I have an entire box of journals which are no obnoxiously pious and self-righteous I can hardly bear to open them. It was all sincere at the time--just me struggling to be a better Mormon, but it is really upsetting to me to read it.

Now here's the problem: There are also wonderful anecdotes about the kids growing up, their cute sayings, the fun things we did, along with the bad, like me wishing this child or that had been born with a "better spirit."

Yeah, I cringe when I read that. I don't want her ever to see it. I came very close to throwing the whole lot on top of my divorce papers burning ceremony at the beach, but I couldn't bear to throw away the quotes and stories of the kids as tots.

For years I've thought that when I retired, I would go through and data enter the good stuff on the computer and then throw away the bad. But quite honestly, every time I start I end up in tears with regrets and blaming myself about how the boys turned out.

What to do? Any ideas, wise women?


Anagrammy

I doubt anyone who is a good friend/family member would be as hard on you as you are and they might be willing to go through the journals to record the happy memories and save you from going through the painful sincerity of your younger self. :)

Great idea.

Maybe you're afraid of success.

Since you plan to enter everything on the computer anyway, there are computer programs that will find key words for you, like: The Church, testimony, temple, Joseph Smith, Satan, boredom, guilt, or whatever. It has been years, but I think Microsoft Word offers this feature.

As for your boys, I think that at some point in life, a child's own personality takes over his development, during his pre-teen and especially teen years. At this time in life, teens' peers have far more influence than their parents do. Really, outside of Utah, kids truly do think for themselves as young adults.

Maybe without your influence, your boys would have turned out worse.

This works: put a rubber band around your wrist, and if you think an upsetting thought, snap the band until it hurts, and tell yourself, "No!" If you control your thoughts, and refuse to have regrets, you ought to find a lot of humor and joy in your stories. Your anecdotes I've read on this board have been very charming and funny! This is because your stories are REAL. There must be some pathos in humor, right?

You are an excellent writer, and one of my favorite posters here! You have some profound insights to share with others! With life, and with great writing, there must be some balance. With out the shading, you would end up with something flat.

Concentrate on the outcome of your editing effort--you might end up with a great book!!!!!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2011 04:10AM by forestpal.

then, don't do your journals.

Do a page, that's enough for today. Time to go out and do something fun.

Also, if you have a trusted friend that is willing to talk about your feelings, this could end up being a very positive growing experience.

Same content as you describe. For her, it has also been helpful dealing with some issues like the disfunctional Mormon family dynamics at her parents' home (she started writing at age 8).

I wouldn't throw them away if I were you. Just keep 'em under lock and key. When you feel like it, read them. What works for my wife is to "go in" and deal with a specific issue at a specific time in the past, not read the whole thing cover to cover. Sure, there's a lot of crying and shame involved but that's part of the process.

I second this. Do not throw them away. I've thrown journals away and regret doing it. You may not want to look at them now, in ten years, but maybe decades from now you'll want to remember what you were like "back then". You may never want to look at them again, and that's ok. Bury them somewhere with a treasure map or something.

Same for me. I left the church about 25 years ago, still haven't been able to really scan through those diaries. I'm about to start that job, finally.

I'll scan the good days into pdf-files and burn the bad & gaggily Mormonish texts. Maybe I'll even re-use some of the more beautiful covers (Chinese silk). You can make fine boxes out of them with card board and a little fantasy.

I threw all of mine away 5 years ago when I was TBMish. I don't regret it.

I have a box of journals up in the garage storage and don't know what to do with them. We put on a new roof, so it doesn't leak - darn! :-)

I think I might just dump them, but then I change my mind as I want to keep some of the records. They are still in the box waiting for my decision.

I guess I could go through them with a black pen, marking out the stuff I don't want anyone to read, but that's very time consuming and probably not really productive. I could condense them into little tid bits to share with the kids about their birth and stuff like that, but I don't know if I really want to do that.

So there they sit.
I'm leaning toward dumping them as they have my private comments that I don't want anyone else to read along with a record of thousands of stuff that happened in our lives.

Some of your past just makes me gasp and realize I wasn't that bad a parent, so thanks for sharing.

Maybe I can do it like learning a foreign language. Coffee, a page or two a day, then jump on my boards (which always make me smile).

The good thing is I can leave out the alternating self-berating and grandiosity. "I am a queen in heaven, why can't I..." Seriously, my friends, I sound like a nut case. Now that you mention it, it could be a book. Lots of drama, for sure. "We had Julia's birthday party at the prison--second one we've had there, but Robert will always remember this." (He did--he said it made him the laughing stock of the prison. They called him Birthday Boy for months). When I brought his favorite cereal, they called him "Captain Crunch."

Actually, I'm laughing even sharing that. It is kind of funny. Maybe I'll share some crap here and view it through a humor paradigm instead.

Thanks,

Anagrammy

Just go thru them and rip out the pages you want to do data entry on, throw the rest away (or burn them).

... to write a counter journal that shows where you are now as opposed to where you were then and why. I think it safe to say that no one who frequents this establishment is the same person they were prior to finding it. Nothing to be ashamed of. As a matter of fact, its quite remarkable.

In my youth, I was a typical southern red-neck bigot type who, through learned behavior, hated blacks and homos and s**t. I broke that nasty spell at the same time I broke mormonism's evil incantation (around age fourteen). I don't mind telling folks because it says people can and often do change for the better.

Just a thought.

Timothy

If reading your old journals causes pain then don't read them. Put them in a box somewhere and forget about them. There's plenty of time to burn them when you are approaching your last throes.

In the meantime, keep writing. Write about who you are now as opposed to who you were before now. Write about not being Mormon. Write about your boys. Write about your life, honestly and without reserve. Just keep writing.

But write with a new twist:

Rather than write about your struggles to be a better Mormon, write about your struggles to be a better human.

Human

I think you should read them and process that pain. You will cry and have regrets but it will more fully inform you of how far you have come in your authenticity.

Consider reworking the whole thing into a new narrative. As you come to something painful or something that strikes you as the damaging part of your involvement in the church, write about your changed ideas. That will be cathartic.

Put the original journal entries in black print - add your new reflections and thoughts juxtaposed in red. (or vice versa - or with some other system or literary device).

Maybe even think of publishing it as so many have done. It may be a healing and inspiring piece for someone else who is beginning the process.

Annotate your journals. They're your journals. You can do what you want with them.

I'd be tempted to use them as the basis for an art project -- some sort of collage in which an original page is used as one piece. Pull the good (human, as opposed to mormon) bits out for highlighting via repetition, color, or some other means. Darken the dark, inhuman parts and comment on them.

The crazy/mormon bits could be presented for the stressed or deranged things they are.

Just an idea.

Annotation of previous works makes a good writer's cache of originals more valuable. So, you could just settle for commenting via text in your own handwriting. Keep the pain. Pain puts your eventual escape in context.

Especially if you cannot edit out all the TBM delusion. It can be important to have the comparison of brainwashing to normal, and an important lesson if any of your descendants decide to join the faith of their ancestors.

Also consider not just what you want, but what may happen to them if you don't condense or rewrite them. I don't know your children, but they may throw them out entirely without reading them.

I have the same journals, with all the TBM stuff, and have decided to keep them intact, all labeled BEFORE. I was a true believer and was honestly deceived. I hope my kids will see through those journals what happened to me. That though I completely changed, I was always being as true to myself as I could possibly be.

Since I began to study out, and then left the church, well all of that will be labeled AFTER. It was literally the pivitol point of my life, learning of all the deception in the mormon church. And so my life will remain in death , just as it was in life: the BEFORE and the AFTER.

My journals from before and after my exodus are much the same. I cringe to see some of the things I wrote when I was younger, but I prefer to keep them around because it serves as a reminder to me just how deep in I was. The morgs programmed me well, that's for sure...

One more reason I think it, at least for me, is best to leave them intact as they are: If my kids can see that all the stuff we lived through, that the "spiritual experiences" as well, when they were growing up, remain as a sincere part of my life at that time, they are far more likely to read my words at all.

If I take that stuff out they will just consider me an angry anti-mormon that took all the precious stuff out. They need to know I was the real me in the BEFORE and the AFTER, about how I discovered I had been lied to and deceived, and I will go into detail to explain what happened, even though they have a pretty good idea.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2011 10:46PM by think4u.

Anagrammy,

I just want to add two thoughts to the many beautiful and creative suggestions that have already been expressed.

I always look forward to reading your posts. Your words, Anagrammy, have articulated truths that have brought to clarity complex ideas, and I have grown from your shared wisdom and from the compassion that infuses your words on rfm. Your integrity also comes with you to each sentence you write; each "person" you were on every one of those days delivered you to your present shore, your current place of understanding.

Is there a way to sit down with your journals, artifacts from your great heart as well as your keen mind, and bring your compassion to honor all of the selves that you have been? You know what parts of yourself have been consistent; you know the intentions of your soul, then and now. The dramatic shift you were willing to make is a product of that integrity. I am sure that the act of extending compassion to yourself in this way can be healing to you in your continuing journey.

(Please don't think I am deeming you uncompassionate in any way. I am simply trying to suggest that you take some of your abundant heart-strength to your task, which has many loving and creative possibilities.)

I also appreciate what you said, Twinker, and this does resonate with me. I ask my daughters to walk toward their fear. I tell them that's where their growth edge is and I'm feeling like maybe my growth edge is accepting my younger self. This really means embracing one's mistakes as legitimate acts which seemed right at the time.

ALso, the idea of adding to them my current thoughts in contrast has an appealing, healing feel. I can feel the fear inside me when I think of going there and I know that deep inside I feel like a failure, a bad mother who screwed her kids up so badly some of them are beyond repair.

I need to read my young, enthusiastic, hopeful voice and realize I wanted the best for the children and that's why I chose Mormonism. I need to forgive myself and be grateful that I got them all out as soon as I knew it was a crock. That's all a person can do.

Like that one poster said, better be a "rare" person of character than a "goat" in the last days.

Thanks for all the help, friends, I really appreciate it. I'll keep you posted...

Anagrammy

A couple of quick thoughts; I've been struggling with similar decisions for many years.

As the only convert in my famiyl age seventeen, I was dismayed after my first journal "disappeared" after I returned from the morning Sacrament session (the split schedule) and the writings of my soul, at a relatively young age, going through a "conversion," were exposed.

After my first journal was basically stolen, I decided to write as if the whole world could discover my thinking at that moment.

Posters advise to keep and annotate your journals--great idea. I've been doing the same i.e., edit the 10-20% out of your journals that are appropriately descriptive, inspiring, illuminating, and pass it forward. Future generations will benefit from your first-hand knowledge of your "here-and-now."

Here's another thought that might expand the notion of the inherent worth of your journals. A close friend came to the US from China and we spent tons of time together as we obtained our doctorates' degrees and then post-docs at Harvard.

Interestingly, he kept journals as he grew-up during the reign of Mao Zedong. We have thought-out how we could combine our journals b/c of the similarity of our experiences.

Your communication has struck my heart; please keep your journals, redact and edit-- you are living history.

Jamie