🎨 Reflection Calendars Reveal What Words Can’t in Your Journal
How transforming my daily experiences into a symbolic map revealed progress toward my dream and an uncomfortable personal truth I needed to act on.
When I began creating my Expressive Journaling class in late 2024, no one was asking me for it. I was about to finish out my year-long sabbatical and knew I wanted to encapsulate it by creating a class that reconnected people to their creativity. I was uncertain about the path forward, but my intuition told me that people needed this work, and I was uniquely positioned to do it.
Traditional diary entries often bury insights across pages of text that rarely get revisited, but visual calendars transform daily experiences into maps that reduce complexity and reveal the bigger picture at a glance. You need your intuition to express thoughts in symbols rather than sentences, and those symbols pack multiple layers of personal meaning behind them. My lightning bolt does not mean the same thing as yours, and that’s what makes this practice so unique.
The repetitive nature of this visualization also amplifies patterns that might otherwise remain hidden for months or years. It invites your intuition to speak and gives it a mirror to be seen.
I’d tried journaling with words about the class before, but the pages all felt like a slew of restarts with no clear sense of progress. So in September I began creating a visual calendar to honor incremental progress and celebrate my milestones. Each week I sat in my favorite coffee shop translating my digital notes into tiny drawings that captured the evolution of my class, creating a personal Akashic Record of the work.
What started as a tool to visualize progress on my class uncovered a deeper insight around month three. That’s when I began seeing undeniable patterns I had been avoiding about my nearly decade-long relationship that was about to end.
September: lightning bolts of energy, confetti, wind, flowers, rainbows, clovers.
I find my very first 4-leaf clover after defining my company vision and announcing my class to friends while my partner is away on a trip. I note my energy levels in the corner of certain days: high, low, very low.
October: labyrinths, enchanted forests, flights, miniature maps, medicine wheels
I finish the curriculum for my class and send out my first calendar invitations. Intrigued by the energy levels I noted in September, I get more specific: nauseas, anxious, tired, “weirdly sad.”
November: stars, oceanic waves, diamonds… gravestones, tears, silence, yell lines
As November unfolds, I notice a juxtaposition. I finish teaching the class I’d been dreaming of and receive heartfelt texts from students sharing how this practice has changed their lives. But things are getting progressively worse in my relationship. Nauseous, exhausted, fighting, misery at grocery store.
That's when the calendars began to tell a more complex story: the one where my partner of 8 years and I decide to end our relationship, and what happened next.
When I flip back through the earlier months, leading up to the breakup, the fatigue and physical ailments show a pattern that I’d been ignoring for a long time.
The calendars reveal what my longer free-write diary entries had lost track of: consistent distress signals that our relationship was not sustainable. The act of documenting in a succinct, symbolic format allowed me to finally confront what I’d been trying to bleach from my brain. We decided to separate on November 29th, the day after Thanksgiving.
And yet, the inconceivable decision to split up was just the first step. How could we possibly disentangle our lives? We had two dogs, one car, one home, and many of our belongings merged over eight years together. Amidst overwhelming uncertainty, my reflection calendars gave me hope for a future I couldn't see. I imagined months in advance, like an advent calendar, looking back to see how I got from here to wherever “there” was in shocking clarity.
All of the answers I wanted to my ease my fears in that moment—desperately emailing my therapist to confess “I’m so sad I can barely breathe”—filled my calendars over the next 2 months.
December: tears, broken hearts, mountains, trees, bones
How do I watch him pack his things? While watching “Is it Cake” and frequently retiring to the bedroom to cry. What does he take? His computer setup, the espresso machine, the record player and his records, his books, a giant hard drive, and a request for more money than I ever could have fathomed. I feel unmoored from reality. How do I get through the first week? Text messages from my favorite people checking in. Care packages. Watercolor meetups. How do I handle taking care of two high-energy dogs on my own? I am brought to the ground in tears, many times over, as they lick my face compassionately with cold noses and ask to play more.
January: waves, hearts, fires, lightning, diamonds, birds, tears, sun, moon
How do I prioritize healing? My brother flies across the country to visit, giving me the gift of companionship and laughter, helping fix broken things in the apartment, hang stained glass, and assemble the new record player. I go to my first craniosacral therapy session. My first community cold plunge. My first meeting with a dog trainer. What happens with the money? A lawyer creates a separation agreement. It is painstakingly slow. But it’s signed and notarized at the end of the month as the Balsamic moon hangs like a fingernail above Mt. Rainier. What happens to my Expressive Journaling class? I open a business bank account, create a Landing Page and Substack post to announce it, and get my first paid students 19 days later.
Seeing my first paid students arrive in my inbox confirmed what my intuition had known months earlier. This work is needed, and I am the person to bring it into the world. The visual calendars not only guided me through a personal crisis, but also validated my professional instincts, creating a record of both journeys unfolding simultaneously.
My Expressive Journaling class is now sold out for March. Join the waitlist for the next cohort here.
Want to make your own calendar? Here’s how to get started.
My visual calendar begins its life as meditatively hand-drawn boxes. First I draw the horizontals, then the verticals to close out the boxes. If you’re not into drawing lines you can paste a printed calendar into your journal.
I don’t pressure myself to find time to draw every single day. I keep my daily practice forgiving and flexible by writing daily updates in a digital journal that syncs to my phone. I usually do this right before falling asleep, or the next morning if I forget. Then, about once a week, I head to my favorite coffee shop to review the digital journal and translate it into memories I want to reflect on later.
What do I draw?
I ask myself: what stood out to me that day? Who did I talk to? What resistance did I work through? What do I want to look back on a month from now and think, "Ah, WOW, I remember when I was dealing with that challenge, or meeting with this person, or taking this class, or visiting this place. Look how far I've come."
This practice transforms what would otherwise be lost (daily struggles, small victories, subtle patterns) into a visual map that reveals not just the past events of my life, but also inspires me to imagine where I’m headed.
Help me decide when the next 4-Week Expressive Journaling Class will start!
My Expressive Journaling class in March is SOLD OUT! If you’re interested in joining at a later date, let me know what day and time is best for you below.
❤️ I want to send heartfelt gratitude to many incredible friends who have continuously encouraged and supported me along my path, including but not limited to:
, , , , , Catt Small, Sara Strickler, Di Dang, Laura B, , , Jen Pearce, Lauren LoPrete, Marsha Dhingra, Casson Rosenblatt, , Mitchell Cohen, Sarah Hallock, and my brother Mike.
What an inspiring post- loving the structure of the boxes in the calendar and the flexibility to spend time with it later in the week rather than every single day it’s also such a gift that you’re willing to share your months, with all their heartache, loss, hope, dreams and confusion. Thank you for sharing this.
you are such a great person to not only expressively journal but also teach it