What Journaling Has Taught Me About Resilience or Writing as a Way Back to Yourself

The first half of 2025 has been a shit storm. Dumpster fire after fire. And if you're exhausted and scattered, all the while feeling fired up, you are not alone. Or maybe that just describes me, ha.

As a counterweight to that, this June and July, I’ll be sharing weekly insights, prompts, and practices all summer long to help you build what I call Resilient Joy. I’m inviting us back to the practices that help us reset, not out of obligation, but out of care. Not to get more done, but to come back to what matters.

So how do we reconnect or begin again when everything feels like too much and you just want to run away to the woods?

It sure isn’t by pushing harder or by trying figuring it all out right now.

We begin with slow. We begin with practice. We begin with one small, honest moment, like picking up a pen and listening to ourselves on the page. 

So I’m kicking off our Summer of Resilient Joy with the core practice of journaling. 

I’ve had a complicated relationship with creativity. And after all these decades of teaching and mentoring, I know you have, too. Red ink, edits, anonymous feedback, critiques, and criticism. Ouch.

For years, I quietly denied the writer in me. That I was too busy for personal writing. The  focus was on publications and most of the time those didn’t feel creative past the idea generation. I thought creative expression was a luxury I couldn’t afford. And for a while, the institutions I worked in confirmed that: rewarding productivity, not slow and intentional.

But every time I returned to my journal, something inside me softened. Once I got past the what-if-someone-reads-this block, my nervous system unclenched. The fog cleared just enough to feel a small flicker of clarity, or at least honesty.

Writing, especially freeform, no-pressure-for-output journaling, has become one of my most essential resilience practices.

Not because it solves anything (although, sometimes, it can with enough consistently and listening), but because it creates space to feel again. To listen. To remember.

These days, I don’t journal because I have something profound to say. I journal because I need to hear myself. I need to express myself. And I need to listen to myself. 

Because once I can get rid of the noise in my head, I can start to retrace the shape of joy, even when it feels far away. 

I invite you to create your own space to rebuild our capacity for clarity, creativity, and aliveness through small, embodied practices like journaling.

This is yours to practice. And it’s enough to begin again with a blank page and a pen.

Want to try it? Here’s a prompt to get you started:

What is my body trying to tell me that my brain has been too loud to hear?

Write for 5 minutes. Be honest. No editing. No judgment. Just follow the thread.

This isn’t about writing well or poetically. It’s about writing real.

Resilient joy isn’t performative; it’s personal. And sometimes the path to it starts right here: a pen, a page, and a few quiet minutes to come home to yourself. 

All the research points to honest writing of less than 20 minutes regularly-ish is enough to lead to numerous health benefits such as improved health benefits like sleep and immunity; mental health support to release anxiety; and building resilience that grows your window of tolerance. There’s nothing to lose but the stories you’ve been telling yourself.

Try it, and let me know how it goes!