Dear Mrs. Brown: I'm still writing

During Covid, I threw away all my journals.

I didn’t plan on it. It happened one day when I was cleaning out my closet. I found the box of journals and opened one up to read a few pages. Before I knew it, I had read the entire journal. And then I was sitting on the floor, reading every single one of them, cover to cover.

There were a lot of them. I must have read for hours.

I sat with high school Sophia… college Sophia… Sophia who was a brand new music teacher… Sophia who had just moved to New York City… Sophia who fell in love… Sophia who experienced heartbreak… Sophia who fell in love again… Sophia who stumbled through a parenting journey… Sophia who experienced so much joy and playfulness and excitement… Sophia who traveled… Sophia who, through it all, loved music and her loved ones and the amazing children she got to teach over the years… all of these Sophias, living life and trying to make sense of it all.

I laughed with her and I cried with her and so many times I wished I could comfort her or tell her how it had (or hadn’t) all worked out. I ran my fingers over the pages, marveling at the fact that my very own hand had written all of those words down, so many years before.

I tore out a few pages along the way. It was as I started to do that, that I felt a strange feeling come over me. The feeling that this would be the last time I would read through all of these journals.

I read every last one. And then I decided to let all of those Sophias go.

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I can trace my love of writing back to third grade. We kept a composition notebook, and each morning when we came in, there was a prompt on the board.

I could have written in that composition notebook all day. I wrote poems and short stories and scenes from plays and I made up characters and I recounted my weekend adventures. I wrote about raindrops and my best friends and the grapevines in my grandparents’ backyard and long car rides with my family.

My teacher, Mrs. Brown, wrote lengthy, thoughtful responses to my journal entries.

“What an interesting story, Sophia! It sounds like you had an amazing adventure. Thank you for sharing this with me.”

Sometimes, her response would include a deeper prompt.

“I wonder if you can tell me even more. Can you describe the sounds and smells around you? Can you describe the feelings you had?”

And I always wrote back to her, trying to cram my third-grade penmanship into the margins, like we were having a side conversation.

“Thank you Mrs. Brown! I think I can try to remember sounds and smells. Like when we ran outside I could smell the grass because my grandpa just mowed the lawn!”

When I’ve looked back through those composition notebooks, I’ve chuckled at my earnest 7-year-old self, writing back to my teacher like that. I wonder if she went back and read my funny little responses.

I love that Mrs. Brown encouraged me to notice the details.

It was around the same time that I started asking my mom for those diaries that had the “lock” on them. I loyally and feverishly wrote “Dear Diary” to the blank pages nightly. I loved capturing my thoughts and I loved exploring what it meant to write my thoughts down in creative ways.

I’ve been a journaler — and person who loves telling stories — ever since.

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I don’t know exactly what made me decide to let go of all those journals that day. I wish I could tell you that I had a bonfire and made a ritual out of it or something.

I had dinner with a friend a few days later (it was the chapter of Covid where we were allowed to dine outdoors) and told her about it.

“I think it just felt like it was time,” I told her. “I’ve read and reread those journals a million times for years. And this time I read them all in one sitting. And I just thought…I think it’s time to release all of these. I just don’t think I need to keep them anymore. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“I love it,” my friend said, an avid journaler herself. “And I get it. You needed them in the moment, and maybe even for a little while after. But you don’t need them anymore.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I think so.”

Her eyes were bright and she was beaming excitedly as she said, “I think I wanna do it, too.”

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On an episode of Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, Pete Holmes said, “People may or may not listen to this one day, when we’re all gone, but it will exist.”

I loved that. The idea that even if the words are unheard, or someday become part of a rarely-visited archive, they’ve been given a place to live. They exist outside of us.

I used to wonder, from time to time, if I made a mistake throwing those journals away. Had I tossed away thoughts that deserved to live somewhere? Had I thoughtlessly discarded my past selves? Were there more pages I should have kept?

I don’t wonder anymore if it was a mistake. At some point, I realized that the act of writing them was the whole point. Those journals had done their job. They were there for me when I needed them, as a space to process, to dream, to rage, to grieve, to wonder, to figure things out. They were companions to my evolving self, a record of who I was in that moment. And the parts of them that were most important have stayed with me, even if I don’t remember the exact phrasing or the little details.

Letting them go felt, in some ways, like a ritual of trust. Trusting that I carried forward the wisdom I had gained. Trusting that new stories, new reflections, and new ways of making sense of the world would always come. Trusting that I would keep noticing the beautiful nuances of life — the sights, the sounds, the smells, the way I felt, the way others seem to feel — because Mrs. Brown taught me, when I was 7 years old, to notice.

I still journal. And I don’t know if I’ll keep these journals forever, either. Maybe someday, years from now, I’ll pull the next box of journals out of my closet and decide it’s time to let them go, too.

And sometimes my journaling just ends up right here, for you to read.

And people may or may not read all of this one day, when I’m gone. But it will exist.