On joy and journaling as resistance
October's journaling prompts for paid Mothership subscribers
October seems to have passed me by entirely — apologies for the lateness of these prompts. I hope you find them useful nonetheless.
I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends recently about journaling through the hard times. Part of the beauty of journaling is that the blank page can be exactly what you need it to be when you turn up.
It can be a log of your day or a place to scream into the void, it can be a friend to rant to about the minutiae of your marriage or the state of the world, it can be a catharsis, a way to work through big feelings, or to find a thread through a tangle of thoughts.
I also try to make my journal a place to seek out moments of joy and magic in the ordinary, to sift through the hard, infuriating, exhausting parts of each day and pull out just one moment when I felt connected or contented.
In times like these, intentionally finding glimmers of joy to string my days and weeks and months together feels almost like resistance. Writing down the magic in each day feels radical in a world that seems hell-bent on keeping women and mothers (and other marginalised groups) down.
Rage is resistance, but so is joy.
This post used to contain paywalled journaling prompts — I’m experimenting with a new model and you can get sixty prompts to write through motherhood here (for free). All I ask in return is to follow me on Instagram @zoepickburn and subscribe (also for free) on here — I’m currently working on building my platform to give my book proposal the best chance of success when it lands on agents’ desks, so every follow and subscribe really helps!