A Helpful Journaling Practice for Your Future Self

Is there an event, trip, or celebration in your near future? Try this.

Hello Readers!

We’ve been busy here at home prepping the outdoors for summer and planning our next stage of plantings in the garden. My early-spring peonies are exploding into bright bowls of fuchsia beside the shed, and my favorite variety of the season—the cotton candy pink peonies I planted everywhere else—should be blooming within a week. Every year, I cut handfuls of them for my daughter Sophie’s late-May birthday, always remembering the vase-full my mother-in-law brought to the hospital the day she was born.

A few weeks ago, we traveled to South Carolina for my brother-in-law’s memorial service. It was such a gift to be there and witness so many moments of sadness, laughter, and remembrance with family and friends as they shared their favorite memories of him.

I felt a bit anxious leading up to our visit. Even though I’m comfortable being in the presence of deep grief and difficult emotions, we were going to be away from home and all the small comforts that help settle my nervous system in hard times. Absorbing a lot of emotions from others, feeling my own sadness, and holding space for Michael and our kids felt daunting and created some anticipatory anxiety for me as the date drew closer.

A few days before we left, I came across a simple idea for paying attention from Edie Wadsworth that I decided to make my own.