Never Hide Again: Healing by Journaling
By Carole Wagener, Coastal Dunes Branch
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Our instructor explains pictures are powerful. They help us express our thoughts and feelings getting them out of our heads and down on paper. Journaling helps to reduce stress, anxiety and negativity. It gives a new perspective on life’s challenges bringing peace, understanding and new meaning.
I feel like I’m back in kindergarten and told to choose a journal book, magazines and calendar art. I’m to cut out pictures and paste them into my journal making a collage of sorts. The teacher suggests finding things like maps, roads, and signs; or butterflies, even alligators to express our feelings.
It’s been six years since I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. Choosing a lumpectomy, radiation treatments, and five years of daily medication, I’m healed physically but need restoration emotionally and spiritually. Called an Enhancement Retreat, this is my very first time at a support group.
I pick out a green and gold booklet, Oprah and Sports Illustrated magazines. A travel journal, gardening booklet and an art calendar beckon to me. With scissors in hand, I begin cutting.
My favorite picture is a person’s head with the words above it saying “Never Hide.” This generic head is wearing sunglasses that have a map on the lenses and on the face a black and white city street. Gluing it down, I write the word “AGAIN” along side of it. “Never hide again” seems like a good beginning.
From calendar art, I find a picture entitled “Why Me?” It’s a beautiful watercolor of a young Columbian woman with a suntanned body lying nude on her stomach on a bed. Both hands are covering her face as if she is crying. It reminds me of my initial feelings: the long nights, silent tears and the many calls made to a breast-cancer hotline called “Why Me?” I glue it down to page two.
Chatting with the other women is fun as I cut out pictures of books, birds, and bees; boobs, lips and wine bottles. A travel photo comes my way, reminding me of my cruise to Belize, Cozumel, and Roatan Island Honduras. Then I find pictures of the things I love about life: the beach, family vacations, and shopping; chocolates, cookies, and coffee breaks, massages, dream therapy, and walks in the woods. As time is running short, I tear out whole pages.
At lunchtime; I’m told to take my cuttings and journal home. Every Sunday, I work on my journal and discover it’s good therapy. It’s relaxing and reminds me of scrapbooking during childhood.
The journal becomes my best friend and a tool to begin writing. I find myself writing poetry about monarch butterflies and memoirs about growing up. Thanks to the Coastal Dunes Branch of the California Writer’s Club in Nipomo, California, I am no longer an amateur writer but a published author. To think it all began with a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue and my first written word, “Again.”
Carole Wagener is currently writing her
first novel based on her husband’s letters
to her from Viet Nam and her time at college
during the anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s.