Power of Journaling

A long time ago my mom gave me a whole bunch of stuff from my childhood. Old clothes, doll clothes, schoolwork and baby pictures. She also gave me a journal she had kept during my first year.

I read the journal this morning. I was looking for something else and came across it, decided to flip it open and the first thing I saw was something about playing with my dad and brother one morning. I flipped to a few other pages then sat down and read it from one end to the other. Quite a bit about how I was a smiling happy baby, but I always acted shy around my grandmother. How Rene loved me but we fought over toys, and how I could hold my own against my 2 1/2 year old brother. How my first word was cat and I would laugh when they came in the room. How my mother loved me.

I've had this journal for quite a while, but I was never very interested. Obviously it was about a part of my life I didn't remember and I didn't have much interest in hearing about how many times I napped, or my first vaccine. But that wasn't what it was about. My mom was just writing about the day to day activities we shared, how I played with my toys, about the blouse my Oma made for me, about how I was the only baby who didn't sleep in the car or how I was always happy to get back home.

I'm very thankful to my mom now for taking the time to write these things down. They are small things but I find that now they mean the world to me. I could tell by her writing that she loved me and she told me how I would make her laugh.

There it is, the power of journaling. Small things that make up a larger picture, that can affect us even thirty odd years later and is now working, making me want to make her proud all over again. Motivating me to better myself.

Love you mom, and thank you.