Just before I graduated from high school, my mom gathered my two younger brothers, my dad and me. “I have something I need to share,” she said. Then she told us she had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. She was 39 and I was only 17.
For the next two years, I shifted my focus from partying with my friends to spending time with my mom. I cherished her every word and clung to every moment with her, though I still believed she would be with me forever.
My mom fought hard, always giving us the impression she was going to be just fine. But 18 months later, she was taken from us. Time ran out before she could answer the questions I desperately wanted to ask her: What was I like as a toddler? Was I funny? Inquisitive? When did I first walk and talk? Was I rambunctious or tranquil? What were my favorite activities? Was I a good big sister? How do I cook your epic spaghetti and clam sauce? What was it like to be my mom?
Nothing caused me to miss my mother more than when my husband, Andrew, and I welcomed our first daughter, Sara, in 1995. Right then I committed to capturing stories for and about Sara in a journal.
A 21-year promise
I went big at the start, chronicling our first weeks as parents, journaling almost every day despite the many sleepless nights, filling the book with detailed accounts about Sara.
Advertisement
I promised myself I would write in her journal for the next 21 years. I would cite her milestones, but I would also make sure I answered all the questions I wished I’d asked my mother and then some, preserving moments big and small. Above all, I would let her know my pride in the joyous privilege of being her mother. And, come her 21st birthday, I would give Sara the journals as a surprise.
With the arrival of our second daughter, Megan, in 1997, I followed with the same commitment.
I captured the funny and the sometimes sad, everything from birthday celebrations to the loss of treasured great-grandparents. I gave both our daughters an emotional recap of how, after 9/11, I had volunteered at the Cantor Fitzgerald grief center, an experience that forever changed my attitude toward the world.
And over time, photos, mementos and concert ticket stubs started to appear beside the journal entries. The storytelling became even more animated.
Advertisement
Journaling is known for its benefits to mental health, its ability to help people document their actions and emotions that can help them identify mood triggers and find workarounds.
“Journaling is a way to figure out how to go back and determine when and why narratives, lenses were created in your life,” Pam Straining, a clinical psychologist in Montebello, N.Y., told me. “The stories, or narratives, we create are the lenses we use to see ourselves, others and our relationships,” she added.
A passion project
For me, my journals for Sara and Megan bloomed into a passion project. I stored them in a steel box for maximum safekeeping. I followed no rules, no blueprint, just writing when the mood would take me. It was an exercise both cathartic and joyful, especially on quiet, rainy weekends and late nights when sleep eluded me.
Advertisement
My formula was simple: Ultimately, I wrote when I could.
With every journal entry, I felt my mom’s presence, as if she had never stopped guiding me. Keeping these journals addressed a void impossible to fill, though I would try.
Then on my 47th birthday, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. Quickly I realized I would have to do for my daughters, then 15 and 16, what my mother had done for me, my dad and my brothers after her diagnosis. I had to channel her spirit and lift myself up. (I recovered, by the way, and today I’m great.)
A few weeks later, I steeled my strength and wrote a journal entry that detailed how I felt. I revealed how their Grandma Flo, whom my daughters had never met, had infused me with the strength to be a light for our family. In that moment, I knew that these journals were more than just gifts for my daughters. They were a unique chance for us to savor our lives together.
Advertisement
The day Sara turned 21, I wrote my final entry in her journal and burst into tears. I then gave her the four volumes I had compiled. Sixteen months later, I performed the same ritual, with another four volumes, for Meg.
Sara and Megan read the journals again and again, sometimes by themselves, other times with all of us together. Today, the journals are displayed in their childhood rooms. One day I hope my daughters, now 28 and 26, will read them to their own children.
A short time ago, just by chance, I came across a collection of letters from my mother to me while I was away at summer camp in the 1970s and a freshman in college in the early 1980s. At least a decade had passed since I’d set eyes on the letters. My mom always signed the letters, in perfect cursive script, “BE HAPPY, LOVE YOU, MOM.” I cut out her signature and pasted it on my computer, where it reminds me daily to beam some sunshine into each day.
Last month I carried out an idea I had toyed with for years. I had “Be Happy” tattooed on my wrist. It’s my first tattoo and a forever reminder to savor every moment.
End of carouselncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMSmuMunnKyrX2d9c4COaWxoaGdkurDAx56pZpuRo7Cmvoyjpq6qnpa5brDArp6hrJWnwHA%3D