Hag Stone Journal

Journaling for Self-Care

Journaling for Self-Care

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March 24 to March 30

I recently went on a vacation that I usually find overwhelming. I used two sessions with my therapist to get prepared for the holiday and to come up with some self-care practices to do on my trip.

One thing that stressed me out about this vacation is that it was on a ship, and I get seasick. That means I was either very unwell, somewhat uneasy, or on drugs that make me sleepy. Those were my three options, and I didn’t love any of them.

Some of my favorite vacations are when we rent a place out in the middle of nowhere and spend our days walking in the woods or along the beach– quiet, spacious, leisurely days of sleeping in, reading, doing puzzles, and going on organically arising adventures.

This vacation was a speciality cruise with daily live music, comedy shows, and lots of back-to-back events. Vacations that are busy and high-energy like that can be amazing and elicit a lot of highs, but they can also be hard for me. Sometimes I feel bad that I am not the kind of person that thrives in that type of environment. There is probably no amount of self-care I can do that will make this type of vacation easy and smooth for me. It’s just too stimulating.

Maybe other people can deal with more before they get overwhelmed. I don’t know. Maybe I am a highly sensitive person. Maybe I just have anxiety. Whatever it is, I am starting to understand and accept both that I need to practice consistent, frequent self care AND that I get overwhelmed easily.

I am learning more about what I need in order to feel okay. Hag Stone Journal describes many of the practices I use to feel my most healthy, intact, and emotionally regulated: things like getting enough sleep, taking care of my body, eating the right food, journaling, communing with nature, long walks, being part of a community, trying to make the world better, reading, handicrafts, singing, church, and being with my family.

Some things I might do that aren’t that healthy for me are self-medicating with sugar and caffeine, buying stuff I don’t need because I imagine it is some form of sympathetic magic (maybe if I buy a workout bike I will look like the people in the advertisements), endlessly scrolling on my phone, and eating when I am bored. These things are not terrible, but they are not the best, either. Sometimes endlessly scrolling on my phone is the most convenient option to self-soothe in certain taxing situations. As an introvert, my smart phone allows me to turn inward and try to block out things that might be overstimulating or upsetting me. Going for a walk or reading a book would be better, but that isn’t always an option.

One thing I find that I can turn to– instead of using my phone, snacking, or ruminating– is my journal. With journaling, I am able to do several activities that are known to be positive self-care practices, like making a gratitude list, drawing, creating art, getting to-dos out of my head and onto paper so I don’t have to think about them, envisioning my dreams, having things to look forward to, coloring, designing, exploring my identity, knowing myself by tracking my sleep cycle, and exploring my feelings by writing about them.

I started journaling when I was a young girl. I carried around journals like Harriet the Spy. I picked up bullet journaling a few years ago. I also do the Artist’s Way morning pages, and keep a tarot journal.

When I was emotionally preparing for my cruise vacation, I figured out that one of the self-care practices I was really looking forward to was journaling. I was excited to make time to go back to my state room and sit on my balcony with all my bullet journaling supplies– stickers, colored pencils, markers, pens, glue, scissors– and work on this issue of Hag Stone Journal. I find it very absorbing to use my hands and my head. I feel like the practices I share below calm me and reset me to a healthier space when I am starting to feel like butter spread over too much bread.

If we want to be more capable of seeing the magic and creating the sacred in our daily lives, we need to take care of ourselves.


By Heather Gray

Journal

I first started keeping a gratitude journal in the late 90’s. I think I started after reading Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. When my daughter was three, we started saying three things we were grateful for about the day with her before bed. Now we often do Three Roses and a Thorn over dinner: sharing three things we are grateful for and one that was difficult. We usually start with the difficult one and end with the three roses.

I have kept various types of gratitude lists in my journal. This one is for the month of March. I used pale markers and colored pencils to make pink, yellow and orange lines, upon which I wrote one thing for which I am grateful each day. There are days I am grateful for more than what one line will hold. And some days I am like, “Uh… I like my hair?” (To be fair, my hair did look good.)

Today I was thankful my husband made pancakes for breakfast.

Meditation

Calligraphy is practiced throughout the world as a sacred art.  Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses calligraphy as a meditative practice, medieval monks copied the bible in gorgeously lettered calligraphy, like The Book of Kells, and in China calligraphy is a foundational form of art, culture and identity.

Studies have shown that calligraphy can relieve stress. My example below is hand lettering with a pen, rather than calligraphy with a brush. I think hand lettering can have much the same meditative stress-reducing effects as calligraphy, with the added benefit of being easy to just pick up and do.

I often make hand lettering pages in my bullet journal, repeating the same word over and over, like my word of the year, or one to mark a new month or season. I find some hand lettering ideas on the internet, like on Instagram and Pinterest, and some I create myself. I can then incorporate these lettering styles into my journal as headers and decorations.   

The arrow lettering looks like “sprong”.

Craft

Collage is an easy, cheap, and creative practice to bring to your self-care repertoire. Intuitive collage is used in art therapy because collage is seen as a more accessible medium for beginning artists than drawing or painting when they are trying to create something meaningful.

Collage is somewhere between an art and a craft. All you need are some old magazines, paste or glue, scissors, and your intuitive mind.

I started by cutting out plants from one magazine and illuminated manuscripts from some stationery to create my base level.

Collage is cheap and easy. College is not.

 

Then I added more images cut from magazines, stickers, cards, and texts.

Hedgehog!

My theme for these collages was Hag Stone Journal – Seeing the Magic and Creating the Sacred.   

And, although this is just a photoshop manipulation and not how the collage looks in my bullet journal, I wanted to share how cool it looks when I flipped colors. It inspired me to do my next collage mixing dark and vibrant colors.

I love all the different shades of purple.

 

Cookery

I never know how to spell ingredient.

I keep various food lists in my bullet journal, like favorite meals, meals using ingredients from our garden, Thanksgiving menu items, etc.

Breakfast for Dinner is one of our favorite themes. (Some of us don’t like to eat a big breakfast, and it is weirdly fun to eat traditional breakfast foods at night.)   

Toad in the hole is an egg fried inside a piece of toast.

 

Fixed it!

 

 

Home

One of my favorite bullet journal spreads is this DIY Home Spa Day that I created. It starts with preparing your home, or at least the area you are going to “spa” in, to be relaxing. Next is a short shopping list. Then a recipe for a Lemon Sugar Scrub you can use on your hands and feet. Then, a list of items you’ll need that you probably have around the home (if not, add them to your shopping list).

The second page goes right into your 13 step Spa Experience, with a little aside for creating the space in which you are going to relax after you get out of the tub. Enjoy!

Using my favorite hand lettering design for the header.

Outdoors

As I wrote above, I recently went on a cruise. I organized our trip in my bullet journal: the flight times and numbers, my packing list, and our calendar.

While I was on my trip, I made these daily spreads using pens, markers, washi tape, stickers, and words and pictures that I cut out of the daily schedule we received in our state room. (As you can see, I was really seasick on Monday morning. But I got better enough to do karaoke after dinner.)  

Hint: I was not drunk.

After our vacation, while waiting in the airport for our flight, I made this page of highlight moments. I used a blue pen, colored pencils, fine point colored markers, and star stickers. This was kind of like a gratitude list – reminders of the many happy moments I experienced.

Have you ever eaten mofondo?

Another way to track your travel experiences in your journal is to print out a states map– I used this one. I shaded in the states I have been to, and outlined and thoroughly colored in the states I have lived in.

I haven’t been to Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, or the Northwest. I made a little list of those states and one thing I would like to see, do, or eat when I do visit them. Studies have found that anticipating exciting things, like travel, can have positive effects on mental health.

I didn’t know Yellowstone was in Wyoming!

Body

Journaling can be a great way to know yourself. If you have a chronic condition, you can track your symptoms and feelings daily or hourly. You can track your mood and cross reference that with your sleeping, eating, or exercise habits.

I am tracking my sleep, from 10 pm to 10 am, the quality of my sleep, and whether I got 8 hours.

You can also track your menstrual cycle. There are a lot of clever period trackers for bullet journals. I went with a Shark Week theme.

I got 8 hours last night.

 

Cue Jaws theme song.

Moon Phases

March 28th is the Last Quarter Moon – a time for letting go and forgiveness.

Magic

Artistic self exploration is another form of self-care. I include a craft in each week’s issue of Hag Stone Journal because I am familiar, both through the research I have done and my own personal experience, with the benefits of working with your hands to create something personally satisfying and meaningful. I don’t have to be a talented or accomplished artist to create. We all need this outlet, just like we should all feel free to sing and dance.

This spread is an “About Me” with a magic/sacred theme. I glued black paper into my journal and used a white colored pencil and silver gel pen to depict all the various aspects of my magical/spiritual practices, from my favorite numbers to my astrological sign.

What am I brewing in my cauldron?

Poem

Community

I looked through my local newspapers and websites for ideas for date nights. You could do the same things for family nights or nights with friends.

I used washi tape, a black pen, and green and pink colored pencils to indicate whether the date would be indoors or outdoors. I left some space to add more ideas as I see them presented by my community. All these ideas are general, not a specific thing that is happening at a specific time. I might make a page of those, too, so I have even more to look forward to. It also helps reduce stress to get the ideas I am trying to hold in my head out and onto paper.

I am excited about the weather getting warmer so we can go on dates outside.

Activism

“I am treacherous with old magic” – Audre Lorde

Do you have an activist or leader that inspires you? Make a quote page that you can turn to for inspiration, guidance, and an infusion of power.

Recommendations

This is popcorn flying out of a popcorn box, not, as my daughter thought, “cute little squid doodles and a weird picket fence”. This is how I am keeping track of the movies that I am interested in seeing in 2019. I am coloring in the ones I see with a yummy buttery yellow. I also colored coded each piece of popcorn so I can see, at a glance, what month the movie comes out. I probably won’t see all these movies in theatres, but this list will help remind me what I might want to watch when we are trying to figure out a movie to stream at home. I also left room to add more movies as I hear about them.

Little doodles like this, just using a pen and some colored pencils, not trying to be perfect or create anything very elaborate, is one way I use my journal to self soothe. It is like the adult coloring book trend that studies purport reduces stress and relaxes the brain.

The Favourite came out in 2018 but I saw it on January 1st.

Next Week

Next week is April Fool’s Day and I am not sure what I am going to write about yet. Surprise!