Lacuna Loft is proud to present our newest blog initiative: Write Now with Jean Rowe! Each month, come on over to Young Adult Voices and read everything Jean Rowe, Certified Journal Therapist, has to say! Love what you’re reading? Check out the many programs Jean is facilitating (including 30 Minute Tune-Up, Lost and Found, Lacuna Loft’s Weekly Journal Prompt, and It’s a Wonderful Life) and sign up to join one today!

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Journal writing is good for you!  I am not just providing lip service for something in which I truly believe. The benefits of expressive/journal writing have been studied for over 30 years. Journaling as a coping technique for cancer patients is among them.  If you have taken part in any of Lacuna Loft’s programs, you already know the changes for good, aha moments, and important internal shifts that can and do take place.

Research performed by James Pennebaker concluded that “physical health and work performance can improve by simple writing and/or talking exercises.” Simple. Writing. Exercises. 

Kay Adams, the Founder and Director for the Center for Journal Therapy, calls the journal the “79￠ therapist.”  If you knew that the anxiety, the worry, the insomnia, the punishing voice in your head, the [you fill in the blank] would lessen, subside or even stop by spending 5-7 minutes writing in a journal on a regular basis, would you?  As Glinda told Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “you’ve always had the power.”  

You might ask, how can journaling help you?  Have you felt triggered by the smells of the infusion room?  Experienced scanxiety?  Wondered who you are with/after cancer?  The journal is your ally towards working through those experiences.  You can write anything you want.  No one is going to judge you.  It’s a personal, private space.

Here is a prompt to try.  Write for 5 minutes.  Then, read back over what you wrote and give yourself an impression of what you feel or think about what you wrote (i.e. I notice…)

Describe a place in your home where you feel safe.  What makes it comfortable?  How do you relax there?  Is there a certain time of day you spend there?  What is the view outside the window?  Is anyone there with you?  Where are you in the room?

Tell me how it goes! I’d love to hear from you.

-Jean

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

-William Wordsworth