Rising Rooted

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There’s a quiet kind of magic in writing things down.

Not the kind you can track or measure, but the kind that hums under your skin — the moment ink meets paper and something unnamed starts to take form.

I’ve always been a bit of a scattered journaler. My ADHD brain keeps a small constellation of notebooks: one for dreams, one for therapy insights, one for the tangled thoughts that arrive at 2 a.m. I used to scold myself for not “finishing” any of them — for skipping pages, changing formats, or starting a new one mid-way through. But now I see it differently. Each journal is a little world. They don’t need to be finished; they need to be inhabited.

Journaling, for me, isn’t about self-discipline. It’s about devotion — a slow conversation with whatever’s moving through me.

From Alchemist to Scientist (and Back Again)

For centuries, alchemists were the original scientists. They blended mystery with method, curiosity with reverence. In dark rooms filled with smoke and mercury, they sought transformation — turning lead into gold, yes, but also turning confusion into meaning.

Then something shifted.

When the scientific revolution came, wonder was traded for certainty. Experiments were standardized, outcomes measured, variables controlled. The alchemist — half-mystic, half-researcher — was replaced by the scientist: rational, precise, predictable.

We did something similar with self-reflection.

Journaling used to be a conversation with the soul, a place to wrestle with dreams and longing. Then the wellness industry turned it into a morning routine. We began to treat our inner worlds like projects to manage — measuring progress, tracking moods, turning feelings into data.

But not everything that matters can be measured.

What if journaling could be alchemy again — not a quest for improvement, but an act of transformation?

My Ecosystem of Journals

At this point, I have somewhere around fifteen journals in active rotation — though “active” is a generous word. Some of them gather dust for months. Others travel with me everywhere.

Five are work-related: meeting notes, course ideas, snippets of writing that may never become anything but help me think. There’s a tarot journal, full of readings and little intuitive hits that I’d forget if I didn’t catch them. A witchy grimoire, where I record bits of magic and ritual, and a messy book of shadows, which is more like a laboratory of experiments and spells gone half-right. There’s a self-reflection journal that acts as a landing pad for deeper insight — and one refined journal that feels almost ceremonial. That’s the one with neat handwriting and highlighters, where I write maybe once a month to distill the essence of what I’m learning about myself.

Then there’s my motherhood journal, written as love letters to my son — fragments of gratitude, small moments I never want to forget, reminders to come back to what matters when the days blur. I have a poetry journal for when the ache becomes art, and a to-do list journal that is, if I’m honest, mostly scraps of old paper that drift around the house like dandelion seeds.

Each one holds a different facet of my mind. Some are neat; most are chaos. But together, they form something like a living ecosystem — a habitat for my attention to wander through. I no longer try to confine it.

For someone with an ADHD brain, this approach feels like home. I move through my journals the way seasons move through the land — unpredictable, cyclical, entirely alive. There’s no pressure to keep them linear. I pick up what calls to me, when it calls.

If you’ve ever felt like your attention shifts too much to be “organized,” I promise: this, too, can be a form of order. Not the kind that’s imposed, but the kind that emerges when you let your nature lead.

Collage as Archetypal Dialogue

Collaging might be my favorite form of journaling because it bypasses words entirely. When I collage, I’m in conversation with images the way the alchemists were with elements — mixing, layering, burning, transmuting.

Sometimes I start with a question: What am I working with right now? What archetype am I inviting in?

A while ago, I’d been tending to my inner teenager — a part of me long exiled in shame. Around that same time, I was calling in Hestia, goddess of the hearth, hoping to learn a gentler kind of devotion to home and rhythm.

So I sat down with my collage journal, scissors in hand, flipping through old magazines without much thought. I wasn’t hunting for literal images. I was looking for resonance. And there she was — a woman holding a fox.

I froze for a second. Months earlier, through a different collage, I had connected the fox to my inner teen — clever, impulsive, full of wild instinct. Seeing her held now by the hearthkeeper felt like a message from my psyche itself: the wild can live with the warm.

That’s what I love about collage — it’s a dialogue between the seen and unseen. You begin with one question and end with an answer you didn’t expect.

A ritual to try:

Choose an archetype or energy you want to explore — maybe your inner protector, your creative self, or an ancestor energy you feel drawn to. Gather images and scraps without analyzing why. Trust your gut. Arrange them freely. When the page feels complete, pause. Notice what sensations stir in your body. Does something soften? Expand? Resist?

Don’t rush to interpret. Meaning will rise like mist — slowly, in its own time.

Bringing Your Whole Self to the Page

Before you write, pause.

Notice your breath, your shoulders, the texture of the air. Feel the weight of your pen or the coolness of the glue stick in your hand. Let your nervous system — not your planner — decide what kind of reflection you need today.

Maybe it’s a list of gratitudes.

Maybe it’s a messy collage.

Maybe it’s one raw sentence that says, I’m here, and it’s hard, but I’m trying.

You don’t have to make meaning every time you write. Sometimes the meaning comes later, after the ink dries. The practice is just to keep showing up — curious, imperfect, alive.

Healing Without Measuring It

You don’t have to journal every day. You don’t need a morning routine or a perfect notebook. You just need a willingness to meet yourself as you are. Healing isn’t something you can quantify. It’s more like alchemy — invisible reactions, quiet experiments, small transformations that build over time.

If you let it, journaling becomes less about fixing and more about witnessing. Less about managing your mind and more about cultivating relationship with it.

Because sometimes the most radical thing you can do is simply listen.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel