Start with the Story: When I Can't Fight These Feelings Anymore

After listening to a recent episode of The Paperclipping Roundtable with Noelle Hyman, featuring Ali Edwards, and a discussion of scrapbooking and mental illness, I spent some time thinking about the stories that go untold. 

In the scrapbooking world, there's a whole movement of "scrap yourself"...started many years ago by Angie Petersen's Book of Me series. Scrapbookers of that time were commonly the mother class and were, by and large, constantly leaving themselves out of much of their scrapbooks. There were many reasons for their omission, but most of them revolved around "I don't look good in that picture"..."I'm overweight"...and "I'm focusing on my children." 

This was obviously unacceptable and I think most people eventually got on board with being included more often, even if they felt the images of themselves would be judged harshly in the future. 

Why am I relating this bit of modern scrapbooking lore to you? I think it's pertinent that we become ok again with telling stories that reflect on us as imperfect strugglers. I'm mean...that's who we are, right? Shouldn't our pages tell the real truth? 

I have faced difficult things in my adult life and I have the scars to prove it. I stare down the twin dog of scary and difficult most every single day. Sometimes I win. Sometimes the snarly dogs win and I just sit on the porch. It's my story. 

I mean, who doesn't wish that every scrapbook-worthy moment of our lives involved uber-cute children playing idyllically on a sugar sand beach in the azure blue surf on a cloudless day? It would be nice, for sure, but that's just not where I live. 

If I scrapbook for myself, don't I owe myself the truth? If I scrapbook for the people who come after me, don't I owe them the truth?

I'm saying yes.

So this is my truth. It's not always about pretty flowers but there are pretty flowers involved. 

 

Here's the journaling:

 

With apologies to REO Speedwagon. 

Be scrappy.

--Sarah