Lessons From A Diary

Kathy Joanne's Diary

This Food for Thought was inspired by a diary discovered in a thrift store in Tampa. The journal was begun on September 6, 1987, in San Diego, California and continues for a brief eleven pages across seven years. The writer, Kathy Joanne, bemoaned previous journals she had begun, but discarded. She began this journal when her mother advised her to do so during a difficult period of her life. I am glad she wrote. I am happier still that I discovered her.

I was struck by this young woman’s words, many painful. I don’t know if Kathy Joanne survived but her journal did. For a time she was living in California. Coincidentally, we attended the same college,  Monterey Peninsula College. I wondered if we had been there at the same time? Perhaps we had taken a writing class together. How strange that we might have crossed lives and now her diary had entered mine again. How did her diary end up in a thrift store in Tampa, Florida, discarded on a shelf along with dusty lamps and chipped cups, waiting there for me to discover?

I have always loved diaries and began writing my first one at the age of ten. My mother always kept a journal. Every book I have written began with my journals, carrying me through  memoir, essays, to non-fiction articles, novels and “Food for Thought” blogs. 

Journaling in my grotto

I love reading the diaries of others, and have learned much from the words of this vast network of writers.  A few of my favorites are Revelations: Diaries of Women, Random House, 1974 is my “go-to” book of women diarists. In 1974 I was just beginning to imagine I could become a writer. Revelations of Women gave me hope. The doubts of many well-known women writers across the ages admitted the same inadequacies I was experiencing. These women buoyed my confidence. They spurred me towards my future.

I have always sought historical books, biographies and diaries from which I am able to unearth lives. My early favorite genre of diaries are those of the homesteaders settling the prairies. My love of homesteading evolved from Willa Cather’s books. These amazing women traveled across the country in the most difficult situations into the unknown, empty, threatening and beautiful lands. They birthed and buried children, husbands and parents. Few can imagine the horrors and joys as we sit in our comfortable homes today. One of my favorite books is Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journal, Schocken Books, 1982. It is a series of women documenting the progression of events as they traversed our country on an invisible trail, over mountains and fording rivers to an unknown future.

From A Letter Home, Margaret W. Inman, searching for a mother on the trail to nurse a baby whose mother had died.

A Letter Home, Gildermeister Historical Narratives by Lucia Williams and Other Pioneers, is the story of the Oregon Trail, women who wrote letters home describing their journeys. Their letters were akin to journal entries, diaries of their lives along every creek of the wheel and every shudder of their wagons. They educated relatives living “back east” the realities of the West. 

When living in California I fell in love with Big Sur. I was deeply affected by the wildness of the landscape, the mountains and valleys over treacherous cliffs and crashing waves. Big Sur Women, Judith Goodman, 1985 taught me the hardships and the isolation these women endured. They were cut off from any village or city during disastrous times of landslides and roads washed away in torrential storms. They survived

A thousand words and bread to bake...from Big Sur Women, Lillian Bos Ross

through their network of neighbors. They met daily at their row of mailboxes at a specific time. If a woman didn’t show up at her mailbox her neighbors rallied to her safety. They traveled by foot, horse or mule to see if their sister was alive and well. Whatever was needed, her friends provided, keeping one another alive. And, they wrote.

We learn of history and the world through the written words of others, in secret or broadcast. The first time I read The Diary of Anne Frank I learned of the holocaust, ghettos, and the need for Anne’s family to go into hiding, racing from extinction by the Nazis. Anne didn’t survive, but her words did. In 1998 Tim and I visited the Anne Frank House. Her words resonated in every silent, empty room. It was impossible to be there without hearing Anne from the pages of her diary, connecting with her life, so tragically stolen. 

The Annex, with Anne's desk

All these women, these diarists, are part of a network of women, a body connected not by blood and tissue, but by words, pumping through us across the ages. We writers reach out to one another, hoping someone will hear our voices, connecting us to this vast network. We have something to say. We hope there is someone listening. Writing saved desolate women connected to a vast body of confessions. From the earliest cave drawings, handprints outlined by red ochre and spittle to hieroglyphics and the earliest languages, we are saying we are alive. We are here. Communication, through whatever means we choose, saves us, brings us to life, keeps us alive. We are "However crudely we represent ourselves, signaling a presence, through hand stencils and mouth art." PBS, 37,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings."

As though I was on an underground grapevine of words, I began receiving comments from readers to my last “Food for Thought,” History Close to Home. From friends to complete strangers, suddenly this grapevine of connections erupted, and came alive. Dolores Rita Slakoff Browne, an amazing writer, artist, architect, sculptress and entrepreneur established the London Victory Clubs both in Philadelphia and Tampa. She and I met at an Oxford Exchange Book Fair.

From Cut and Paste, Dolores Rita Slakoff Browne, London Victory Club, Tampa

      Dolores shared with me that unexpectedly, Dolores was contacted by a family member, her sister’s grandson who had been cleaning out old photographs from his home. He wanted to know if Dolores could identify family members from old photos. He had always known Dolores as the artist in the family. Her sister’s grandson wrote, “I never tried to take them (the photos) out of the frames as I knew…until finding you (I) had no one to pass them to.”  He hoped Dolores could identify long lost family members. He contacted the right family member. Dolores’s ABC books, and her Cut and Paste book, published when “cut and paste”  meant using scissors and glue, is a powerhouse of family, history, knowledge and beauty. The trail ended with the right person through Facebook and the internet, through words and photographs. Dolores was able to identify family members, ensuring that the past will live on.

On February 20 at an Outlaws concert in Clearwater, a complete stranger approached me when she learned I was a writer. She told me she had recently discovered a 1943 journal of an aunt who had lived in West Virginia. She is fascinated by what she learned from her aunt’s diary of life in West Virginia in 1943. This future writer, Claudia, through conversations and the sharing of stories is how writers are born. Past words discovered in diaries inspire us and spur our writing. The more women I talked with, the more stories they shared. The network of words, the grapevine of  writers and diarists, began to vibrate with confessions, questions, and the need to talk.

Kathy Joanne had something to say. It has been very painful to read her diary, which ended

Kathy Joanne's Diary Entry, March 16, 1988

abruptly. Throughout the pages she begins with hope, a new love in her life, a new husband who adopted her first child. She has two more children, and loves them all equally. Problems arise, which she struggles to solve. Her youngest son was diagnosed with anger and depression in second grade. She reveals that depression is a family trait. Her words turn to deep mourning when her brother Brad committed suicide. She is heartbroken. She writes, on March 16, 1988, “It is one month and 11 days since Brad’s death. He was my big brother and is still in my heart.” April 2, 1988, “Two months since Brad's death,” July 19, 1988, “Five and a half months since Brad’s death.” November 5, 1988, “Nine long months since Brad’s death.”

She writes of attending grief counseling services with Survivors of Suicide, in Dayton, Ohio. She battles her own depression, and faces the possibility of killing herself, “Sometimes I think about the whole family being together and taking pills to die together and be with Brad.” The years continue, with a husband who drinks too much and is completely unsupportive. Kathy was screaming through loneliness, failed relationships, a dysfunctional angry child and adult family members talking of suicide. She wanted to be heard. It was her message in a diary which she was afraid to share. She was driven to write, crying out to be heard on every page. Kathy’s last entry has haunted me. “I’m not smart. I was always the stupidest one in the family. I can’t remember anything. I’m not even pretty anymore. I’m just fat. I’m a terrible wife and mother. And now I’m ruining my children. I just love them all so much. I just shouldn’t have had them.”  

I’m happy to have met Kathy Joanne on a thrift store shelf in Tampa, but saddened that her words didn’t reach the right person before her final entry in 1993. Who was there to read her words, her pleas for help? How many others are out there, wanting to send messages, hoping to save themselves through their confessions? Kathy Joanne had so much to say, but was afraid to say anything out loud. If only to herself, she was saying I am here. I matter.

Writing saves us, validates us.  Don’t be afraid to share your history, in your journals, diaries and photo albums.  Let your loved ones find you, let the world hear you. Someday your words might become a book, you an author, a savior, reaching another person in need. Reach out a hand, put a pen in it, and begin writing. Your words matter. Your diary could save another soul, and yourself.

Kathy's brother's obituary, provided through Cathy Varon's research. Despite both Cathy and I researching, we were never able to uncover anything more of Kathy Joanne through her maiden or married names.