Carolyn Koesters
Carolyn Koesters began journaling as a young girl when her second grade teacher, Mrs. Thomason, handed her her very first journal. That gift resulted in her teaching journal writing to others for almost 40 years.
“I’m sure she wanted me to improve my handwriting, but what she actually taught me was that my story was unique, important, and I could write it down. For almost 40 years, I’ve developed that gift into my life’s purpose: to offer journal writing to anyone as an invaluable instrument for healing, growth and discovery, and to share the gift of personal writing with anyone who has a desire to be transformed through the power of words.
“Through my passion for personal writing, I’ve discovered a realm of therapeutic benefits through expressive writings that have been studied and proven to reduce stress and promote feelings of well-being. Journal Therapy, which is defined as the purposeful and intentional use of life-based writing to further therapeutic goals, is one of the expressive arts therapies, such as dance, art or music therapy,” she says.
Koesters earned her credential as a Certified Applied Poetry Facilitato rthrough the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy in 2006 and loves sharing her passion for and extensive knowledge of personal writing with beginning writers and lifelong journalers.
A certified applied poetry facilitator has a unique background, blending love and knowledge of literature and writing with an understanding of basic psychology and group dynamics. They have completed 440 hours of supervision, mentoring, facilitation and didactic training, all under the supervision of a mentor/supervisor, and it took Koesters more than three years to complete. Her supervisor was Kay Adams, the director of Journalversity, the founder of the Therapeutic Writing Institute, and the pioneer of therapeutic personal writing. Her book, “Journal to the Self,” was published in 1990, when poetry therapy had only been nationally recognized as an expressive arts therapy since 1980.
“It’s important to delineate that I am not a therapist and do not call myself a poetry or journal therapist. Writing is therapeutic, to be sure, but there are specific guidelines for different licenses. There are licensed poetry therapists, but those professionals have extensive mental health training, usually in psychology or psychiatry. As a CAPF, I am trained to work with individuals and groups alike, of all ages, in all types of developmental (non-medical) settings. I have taught at creative writing retreats, led groups of women in transition, taught writing memoir series with aging populations and over Zoom during the pandemic, and even offered fun and light classes such as visioning, art journaling and journaling 101 at libraries and summer camps,” she says.
Her “Write Yourself In” method takes into account the fact that you may only have five minutes in your busy life to write, but she emphasizes that is enough time.
“You may be in your car, waiting for a train to pass, your child to be released from school or even taking a breath to collect yourself before heading into work. Not only will you be prepared to write, you can access the depths (if you wish) more quickly, and we care about that because the edges ... the depths ... is where the good stuff is. The point at which you are taking a deep breath and writing the words you never thought you’d write or describing the future moment you have always wanted to have, you can trust that the boundaries of your journal practice are safe, you know where you want to go in your writing, and you can commit fully to the time you have allotted. The few moments it takes to center yourself with the four simple steps of my method can mean the difference between writing in your journal: ‘Had oatmeal for breakfast again,’ and ‘I don’t want to feel like this anymore. Something has got to change. Today.’
“All too often in my journaling workshops, I hear concerns from people who wish to start a journaling practice but encounter so many obstacles that they can’t begin to create a journaling habit, even though the will is there. With as many tugs that pull on our proverbial sleeves these days, it’s no wonder it’s hard to get going, much less try to go deeper than writing about what you ate for lunch or the portion of cloud cover in the skies that day. I’ve been journaling since the age of 8, and through all those 99-cent spiral notebooks; the planners, diaries and journals; oversized sturdy blank artist sketchbooks, scrapbooks, morning pages; and most recently, the addition of a bullet journal and all its accoutrements, I have studied and reaped the benefits of transforming personal writing into total creative freedom.
“Journaling, or personal writing, brings clarity to your relationships, helps release feelings of stress and anxiety, and connects you to what you already know.Taking a few minutes to write down your thoughts, emotions, ideas, fears and questions will strengthen your relationship with yourself and lead you down a path of delicious, true and surprisingly deep self-discovery,” she says.
Koesters says that you do not have to be a writer to journal, and that there’s no one format to follow.
“Keeping a personal journal, with the intention of collecting both the ordinary and incredible, can be a simple, yet powerful tool for life transformation. Every time we approach the page, our minds may be full of questions, or conflict, or curiosity, and the act of putting pen to page can calm that busyness. Once we ‘write it out,’ we can more easily reflect on the language we use, the story we are telling ourselves, and possibly, identify any changes we are seeking.
“Beginning journalers may have other people’s views about writing in their head or have the ‘English class from high school’ mindset, and panic when they think they have to write clear concise paragraphs with well-supported evidence. They simply haven’t experienced what happens when personal writing is developed over time, and they think there’s a right and wrong way to do it. There are certainly some patterns and forms that are more successful than others for dealing with certain life events or issues, but mostly, they need to just write,” she says.
Koesters offers journaling classes through her website, www.wordcatching.com.
“Your thoughts, emotions, ideas, fears, etc., once they are written down, amount to a path of delicious, demystifying and surprisingly deep self-discovery. A journal kept with the intention of collecting both the inane and the important, the minutiae and the miraculous, every question you ask yourself in the journal seeks to be answered. The act of catching those words, by any means necessary, has been my definition of ‘wordcatching’ since 1999,” she says.
