A few months ago, after a particularly rich teaching session of Circle Leader Training, I set out on a mission.
I strained to pick up the worn and heavy box containing 14 years of my journals. After having moved with me to five different cities, this old box had been sitting in a corner of my bedroom, making itself known for months. I carefully climbed down the ladder from my bedroom into the kitchen with the cumbersome box under my arm. It was already late. My beloved slept as I carried this box outside, under the stars, and lit a fire.
Not particularly adept at fire building, it took time and patience, which was helpful, actually, because what I was about to do was radical (for me, anyway) and I needed time to build up the inner readiness.
I’d been thinking of burning my old journals for years and never quite felt ripe to do it. But something had changed in me; the time was right. I was itching to send these tattered books, filled to the brim with thoughts and dreams and poetry and heartaches and big plans and to-do lists (so many to-do lists!), into their next adventure.
When the fire finally got some momentum, I stood there taking in the heat of the moment & I prayed that all I was meant to have and remember from these past 14 years was living in me. I said thank you to all the experiences I have had and all the versions of myself I have been.
I picked up the first book, chosen randomly, and began to tear the pages out, catching glimpses of phrases on some of the pages as they made their way into the flames.
As I tore the pages out and offered them to the fire, I saw visions of moments I had lived. Faces I had nearly forgotten flashed big smiles at me through the flames. Flavors of somewhat foreign feelings remembered themselves in me. I remembered versions of myself I had honestly not thought of in years. How strange to realize how much you’ve changed, all while staying the same.
I hadn’t remembered how much poetry I had written. I do believe poetry is the way the feminine expresses through words. I didn’t think of it in those terms back then, but I must have known. Most of it was…well, not the greatest. But it was honest and unpretentious. I appreciated that.
Sometimes, I saw a line or two that made me smile, like this one: “I want to live inside the pages of your book. I know it’s used, but I love the smell.”
As I watched the hundreds and hundreds of pages curl and burn and turn to ash, my insides stirred.
I observed the diversity of journal covers, I smiled. One with a line of Emerson’s about flowers, another decorated with a picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed, another rather small one with Ganesha, another with something about believing in your dreams. Each and everyone had spoken deeply to me at the time of use. Since childhood it has been a beloved ritual of mine to find a new journal when I had filled all the pages of the last one. Writing really is, and always has been, the primary way I have for understanding what the hell is going on inside of me.
There was a lot of pain in the air that night. People and dreams I had invested my love into, with sometimes catastrophic returns. I envisioned a Phoenix rising from the ash.
In the tearing and burning, I noticed a passion for life in those pages. As hard as I often was on myself, I was always living full. Throwing myself into each experience and allowing myself to feel in a big way. I was hungry and willing.
One of the lines I threw into the flames was from a best friend who I’ve known since I was a kid. With equal parts hope and doubt, he said to me, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” I remember how scared I felt when he said that to me all those years back, how scared I was that I may never find it.
Even though I couldn’t articulate precisely what “it” was, in that moment, underneath the sky, before the fire, I felt I had. I found it – it was here – in and around me.
Now, months later, with plenty of time to digest the experience, I have a better understanding of what I had been searching for – sometimes happily, sometimes franticly – for all those 14 years. Like a triangle, “it” had three points all connected, with space between.
1. I was looking for what I was supposed to do with my life – a path that made sense to me & offered fulfillment.
2. I was looking for a way to understand what life was all about – what is reallllyyy going on here.
3. I was looking to find a way to feel at home – in my body, in society, on the Earth, with my family, in a town, with friends & lovers.
The fire kept burning until dawn.
It took so much longer than I anticipated, but doesn’t it always?
And here I am again, with a new hunger, and a pen in my hand.
Oh gosh.
What courage.
I still have all my journals, so many now. Need to do some kind of clearance as do not wish to burden my children with that task.
Burning all those hoarded wishes and dreams is hard.
When I left home at 18 I did it.
Wishing you all the best.
Dear Marian,
I hear you. I def would only recommend the burning of journals to those who hear the call. We are all so different.
Thanks so much for reading & for your reflection. xoxo
This article could not have come at the right time into my email! Tremendous synchronicity which made its way into my story. Over the past 2 days I’ve been meaning to burn a journal filled with pain and hurt which was used to vent my frustrations.
I have been wanting to join and become part of the Wild Woman Training, however as I’m from Australia the cost is expensive. Please email back xox
Love & Light,
Chantelle
Hi there, Chantelle,
So happy to hear of the good timing for you, I hope it is a little nudge to follow your own guidance! Blessing on your burn, should you go through with it.
Regarding Circle Leader Training, you can inquire about scholarships on the Leadership Page here. If you email support@thewildwomanproject.com, Amanda will get back to you in 1-2 business days.
Much Love to you.
Dear Chris ~ Thank you for sharing your experience with your journals. So brave and so powerful! Coincidentally, I just recently began to read my journals in preparation for letting them go in a fire ritual. After reading your story, I no longer feel the need to read them out of a fear that there is something written in them that I meant to remember. I will, as you did, set the intention to remember what is necessary for my journey and trust in the Divine. So much gratitude!
Peace and Blessings,
Mary Ellen
Dear Mary Ellen,
Thanks so much for reading and sharing about your process with your journals. Blessings on your burn!
Much love,
Chris
When I was young (biologically) single and starting out on my own, I kept a journal. I wrote poetry too, and like you Chris, the poetry was an attempt to express and understand my feelings. The 2 were separate, it never occurred to me to write my Poetry in my “Diary”. I remember when I decided to burn the journal, it was clogged with the anguish of being young and insecure. I decided then never to keep a journal again, never to record such things again. But I have, but only on 2 occasions and for very specific reasons. As to the poetry, it survived in a folder stored elsewhere, but somewhere in the responsible adult world of corporate jobs then dedicated motherhood the poetry inside me has been lost. Since becoming a circle leader I have been using journalling to help me prepare and keep notes on rituals etc, I am slowly finding my expression again. It’s as if I have come full circle, but now I feel more positive and constructive in my scribblings, and in part, that is because of my participation in the WWP. I have much to be thankful for.
Bless you Chris, and everyone who supports you in this amazing endeavour.
Dear Sarah,
I love hearing about your relationship to your poetry and journaling. It’s so touching to hear your process and reasoning.
So happy you are finding nourishment in your Circle Leadership and being a part of TWWP. Heart taps:)
Thank you for your blessings and reflection – it means so much.
Love,
C
So Glad.. To read your experience of letting it go.. Thankyou for sharing this with all of us. I am still convincing myself to do the same..Reading Today’s write up on personal and precious ritual of writing..I feel a kind.. Hard to find a word to express it.. InShaAllah.. Some day, I will.. Love and prayers.
Thanks for reading and for your reflections. I hear you. I thought about doing it for years before I felt ready. It seems important to feel totally ready, so I really honor you taking your time until it feels just right.
Sending you lots of love!
Holy crap as I read this my chest tightened. I applaud you. I have the same box (now a suitcase) of journals and also feel that I live fully, authenticity, honestly, completely in my journals. I also look back at my journals to realize what has not changed. I kept track of my ex-husbands drinking and finally after a year divorced and left him because I had the hard evidence and words in front of me to see that nothing was changing. I also write when my intuition is telling me something. What I’m trying to excuse away. It is always a good reminder of me to take action. I realized that I can and now do trust my intuition because I am able to go back and see what I already now. I am glad that is has served you in the way you needed. That’s all that matters. Your soul is fed in the way it needs to be by YOU. Namaste.
I love your thinking about this and reading about what looking back at your journals offers you. It’s beautiful and powerful.
I love how in our journals, we can’t or perhaps don’t, hide from ourselves.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing your story.
Much Love,
Chris
Holy smoldering embers! What courage!
I’ve moved a TON over my life, and journals have been the one thing I’ve kept.
I see myself at an old age, re-reading them. And maybe at that point in time, I see myself burning them.
But I think they want to hang around till then. Even if i never look at them.
If only to see the curves of my life. If only to remember what once was.
Yes. I’m right there with you – re-reading my journals at an old age, and burning them then. I’ve kept all of my journals as well, as evidence of a life lived. Occasionally I do look back at them, and learn something new about my present from my past. But at the same time, I so admire the courage in this ritual, and the freedom and transformation that came from it – profoundly letting go.
I totally understand that, Mishel and fully support you in it. Journals are precious and offer each of us so much.
I’ve only done it once and who knows if I will ever do it again. Only time will tell.
Big hugs and love to you! Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to write back!
I love how the Universe brings to me the things I need to hear to give me “lift” I need to follow thru with something that has been on my mind. I had ben thinking I needed to re-read each and every one to make sure that nothing “important” was being tossed away. Now I can just let go and know, that if it was important, I will remember it in detail and exactly the perfect time. Thank you for this poetic inspiration.
mmm…beautiful, Ruby. Thank you so much for reading and taking the time to share here. xoxo
I love this. I burned all of mine 4 years ago before yet another move, yet another life transition. Like you I realized I was dragging my whole past along with me each time I moved. In college each time I moved I reinvented myself, and not always in healthy ways. I suppose I was refinding myself on that particular move, knowing more who I was and am. Knowing there will always be someone I am learning to be and learning to know. I sometimes wonder if I regret burning them all, but I appreciate your words– I hope too “that all I was meant to have and remember… was living in me.” So beautiful.
Dear Mandi,
Thank you so much for sharing about your experience with burning your own journals, as well as your reasoning.
So happy to hear you trusting in the intelligence of your choice. It’s a bold move, and if you chose it, I trust in the perfection of that.
Much love to you,
C
Timeliness is everything- as was this sharing of yours, Chris. I’ve given thought to doing the same but am not ready to not be able to look back at the written words of memory. At my age, there is so much to look back on and I forget so much details. It’s a gift to have the pages.
It apparently was Time for you to release and that took Great Courage, knowing once the Fire took them -they were gone forever-only what was to be remembered in your soul left- apparently the most essential memories. I applaud you.
I’ve been feeling lost and disconnected lately- questioning everything- “who am I now? Do I know me?Who is this man I’m sharing my life with- do I even know him anymore?”
Something inside me, nudged me to revisit my Very First Diary- it was labeled ‘My Diary’ from 1968 when I was 12 years old and in 7th grade- it locked with a key(LOL). I’d only stuck to writing the first 4 months- after that – it dwindled to no notes after September.I wish I’d kept at it.
I needed to see that young girl again- to go back to the root of who I was becoming at those tumulutous pre-teen years. To see if there were remnants of her still within or had she become someone entirely different. I saw at my core- my beginnings are still here, but so is so much else. I am glad I had that Diary to go back to.
I have journals going back to 1998- I go back to them occasionally. To see all that I’ve been through, all the pain and hurt kept in those pages as well as joy and hope- and- like M.I.D.I.- to see what hasn’t changed. It also crosses my mind -what happens to all this when I die? Do I really want to leave it for prying eyes or a burden to someone else?
I know the time will also come for me- when I’m ready to release- just not yet…….
Dear Michele,
Thanks so much for reading and also sharing about your relationship with your journals. So beautiful to have your one from girlhood! What a treasure!
I would only advise burning if you felt a full-bodied call to do it. It took me years of thinking about it to feel ready and who knows if I will ever do it again. We must trust ourselves, our instincts.
Much love to you. Keep writing xoxo
Wow…I felt this terror inside of me with just the thought of my journals burning. Some I could probably release but others I hold so dear. I feel like my journals reassure me and remind me who I am and where I have come from when I sometimes feel lost. I feel as though I gain so much clarity when I write and I find it helpful to look back on those entries which can help me realign in the present moment. There is also this feeling that I want those journals there to pass onto my child in the future so they will be able to carry me forward…that thought is definitely one I need to explore more of.
Thanks for the inspiration Chris
Ashley
Dear Ashley,
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and share. Beautiful to hear your reflections of your journals as touch stones, reminders, and maybe even future family Heirlooms! So beautiful.
I’d def only recommend this burning to someone who felt the full bodied call to do it. In all things: to each, her own.
Keep writing!
Much love to you,
Chris
It’s so interesting to hear different women’s takes on journal burning. I felt the deep poignancy of Michele’s comment. Clearly, for everyone, this is a loaded notion. I’m a bio buff, and I always feel so deeply grateful to read journal entries from day’s past–to get an authentic sense of what life, the world, the writer was like many years ago. I love reading my journals because I usually can’t remember the events I wrote about, so it feels as though I’m reading someone else’s journal, and that makes me marvel at what I’ve experienced. As I grow older, maybe I won’t be able to find words or string lovely sentences together. Will my soul know in a non-verbal way? Maybe I will burn my journals some day…or maybe they’ll become a testament of courage and adventure for someone who needs it… Thank you for inspiring this conversation, Chris.
I agree, it so delicious to hear everyone’s relationship with their journals! And happy to know the practice of keeping a journal is as precious as others as it is to me.
I hear you so much on how you have looked back and remembered with your journals. I fully respect and honor the guidance to do so.
Thanks so much for sharing, Rita! xo
I have burned my journals before. I read them all first. I had gone through cancer diagnosis and treatment, followed by several other health challenges, then endured a horrible divorce. I did not want my kids to read about the depths of despair, depression, and sadness I had experienced, particularly in regards to my relationship with their father. So I reread them all. I relived all the memories and committed to trying my best to remember the coolest things about my kids’ youngest years and to let go of all the saddest parts. I took them outside and burned them. And walked away.
What a great ritual idea. I give you tons of credit for doing something you felt called to do, and not allowing any of the difficult thoughts or feelings that surfaced to get in your way! That’s some Wild Woman Bravery!! I’ve journaled for as long as I can remember. Now my mind and heart and spirit are stirring, trying to imagine letting go of all those words/feelings/yearnings of my life. I can imagine burning some of the pages—memories and feelings I’m ‘done’ with or ready to release…maybe… Did you keep any pages?? Much love to you for sharing this!
Chris, this is my favorite article of yours to date. I felt as if I was with you in that moment of burning the journals and more radically “burning” and transmuting former selves. I’ve been using the KonMari method to tidy my home and saving my journals to burn as the last step in that process. You’ve turned it into a ritual and celebration of sorts. Thank you for providing the kindling of courage to step into the threshold of what’s next for me and for all of us.
I journal and I have decided to burn them when I finish them and after I get a new one, because you’re writing all of your feelings down in a Journal that you don’t want anyone else to read, because, I mean, privacy. So why not Burn the past and Embrace the future?
Chris, what a beautiful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing such a personal
And brave experience with us.
I received my first journal in 1975 at the age of 5, close to age 6. It was (and is) a tiny blue Diary with the word “Diary” in white letters on the front cover. While I didn’t write in it every day I did write tiny bits in there on certain days from then until 1980, I think.
In 4th grade, our teacher, Mrs. Stapleton introduced the class to the concept of journaling. I was an avid journaler that year and received a lot of encouragement in my chaotic life and in my writing from Mrs. Stapleton.
Through the tumultuous teen years scribbled in spiral notebook journals quite often as a way to express the angst I was experiencing and this continued through the most difficult times in my life up until I had a child of my own. The time for that type of writing leveled off.
So I have several spiral notebooks and a few nice hard cover ones full of misc things from Misc times when I’ve tried to make sense of the world. I’ve only gone back to read them two or three times in my life when, once again I’m trying to make sense of things.
Poetry wasn’t the thing that sang to my soul, but I did have one book containing a few song lyrics I wrote in the 80’s.
The concept of burning my journals never occurred to me, but Your post is the second time I’ve been presented with the idea in one week. I’ve been contemplating what that would mean for me. Maybe really freeing me From all evidence of my past. Maybe that’s something I will Do one day.
I relate to what Ashley said about keeping them For someone to read in the future. I’m not sure who, but in my younger years I felt it important to leave some sort of information to someone about who I was when I’m gone. I thought I would be a famous writer and someone might care to read those angsty scribbles one day.
Now that I’m older I see those words
More than likely will mean nothing to anyone other than me. I’m not ready to part with them. At the age of 53 I’m still searching for peace and purpose and those journals are part of My journey towards it.
Wow. I’ve been thinking of burning my journals for a while now. Your reflection gives me the push I need to do it…. To let go of the victim role. To let go of the past and step into my authentic self in this moment. Thanks and blessings!!
I am a journaler and have been since I could write, since the first time I realized that the words I wrote in that sacred space would be respected and not read by someone else. My mom was a journaler, and I learned that from her.
Five or six years ago, I was cleaning out old memory boxes and threw away my childhood and early adulthood journals. I opened them to read them, and there was so much pain and anger in them. My journal was the safe place I vented, but I felt in that moment that re-reading didn’t benefit me, and I didn’t want my children reading them sometime later.
I might feel a little differently about it now, but in that moment, it was so freeing to close those books and let them go, and to intentionally let a painful season go. I was setting a new intention for what I wanted for my writing and for my life. If I could change one thing, it would be creating a ritual or intention around letting all of that go.
This was so lovely to read, Chris.
I don’t journal much any more. As of 2024, I keep a “Captain’s Log”. I still have my many journals from before. Maybe it’s because I have SDAM that I keep them because it’s the only way I can remember my past with any acuity…and some day maybe I’ll release the need to remember my past.
The message of the flame has been appearing to me for two years now. I have one oracle deck, have only used it three times in two years and even though I shuffled, and poured intention into it, I drew the flame each time.
Recently, in a very tumultuous time; losing my job, losing my house and finances, losing my health and losing my beloved dog companion, I had a vision and my higher self whispered “fire”. I further explored this vision and the still of Winter shared with me a hard-to-hear truth: I’ve let the fire of my hearth blow out. I cried. I have little children to attend to.
I prayed for guidance on my path. I am to start simply and humbly by lighting a candle each and every day to honour the fire within my soul. I remember reading this post of yours in 2019 and thought how courageous you are. I have the same heavy box of journals, all of them kept since I was 14. Moved from home to home. I couldn’t do that, I thought. Or at least I wasn’t ready at the time.
Your message and revival of this bravery comes at the perfect time. Thank you for sharing again and providing the courage for me to do the same. I am ready to release the past dreams of me and purge my soul through the ritual cleanse of fire; burning, letting go, sending gratitude for the journey to the person I am now. Transforming my presence and the future by honouring and relinquishing the past.
Like the Pheonix rising from the ashes, great transformation is afoot. Now to plan and light the fire, release, revive and marvel while the spirit of light and love and good ignites again into the roaring flame I once held in my heart.
I’m 43 and just burned some pages this year I was downsizing. I had a journal from 3rd grade and many more for the years between then and now. I am continuing to journal. I ,too, moved those from house to house. It felt necessary. Then suddenly , I felt the desire to let go.
Chris, I’m curious how it felt to let go of your poetry in your journals. I would love to get rid of some of my journals in a bonfire, how very freeing! But I have many poems included in them and I’m wondering if I could let those go🤔