Journaling After Cancer: A Conversation With Your Body
The first in a series
I started journaling seriously at 11, as in, seriously about celebrity crushes (Jonathan Taylor Thomas for life), boys at school, periods (mostly wondering when mine would come), friendship rifts and tiffs, and musings about my future, when I’d be a proper, grownup woman.
When I was around 16, I discovered the writer SARK. Her colorful, whimsical drawings and honesty about her own struggles were revelatory, to me at least. I followed her advice and bought a cheap A4 notebook that I wouldn’t feel precious about scribbling in. She opened my mind to the idea that journaling didn’t have to consist of pages and pages of writing. Rather, I could pull out colorful markers and paints, and use those to write, draw, doodle—whatever I fancied.
Her books also introduced me to the idea of writing prompts. Instead of facing yet another blank page, unsure of how to start, she offered ideas on topics I could explore in those pages.
I wrote and drew about what being a “succulent, wild woman” looked like, ways to feel “really alive,” and my favorite healing places. I also wrote about the earth-shattering heartbreak after things ended with my first serious boyfriend (one line from 2004, when I was 19: “I feel like dying. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach 20 million times and now I can’t breathe.” Dramatic, much?), my angst over what career to pursue, and my struggles with anxiety. Looking back, that stack of notebooks helped anchor me through the tumult of my late teens and early twenties.
And then I stopped journaling. Life took over—I moved countries, met my husband, started working, became a mother… I would pick up a notebook periodically and write for a week or two, and then the practice would drift off. I’d also go through phases of keeping gratitude journals, noting down five things I was grateful for each night (a practice I would recommend for anyone looking to feel more content). But nothing consistent.
Recently, I’ve felt the call to start journaling again. The urge has coincided with starting this Substack. I gingerly turned the spigot and now the words have started pouring out of me.
I’m a little unsure of how to begin, and that’s where the idea of a journaling prompt comes in. I think prompts can be enormously helpful to guide one’s writing and bring to light different topics and ideas.
I thought we could try doing this together, perhaps explore a different prompt each month (and more regularly if the idea resonates).
I’m putting the prompt itself behind a paywall, because I’d like for this to be an intimate, safe space to foster discussion and community.
These prompts will all be connected to cancer in some way, but the themes are universal and will resonate even if you haven’t gone through cancer. We’ll explore ideas around identity, grief, the body, and healing, as we piece together the fragments and shards cancer leaves behind into something new, and hopefully sturdier.
Today’s prompt invites a conversation with your body.
