As so often happens, Dunya’s words seem spoken just for me. I am surprised again after all these years… How does she do that?

I am in a period of contraction now in my life, feeling squeezed from all sides. Reading this post (Dunya’s blog post on ‘Journal Crafting & Expansion’) gave me some space inside and I was able to take a deep breath and find some peace in remembering… hey, I’ve been here before and I remember it and I also remember how good the expansion feels. So I need to just be with my discomfort for a little while. I long for the expansion phase, but I will wait for it.

Journal Crafting… You’ve been encouraging me to write for how many years now, Dunya, and it is only now, the past few weeks with my new blog, that I have begun to keep something like a journal. I have so many half or quarter filled journal notebooks, from retreats or trips when I had planned to keep a journal . Two of them were gifts from you at different times. There was some kind of block about journaling for me… some kind of baggage left over… from brothers or friends finding and reading my diary and shouting out secrets they read for all the world to hear… I don’t have secrets any more - so I don’t fear being shamed for anything I might write. Being a cancer survivor helps with that. All to say, this blog posting feels like a type of journal crafting to me…. I aspire to having a real, physical journal that I make or at least decorate myself and with pockets!