Back to Journaling

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.


I have had a complicated relationship with journaling all my life. Starting in elementary school and through early middle school, I was a pretty consistent journaler. I filled two journals within a few years, and wrote about once a week. The entries were hilarious to read back on; mostly they were just gushing over a boy I had a crush on or outlining what I did with my friend that day. 

After those early middle school years, I pretty much abandoned journaling. Occasionally, if I was going through a particularly tough day, I would type up how I was feeling in a Word document, but never actually picked up a physical journal. 

A few weeks before I had to return back to work from quarantine, (we reopened at the start of the yellow phase) I decided to give journaling another try. It’s been two and a half months since then, and I have been the most consistent with it since my middle school journaling days. In the beginning, I was journaling every day, but now that I am back to work at full time hours, I do not always have the time or motivation. However, I am happy to say I have journaled at least once a week the past two and a half months. 

Although it can be daunting, and sometimes not what you feel like doing, this experience has really taught me the importance of journaling. It is something I’ve heard a lot (and I’m sure you have too!) from articles, therapists, and others along the way, but still never felt motivated enough. I am so glad I was able to find that motivation eventually, because I have learned a lot about myself

I always knew that I experienced pretty extreme mood swings from day to day, but my experience with consistent journaling really opened my eyes to just how often. Something that I brushed off the day before was harped on as something that deeply hurt me the very next day. It was interesting and enlightening to follow these changes. 

Although I used to prefer typing out what I was feeling because it was more comfortable, there is a large benefit to using pen and paper, as my therapist always told me. It is more therapeutic and there is less of a chance of deleting your thoughts or sentences, making it more of a genuine release of emotions. 

If you are on the fence about journaling, I encourage you to try it out, even if it is just each day for one week. Another thing that helps me feel motivated is the journal itself. I like the look of mine now – a sleek black notebook with a typewriter on the cover – and have also been shopping around for a higher quality hardcover journal. If you are excited about the look of your journal, you will be more likely to want to use it.

Another journal I have been using is the One Line A Day journal. You reflect on your day, every day, for five years. This motivates you to write every day, even if it is just one line. It is now a habit of mine, and is typically the last thing I do before I go to bed at night. It also makes me look forward to seeing my entries in the future and looking back at what my life was like day-to-day through the five years. 


Do you journal? Did you used to journal? What did you used to write about? Would you encourage your child to try journaling?

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