When our journals are altars, our creative practices can hold us.

We keep altars for many reasons: to show off objects that we love, to honor our beloveds, to make our hopes visible and tangible, to protect our homes, for cultural, religious, and/or spiritual expression. Altars can be as simple as collecting on a window ledge your auntie’s favorite necklace, your treasured childhood diary, and that candy wrapper you cherished for the design and memory of your trip to London. Some keep ornate altars with ritual and tradition embedded. An altar can be anything!

My journals are altars to what is possible, and to what is. My journals document my commitment to the collective, my commitment to myself and my loves. My journals hold pain, joy, healing, reflection, worry, hope. They are serious, fun, silly, embrace the mundane, keep memories, and revel in the extraordinary. My journals are altars that romanticize my life. Yours can be, too.