Journaling is a good way to help you to process your feelings and emotions when you are going through a difficult time. When you have heavy emotions swirling around in your head, it can help to get them out onto paper. Your brain processes your thoughts differently when you are writing than when you are thinking or speaking. Sometimes seeing your thoughts written out on paper can help to ease the emotions behind them.

Journaling can serve more than just a therapeutic role: it can also provide valuable information for your child. I wrote many letters to my child long before he came into my life. I told him how I longed to be his mother. I talked about how special he was to me and how I could not wait to hold him in my arms. Now that he is in my life, I write him a letter once a year for his birthday. I talk about the special times that we shared together over the past year. I then seal the letter in an envelope and write on the front: “For Nicholas on his 6th birthday. Not to be opened until he is 21.” When Nicholas turns 21, he will have the gift of reading about his entire childhood through adult eyes. Because I wrote to him before he was even born, he will read about his story even before he came into the world. His beginning really started before his birth – I loved him deeply in my heart for years before he was even conceived. He will know that this is true when he reads my “love letters” to him that I wrote years before his birth.

Another good thing about journaling is that you have a record to look back upon after you enter a new phase of your life. I wrote in my journal during my infertility and waiting to adopt years. After I was a mother, I started an infertility support group through my church. To prepare for our initial meeting, I read back over my journal entries from my infertility years. While I had not forgotten the pain, reading the words I had written drove home the depth of my pain. This gave me the empathy I needed to connect with the people who came to our first meeting.

I think it is important that we remember the roads that we have traveled. There will always be other people who are traveling those same roads. If we remember what it was like, we are in the unique position to make another person’s journey a little less painful and to provide hope. If we forget where we have been, that gift is lost forever.