I chose to do a workshop for myself because I felt like I needed to have a day of healing art. There can be a lot of stressors that occur in our day to day and lately I’ve been having low energy, so I wanted to create a journal for the new year to relieve a lot of the heaviness and provide hopefulness and encouragement. 

With times that can feel heavy, it can help to be present and ground yourself with journaling. When I started this workshop for myself, I first did a breathing exercise and set the space to be comforting and quiet before creating. Once I was done with my breathing exercise I began to construct the journal. While I was creating my journal, I was thinking about what messages I wanted to write down. 

On the first page, I wrote down my goals for what I envision this year to be about. I was also thinking about what colors I wanted to use for that page so I made the decision to design it in a way that is colorful and vibrant. For the second page, I wrote down certain aspects I feel are negative that I want to cut out of this year. Thinking and physically writing down all the negative aspects truly felt therapeutic. It felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders. 

On the last few pages, I wrote down many words of affirmation that I needed to hear and see visually. I also journaled freely on one of the pages and left some sheets blank for me to be able to journal some more in the coming days. 

I really enjoyed doing this workshop because I am someone who loves crafting and I felt right in my element being able to create and be fully present with myself. Doing this workshop gave me inspiration to look forward to taking on the goals I set for myself this year and has brought me back up from the low energy that I was feeling.