Egypt Burge interviews Mari L. McCarthy on how journaling actually helps you get to know your body ON THE INSIDE.
Here is the full transcript of this video:
Egypt Burge: Welcome, I'm Egypt Berge, your self care specialist and host of the nurse or so on laboratory. Today our featured guest is Mary l mccarthy, founder and chief inspiration officer of create right now that come, Mary is also the author of journaling power, how to create the happy healthy life you want to live, which is an international best seller. Through the power of journaling, Mary has transformed her own life, discovered her true self and uncovered hidden talents. Mary offers guidance, support, and inspiration through our online offerings, ebooks, and private consultation. Welcome Mary. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. So Mary, if you could just share more about who you are in and how you got started with journaling that will be good.
Mari: Diagnosed with Ms Probably about 25 plus years ago. Uh, but I, uh, had, uh, an incident where I lost all feeling on the right side of my body. I, uh, most of the incidents is ms, the episodes and they come back. I just had this feeling that this was going to be a long haul before I would get feeling and function. So at that point I was a, um, no not hating our management consulting business and I was traveling all the time and I just closed that down and all that stuff. So it was very much focused and driven. So I hadn't had that procedure because I had, my goodness, I had to teach myself how to break with my left hand like this. So I a synchronistically I ran into a, a young lady whose sister was a, a Novelis, uh, and she said no, she swears by a morning pages and it was a book by Julia Cameron.
Mari: Uh, it's called the artist's way, uh, and the, uh, what I call the quote unquote procedure, let's as sitting down with a pen to page, um, every morning, first thing and just writing three stream of consciousness things about anything. So I thought, oh, that'll be very no easy to follow and get into the process. As I got into to that, uh, certainly started to, it was not that long before I got my left hand functioning. And in the process I started remembering all these things from my childhood. Wow, this is therapy. You know what I mean? I've gotten into emotions and remembrances, uh, one of the things that became lefthanded very quickly and in the process I found that I originally was left handed and the nuns of St Bernard school changed me because good little Catholic girl, certainly. Oh, that was very, that was one fine.
Mari: But I just found out, oh my goodness, this is certainly more than just the, um, the physical aspect and certainly, you know, everyone thinks that journaling is just know directing and you have the whole perception of it just being something for a little like teenage girls to write about their, oh, their emotional anx about the love of their life and all that type of thing. I was just really fascinating. Like I got into starting to write poetry, creative writing because, you know, I think that most people have some kind of issues around our writing because we didn't, I don't think too many people in school had a really good writing experience. So with that, with teachers, I had this experience of, of needing to write with my left hand. It's just like taught me to journaling and just, I really saw that wow, this is what journaling really is and that's why I call my, my business the whole process. Journaling power because it's something that if you sit down and you do it routinely and consistently, it's something that, like I said, his is the best draw guy. No, I'm just like, wow. Yeah, sounds like it really changed their life.
Egypt Burge: So you mentioned, um, just some, some of the benefits of it, health benefits, opening up some memories from childhood and, and just being able to almost like therapy. It was actually therapeutic for you to have these experiences. But you mentioned you also talked about how teenage girls normally, you know, they write out things and that's when I first got my first diary when I was 12 years old and you know, my mind just handing me one, like it was almost like, you know, write your thoughts out, write down what you're going through through the day. I'm, I'm curious to know if it journaling is not like that. Then what are some of the techniques that you will use for like the morning pages?
Mari: I think that the journaling offers an opportunity, uh, to really understand one, certainly spend time with ourselves and understand who really is I like to say who really lives in our body and I think we're just so much your head focused and so driven with the o worrying, thinking to all these responsibilities that I think you're right that, that it's really the dairying and the a is really important just to get a good the message to your body and your whole being that you're important, you know, and just help you sort sort out what's going on inside the bus.
Mari: It's just like there's just so much where I think we're just been so much focused on the external. It's just, it's really a challenging, uh, to, to go in. But like I said, you're talking when you really spend time and really take the risk about, you know, really, uh, allowed yourself to just dump all the, the anger if you just trust yourself and, and just really just pour out whatever. If it's an, if it's a day that you just feel like whining and they were carrying around all the, all the memories, all the experiences, all the erroneous fos from, from childhood about how it's our fault that we did this. I mean, like I said, it's just really a wonderful opportunity. Like you say, do what your mom says. Yeah. Just, you know, spend time with yourself and just come back to center and that, that's something that's just important.
Egypt Burge: And I completely agree with that there. Um, when I was, I noticed that my writing changed the more that I did, right? So as I journaled initially it will be what was going on, you know, externally things that were happening, you know, if I got into an argument with someone when I was younger or by, you know, just those types of things that external. But then the more that I journaled it was, I noticed that my writing changed more reflecting, allow me to reflect on how I felt or what was going on inside of me. So like you mentioned, just getting to know who lives inside of my body. So, and I really liked that you put it that way because that is a very powerful statement and you do get to learn more about, you know, those internal conflicts word, you know, that happened maybe long ago that you may not even know how, how, how it still affects you, you know, maybe years down the line. So in just bringing up those different memories. So yeah, journaling is powerful. I don't think that I've ever thought about it from a healing perspective, like healing physically. So that gives me something to really think about as well. Well, thank you mary. We appreciate all that you said today and I'm actually planning to increase my journal time.