I’m a big advocate for journaling. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I won’t touch my journal for months, other times I fill pages and pages within a day. Every single time, my journal has been a place of refuge for me, a quiet space to untangle all the complex thoughts trapped in the mazes of my mind.

Some go to counselors to figure out their problems, but the idea of pouring out my heart’s troubles to a stranger is not exactly appealing to me. Journaling is my alternative, an intimate healing process, letting me sort out events and emotions in the privacy of my own head.

I think everyone should journal.

It's a way to look back and remember the things we did or did not do, allowing us to take note and learn from experience. It gives us room to breathe, to take a step back and look with a more critical eye. Patterns appear and certain enlightenment comes.

Excluding those with supernatural memories, we all forget. We forget the little things that don’t matter much in the long run, but they were the things that filled in the spaces in life. They are the little things that we remember at the sight of a movie stub or an old receipt. The way he would always quote that one movie. How she would sing off-key to that one-hit wonder. These are hardly things impactful enough to be recalled every day, but they are the sweetness in life. If we don’t record that sweetness, one day we will forget.

Not everything is meant to be remembered though, and those too can be written down. Sometimes I write down to remember forever, like those sweet little moments in life. Other times I write down to let go. As the words form on paper, acknowledgement and peace are made. Healing begins as the words flying around in my head finally find a place to land.

Savor the sweetness; let your planes land; write it down.