Silence is Golden

Is it so with very many people that they only write a journal or diary when they are lonely, sad, suffering....or totally mad at their teenagers?

I remember those fraught times in my life when I wrote in my journals like a woman possessed with finding answers. Times when I would lie in bed on winter weekends with my pen in hand scripting paragraphs wondering if my current love loved me. Homesick for the first time when I travelled to take up a summer placement job in a city where I knew noone and was living at my dear, but ancient, aunt's place, I recall I scribbled myself to sleep at night. And so many other times too. Young and miserable with unrequited love for a much older Frenchman who later turned out to be gay. Struggling with making a decision between staying in a career that had prestige and power but where I had no attachment to the organisation at all, or leaving to pursue other options so that I could meet other parts of me I didn't yet know existed. Emotionally wrecked when I discovered my husband had several other women whose shadows began to cross over the threshold of my home and marriage. Scared when a friend was diagnosed with cancer and my role was to stand solid, unafraid and focused beside her. Bereft when someone I loved deeply died. Reflective when I was in therapy once, twice and a third time again. Lonely and unsure when I uprooted my children and left my home to start a new life as a single mum. Terrified when my son first came home noticeably messed up in his head and in his soul.

All these times taking up a pen, or a key board, brought out the pain and helped me to see myself more clearly with each sentence. Then cringe in the rereading of it all.

I would far rather write an abundance journal. I tried at times, but whenever I've been so fabulously content, there's other tapestries to weave that don't involve me weaving sentences together.

So, when things were going smoothly in my life, I was more silent and still inside.

Lately, I've been working on being more silent and still in my parenting life, inside and out. In the midst of my fear for Teen1, or indeed for all three of my boys, I've been working on my sense of Faith. Faith that all will be well. I rest at night with that thought, letting the computer blink accusingly at me ('write, write, write', it blinks) without succumbing to tapping out thoughts, until I turn out the light at 11pm or 2am after Teen1 gets in the door. Then I go to sleep.

Wondering if worried parents could find an inner sense of Faith as an antidote for their fears for their children, what changes might occur.