On burning my journals

I started to burn thirty years worth of journals on Tuesday. It was a brilliant spring day when meltwater dripped, whiskeyjacks chirruped and winter’s back was broken. As I fed the pages into the bonfire, I realized that I was engaged in the ancient ritual of shedding old skin in order to expose the new.

Many people have questioned the wisdom of burning these journals.

The journals I burnt were not memories, reflections or stories. Rather they were a spewing forth of raw emotion, of anger, of jealousy, obsession, heartbreak. I have been on a healing journey these last thirty years, and the journals represent a purging of my inner poison. They are rambling, repetitive, disjointed and embarrassing. They are intensely personal. I shudder at the thought that anybody else should read them.

Nonetheless, I kept them for many years because I thought I might use them as material for the inner workings of fictional characters. This was not the case. I would fill up a notebook, throw it into a box and never look at it again. In time, I began to understand that the art of these journals was in the process, not the result.

The process of journaling has been, and continues to be, a ritual and prayer for me. It is a  process of becoming and it has influenced everything else I’ve written. Its power comes from its utter privacy. All that is good and true in the journals has been carved in my heart, the rest has no value.

I decided to burn them last year when I was on an turbulent airplane. I have a fear of flying and whenever a plane starts to bump and shake, I think I’m going to die. As the plane rollicked through the clouds, I panicked that people would read my journals.

When I fed the pages into the bonfire last Tuesday, I felt cleansed of the turmoil of the past. As writing them had been a process of becoming, so was the burning of them. A story of death and renewal, of a spring day when snow drips and whiskyjacks chirrup as winter’s back is broken.