Mysterious messages from within your notebook
Try this quick journaling activity plus the recording from Samhain
Hey,
So yesterday we had another of our virtual ‘mini journaling retreats’ - the fourth and final one for 2025. This time we were celebrating Samhain or November Eve and considering how we are all feeling moving towards the dark season.
I’ve recorded it as usual for those who couldn’t come along - paid subscribers you’ll find the link towards the bottom of this post. There are also some additional journaling exercises because, for a change, we ran out of time. Time flies when you’re sitting about writing, reading, drinking tea and making a plan for how to keep grimacing smiling when the sun doesn’t make an appearance for weeks on end. I had my candle lit and my slipper socks firmly on, in fact I even moved onto my bed to write for a bit, I mean in for a penny!
Anyway, we did one writing exercise that was such good fun that I thought I’d send it out to everyone.
You’ll need to grab yourself any old notebook, a biro (or whatever), a black marker pen and an open mind to being surprised.
Are you game? Come on, let’s play…
We always start any journaling session with a few quick-fire writing prompts to get ourselves into the room and away from the long jobs list telling us we have other places we should be (no time for ‘shoulds’). Here were the ones from yesterday, if you fancy:
Opening quick writes:
Five seasonal ‘noticings’ - you could write about things you can see outside right now and/or coming up that you want to be on the look out for.
Five things that bring you comfort at this time of year.
Five rituals that support and/or bring you joy for you at this time of year.
Writing activity one:
A message from my shadowy self
It’s a mysterious time of year so we’re going to lean into that. We’re going to see what might emerge from our subconscious. We’re going to delve a little deeper during this time of darkness and stillness and inner knowing.
Follow the instructions in turn, try not to read ahead.
Create your raw material. Do a full page of A4 (at least) of ‘free-writing’ using one of the following prompts (or any of your own). By free-writing I just mean write freely, keep your pen moving, don’t over-think it. There’s no wrong or right here. No grammar checks. Let what needs to fall out onto the page, fall out. And if you find yourself stuck on getting started, I sometimes even write, “I don’t know what to write and…” then keep on going. You can always scrap this first waffly bit at the end if necessary. This isn’t going to be kept (unless you want to) so you can write without censoring yourself (I’m sometimes a self-censorer):
A message from my shadowy self
Heading into Winter, this much I know…
Let me tell you this…
How I am feeling right now…
Now read over your writing and underline any specific words, phrases, odd sentences that resonate. At this point don’t over-think the process, just choose the bits that you are drawn to, that feel energetically right, the words that feel good, that you connect with on some level. Might be emotionally, the way they sound, the rhythm, just the feel. Don’t worry if it seems illogical, you can be fairly ruthless. What do you want to keep? It could be just a handful of individual words, whatever.
Now take a marker pen (or you can do this whole thing digitally too if you prefer) and get rid of all the rest. Literally black out all the other text. If you like what you’ve written you could obvs take a photograph of it first. But otherwise, get releasing all those words you don’t need. You might find as you are going along that some additional words stand out and want to be kept. That’s all good. Don’t worry that it might appear completely non-sensical. Again, just trust the process.
Finally, look back over your remaining words and read them out loud to yourself. Are there any surprising connections? Are there any new truths that have been revealed. Any new stories? Messages within your words? Randomness that you actually quite like - on part of mine the line, “I candle” emerged, which has stuck with me.
Reflect on the process. It might not be that the full piece lights you up (maybe it does) but perhaps there is one line or one part, even one word that is whispering to you. Maybe you found it difficult to let go of certain words. Any unusual connections that were remarkable? Anything that’s left you thinking? Oh and did you enjoy the process? You might not have done, that’s fine too, ha.
So you may or may not know that we’ve just created a blackout poem! I didn’t mention that we were writing poetry here at the beginning because I was imagining a few friends (who I know read this newsletter) and this would have turned them straight off. Or made them panic. You know how I am only ever one step away from talking about poetry.
Blackout poems are most commonly created using other people’s writing - often with old books or letters, it’s great fun. I wrote another post about creating blackout poems here, if this is the first time you’ve come across them.
But this weekend we used our own writing to create blackout poems. This weekend we turned our own words, our own thoughts about the dark season, into ‘found poems’ (another term for them) - thereby playing around with hidden meanings and messages.
We attempted to mirror Winter’s stripping back and leaving only what is essential. We played around with light and dark, revealing and releasing. And we practised tapping into our creativity - something that can be deeply sustaining at this time of year.
You could return to what you’ve written and write it out again? Add in a few words perhaps. Enjoy creating some poetry. But you could just as easily not see this as poetry at all but rather a short piece of prose that your subconscious wanted to be written. A writing exercise that is absolutely just about the writing. A message to support you through the darker season perhaps? Something to remember? Something you needed to hear? Maybe a hint of what does now need to be let go as we slowly begin our version of hibernation.
Or maybe just a fun thing to do on a dark winters day!? As a side note this is also a good one to do if you have kids.
(Tamsin 🍂 🐸 has also shared a poem she wrote yesterday - read it here if you’d like some more inspiration)
Do let me know if you try it.
Writing activity two:
Re-connecting with our ancestors
