Girlie Journaling

Handbound water color paper make this journal. The cover is heavy handmade paper with paper overlays applied with acrylic medium.

  I have resistance to what I call "girlie journals"...the sort of journals that have pages rife with angst or happy pep talk slogans, dripping with doe-eyed female faces, awash with fluttery lettering, glitter and feathers. The kind of "creative pages" you see that choke Pinterest and give journal keeping, in my opinion, a bad name.

The prompt was "What do women want?" Annie  demonstrated the magic of applying bleeding tissue to watercolor paper.

Despite my revulsion for girlie journaling I find myself sitting for the 5th week in Annie D 's Creative Journaling class, surrounded by a room full mostly of lady journalists. Annie D, our teacher, presents a verbal prompt then the class goes silent for about two hours; diving into their art tools, montaging, collaging, transferring images, coloring and glueing. Annie strictly forbids any kind of critiquing in her class, including judgement of your own pages.  Her class offers a safe calm space for a lot of people to come together to create a personal something. 
  

The prompt was who are your heroes /heroines? Visiting Venezuela, I became fascinated with the local saints. My favorite is Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez 
who cared for the poor and after his early death in a car accident still performs miracles for the living.

You are allowed to ask questions in her class: How did you do that?, What kind of paint did you use? Where did you find that image?  One session  I asked the class, "Why do you journal and what do you get out of this class?"  There were a lot of responses, and I had to write fast, these answers were paraphrased:

It gives me perspective.helpful in a spiritual way, it is a kind of spiritual practice.

I wasn't "creative".  After a business career and suppressing my creative side, I find that I can be creative.

It is a nice place to come for three hours on Saturday.

It is nourishing... there are no judgements.
A stress reducing, meditative practice.

A way of processing events. and manifesting goals.
I enjoy color and making marks.

I am glad to have a place to spew. I like keeping it confidential and not spilling my angst into the world. I can contain it in a journal 

I used to just write, but the addition of using images brings forth a deepness. I find it soothing and helpful.

It is a sacred container for joy, and hopes, dreams, grief, rage.  It is a place for feelings: putting them down into the page and transforming a feeling into a page with color and image. Allowing a feeling to form. watching it change into the next form... witnessing the transformation

This kind of journal is open ended. Sometimes the pages remain unfinished, to be added to later. 

The pages that I see made in this class are most often awkward at best, but the energy and sincerity with which they are made are admirable.  At the end of class Annie D asks what people have discovered. Then she eloquently has the words to make the process important, despite however awful or awkward the art.

My discovery in this class?  My own inner critic is loud... insistent and impatient. I can't get her to shut up. Perhaps I should get Annie D to give her a talking to. 

June 2020

Annie D says, "The creative process doesn't need steering." 
I have discovered that a prompt can take your to
places you wouldn't go to on your own