I stopped journaling a few years back. Didn’t tell or ask a single soul, just tucked my journal into a drawer and turned my back like I wasn’t bothered. Like I wasn’t burdened.

Somewhere between birthing a baby, a chronic illness diagnosis, and the utter upheaval of 2020, life just got too heavy to look at. Too hard to honor the trauma and tears. Too hopeless to hold space. I couldn’t tell you the exact day I stopped journaling. Couldn’t pin down the date, even if I tried. All I know is it was a gradual fading away. A gentle letting go, like a candle extinguished — burning, blazing, blown . . . then gone.

It can be easier to look away from our despair and disillusionment than it is to face them head on. It can be easier to stay stuck in survival mode — pushing past and pressing on — instead of slowing down and letting it all sink in. The stress. The sorrow. The disappointment. The fear.

We hustle and grind our way through grief, brushing our cheeks with bright blush and painting our lips in bold shades that hide the heaviness harbored in our hearts. We wake to new mornings only to hit the ground running, shackled with the weight of all our yesterdays. We carry trauma like a companion, wear our worries like a garment, and stuff our feelings until they are layers deep and out of reach.

But the heart can only take so many hits before it breaks. And, as far as I’m concerned, 2025 has already come in swinging. We are, collectively, carrying a conglomeration of grief and fear — how to heal after natural devastations, how to hold onto hope when planes collide in midair, how to survive another season of political polarization, how to pay bills in the midst economic uncertainty, how to be (let alone breathe) through our apprehensions of America’s current presidential administration.

It’s all too much, is it not?

Sometime around the start of this year, I finally went looking for my journal. It was a quiet morning, the kind that unfolds in the calm that comes after Christmas. It was early, and the sky was dark and dense with a fog that was slowly lifting, blown . . . then gone. This dissipating fog was a prophetic visual for what could become of my burdens, should I muster the courage to recognize, record, and release them.

That morning, I picked up my journal and pen and began to write, once again. As ink flowed from my fountain pen, I poured out my heart on the page. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t an essay or an email, nor was it an article for all the wide world to read and see. It was for me and from me. It was to me and it was about me. It was a moment of returning, like a homecoming, of sorts.

Still, I cannot claim this gift as all my own. I am not the first one — and I certainly won’t be the last one — to find solace in the act of peering into the depths of their own soul. For, there is no one person privy to the pen. Truly, the pen is a weapon to be wielded for and by all.

Maybe you consider yourself a writer. Maybe you don’t.

Maybe it’s grief that you’re carrying. Maybe it’s guilt.

Maybe you dread the year ahead. Maybe you dread the day ahead.

Maybe you don’t know how to hold the joy together with the sorrow.

Maybe you’re heartbroken over the headlines. Maybe you’re haunted by them.

Maybe you can’t find your faith anymore.

Maybe you’re swallowed up in sickness.

Maybe loss outweighs the love.

However you find your heart today, believe this to be true: It might be time to stop hiding, to face your fears, and name the nuances that you know. It might be time to release the resentment, to fight against the fog, to write your way through last year’s wounds. Whatever the weight, whatever the burden, whatever the reason for your resistance . . . now is the time to reach for your journal, to type self-care memos in the app on your phone, or to write out empowering affirmations.

Let us even join the earnest echo of our ancestors — especially here and now as we honor Black History Month — by writing words and leaving legacies that reach for hope while still honoring heartache.

Sis — for the sake of your soul, your mental health, and your peace of mind  — it might be time to pick up the pen again.

Don’t let this moment pass you by. Let these words sink into your heart, then leave a comment and share if you plan on picking up your pen this new year?