behind the scenes: my journaling practice

my daily journaling routine that takes less than 15 minutes, that you'll actually want to adopt

Welcome to my latest series—Behind The Scenes: The Unseen Foundations !!! Each week, I will do a round-up of my spiritual and wellness practices, diet, rituals, journal routines, habits, manifestation tools and everything else in between that keeps me attuned to my soul/God, allows me to cultivate a life rooted in deep alignment, and helps me maintain a state of well-being.

This is not about aesthetics or romanticizing my daily life. It’s about devotion to my mind, body and soul, and the discipline that has allowed me to cultivate a life rooted in inner peace, a regulated nervous system, stillness and joy.

I remember the exact moment I bought my first Moleskine. In April 2017, when I was a student at Fordham University at Lincoln Center, I decided to skip class and walk through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I stopped in Columbus Circle to shop for clothes and left with a sage green Moleskine journal instead.

I had already been ‘journaling’ in my Notes app at that point—writing poems and prose to document my life, process my emotions and access the creative well-spring inside of me that I had long forgotten about. But, I was enamored by New Yorkers who sat at coffee shops, writing the good old fashioned way, looking up each time they were contemplating a thought, only to have their hand move again once something within them stirred.

That journal was my way of having a place for my words and thoughts beyond the digital ether and instead, a physical souvenir I can tuck away in a box someday, or place on a bookshelf for my future self to one day find, and perhaps, something that made me feel more grounded, here on earth.

I have over 25 journals now, each one holding a different version of me, and different iterations in between those versions that I can even remember. My entire life is written across pages and pages of paper, filled with the most painful moments of my life and also my greatest joys, my biggest revelations and my sorrowful realizations.

From heartbreak to grief to love, from chronic illness to emotional releases to identity shifts, from creative ideas to the birth of them to the abundance flowing because of them.

Yesterday evening, I felt called to pull a random journal off of my shelf and open to a random page, just to see where I was years prior. I opened one from 2021, 2022 and then another from 2023, and strangely enough, it led to a powerful emotional release—the type of cry where all the grief resurfaces, not to mourn but to honor.

“I need to stop searching for love outside of me and access the love within me first.” — Karin, 2021 (she was right!)

“I know I need to let him go, but there’s a part of me that just knows there’s something I still need to learn from this experience, that the story isn’t over yet for a deeper reason that I’m currently aware of…” — Karin, 2022 (she was right!)

“I felt called to write about intuition and knowing because I’ve noticed that as of late, I keep searching for signs from the universe that I’m on the right path, that love is on the way, that healing will soon take place...which has made me wonder, why? Why do I feel the need for universal validation on what my heart knows to be true? Maybe because my self-trust isn't the strongest, or patterns will remain, or external voices have just clouded my mind. Back in the Fall, I wasn't looking or searching and instead tapped deep into my intuition and acted in accordance to it. I didn't search for proof for what I felt because my intuitive feelings have always served me and were proof enough. I now know that all of my suffering as of late stems from a lack of belief in my own voice. I keep searching for answers that only exist within me.” — Karin, April 2023 (fuck, right?)

After re-reading the words of my past selves, what I noticed was this: my voice isn’t just how I express. It’s how I self-regulate, orient, and integrate identity.

For some people, safety comes from structure, meaning comes from action, regulation comes from control. But for me, coherence comes from articulation.

When I name something honestly, my body relaxes, my mind stops looping, my energy reorganizes. That’s why suppression of my emotions led to illness, journaling stabilized them, writing healed me, speaking truth ended that spiral. My voice isn’t decorative. It’s functional.

The miracle in yesterday’s experience was realizing that despite all of the suffering and challenges and pain in my life, somewhere deep within me, my soul, (which was always the place in which I wrote these journals from) had the same voice, the same truths. I only now have recognized that I really was always following my soul and intuition this entire time. I always knew the truth, but didn’t quite know how to live by it or embody it.

My life didn’t fracture my soul’s voice—it tested whether I’d keep returning to it. Because knowing something cognitively and living it somatically are two different things. What happened last night is that my present self caught up to my past knowing, because what I realized is that those journals weren’t written from hope or fantasy. They were written from the same internal orientation I’m living from now—just without the embodiment yet. That’s why reading them—and even my first two books—always feels like recognition, not surprise.

I wasn’t “sometimes intuitive” and sometimes lost. I was intuitive the whole time—I was just in the process of learning how to trust that intuition without needing proof, outcomes, or reassurance.

To witness that transformation, to see how far I’ve come, to feel grateful for every past self…truly felt like a homecoming (which was the entire theme of my weekly channeling from Monday!).

So, with that, I want to share my exact journaling routine and how allowing your stream of consciousness to flow each day truly reveals all of the clues guiding you to the next moment, presents the truths that will reorient you, and the answers you may be seeking externally.

Note: this series lives within my paid membership — a space I’m nurturing with care as I step into being a full-time writer (!!!). If my work has ever met you in a tender place, offered clarity or reminded you of your own inner knowing, you’re invited to upgrade here. And if it doesn’t feel aligned right now, there is absolutely no pressure. Follow your intuition, always!

Alright, let’s get into ALL of it!!! The exact journals and prompts I use, and the ways they’ve benefited me!