchor during a lengthy recovery period, since the concussion made looking at screens too painful.
My nature walks became longer, meditations in and of themselves, and I realized that the beings out in nature were speaking as well. I started a separate journal just for these entries.
1/30/25 - 1PM: Today the hawks were very present with me and they showed me that I am afraid of love and support. I walked on the path towards the guardian trees. First I heard the hawks’ call which I did not know until yesterday. I saw one, and then two, of them fly into the tree that was right in front of me. They were kind of tussling with each other and I watched them. One of them flew right in front of me while crying out. The other one followed in the opposite direction like they do. And flew high in the air making those slow and confident circles.
Year Five (2025-2026)
After four years of building a foundation through daily practice, I was ready to break it open. I started writing morning pages on random legal pads and printer paper, in order to feel as unrestricted as possible.
From those pages, in which I usually recount my dreams or events from the day before, I extracted the relevant dream symbols, motifs, and thematic patterns that kept showing up in life, into a large spiral notebook, where I expanded on the connections I noticed, and added external research. There are a lot of empty spaces for drawings I never did.
4/9/26:
I saw a young girl roller skating down the street with her arms spread out wide, bathing in the sunlight. I decided that she is who I want to be!
It’s worth it to be open and honest about your life. People want to be kind and excited for you…
I got off the bus and walked home through a different route because of traffic, feeling love for every person on the street. Realizing that I know nothing about the world, and excited that now I get to learn.
Inspired by the Halliwell sisters’ Book of Shadows, this notebook holds everything from notes from therapy sessions and Buddhist philosophy class, to nature walks and made up herbal tea blends. This was the period in which I finally gave up trying to fix everything on my own. I asked for help and the world around me responded emphatically.
I began to see everything in my reality as a direct reflection of me, and how each area of my life influenced the other, like a garden or a playground without boundaries. I wanted this one book to feel like an experiment, like a caldero where I could just close the lid and leave all of my ideas to stew and cook together. That has been the most fun journal by far. I think it’s still cooking, it’s too early to tell what will come of it.
Present…
The linear form of this account is deeply inaccurate. I organized it this way, against my own impulse at times, in order to make just some realizations legible. I’m afraid that other realizations have been grossly generalized, and there are others still that have not yet been made. The truth is that more often than not, I still wake up in year one, only to be pulled out of it by the memory of a message, now a faint inkling, received in year three.
I spend my days forgetting and remembering, cycling through the fears and hopes outlined here, looking for new ways to disrupt the pattern. Impatience has always been a weakness of mine, but the journey back through these journals has taught me that to play with time one must have a sense of humor.
Thank you for sharing your reflections, Yasmina. I feel grateful to recognize so many conversations we've had over the years in this post. And one familiar journal cover! These last few weeks, I've been thinking about neuroplasticity and wondering how I can use my journaling to break old thought pathways and create new ones. I'd be interested to know more about how you use manifestations and other tools to mold your thinking and your life. Love you <3
Thank you for sharing these words. I also have shelves of notebooks. Notebooks that have helped me to know my own inner worlds.