Are You Looking to Create a Lifeline? Gain Perspective?

            Journaling May be an Answer...

As a caregiver, you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions, paying bills, and helping with matters that used to be private.

Why write about it?

Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Do not underestimate its power. Writing saves lives*.

One of the simplest, most private places to write is in a journal. Journaling allows you to vent, delve into issues, untangle messes, analyze, or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. Daily journaling releases mental toxins and deepens awareness, transforming the unpleasant and allowing the strong, sane, safe, healthy, hopeful parts of you emerge.

What do you do if you have nothing to say? Look around the room for an image or a sensory detail-the way the sun makes a path on the carpet, the way steam rises off a cup of coffee, carrying the aroma of morning with it. Listen to the high pitched whirring of an omnipresent machine, the tick of the kitchen's black-and-white, kitty-cat clock-any image at all.

Write about a specific image you see or hear. Include sights, sounds, movements, smells, and the feel of the air. Describing the immediate environment will start your writing again. Don't worry if it's not related to the topic, because topics are only suggestions. Go wherever an image takes you. Explore fearlessly.

If you're ready to try but not sure how to begin, let me assure you that sentence starts can be a big help. If a sentence start says, "Today I feel." you finish the sentence, write another sentence, and you are journaling.

Everyone can do it. A book called You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers can help. You'll find encouragement, instructions, and over 200 sentence starts like "If you ask me.," "Because I follow.," and "What if."

Although I divided the sentence starts into four chapters, "About Me," "About Caregiving," "About the One I Care For," and "Reclaiming Myself," you are under no obligation to go in any specific order. Skip around. Use what strikes your fancy.

I've had two former caregivers tell me they never wrote a word but the prompts triggered memories of the way their life had been and they grew just by reading and thinking.

Wherever you are in your caregiving journey, You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers can help you process your stress and find solutions and hope. You can buy the book at Amazon, B&N, your local bookseller, or through Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com.

Sharon Bray, the author of When Words Heal, Writing Through Cancer, has said, "As someone steeped in the therapeutic value of writing, I think B. Lynn Goodwin's book meets a need that has yet to be addressed."

Of course, I agree. I know how powerful writing can be and I know it can lead to essays, memoirs, and fiction, if you decide you want to pursue it. Your truths are longing to come out. Writing has saved lives and opened doors for others. See what it can do for you.

B. Lynn Goodwin is a teacher, editor, freelance writer and the author of You Want Me To Do What? - Journaling for Caregivers. She is published in Voices of Caregivers, Hip Mama, the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, the Danville Weekly, Staying Sane When You're Dieting, Small Press Review, Dramatics Magazine, 24/7-a caregiving anthology and numerous e-zines. She facilitates journaling workshops for caregivers and publishes Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com.

 I posed the question to Jon Progoff, Director, of Dialogue House, Ronkonkoma, NY, home of the Progoff Intensive Journal Program. Mr. Progoff indicated that in his experience “the Intensive Journal method has helped people transform their lives and work through major challenges such as grieving the loss of a family member, dealing with the stress of caring for a family member and overcoming difficult family living arrangements”. 

 He went on to state “It can help people who live with great uncertainty such as a family member who is serving overseas in the military or the worry of a family member who needs to get on another pathway in life. At an Intensive Journal workshop, people learn how to use the exercises to work through these issues in a private supportive nonjudgmental environment. They can then use the method on their own over time, as they deem necessary”.

For more info on the Progoff Intensive Journal Program contact: Jon Progoff at 800-221-5844 www.intensivejournal.org

Psychologist Ira Progoff, developed the Intensive Journal ® Program for Self-Development. (www.intensivejournal.org)

Dr. Progoff emphasizes the importance of the Journal Feedback method as follows:

“The self-multiplying, cumulative effect of the Journal Feedback process makes it a great force for change. It generates a power which cumulates in the unconscious depths behind the mind in the very midst of conscious thinking and writing. And then it thrusts forward in the form of new experiences, new recognitions, new ideas and emotions.”