A guide for teens and young adults on the power of creative journaling and its role in enhancing self-discovery and self-awareness
• Provides encouragement for creative writing, self-expression, and self-dialogue
• Includes journaling exercises to inspire creativity and cultivate self-esteem
• By the author of Teen Psychic and The Thundering Years, winner of the 2002 Independent Publisher Book Award for multicultural juvenile nonfiction
Most teens and young adults search for ways to express their individuality and to discover who they are, without being judged. In Spiritual Journaling Julie Tallard Johnson shows that journaling is an informative and supportive outlet for the joys, frustrations, and questions that arise for those making the transition toward their own independent ideas and lives--and a powerful tool for awakening creative potential.
Johnson encourages young people to discover their own unique voices by offering guidance on writing and other forms of self-expression and self-dialogue and on learning how to listen to inner wisdom. As readers move through the book and write in their own personal journals, they gain insight about themselves--knowledge reflected in their own words and the writing of other young people included in the book. The journaling tools provided include meditations, consulting oracles, writing poetry, visualizations, writing rituals, and problem solving around spiritual questions.
AAbout the Author
Julie Tallard Johnson is a licensed psychotherapist who maintains a private healing service, Healing Services Overlooking the River, established in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, in 1995. Here she offers the Wheel of Initiation course, spiritual journaling classes, and one-on-one transpersonal counseling. Her studies and investigation into cognitive-behavioral therapy, mind training, Buddhist philosophy, transpersonal counseling, and group dynamics lead to her development of the Wheel of Initiation and a year-long Initiation course, which she has facilitated since 1998. She employs a multicultural approach in her work, knowing that each person has to find a spiritual practice that is personally relevant for them. In 2008 the land adjacent to her practice was opened up so that others could enjoy its Three-jewel labyrinth, one-acre prairie spiral, and 40 acres of nature paths as a place for meditations and writing retreats.
Julie obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she had a double major in sociology and social work. In 1982 she began her career as a social worker and case manager of a program in Minneapolis for those with chronic and persistent mental illness. She soon became supervisor of a new program where she designed and coordinated "friendship circles" for the mentally ill.
While in graduate school at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, she researched self-help and support groups and could not find one that was set up for siblings and adult children of the mentally ill. As a result, she designed and authored The Eight Stage Healing Process for Families and Friends of the Mentally Ill. This book was published by Doubleday in 1989 and Julie toured the United States, Canada, and Australia teaching the eight stages and offering instructions on how to set up a healthy self-help group. She founded the National Siblings Network in the United States through the Alliance of the Mentally Ill, and Australia adopted her eight-stage protocol, incorporating it into their primary national program for families of the mentally ill.
Julie has studied neurolinguistic programming (NLP), cognitive behavioral and rational emotive therapies (RET), as well as mind training. Through her continued studies she came to value narrative therapies (storytelling) in helping others to heal, and she has integrated this dynamic into her own work.
In addition, she is a teacher of Vipassana meditation, which she has also practiced for many years. She took instruction in Rebirthing Breathwork as well as Shamnic Breathwork, Bindu Breathwork™. Along with this she studied and applied mandala work and the healing power of circles, wheels, and mandalas in the transformative process.
Julie is the author of nine books, two for adults and seven for youth.
They are:
Hidden Victims Hidden Healers: An Eight-Stage Process for Friends and Family of the Mentally Ill
Understanding Mental Illness: for Teens Who Care About Someone with Mental Illness
Celebrate You: Building Your Self-Esteem
Making Friends Finding Love
The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom of Teens
Teen Psychic: Exploring Your Intuitive and Spiritual Powers
I Ching for Teens: Take Charge of Your Destiny with the Ancient Chinese Oracle
Spiritual Journaling: Writing your Way to Independence
The Wheel of Initiation: Practices for Releasing Your Inner Light
Julie has also self-published a manual for group facilitators of the Eight Stage Healing Process. She has received many positive reviews and awards for her books including three Roundtable awards, Best Youth book from New York Library, and the Independent Book award for best multicultural book for youth for The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens (His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote a piece for this book). Her Teen Psychic: Developing Your Intuitive and Spiritual Powers book received a Star Review in Publisher's Weekly and remains one of her most popular books with young readers.
Julie has a monthly blog that she updates regularly, offering readers a means for spiritual inquiry through journaling and meditation. She also writes a column on spirituality for a local newsletter, From the Spirit. She lives with her husband, Bill, and daughter, Lydia, in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
