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Journaling & Legacy w/ Merle Saferstein
21 Plays1 year ago
On today’s episode, I’m joined by Merle Saferstein, writer, journaler, and legacy work educator. Together we talk about the joys of journaling, how it’s useful to get to know ourselves, process our messy feelings, and consider new perspectives as we navigate our relationships and worries. We also talk about Merle’s work as a legacy educator and how she helps people live more intentionally by asking them to live out the legacy they want to leave behind. Merle has been journaling since 1974, and for fourteen years, she culled through her 359 journals taking excerpts according to approximately seventy topics. In June 2022, Living and Leaving My Legacy, Vol. 1, a book containing eleven of these topics, was released. The second volume will be published this month on June 20.
As the director of educational outreach at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center for twenty-six years, Merle worked closely with hundreds of Holocaust survivors helping them to pass along their Legacy of Remembrance to hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. When she retired from the Holocaust Center, she developed a course entitled Living and Leaving Your Legacy® and teaches and speaks to audiences locally, nationally, and internationally.
You can get in touch with Merle at merlersaferstein.com and you can find her books on Amazon!
References:
Gateless Writing
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Ugly Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Ugly Podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Alexander, she, they, and this is the place where creatives are encouraged to make messy, ugly art and let go of perfectionism.
00:00:14
Speaker
I started this podcast with my creative partner, Emerson, and we've since grown into our businesses. And this podcast is now evolving into a space where I interview other creatives to discuss our creative processes and how we navigate the mental mind field of creativity. This podcast serves as a reminder that you and your art get to be whatever the hell you want to be, ugly and all.
Return to Podcast & Women in Publishing Summit
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Ugly podcast. It has been a while since I have recorded, so this is really exciting. I'm so happy to be back.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thank you all for continuing to come back and listen to me ramble about ugly art. It is the highlight of my life these days. So excited about my guest today. We met at the Women in Publishing Summit, which I cannot recommend enough. Such a wonderful conference where I actually got to meet people and didn't become kind of just a face in the crowd. So highly recommend that. But let's get into my guest today.
Introducing Merle Saferstein
00:01:18
Speaker
As the Director of Educational Outreach at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center for 26 years, my guest worked closely with hundreds of Holocaust survivors, helping them pass along their legacy of remembrance to hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. When she retired from the Holocaust Center, she developed a course entitled Living and Leaving Your Legacy and teaches and speaks to audiences local, nationally, and internationally.
00:01:44
Speaker
She has been facilitating a weekly journaling circle since April 2020 at the start of COVID. For 14 years, she culled through her 359 journals, taking excerpts according to approximately 70 topics. And then in June of 2022, Living and Leaving My Legacy, volume one, a book containing 11 of those topics was released. And the second volume of Living and Leaving My Legacy will be published this month in June 20.
00:02:13
Speaker
Welcome. Can you please introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns, please? Sure. My name is Merle Saferstein and my pronouns are she, her, and I'm thrilled to be here, Lauren. Oh, thank you so much. So we're going to talk a bit about journaling and I'm, I love this topic so much because I've been journaling forever, even before I considered myself a creative person. Journaling was that safe space for me.
00:02:38
Speaker
And I think it's very appropriate to talk about journaling because it can be such an ugly, messy endeavor, right?
Journaling Journey of Merle
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, so tell me about your relationship to journaling. When I was a teenager, I kept a journal. It was actually a diary in those days. It was with a little lock and key, a plastic cover with a poodle on the cover. How adorable.
00:03:04
Speaker
I, right. And then, so that was in the, that was in the fifties and the sixties. I stopped journaling when I went to high school.
00:03:12
Speaker
and then did not start journaling again until I was 30. And at 30 on my 30th birthday, I picked up a pad that I, a legal pad that I, well, actually a stenographer's pad that I had taken notes for a class I was taking. I was taking a Gestalt class and I hadn't finished the notebooks. So I decided to just kind of write down what was going on in my life. I had two small children.
00:03:36
Speaker
And I was reflecting. And as soon as I started, I said, you know, this is something I think I want to do. So that was in 74. And I continued journaling. By 1982, I was journaling every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and have continued since. So I think now I'm
00:03:58
Speaker
to about 380 journals or maybe even more. I know, it's a lot. It's amazing. And, you know, there came a time where I didn't know what to do with them, you know, how to, where to keep them even. And I was concerned more about losing them to a fire because we hadn't had a fire in our house early on. And so I rented, I bought a fireproof safe. It weighed 700 pounds when I brought it into my house.
00:04:28
Speaker
We had three men who brought it in. I can't even imagine what it weighs now.
00:04:33
Speaker
At the time, my daughter had left for college, or she was actually graduating from college, and I asked her if she was coming home for sure, because she said she was moving to Atlanta. I said, because if you do, you're only going to have half a closet, because that's how big this safe is. And it's filled. I mean, I cannot put another piece of paper in that. Wow. Yeah, so now there's that issue of what to do with the rest of
To Keep or Burn Journals?
00:05:01
Speaker
them. We need a second safe.
00:05:04
Speaker
It really was more about not about the safe space as much as just safe from the fire, hurricanes, those kinds of things. Absolutely. That's amazing. It's actually very interesting that you bring up losing your journals to a fire because I did it on purpose. I went through that phase of
00:05:29
Speaker
You know, I had all of these journals from high school and those were some of my darkest and saddest years going through depression. And I once I left for college, I was like, I never want to think about this person ever again.
00:05:43
Speaker
and I burned all my journals. And that has been like one of my biggest regrets is having burned all of those journals because I wish so badly that I could look back at my high school self and read those journals with all of the compassion that I have now. Zoran, I'm curious, how did you burn them? What did you do? Like, did we create a bonfire? Yes, yeah, my friend had a,
00:06:11
Speaker
one of those just kind of little fire pits, there's little metal bowls out in her backyard. And we were we were burning all of our our homework and stuff from senior year after we graduated. And I was like, I'm gonna throw these in there too. And so I threw in my, my journals. Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
it's interesting because I've debated a lot about what I'm going to do with my journals. And as of now, because I know that I really can't have anyone else read them, in my will I have it stated that I want my journals burned. And lately I've been thinking about
00:06:47
Speaker
My real goal is to be able to read them from start to finish, not doing what I did with them, which I think we'll talk about, but just to read them and then destroy them. And I'm not sure that that's going to happen, but in Florida, you can't have bonfires on the beach and you can't. So I don't even know how or where I'm going to be able to do that.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, maybe you'd need like a crematorium perhaps as some kind of industrial. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. And it will not be my issue. I might die and then my family. Right. It'll be your kid's problem. So what keeps you continuing to journal now? I mean, you've, you've, is it, I mean, it's just integrated into your life now. I mean, can't live without it. What, what keeps you continuing to do it?
Benefits of Journaling
00:07:46
Speaker
For me, journaling is a way to process my life. And I honestly can't imagine that journaling. I think that there's so many benefits, just psychological benefits to be able to journal. And so for me, I can't even imagine a day without journaling, truthfully.
00:08:11
Speaker
And I suppose that's probably going to be the rest of my life. I mean, it's just so much a part of my life. In fact, a long time ago, I was in therapy for just a short period of time. And the therapist at the end of when I finished with her said to me, I've never met anyone who knows herself as well as you do. And I really believe that journaling has helped that. But I also think that it's helped me live in the moment.
00:08:39
Speaker
in a way that I wouldn't otherwise. Also, I think that my memory is so much better than it would have ever been because I've written things down. And I really do. I really think that's been important as well. Yeah, just today from a friend of mine who
00:08:58
Speaker
who asked me if I could tell her the dates of when our women's group has gotten together because we're having a party for one of the women, and she wanted to look for pictures. And I was able to go back and easily trace that. So in some ways, I've become my friends and family historian. Yeah. What an amazing gift to be able to give to people to just know all of these dates.
00:09:26
Speaker
What an amazing point of contact and reference for everybody around you to have.
00:09:34
Speaker
When I worked on my journal project, one of the things I did was I took excerpts on people, some of the experiences I had with other people and sent them to them. And that was really fun. I did it for two reasons. I wanted them to know what I was doing to understand the project, but I also wanted to share with them. And it was very exciting to people. They were really happy to have that
00:10:00
Speaker
It's just a little piece of history that most people don't have that I'm fortunate to have. Yeah, absolutely. What a sweet gift for the people in your life. I love that. Okay, so everybody has a different method of journaling. Some people use a lot of details. For some, it's just kind of heady contemplation. What is your process for journaling? What kind of details or things do you actually write down?
00:10:30
Speaker
I used to write everything down. So I used to write down how far I jogged in the morning, how much I weighed, just the details, the very day-to-day mundane details, and also how I was feeling when I was thinking. And when I started going through my journals and reading them, I realized I do not need that information. And so I no longer do any of that. I would say that it's a recall, a recalling of
00:11:00
Speaker
the conversations I have, the experiences that I'm having, and also the thoughts, my thoughts, feelings, working through an issue. Sometimes if I've got, for example, if something's going on with my husband and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to approach something with him, I might write him a letter in my journal and figure out what it is, you know, an unsent letter, what it is I really want to say
00:11:31
Speaker
and get rid of all the anger or the feelings and just get to the idea. Another thing I do sometimes is dialogue. So if I know I'm going to be talking to someone and I need to really figure out how I want to approach something, I might do a dialogue between myself and the person. And I really think it's magical because
00:11:53
Speaker
While we don't really know what someone else is going to say, somehow what comes down on paper is that person's voice. It's really pretty incredible. And I've been doing that for many, many years. I learned that in the 70s. I went to an Ira Progof Intensive Workshop and learned to do dialoguing and find it to be a really valuable tool. So it's all of that. I also do a lot of lists, which I did not realize I did.
00:12:23
Speaker
in my journals until I started going through them. So I do not necessarily write very much about the world around me. So it's much more of my inner journey. But many years ago, I was at, in Cincinnati, I was speaking, and we went to the National Jewish Archives. And the head of the archive, and someone had told me,
00:12:52
Speaker
a few friends of mine who are historians said, you cannot burn your journals. You really need to give them to an archive. And I thought, well, this is perfect. You know, I'm a Holocaust educator, Jewish, you know, whatever. And so I spoke to the head of the archives and he was very interested.
00:13:10
Speaker
So he said, when you go home, write a letter. Tell me what this is all about. And so I did. And he wrote back and he said, yes, we really want them. But what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to go back since you started writing in the 70s. I want you to send the excerpts, for example, of the Nixon impeachment and Israel and one of the wars or whatever. And I just looked at the letter and said, well, that's just not going to work because I don't do that.
00:13:41
Speaker
But when I went back and started reading my journals, I realized I do do that. Not to the extent that maybe he might have wanted it to be, but I do. I mean, I do on occasion record something that's going on around me. As it turned out, I just wrote him and said, thanks, but no thanks. I just don't think it's a good match.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Encouraging Journaling for Clarity
00:14:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, it was worth a shot. Absolutely. Yeah. I love your approach of just like, it's not just one way. It's whatever is moving you in the moment. It's not just like a daily practice of the same thing over and over again. It's such a collaboration of things. I really appreciate that, especially just in my own journaling practice, you're giving me a lot of ideas.
00:14:28
Speaker
because I have gotten into a practice of just kind of the same thing over and over again. And that has led me to do it less frequently than I might if I was more free with it. So I really love these ideas, especially the dialogue. I love that idea, especially because a lot of times you'll get really, at least I will, I'll get anxious about a conversation and I'll let it play out in my head.
00:14:52
Speaker
But often in my head, it goes out to these extremes. But I know that when I write things down, when I'm thinking in the extreme, I'm able to actually see like, oh, that probably won't happen. You know, that's probably not realistic. And I can adjust from there, but seeing things written on paper.
00:15:07
Speaker
really helps kind of rein in your mind from going to these extreme catastrophizing scenarios. So I love that idea. It's such a fabulous technique and I've used it for so many different occasions and really found it to be helpful every single time. I love it. So good. Good. Great.
00:15:28
Speaker
Do you ever work with people who feel nervous or embarrassed about writing in journals? I know a few people who refuse to write in journals because they say they're too embarrassed, they don't have anything worth saying, they wouldn't want anyone to ever see them. It's this very big fear of having your personal life on a page. How do you approach that? How do you respond to that?
00:15:53
Speaker
there's definitely that that happens. So what I do is I really help people understand first the value. Why write in a journal? And then I think the biggest issue for most people is not the embarrassment. I mean sometimes people say I have nothing to say and I truly believe we all have something to say regardless. But more than that I just I encourage them to
00:16:23
Speaker
put everything down on paper. And here's what I do. I feel like if we live in a house that's cluttered, then our minds can't necessarily focus the way we might otherwise.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I think the same thing. If our mind is cluttered with material, with stuff, then unless we get it out, we're not focused the same way. We're not thinking in the best way possible. So what I say is, if you are afraid to write in your journal because you're afraid someone will see it, then take a piece of paper and write it down and tear it up.
00:17:01
Speaker
or burn, but get it out. Because to me, it's really the act of getting out. It doesn't matter if it's in a journal. It doesn't matter if it's on a chalkboard. It doesn't matter on a computer. It doesn't matter as long as you do it. So I really encourage that. There have been so many people in my journaling circles and journaling classes at workshops that I've done through the years that say that they don't write anymore because when they were younger, their mother found their
00:17:29
Speaker
diary and she read it and then it can really wipe someone out and it's so unfortunate. So I just try to encourage them. At the beginning of COVID, I was asked by an organization to do a journaling circle.
00:17:47
Speaker
just for a month because we thought that's all, COVID was gonna last. And so we started on Sunday mornings and we are now into, we just had our 144th journaling circle together. These are women, I think only two or three of them journaled before.
00:18:08
Speaker
And now they're all journalists. And the conversations that we have have been just fabulous. And we've gotten to be a really intimate group of 15 women who share deeply and who are no longer afraid to write and just put it down, get it out. I love that so much. What a beautiful community.
00:18:36
Speaker
I just need to sit with that for a second. The idea of journaling being able to kind of release all of that clutter in your mind and then not only bring you closer to yourself, but with this community that you're running, bring you closer to other people and bring you into community with other people in such an intimate and vulnerable way that most people don't get to know each other in that way.
00:19:05
Speaker
That's just such a beautiful example of community. What's been interesting is I belong to a few different writing circles. The International Association of Journal Writing, of which I'm on the on the council, they do a monthly journaling circle. And what they do is we write together, but and we
00:19:27
Speaker
We have choice whether we want to read or not what we've written, but nobody comments. We just sit with the reading. And while I think that's valuable because it really makes a difference when you hear your voice out loud saying what you've written, I approach it really differently. I encourage people to talk about what they've written. And so after someone reads something,
00:19:53
Speaker
we might, or talks about what they've written, we end up having some really wonderful conversations about things that, you know, we come on Sunday mornings and people have absolutely no idea what they're going to be writing about. And suddenly they go to a place where
00:20:10
Speaker
They can hardly believe they're there. Someone wrote me one this past Sunday and said these were the most important prompts I needed to be writing this and never would have done it had it not been for the journaling circle. So I'm really grateful that we can do that. Beautiful. That's very similar to have you heard of gateless writing?
00:20:32
Speaker
No, no, it's a it's a technique that is it's it is more creative writing based not so much journaling but it is a it's a space where
00:20:46
Speaker
You come in, you start with a meditation or just kind of a moment to center yourselves and then together you all write for 20 minutes following a prompt and then you read it aloud kind of just releasing it and everybody in the circle comments on something about the piece and they are often
00:21:05
Speaker
not speaking personally, which I think with the journaling, it would get more into personal conversations. And so this is more about writing, but just commenting on what resonates with them, what is interesting, what's exciting. So it's kind of a take on critique groups, but focusing on what is great and exciting about the writing. And in those spaces, it's where you can kind of let go of the outcome, because you know, no one's going to criticize your work, no one's going to criticize you for writing something. And so
00:21:31
Speaker
it just releases you from this fear of putting it down on paper. And it's a really amazing experience. That's great. That sounds wonderful.
00:21:43
Speaker
We have this idea that everything we do has to be good or have value. This belief leads us to burn out.
Ugly Art 101 Course
00:21:51
Speaker
It can hold us back from creating altogether. But in my Ugly Art 101 course, I break down these restrictive beliefs and lead you through exercises that intentionally subvert perfectionism and bring playfulness back into your creative process. You can get the first day absolutely free by going to my website, scribeandsunshine.com and signing up on the homepage. Join me in my weird ugly art revolution. Back to the show.
00:22:16
Speaker
All right, so when you talk about leaving a legacy, what is the thing that gets you the most fired up, the most excited about yourself leaving a legacy and then also encouraging others to leave their legacy?
Defining Legacy
00:22:32
Speaker
What I've learned is that how we live our life becomes our legacy. And
00:22:39
Speaker
For the 26 years that I worked with Holocaust survivors, my role was, as the Director of Educational Outreach, my role was to really help them pass along their legacy of remembrance to students and to teachers. And I understood the value of doing that and understood
00:23:02
Speaker
how important it was for people to know. So I kind of took that when I retired and thought about what value is this in helping people leave their legacy? And what does that mean? And one of the things that I really understand is that it's really not what we say, but it's how we live our lives. And so for me, it's looking at
00:23:30
Speaker
person's what he does every day, he or she does every day, and understanding that we're going to learn from that person by watching them. And if someone doesn't do any kind of legacy project at all, the legacy becomes just how you've lived your life.
00:23:50
Speaker
So I extended it further and have created this course where we talk about living our legacies and also leaving our legacies. And then we do projects. I encourage people to do projects. What excites me is knowing that people through
00:24:10
Speaker
Looking at their legacies and talking about how they're living their life are understanding how to live the best life possible So I have a woman in my class at the time we started She was 38 and there was a man who was in the same class who was 92 and I'll never forget this moment He looked at her at one point and he said what in the hell are you doing here? I
00:24:33
Speaker
Because to him, he's 92. He's got a long life that he's lived, and he's got a lot that he's leaving. And he didn't understand why she would even be interested. And she originally came because she wanted to help her parents do some kind of legacy project, but quickly realized that this was for her. So I've had two classes that have been going on for one 10 years or one nine years, long time.
00:25:04
Speaker
What she says now is that as a result of this class, she said, my family has benefited. I have benefited. I am living a life that I never would have lived before. So it's really helping people understand the importance of day to day, what we do, how we do it, what we're thinking, how we're acting. And that excites me. It excites me.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yes, I love that. How do you help them like kind of pinpoint like what I mean, what kind of questions do you ask to kind of help people pinpoint like where they want their legacy to lie and how they can live into that more? Are there like, yeah, are there are there questions that you ask? Are there, you know, thought prompts? How do you go about this work?
00:25:50
Speaker
Well, the very first thing I do in the first class that I teach of a series, that's my clock going off. And that's a legacy. So I'll just stop and tell you this. My cousin, who I was very close with, had this clock and it goes off every hour. It plays the Beatles tune. And I used to go visit her when she was actually very sick and dying.
00:26:17
Speaker
and worked with her on legacy projects. And so we would stop every time, it's solar run. And every time the clock would go off every hour, we would stop and just listen together. When my cousin Carol died, right before she died, her two sons came in from California and this is what they said to me. They said they walked in and the first thing Carol said to them was, we're all getting the clock.
00:26:41
Speaker
So I used to turn it off when I was speaking on Zoom, but now I leave it because it's just another way to, I often just stop and think for that minute about Carol. Okay, so back to the first class, what I do is I have people list 20 things that bring them joy.
00:27:07
Speaker
And then I ask them these questions. So when is the last time you did these things? And then do these things cost money? And if your parents are alive or if they weren't, would they or do they do these things? Is this something that would be part of their lives?
00:27:33
Speaker
Would you want to be doing this in five to 10 years? So it's really looking at right now in this moment, what is bringing you joy and are you doing it? And to me, the most important thing is
00:27:47
Speaker
how long ago did you do it? And if someone says it's been a year, two years, I'm like, all right, then there's something wrong. You need to put this back into your life if this makes you happy. So it's beginning to look at that. Another exercise we do is, this is a true story of a man who was in Vietnam and he was a fighter pilot
00:28:12
Speaker
and a fighter jet pilot, and he was captured by the Vietnamese, and he was in prison as a POW for many years. And long after, he was in a restaurant in Kansas City, and some man came up to him and said, are you Captain Plum? And he said yes, and he looked at him, and he had no idea who this man was, and he said, and you were a fighter pilot.
00:28:39
Speaker
in Vietnam, yes, and he went through the whole thing and this man was like, how do you know this? And he said, because I packed your parachute that day. Oh, wow. And so I read them that story and then I asked them who impacted their lives.
00:28:58
Speaker
And so we talk about that. And then we talk about whose life they've impacted. And that's a little harder for some people. Some people think it's kind of nervy to be able to say, well, I've made a difference in so-and-so's life. I say, I hope you have. I hope you could think of that and not think of it as being
00:29:20
Speaker
bragging or feeling like you're better than someone else or whatever, but just really the importance of knowing that people impact our lives and we impact other people's lives. So that's another way. Another thing we do is stepping stones. So I have them list like 10 pivotal points, stepping stones in their lives.
00:29:41
Speaker
a moment at which you went one way or the other way, or something that just impacted your life greatly. And then pick one of those and talk about it. And so we talk about those things. So those are important also. So those are the kinds of things, just a few. Mostly what we're looking at are, what are your life lessons? What have you learned from your experiences that you want to pass along?
Reflecting on Joy & Legacy
00:30:10
Speaker
Another thing is what are your values and what are your hopes and beliefs? And so those are the kinds of things that I encourage people to really look at. And there are lots of different legacy projects you can do. But I think one of the most impactful and important ones is called writing an ethical will. And that is basically one's life lessons, hopes and dreams, values and beliefs.
00:30:38
Speaker
and sharing those, writing them down and looking at them. And that to me is a spiritual document that's always in progress. And when I say that, what I mean is I hope that we continue to learn and grow. And so periodically I go back to my ethical will and reread it and add to it. And the other thing I say is, and I'd like mine read at my funeral. The other thing I say about that is I hope
00:31:05
Speaker
that there's no one who I know who I love in my life who will hear anything new when they hear my ethical will. I hope that I'm living my life and that I'm teaching as I go so that none of this will be new to them. What a Yeah, that's such a great
00:31:25
Speaker
way to view this. And it's a beautiful intentional, bringing intentionality to your life. That's something that I've been really working towards for the past
00:31:41
Speaker
year really is taking a look at my life and very intentionally saying, what brings me joy? Like you said, what do I want to spend my days doing? I think so often we can kind of just get sucked into a routine that then defines our life. And like you said, you haven't done some of these things that bring you joy for two years. Like, well, why haven't why haven't we done that? Why haven't I gone and jumped in the lake?
00:32:07
Speaker
when that's often all I want to do on a hot day is go jump in a lake and I haven't done that in years. Why haven't I? Maybe I should reevaluate that. How can I bring that into my life? It's so important to bring that intentionality into your life and then see how your life changes from that.
00:32:24
Speaker
Let's talk a bit about your legacy, these books that you've made.
Compiling Journals into Books
00:32:29
Speaker
What has, what was the process of combing through hundreds of journals to compile these books? What, what a process. Yeah, it was crazy. I started in 2000, I started thinking about this. So I have two children and I always thought that I was going to leave my journals to my children.
00:32:52
Speaker
And then in 2000, I said to myself, wait a minute. You can't leave these to your children. These are for you. These are for your eyes only. And really, what I realized was, not only do I write things in there that I want no one to read, but I also, in my lifetime, have been privy to a lot of people's confidences. And the last thing I would ever want to do is betray them. And that would definitely happen if I let
00:33:22
Speaker
my children read my journals. And so I began to think, all right, what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? As an educator all my life, I kept saying to myself, there's got to be something of value in here. I have no idea. I just know every day I go to my journal and I write, I don't know, but I'm going to go back and read them. Not really understanding exactly what that meant. So I started and I made a list of
00:33:51
Speaker
Originally, it was 40 topics, but then it grew to 70 topics. It's crazier. And what I did was I would read a journal. I took the little post-it notes. I would cut them into four. So I had these little slim notes. And as I would read, I would write down the topic.
00:34:15
Speaker
of a paragraph or a page or many pages that I wanted to then go back and type into the computer. So at the end of reading a journal, which took me, I'd say an average of four to five hours to read and tab.
00:34:31
Speaker
I would then sit down and go through them and look for sometimes, you know, one journal might have a greater theme, you know, something might be going on and there's a lot of one thing. So I would always go through the topic that was the greatest and go through and look at all those tabs and type those in. It took me about seven hours, an average of seven hours to type each one.
00:34:59
Speaker
So seven hours times 359. Right. Plus four hours of reading them. Right. Yes. Oh my goodness.
00:35:11
Speaker
And then that's when I also would write people's names down. So after I finished doing all the taps for myself, then I would go back and type in those excerpts and email them to people. So it was insane. It took me 14 years. The last year in 2016, I decided that I was going to spend the entire summer
00:35:36
Speaker
I was done. I just, I had to finish. So I spent 77 days at the time I thought, this is crazy. I don't know anyone who would stay home for 77 days. The only thing I did was walk early in the morning. And then of course after COVID, I was like, Oh, this is not so bad. 77 days. I've done this before. But at the time I thought, Oh my, who would do this crazy thing?
00:36:03
Speaker
The experience was beyond anything I could have imagined. It was painful. It was wonderful. I always thought, so I look at myself as a very positive person, and I always thought that I mostly wrote the good things. Most people journal when things are tough.
00:36:25
Speaker
I didn't think that was the case. I thought, you know, my life is pretty good and everything. Well, what I realized is that's not true at all. But I would say that I journaled a lot, probably almost 50-50, good and bad. But what I realized is through my journaling, I took the bad and worked to get it to a positive place. So that was really interesting to discover that in my life.
00:36:55
Speaker
There were days that I would sit and literally cry as I was reading. When I started the project, my husband did not understand at all. He kept saying, why are you doing this? And I was like, I have to do this. He couldn't imagine. And he said to me, are you going to be angry with me when you get to a part where there was something that went wrong? And I said, I don't know.
00:37:20
Speaker
And then he came home one day, I was ready to kill him. And he said, OK, I have no answer. It really put me back in the moment. So going through all those years and just discovering. Interestingly enough, there was very little that was new to me. Almost everything that I remembered, I remembered the way it happened. There were a few incidents where I had some things mixed up, but very few.
00:37:47
Speaker
Very few people, every once in a while I would see a name and I'd say, I have no idea who that person is. But for the most part, I really was surprised and I do believe it's because I wrote that I remembered as much as I did.
00:38:00
Speaker
So it took me 14 years, like I said, to do that. And then I had to decide what topics I wanted to use. So then that took a little while. And some I totally deleted. I mean, as many topics as were really, it was hard to delete, but I thought, I don't want anyone to see them. So I deleted them. And then I chose 22 topics and I knew I was going to do 11 for each book.
00:38:30
Speaker
And what I ended up doing was spending about four years, maybe almost five years, going through those topics because each topic had 75 to 450 pages, single spaced typewritten pages. And so then it was a matter of, okay, so what do I put in and what do I leave out?
00:38:53
Speaker
And very often I took excerpts from my journals that I knew that I was not going to share. But I also knew that I wasn't done looking at them. And I thought I need the whole picture in order to decide and discern what I'm going to leave in and what I'm going to leave out. The other thing that happened was as I got closer to actually putting the book together, one of my friends who's a psychologist kept talking to me about the shadow work.
00:39:21
Speaker
and saying to me, you know, you can't and it can't all be positive. You know, you've got people, you know, you've got to say all of it. So I'll just take the topic of marriage, for example. So my husband and I have been married over 56 years, so long time, we have a long history of high school sweethearts, and we've been together for the greater majority of our life. And I would when I read, you know, when I finished the
00:39:49
Speaker
the chapter and read it over for the first time. I said, well, this is really kind of Pollyannish. You know, there's a lot of really wonderful things. But in all those years, it hasn't all been wonderful. And so I decide and I read him, you know, whatever I read him and the negative things he was happy with. He was fine. He didn't have any problem with. But then I went back.
00:40:13
Speaker
And I said, okay, now I'm going to get real. And I went back to those 450 pages and started taking some of the excerpts of the really tough stuff that really left me feeling vulnerable to some extent, but also knowing that if anyone's going to relate to this book at all, that's important. And I want to say that the reason I decided to share this
00:40:37
Speaker
beyond sharing with my children, my nieces and nephews, is that twofold. One, that I really wanted people to understand the value of journaling, the gift that it is that we give ourselves. And the second, to look at my life, not because it's my life, but to look at my life as a reflection into their own. To look at the different topics, read them and say, oh, I feel that way. Or I never thought about that, but maybe if I do, I might change my thinking.
00:41:07
Speaker
to really see what resonates for other people. And it's been very interesting to see. And one of the greatest joys has been people who have written me to say, I'm journaling now as a result of reading your book. Oh, that's wonderful. Yes, I you absolutely do such a good job of encapsulating the broader human experience. I was I was thumbing through your chapter on friendship. And just within the first page, I saw just
00:41:36
Speaker
I mean, three different examples of various friendships and acquaintances that I'm like, Oh, that's this person. Oh, that's this person. Like I see myself reflected in your pages. Great. So you do such an amazing job at that. So that's the second book that one. Most people haven't seen that yet. I got a sneak peek. Glad. Oh, just amazing.
00:42:01
Speaker
How did you, what kept you going? I mean, especially for those 77 days, what kept you focused on that project? I think a lot of people writing books especially would love to know just kind of, you know, throughout that process, how did you keep moving forward and not just kind of throw up your hands and say, I can't do this anymore. I'm a driven soul.
00:42:31
Speaker
I had a purpose. I wanted to be done. I knew that it was time. I didn't finish that summer. I think I had like 90, I don't know, 80, I don't know. Anyway, I did 77 journals, one a day. And then I had 15 more to go. So I guess 92 journals I started with that summer. And
00:42:59
Speaker
And those I finished quickly after, by October I was done. It was just a matter, Lauren, of it's enough already. You know, 14 years is a long time. And I was, I've been working on this while I was working full-time. I mean, it was, you know, I'd do it in my spare time, but I just had to do it. So that's really what, that's it. I wish I could give you better advice or say.
00:43:24
Speaker
I think that's good advice in and of itself, especially just when I was reading the first chapter of Volume 2, you go into, I mean, it's showing excerpts from, I mean, all the way back saying, I have this project in mind. I want to do this with this journal someday. And you can see the, like,
00:43:44
Speaker
14 years of telling yourself, I'm going to do this project. I'm going to do this project. I think that in itself is inspiring because some of us have only been dreaming of our projects for a couple of years. And we feel like, oh, I'm never going to get it done. But you had this in mind for 14 years. And here you are having your second book published. That in itself is inspiring and wonderful. So it's great. I just
The Writer's Helm Community
00:44:09
Speaker
knew that this is something I had to do.
00:44:13
Speaker
I was determined. Just determined. So glad you were. Thank you. Okay. Hey writer, are you feeling a drift in your writing practice? Like the word swept you out to sea, but you have no idea where you're going. Climb aboard the writer's helm. I'm Lauren. And I'm Gabby. And we're both writers and professional editors who are here to support you on your writing voyage.
00:44:39
Speaker
With the Writer's Helm, you get access to group co-writing sessions, Q&A sessions, our private community chat room, and group coaching calls to help you along no matter what stage of the writing process you're in. Members of our crew have said that they've reconnected with their excitement for writing and feel energized from the support they've received from us and each other. You can sign up for the Writer's Helm at any time, which comes with a one-week free trial to make sure that we're the right crew for you. You don't need to navigate these stormy seas alone. Let the Writer's Helm take you to New Shores.
Advice for Creatives
00:45:10
Speaker
So what is your your wish for other creatives? What do you wish more creatives knew? And what would you kind of just like to send off this podcast telling creatives? I I think it's so important to follow our dreams. And if we have any kind of idea or goal in mind,
00:45:37
Speaker
to pursue that and to not give up, to just keep going. And to understand, and I learned this when I wrote a novel years ago that never got published, but I wrote, I sat at my typewriter every day writing this book. And I'll never forget the last one I finished, the very last
00:46:00
Speaker
I typed the last period and wrote the end. I realized that it was really the journey, not the destination, because immediately I said to myself, okay, what's next? And so for someone who's creative, who has a project, just to embrace the journey, to understand that this is where the joy comes.
00:46:26
Speaker
And of course, it's lovely to have a finished product. But when I say just, if you've got something in mind, do it. And don't be afraid. And sometimes we fail. I mean, I have a few books that I've written before that are sitting in my drawer and will be there forever. And it's OK. It's OK. It's really just the doing and the creating. It's so important.
00:46:54
Speaker
Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Of course. All right.
Importance of Honest Self-Expression
00:46:59
Speaker
And at the end of every episode, I always like to ask, is there anything ugly that you have made recently that you would like to share with everybody? So I, I would say the ugliest thing I've done so far is some of the words I've written in my journal.
00:47:22
Speaker
because there are moments where I go to my journal and I say things that I can hardly believe that I am putting down on paper. Right. And there are some ugly thoughts. I mean, there are some really, really ugly thoughts. So I would say that's it.
00:47:41
Speaker
Most, quite honestly, most of the things that I create I like, I think they're pretty and happy with them. But you had, at one point when we had talked, asked me about letting go. Yeah. So I just thought I would share that with, if I can. Yes, please do.
00:48:00
Speaker
I had a friend, Tom, who I met in 1982 at the beach and Tom and I became friends and we began writing to each other when he left, he came for a vacation and he was working on a documentary and then he left and moved to New York. And we wrote letters for years and years and years and years. And at some point Tom and I decided we were going to write a book together.
00:48:32
Speaker
I knew that I would be the one doing it. And he sent me back all my letters. So I had all his letters. Now I have all my letters. And I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of letters. And I started the project in 1997. I went to the beach and brought the letters and started working on it and called him up and said, you know, this isn't going to work unless you're willing to expose all these things. I mean, there were things that neither one of us were willing at that point in our lives to talk about or to put out the world.
00:48:51
Speaker
from our letters and so I
00:49:04
Speaker
Many years later, Tom and I decided that we're ready. We couldn't, you know, we can say that we spoke pot or that, you know, he was drinking or whatever. I mean, those were and he was gay and he was, you know, he wasn't at that point willing to say anything, but that was different. So I began working on it, but just working part time just a little bit because I had this other project and we were calling the book a seminar by the sea.
00:49:31
Speaker
And it has been something that I always knew after I finished writing these two volumes that I was going to tackle this book. And in October of last year, Tom died. And I went back
00:49:50
Speaker
And his sister was very kind and sent me some of his journals and his writing which he was leaving to me. And when I got the box, I took out the boxes, two boxes actually of stuff and started going through them and started then taking out all the letters and sorting them really carefully because I was ready. I basically finished this project. I was ready to dig in.
00:50:17
Speaker
I, you know, it was so interesting because the other two times I had started, I would call him and we would talk all the time about things. You know, I'd bring back memories and we'd have this conversation. And suddenly there was no one on the other end. And I realized that I don't think I'm up to doing that, which is shocking because I've never been without a big project. And suddenly I've got this empty space.
00:50:45
Speaker
But I also know that one of the goals of us doing that was for me to tell our story. And our story is woven through my two books. So the story is told, maybe not from front to back, you know, from the beginning to the end, the way it might be chronologically, but it is there. And I realize that that's not something I have to do. So that leaves me with a huge empty space and something I've never had before.
00:51:16
Speaker
And so I'm sitting with that and it's a really different place to be. Yeah. Yeah. Just being able to let go of the project itself sometimes is the hardest thing to do. Yeah. And to see what floats up. And so looking at this as an opportunity. I have no idea. I'm 78 years old. I have
00:51:39
Speaker
lots and lots of projects I can do, but I have no idea what might fill that space. We'll see.
00:51:49
Speaker
I am so excited to find out what comes up. Let's see. I love it. Oh, well, thank you so
Merle Saferstein's Website
00:51:58
Speaker
much, Merle. This is such a wonderful conversation. Can you please just share where people can find you, how they can work with you, and most importantly, where they can purchase your book? Thank you. My website is merle, r, Saferstein. So it's M-E-R-L-E-R.
00:52:17
Speaker
Saferstein, S-A-F-E-R-S-T-E-I-N dot com and my social media is on my website. There's legacy information on there, there's journaling information on there. My books are available, well the one is available on Amazon and the second one will be in June and anywhere else that you can purchase books.
00:52:42
Speaker
Amazing. Perfect. I can't wait to get it. I'm already planning on giving your books to people for Christmas. Just so good. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us, Merle. And everybody else, please keep it ugly. Thank you, Lauren, so much.
00:53:02
Speaker
The Ugly podcast is created by me, Lauren Alexander of Scribe and Sunshine. It is produced and sort of edited, also by me, and written and directed by absolutely nobody. If you like the podcast, be sure to rate and leave a review on your preferred platform and share with the creative people in your life. If you're interested in learning more about what I do, head to scribeandsunshine.com to learn more about my Ugly Art 101 course, my perfectionism workshop, my editing services, and The Writer's Home, which is an online community for writers, co-captain by myself and Gabby Goodlow. As always, keep it ugly.