Journaling – Not Just For Teenage Girls

On my 21st birthday, my mom handed me a large stack of papers in a pretty box, all neatly stapled together. She said, “This is something that I have wanted to give you for a long time.” As I started looking at the pages, my mom explained to me that every year on my birthday she would sit down and write a letter to my birth mom… (I was adopted, and I’ll share more on this in a different post). She made a copy of every single letter and kept it; waiting for the right time to give them to me.

Can we talk about what an amazing gift this is!?

I mean… who has a “book” about their first 20 years of through their mother’s eyes! I do!! And it is such a treasure.

My mom wrote about all of the new things I was doing; my accomplishments, my interests, and my developing personality. Things that seem to be anyone elses’ normal part of life, my mom was able to document and express some of the biggest moments that meant the most to her.

To be frank, I was overwhelmed with emotion by what was in these letters and how special it was to have them. She continued to explain how difficult it was for her to write this letter every year because a part of her felt like she was sharing me with someone else, and this was something she did not do for my brother or sister. But, it was also something she looked forward to doing because she could relive  memories and think about all of the great things that had happened over the year.

Receiving this journal as a young adult was incredible and I knew I wanted to be able to give this type of gift to my kids one day. However, I did not fully grasp how truly special these memories were until I became a mom, myself.

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Fast forward 6 years after receiving this gift,  I welcomed my first baby girl. I quickly learned that everything happens so fast and as soon as you are enjoying one stage, you are entering another. Days are blurry, and memories you think will last forever start to fade, because every new memory is shining so bright. This is where keeping a journal helps!

As bad as it sounds, I have to put it in my calendar or on my monthly to-do list, so that I set aside the time to put my thoughts to paper. I have a folder on my computer that I open at least once a month to write down what is new in my children’s lives. I also can’t help myself from scrolling back to previous months and reading what was going on, and reliving the moments that seem like forever ago. This is so very therapeutic on days when your toddler is extra sassy or has an epic meltdown in Hobby Lobby (because you didn’t let her insert your debit card), and you can look back to when she was 15 months old and was nothing but pure sweetness!

Here is an entry from my journal:

My plan for these notes is to turn them into a journal for when they are older. I love how we can use social media to look back at pictures to remember milestones and events, but having those tangible letters my mom hand-wrote is something more special than pictures. When I decide to give this gift to my girls, I am going to sit down with a blank journal, a pen, these notes, probably a large glass, (…who are we kidding, a bottle…) of wine and write about how they have completed my life from the day(s) they entered this world!

I would love to hear other ways that you keep memories and how you plan to share them with your kids!