Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind,

and make you brave. I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode.

Hello, friends. I am so happy to be back with you all this week after a very brief

break and to be exploring the theme of memory. Now, I've been having a bit of a crisis of memory

lately because I misplaced one of my journals. I have been keeping a journal fairly consistently since I was about eight years old.

Actually, since I was exactly eight years old,

because my very first journal, which was this,

it was a journal that was wrapped in a gene, like in a blue gene binding,

and had daisies embroidered on front and was therefore creatively called

by me as an eight-year-old Daisy. And the very first journal entry reads, Dear Daisy, as you know,

I am a writer and a poet. And thus began my habit of journaling, which I've kept up pretty

consistently ever since then. And that became more

important for me and more consistent, particularly in my teen years and then now into my 20s. And

especially in the years, I think, kind of near the end of college and then into my young adult years,

it's been a really important

way for me to record my thoughts and anxieties and also to be able to look back and kind

of see my progression of who I was and who I've become.

I always think that probably my journals are not exactly a realistic depiction of who I am,

because I tend to turn to them when I'm in a particularly elated or depressive mood.

But nonetheless, there's been this kind of continuity in my life of returning to these journals and being able to see my progression as a person.

Now, recently, I was finishing a writing project, finishing a poem that I had actually

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