How to journal your life
Famous diary and journal entries from the likes of Audre Lorde, Nelson Mandela, etc.
Have you ever experienced something so shocking that you have to take a step back to make sure you really saw what you saw and heard what you heard? Sometimes you need more than the split second between what just happened and the aftereffects to fully process things. Imagine finding out you have breast cancer, you’re going to be imprisoned for the unforeseeable future, or your partner of 3 years has been cheating on you for the past 7 months. It’s not necessarily that any of these are implausible events, just events you never thought would happen to you.
This week we’re just going to look at excerpts from diaries and journals of people like Audre Lorde, Nelson Mandela, and Alice Walker processing the mundane and the incredulous aspects of life. Journaling is a means of processing–thinking with the hand. Each of the individual journals is situated in different points in history, across different localities, and yet there’s something quite familiar about them.
It’s the act of processing this short, little life that we’re all currently experiencing. I’ve read these diaries at different stages in my life and each time I revisit them I learn something new.
A diary/journal entry is just a glimpse into a person’s life. However, I hope that at least one of these glimpses resonates with you. History is now. History is present. Every single time you feel, see, or recognize something familiar you’re experiencing the now-ness of history.
Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela
“In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth, and standard of education. These are, of course, important in measuring one's success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these. But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others - qualities which are within reach of every soul - are the foundation of one's spiritual life.”
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000 by Alice Walker
May 18, 1967
I am afraid, worried, distracted, and it is an old-new feeling and quite unshakeable, although for Mel's sake it must be overcome. There was a time when a mother-in-law's shouts, as in a story, would have amused me; now they do not, of course. They fill me with dread for the knowledge that these shouts are unchangeable keeps me from being optimistic about a better future relationship.
I don't think I know everything there is to know, but I do know that I love my husband. This pain each time he pains, sickness even in my body because he feels it, too. My life is double and our lives, one. We are both nervous, jittery from caring so much about each other.
Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 by Susan Sontag
“On Keeping a Journal.
Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts—like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.
The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather—in many cases—offers an alternative to it.”
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
“Well, women with breast cancer are warriors, also. I have been to war, and still am. So has every woman who had had one or both breasts amputated because of the cancer that is becoming the primary physical scourge of our time. For me, my scars are an honorable reminder that I may be a casualty in the cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald’s hamburgers and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still a part of it. I refuse to have my scars hidden or trivialized behind lambswool or silicone gel. I refuse to be reduced in my own eyes or in the eyes of others from warrior to mere victim, simply because it might render me a fraction more acceptable or less dangerous to the still complacent, those who believe if you cover up a problem it ceases to exist. I refuse to hide my body simply because it might make a woman-phobic world more comfortable.”
Until next time,
Hi, I’m Shae and I am a doctoral candidate in History at Harvard University. I discovered my passion for education while teaching at the college and ever since then, I’ve been on a mission to bring the classroom learning experience to all of you. I believe everyone deserves a world-class education, so I’m so glad you’re here 🤓.
