Date 2021.Hello and welcome to my world of journaling :-)

I have written journals on and off for decades and found them grounding and healing often revealing the depths in me that I am sure I would not have found or understood in other ways. When I am in the throes of writing it feels satisfying and so worthwhile, yet I am not always in that headspace other things take my attention and I have Learnt that is alright too. I know from experience the time to write will come around again, because it always does.

Last January 2020 I started purposefully writing a journal with a number of desired outcomes. First and foremost it was to leave a record, an essence of me behind for my family and in particular for my granddaughter who will find it hard to remember me with her still being young, I know because I can’t remember much of what was going on in my life at 14. It was just a coincidence that it was to be the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I’ve had poor mental health all my life due to a very destructive childhood and for the first 50 years I lived with the feeling of shame that I couldn’t be “like everyone else”. I hid my fears as much as possible but eventually over time I have come to realised it was not my fault and that I am not alone.

Over the passing of the years I spent a lot of time reading self-help books, going on courses and having counselling, all of which helped me to move forward to a better understanding of myself and others. I now have a deep desire to share all I had learnt with others, tools from my ‘emotional toolbox’. You will find a list of them under resources, they are a key to unlocking better mental health.

The second hope for my journal was to share some of these tools as I use them in my day-to-day life. This would come to help me as much as others as I travelled down the road of lockdown, giving me purpose and allowing me to share and process my pain as well. I posted my journalling on Facebook and had some good feedback and got asked to share on two other sites as well which I did. Then I saw an invitation from Swansea University asking for people to share what they had written or painted during the Covid crisis, they were gathering records of the ‘happenings’ in this pandemic in an archive similar to the ones made after the Second World War. I sent them my journaling March to May along with my poems and paintings. They are now extending that period so I will send them more.

I have been a part of Rebuild in the Vale for a year and a half and during this time shared my emotional tools and my art on a weekly zoom meeting growing my own confidence and encouraging others to explore their abilities and meet their own mental health needs.

This website has been developed for me by Rebuild one of the many things left behind to show the fruits of their time with us in the Vale. Sadly their funding is ceasing at the end of March, so I say thank you Rebuild.

Some examples of my journey through journalling are to follow, the first one is my perception of the pandemic in China as it starts...