If you have not already done so, please check out my Substack, A Reading from the Journal of Yesterday, where I write about reading my old journals, and what to do with all these volumes of personal writing. I share with all subscribers, but my recent ramble about writing as a trauma response was pretty vulnerable. As I get deeper into this reflective practice, I will limit some posts to paid subscribers only. Just $5 a month or $55 for a whole year.
Do you have old journals, too? Don’t burn them! Learn how to harvest wisdom from your very own words by opening these love letters sent by who you used to be. I will guide you in thoughtful engagement with your primary source material through reflective writing exercises, curiosity prompts, and suggestions for developing personal writing into narrative forms. The group will create a supportive space for integrating the seasons of life experience into the present moment. Sign up by emailing raye.s.leonard@gmail.com. Preferred payment by Venmo @Raye-Leonard-1, but we can make other arrangements.
I launched a Substack in March called A Reading from the Journal of Yesterday where I am happily posting reflections somewhat regularly from my lifetime collection of journals and personal writing. I am cross-posting my most recent entry here because I would love for readers of this blog to join me there.
As a thank you to long-time followers (and believers in) my work, at the end of this post, I include an excerpt from a chapter of my memoir-in-progress that you can read without becoming a paid Substack subscriber.
I changed my name to Shelly on my Facebook profile two months ago in celebration of my 35th high school reunion. It’s the name I grew up with.
I didn’t realize it would be 60 days, according to META rules, before I could change it back to Raye, the name I’ve used for over 30 years.
I’ve told the story of how I went from Shelly to Raye many times since the first of June. No, I am not now and never was in a witness protection program. I was not trying to reinvent myself in my early 20s, though I appreciated the fresh start of going to college like anyone else.
I am not trying to be someone I’m not. I simply become more and more who I am.
Some people say, “You’ll always be ‘Shelly’ to me.” It’s spoken like a secret, as if the person knows something about me that others may not simply because they “knew me when.”
San Diego Shelly in 1986 playing dress up with one of my dearest friends whose Navy family was transferred across the country after 8th grade. Theater was my one and only extracurricular activity in high school. Those who truly knew me when know how much I loved to be part of a show. No secret there.
When was that exactly? Who was that me?
Only a very special few have known me through all my names, speaking to me in every language of myself.
In celebration of switching back to Raye on Facebook today, here’s an excerpt from a chapter of my memoir-in-progress that explains what’s in my name.
I will continue to update this website from time to time, so I hope you will stick around. Please also join me on Substack where I share generously from my work, even for free subscribers. If you want to become a paid subscriber, it’s just $5 a month or $55 a year, and includes content just for you, commenting options, prompts to support your own personal writing excavation, and discounts on workshops.
Thank you for following me wherever you find my work!
Today marks 41 years exactly since I started talking to myself.
I thought I would commemorate the occasion by starting to draft what could someday be a publishable book. How auspicious to begin such a thing on the anniversary of when all the writing began.
But when you’ve been talking to yourself for so many decades, you can’t just not show up one day without being missed, even if only by yourself. So instead of crafting what would surely become a respectable memoir this morning, I simply picked up the first journal in my spring 2023 series, and wrote a great big long thank you note to the lifelong friend I found between all these lines across so many pages, filling books, stacked in boxes.
Joy Harjo said that bit about the story matrix. I cut it out of a Taproot magazine.
As I wrote, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to look at March 22 (or thereabouts) for every year?
So I pulled all the March volumes and flagged those dates.
Somehow I thought I could whip all of this together and still get to job, but it’s going to to take some time to not only collate all this, but contemplate it.
This is enough for now. This … and some basic opening questions.
Where is 1983 (’86, ’88, ’89, ’91, ’92, ’93, ’97, ’99, 2000, ’05, ’08, ’11, ’14, ’16)?
Who was the “you” I was writing to in the early years?
Raye S. Leonard 