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Tag Archives: Journaling

Be Yourself! A Journal for Catholic Girls {Book Review & Giveaway!}

11 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by purdywords in Book Review, Books, Catholic Parenting, Catholicism, Family life, Glorifying God, Inspiration, Journaling, Motherhood, Mothers & Daughters, Personal health, Prayer, Reading, Truth of Heart

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Book Review, Books, Catholic Parenting, Creativity, Family time, Inspiration, Journaling, Motherhood, Mothers & Daughters, Prayer, Reading

***BLOG POST UPDATE ***

The winner of the giveaway is reader Gian!

Thank you to those of you who participated and for your readership!

 

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means the blog author may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that the blog author has recommended. While clicking these links won’t cost you any extra money, the blog author may receive a commission from the affiliate. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. Thank you for your readership and support!

“Let your light shine!” – Matthew 5:16

book review journal be yourself.jpg

Be Yourself! A Journal for Catholic Girls by Amy Brooks of http://prayerwinechocolate.com/

The Christmas and gifting season is upon us, and books are one of my favorite gifts to give for birthdays, Christmas presents, and other special occasions. I’m always on the hunt for books that inspire and encourage the children in my life. My hope is to always support authors, encourage thoughtful readers in my life, and spread around my love of literature and the written word. Going forward, I’ll be featuring some book reviews on this blog, and I’m thrilled to share my first one with you today.

When I found out through social media about a journal written specifically for Catholic girls age 9 and older, I couldn’t wait to get a copy! My first impression of Amy Brooks’ Be Yourself! A Journal for Catholic Girls was “Wait! Where was a journal like this one when I was growing up?”

Talk about relevant and necessary! Personally, I believe every Catholic Christian tween and teen girl would benefit from being gifted a copy of Amy’s creative work for their birthday or under the Christmas tree this year. It’s that good. Here are a few reasons why:

  • It’s a guided journal that allows the girl to start where she needs to go that day—from listing hopes, dreams, blessings or worries; exploring her prayer style, special talents, and identity in God’s creation; opportunities for reflecting on a myriad of ways to show love to herself and others; and a tangible outlet for quieting herself, praying, thinking, dreaming, coloring; and so much more.
  • The writer speaks directly to the girl, making this special journal a safe and inspiring place for her to be alone with her thoughts and feelings, all the while receiving spiritual encouragement from her Heavenly Father, the Saints, and Mother Mary from the included, thoughtful Bible verses, inspirational quotes, and relevant Saint stories.
  • It’s a fluid, open-ended journal, with various ways for girls to creatively explore their relationship with God, strengthen their devotion, and increase their Catholic faith. It’s one that I can envision so many different types of our precious girls enjoying in so many different ways—all of the reasons just as good, beautiful, pure, and strong as the content of this well-written, enchantingly illustrated journal.

My soon-to-be-eight-year-old daughter was thrilled to have the chance to look through this attractive and interesting Catholic girls’ journal. Although, she’s not quite ready for all the material this journal offers, she shared that her favorite parts of the book are:

  • The cool pictures to color on almost every page throughout the entire journal.
  • The “happy” quotes and Bible verses that popped out at her as she leafed through the book.
  • The Letter to Jesus page which she said she would use a lot to write to Jesus about what’s on her mind and in her heart.

The author was so gracious to gift me two copies of Be Yourself! A Journal for Catholic Girls—one for sharing with a special girl in my life, and one for giving away to a lucky reader of my blog. Please, enter this giveaway for your chance to win a copy of this finely written and illustrated journal for a tween or teen girl in your life! It would make a perfect Christmas gift, or anytime treasure!

To enter the journal give-a-way:

  1. For ONE chance: Please comment on this blog post with a favorite Bible verse or quote from a favorite Saint.
  2. For TWO chances: Add to your comments by telling me about how a beloved book or favorite author resonated with you when you were a tween.
  3. For THREE chances: In your comment, please let me know that you’ve shared this blog post and giveaway on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

***I will choose the lucky winner by random drawing on 11/17/18!***

“Be happy in the moment. That’s enough. Each moment is all we need. Not more.”

~ Saint Teresa of Calcutta

 

Thoughts on Journal Writing

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by purdywords in Journaling, Memories, Past, Peace, Writer's Block, Writing, Writing Goals, Writing routine

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Tags

Creativity, Journal writing, Journaling, Seeking joy, Writer's Block, Writing

“The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I’d hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink.” ― Rachel L. Schade, Silent Kingdom

The greatest cure I have found to my own writer’s block is diligently keeping a personal journal. Some days, if my fingers won’t willingly dance across the keys of my laptop, I take up my pen and put the ink to paper, easily scrawling away the mess filling inside my head―all of the anxieties, doubts, fears about the unknowns, random thoughts, memories, coincidences, and dreams. Once my journal writing session is complete, which takes me anywhere from 10-20 minutes (depending upon the weightiness of my heart and the heaviness of my soul at the time), I am finally confident and steady enough to confront a blank screen. After I journal, my mind is straighter and freer, and I am able to write fluidly with a clearer perspective, lighter heart and peaceful demeanor―no matter the subject matter.

It takes only a quick Google search to discover why famous authors, past and present, have kept a journal. Personally, I find the process cathartic; a balm to my emotional, sentimental nature. I would much rather my journal be the vessel bearing the burdens of my inner-person, fielding the complaints, taking the hits, mending the brokenness, offering the therapy, relieving the stress, questioning the injustices, remembering the laughter, piecing together fragments of memory, working through shame, healing past hurts, expressing grief, and recording both the simple and profound moments of my life. Essentially, my journal is where I work out the sorrows and write my way to discovering the joys.  

A cup of tea, a near-perfect pen, a journal waiting to be filled―this is my prescriptive remedy for a happy calm. Journal writing is as essential as breath. 

If you’re intrigued by the journal writing process, but have no idea where to begin, I recommend reading this: https://journaltherapy.com/lets-journal/a-short-course-in-journal-writing/

May I also suggest reading this essay on writing?  Ellen O’Connell Whittet muses in beautiful detail about how everything we write matters. 

 

“I say to people that I am not writing, but I keep writing the diary, subterraneously, secretly, a writing which is not writing but breathing.”  ― Anaïs Nin, from her Diary

A Renewed Commitment to Writing for the New Year

04 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by purdywords in "The Book", New Year's Resolutions, Personal Challenges, Writing, Writing Goals

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Challenges, Journaling, New Year's Resolutions, Writing

The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.

Melody Beattie

Most of the writing that I do, you do not see. Even when I don’t update this blog nearly as much as I need or want to, I am writing. Notes are scrawled inside my blue journal and most of my daily thoughts I pound away on my ruby-red laptop. Two years ago, I decided to keep an electronic journal due to a wicked case of tendonitis in my writing hand that plagued me for the first time over twelve years ago. Nowadays, I can write in my preferred paper lined journal only for so long before the fatigue of the tendonitis settles in and I have to take a break, hand cramping with searing pain. I remember the days when I could write letter after letter, pen page after page of stories and poems, scribe non-stop notes in my classes. I’m thankful for new technologies that allow me to continue writing without relying on a pencil grip.

I have simple goals related to my writing this New Year:  to write daily in my electronic journal, to keep a gratitude journal beside my bedside table, and to write 3,000 words per week. Toward the end of 2015, I’d like to be published—just one article or essay—and to keep plugging away at my book. In the immediate future, I am facing a myriad of personal challenges that will undoubtedly throw obstacles my way and disrupt my scheduled writing time. Nevertheless, I’m planning ahead, committing to my daily word counts, and prioritizing myself and my writing this year.

What are your writing goals for 2015?

Thank You Poetry, I Owe it All to You

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by purdywords in Journaling, Poets and Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Journaling, National Poetry Month, Poetry, Poets, Writing

Always be a poet, even in prose.  ~Charles Baudelaire, “My Heart Laid Bare,”Intimate Journals, 1864

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.  ~Plato, Ion

The smell of ink is intoxicating to me — others may have wine, but I have poetry. ~Terri Guillemets

 

Barely visible to any unassuming pair of eyes, a dusty collection of old journals lives down in the farthest, darkest corner of my home. Hidden away in the basement storage area for obvious reasons, but still accessible enough that anyone on a hunt for something else would be able to find these passionate records, a scattered history of my early life remains in clear storage bins. This vast array of books hold the secrets to my early truths. Held inside is the trail of self-discovery I embarked upon—forming this collected record—written snippets of a life searching for meaning. Scribbled letters formed tightly together at first, moving quickly toward a type of sprawling formation all over the page—my most raw emotions and thoughts, previous perceptions and presumptions are preserved for any reader to read in a type of dark ink, however now slightly faded.

A younger version of myself wrote out of pure emotion and often only when my heart had been broken or my ego bruised.  (Not unlike any other adolescent girl, I presume.) To make sense of it all—the quick swirl of emotions, the intensity of love with all its ups and downs, the joy and disappointments—much like finding yoga and hiking or walking through the woods to calm the storms atypically rampant in adolescence and young adulthood—writing became my refuge and rejuvenated me in ways no other system or activity ever could. Always in unlined journals, I tried to capture my life in words and hoped to free myself from the pains that followed hard choices and experiences that left me feeling empty and alone. By writing through it all, I was pulled  by the words of my own making and gained a clearer sense of the moving on and the freedom and fright of moving away, and conquered the anguish and mixed emotions that accompanied me every time I planned on coming back home. Inside these deeply personal books lie the questions of that time, my profound discoveries, the compelling answers, and also the mundane of my early life.

~

As far back as I can remember, books were the answer to almost everything in my family. Struggling to spell a word? My mother would say, “Look it up in the dictionary.” Bored to tears? “Read a book,” was always my parents’ first answer to our whining and complaints. The day I started my period, I sat on the hardwood floor of my bedroom with my back against the pale blue wall and wrote in my teal green college-ruled composition notebook to work out the mixed emotions I had rushing over me all at once. A soft knock at the door interrupted my writing, and my mother came in with a hardbound book in hand. She presented this new genre to me with a, “Read this–then we’ll talk.”

It was about this time in my life that I discovered poetry. Where I could lose myself in all sorts of novels and actually loved reading my school textbooks, poetry met me where I was and took me to places I’d never imagined before. Back then, poetry held all the answers by insight and depth. In eighth grade, we had an assignment to write poems inspired by Langston Hughes’ “Dream Deferred” and I still remember the joy that came with the discovery of another poet that inspired and amazed me, and the pleasure I felt in trying to mimic his style as I worked diligently to perfect my own writing. My library card was well-worn by then as I borrowed what seemed like all of the library’s poetry anthologies and collections. At night, I eagerly devoured each poet’s words by the aid of a flashlight in my bed during the calm of the night–the only peaceful time in my family home. Although my family knew I read–that was my thing like sports were to each of my siblings–I still didn’t want to catch any flack for reading poems. If found out, I feared opening myself up to even more ridicule and relentless teasing by peers and family members alike.  So, I hid my propensity for the most captivating and beautiful literature I had ever encountered and read on.

The more poems I read, the more I needed to read. And amidst the discovery of old and new poets alike, I fell in love with the process of poems. As I eagerly took on the more obscure, lesser known poets and their poems, I made a game out of trying to figure out their form, guessing the poem’s purpose and intent, and letting the poets themselves teach me about their chosen craft. What I enjoyed most about the learning process was how poems made me feel closer to the words themselves and I felt empowered knowing that I could go deeper in my own writing, revealing my innermost self in ways unimaginable before my discovery of such gift-bearing literature. Reading with more awareness now, I gave in to the hunger for drawing nearer as I read, digesting the deeper meaning and learning to let the words soak through my skin and touch me to the core. I aspired to write like these master wordsmiths, and my ambition to achieve this goal still remains one of the most important objectives in my writing today as I allow the poets to guide and their poetry to continually enlighten and inspire me beyond expectation.

~

In honor of National Poetry Month, I’d be pleased to hear about your favorite poem, poet, or collection of poetry!

  • purdywords
    • 30 Days of Thanks, November 2020
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