After a year of the “moving-in” process into our Topanga house, I finally opened the last box of my personal belongings that contained (drum roll, please!!): past journals. This box almost didn’t move forward with our family. I know... that each of us has a different sentiment with past personal writings, and I have extremely polarized back-and-forth dynamics with mine. When we cleared our previous house, I was ready to let them go instead of holding onto them—a clean slate. I always gravitated toward the journaling process more than the way the final pages looked. I thought, “Why do I hold onto the past when I aim to live fully in the present?” Frido convinced me I should keep them just in case since they do not take a lot of space to store. “Fine,” I said.
This month, A.C. shares their path to unearth their connection with their Filipino heritage. It is a very personal journey. I am grateful that they are offering the story to our community and that they have pen and paper to process everything they are working through. Trina is back from her trip to Germany. She has two stories to share with us. The first story highlights her and her boys’ visit to Roterfaden headquarters. Trina’s second story is about the importance of keeping a travel journal and how it played a role when she returned from her family’s 2-week travel. It is fascinating to read about her travel journal and how it filled the gap between what she remembered and what happened, which was documented clearly in her notebook.
I am so intrigued by how A.C.'s and Trina’s writings have played a role in processing vastly different yet very human experiences that they went through this past month. Reading their stories made me wonder if my past journals would fill some of my memory gaps or help me understand how my younger self grappled with ideas and information that were too big for me to handle at the time.
So I committed to going through my past entries, though a part of me who was going to toss those notebooks out of the door thinks it’s an incredibly tedious process. Right now, those notebooks are still tucked away from plain sight. So the first step is to haul the heavy box into my room so I can start sitting with them. Will I enjoy having them so close to me? I am not sure. Is it possible that each page I have written and the blank pages I open in the future, hold uniquely sacred space? “Maybe.” The part of me who is always ready to live in the “now” is not entirely convinced just yet. Did I mention I have an extremely polarized relationship with my past journals? I will report back if I find new insights.
-wakako
always a work in progress...
Topanga, California // August 1st, 2022
**This is from our BK Love Letter for August 2022. If you would like to see the entire love letter we sent to our community, you can browse it via this link.
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