Have you ever had a dream where you wonder if you are dreaming? In those kinds of dreams, I have often told myself I must be dreaming, because in real life you never question if you are awake.
Or in real life, have you ever suddenly been jolted into a heightened sense of reality–through intense beauty or pain or loss? Your brain wants to keep telling you that you must be dreaming, because in real life you never question if you are awake.
For me, showing up to write my story is the opposite of a dream within a dream. It is a gentle jolt into my deeper reality. When I journal, I am awake. When I write about my life, I am aware that I am truly alive. If you would like to connect with the deeper meaning of your sacred everyday life through the open invitation of a blank journal, I would love to show you how.
Innermost Journaling: Mining the Depths of Your Sacred Everyday Life is a six-week online course designed to teach you how to use your journal to connect with the beauty and meaning behind the rituals of your everyday life. Each week begins with a short (5-10 minute) deep-dive video that will jumpstart your thinking, get you inspired, and motivate you to write down the rich details of your life. Each weekly video is followed by six daily writing prompts that you can work through at your own pace. All you need is 10-15 minutes a day to begin this amazing work that only you can do. I will guide you through the entire process, day by day, giving you clear, concise instructions for bringing your pages to life. At the end of six weeks, you will walk away with a beautiful, one-of-a-kind journal that uniquely expresses who you are in your own handwriting and with your own original thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Your innermost. And you will also leave with a deeper connection to the greater story of your life. Priceless.
Is this the right course for you?
In all honesty, I think that anyone who commits to write in a journal for 36 days is going to get something profound out of that work, course or no course. However, I know that there are some women who are really going to feel a connection with my story and the way I describe my journaling practice. If you feel like I’m speaking your language, this course is especially for you.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Mackenzie Chester. I am a wife and homeschooling mother of seven young children. My husband and I have a home business teaching music lessons. I run a blog called The Sacred Everyday, where I write about waking up to the miracle of ordinary life through prayer, reflection, and creative practice. I have an MFA in visual arts, have been a teacher of all ages (preschool to adult), am a writer, artist, musician, and lover of all things handmade. I’ve been journaling since I was fifteen years old, and every good idea I ever had started on the page of a journal. Every major question that I have wrestled with can be found as a prayer scrawled in my own handwriting there. No practice has been more transformative for my inner life than showing up, day after day, to write my story. The blank page is the place where I make a choice to connect my often-overwhelming reality with the sacred meaning of my everyday life.
I have hundreds of journals. How do I find time to fill them up? I am literally meeting needs every waking moment of my life. (Cue the picture of me typing this at 4 a.m. after nursing the baby and getting him back to bed, sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night because that is the only time it is quiet enough to think…) The needs never stop. So why do I spend so much time in my journals? Writing in a book that no one else is ever going to read seems like one of the very first things I could let go, right? But I can’t. I can’t not write. Because journaling is the way I connect with the deeper meaning in the chaos of my life. It is the place where I show up and choose how I am going to view my current circumstance. It is the place where all of my creative ideas begin. Where I plan out every new season of learning for our family. Where I dream and hope and believe better things that I often feel. It is where I connect with God. It is how I pray. It is how I process every complex emotion and relationship of my life. It is where I surrender to the bigger narrative. It is where I truly “see” the people and things around me as what they are–beautiful, transient gifts from the hand of God. It is where I lean into my purpose. It is where my intuition takes on a depth of meaning. It is where I find my vision.
If this resonates with you, even if you can’t articulate why, I would like to assure you that journal-keeping can do the same for you. In this course, I will lay it all out for you in simple steps. You do not have to have any previous experience with journaling. You do not need to be a writer. You may think you’re not creative, that you have nothing to say, and that you don’t even know where to start. But if you have a longing to connect with something deeper in your life, and you feel journaling is a part of the process to bring that connection about, then let me assure you that you are in the right place. This course is for you! There is absolutely no prerequisite for beginning the practice of transformative journaling. You already contain everything you need inside of you. Through this course, we are going to be mining the jewels that are already there.
Maybe you have dabbled in journal-keeping before, but you have never filled one front to back. You see the beautiful blank books in the store and they call to you. You may have a stack of journals you started and abandoned on your shelf. You don’t know how to keep going or what to write or why you are bothering in the first place. If you are the kind of person that longs to fill a journal and you don’t even know why, this course is for you. I am going to help you reach in and unlock the thoughts that you want to express in the sacred space of the blank page.
If you are an active journaler, you already know how life-changing the process of writing your story can be. I want to help you dig deeper through these six short, action-packed, in-depth lessons and daily writing prompts. You will record thoughts that have never surfaced. You will make marks in your book that are completely new and ground-breaking. You will find unearthed treasures from your innermost depths. Get ready to be inspired and to deepen the dialogue that you are already having on the pages of your journal. Regardless of your starting point, I would be both thrilled and humbled to be your guide as you learn the simple, yet profound practice of pouring out your innermost like ink on the page.
Course Themes
| Week 1: Just Show Up: How to begin a transformative journal practice | Week 4: Memory Keepers: Creating a sacred space for fleeting memories |
| Week 2: A Different Kind of Mirror: Using words to sketch an inner self-portrait | Week 5: Moving Beyond Words: Using intuition and imagery to express your innermost |
| Week 3: Curio Cabinet: Curating a collection of details from your meaningful life | Week 6: The Yielded Journal: Offering your innermost as prayer and worship |
Ready to get started? I cannot wait to walk you through the transformative practice of Innermost Journaling.
