How Journaling Becomes a Ritual of Remembering

I don't journal to remember the words.

I journal to remember myself.

Most of the time, I don’t keep what I write. I don’t stack notebooks on a shelf or reread old entries looking for insight or proof of progress. Once I’ve written it out, once it has moved from my body to the page, I burn it.

I let the fire have it.

There is something deeply honest about that moment. The crackle. The smoke. The quiet understanding that I don’t need to carry this anymore. I’ve already learned what I needed to learn. The rest can return to the universe, to the soil, to whatever holds things better than I do.

Journaling, for me, is not a record keeping practice. It is a ritual of remembering.

Remembering what my body has been holding.

Remembering what my nervous system has been trying to say.

Remembering that feelings don’t need to be solved to be released.

When I write, I’m not trying to create something permanent. I’m creating movement. I’m giving shape to things that were stuck, tangled, or heavy. Once they have form, they no longer need to stay inside me.

Burning the pages is not about erasing the past. It’s about trusting that what mattered has already been integrated. My body remembers. My breath remembers. My choices remember.

The paper doesn’t need to.

There is a quiet freedom in not clinging to the evidence of pain. In not needing to revisit every chapter to prove that it happened. I know it happened. I lived it. Writing lets me honor that without asking me to relive it.

This is what turns journaling into ritual.

The intention.

The presence.

The release.

It’s the act of saying, “I’ve listened. I’ve felt. I’m done carrying this forward.”

And then letting it go.

If you’ve been journaling with the sense that you should save everything, revisit everything, make meaning out of everything, consider this a gentle permission slip.

You don’t have to keep the pages to keep the wisdom.

Some truths are meant to be written.

Some are meant to be witnessed.

And some are meant to be burned.

What matters will stay.

Everything else was just passing through.