Better Than Therapy? How Journaling Rewires the Brain for Focus, Resilience, and Emotional Strength
Journaling literally reshapes your brain! 🧠 Listen now and start your own 5-minute brain ritual. It’s not about perfection—it’s about action.
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Why Journaling Is a Great for Your Brain
If you’ve ever searched for how to help your child focus or manage big emotions, you’re not alone. Between school stress, social comparison, and screen time overload, many kids—and their parents—are overwhelmed.
But there’s a simple tool backed by neuroscience that can help: journaling. 🧠
What the Science Says About Journaling
Journaling isn’t just emotional expression—it’s brain training.
🧠 Activates the prefrontal cortex (activated during focused activities, planning, and decision-making)
🔥 Regulates the amygdala (our brain’s emotional, often overactive, fire alarm)
🔁 Boosts metacognition (thinking about your thinking—a cornerstone of self-regulation and a success in all facets of life as in relationships, work, learning)
“Why does a writing intervention work? While it may seem counterintuitive that writing about negative experiences has a positive effect, some have posited that narrating the story of a past negative event or an ongoing anxiety “frees up” cognitive resources. Research suggests that trauma damages brain tissue, but that when people translate their emotional experience into words, they may be changing the way it is organized in the brain. This matters, both personally and professionally. In a moment still permeated with epic stress and loss, we need to call in all possible supports. So, what does this look like in practice, and how can you put this powerful tool into effect? The author offers three practices, with prompts, to get you started.” Deborah Seigel-Acevedo — > > Harvard Health Publishing> > https://hbr.org/2021/07/writing-can-help-us-heal-from-trauma
Writing helps create distance from strong emotions, which allows kids (and adults) to pause, process, and respond—rather than react. This is the foundation of being to coach our own brain!
Why Journaling Builds Emotional Resilience
Journaling strengthens:
- Neuroplasticity — your brain’s ability to rewire itself
- Emotional granularity — naming and understanding feelings
- Sense of identity — telling your story helps you know who you are
Plus, it gives children the tools to reflect on challenges, set intentions, and develop self-trust.
How to Get Started Without It Feeling Like Homework
Here are a few brain-based tips to introduce journaling in a fun, low-pressure way:
- ✏️ Use open-ended sentence starters like “Today I noticed…” or “I feel ___ because…”
- 🎨 Let them draw first, write second
- 💬 Keep it short—5 minutes is enough
- 🙃 Focus on reflection, not spelling or grammar
Want to make it a routine? Pair journaling with an existing habit like bedtime, snack time, or right after school.
What Parents Gain Too
Journaling isn’t just for kids—it’s a powerful stress management tool for moms and dads.
- 🧘♀️ Lowers cortisol (stress hormone)
- 🧠 Boosts self-awareness and emotional regulation
- ❤️ Models healthy habits for your child
When your child sees you journaling—even briefly—they learn that feelings are manageable and thoughts can be transformed.
Ready to Go Deeper?
Want your child to build the mental muscles they need for success—before they struggle?
Explore our science-backed Brain-Body Resilience Courses for K–12 students, designed by a Harvard-trained educator, physician, and Juilliard faculty.
Related Resources
🎙️ Listen to the full episode: The Neuroscience of Journaling with Bianca Turetsky
📺 Watch on YouTube »
📓 Free journaling prompts and guides coming soon.
#braintalk #neuroliteracy #emotionalintelligence #journalingforkids #executivefunction #metacognition #brainbasedparenting #mindfulmotherhood #childresilience #parentingtips
Download Prompts to Start Journaling👇👇👇👇
Better Than Therapy? How Journaling Rewires the Brain for Focus, Resilience, and Emotional Strength
CLICK TO LISTEN WATCH THE EPISODE:
TRANSCRIPT :
Hi there. Welcome back to the MINDBODY Space podcast. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby, and this is where we explore how to raise resilient, curious, emotionally grounded kids and how we as parents can grow right alongside with them.
If you're looking to step up your life , journaling might be one of the easiest things that you can do.
But how to get started and how to keep going, well, that could be a challenge for all of us. I've tried to journal many times and I found it to be a challenge to get started and to keep going. So today I have a special treat for us.
We have Bianca Turetsky. She is a renowned author of children's books, including the Time Traveling Fashionista series and co-author of the Magic on the Map chapter book series published by Random House kids. She was the Associate Director of programs at Write Topia Lab, a nonprofit that fosters joy, literacy, and critical thinking through creative writing.
She also serves on the education committee at the Guggenheim Museum, and she recently completed her Master's in Education in leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where we met and became fast friends.
Bianca is gonna share with us tips and tricks on how to get started journaling one of the most accessible ways to increase our mental resilience.
Stick around to the end because we have a downloadable PDF for you that includes all of the prompts that Bianca shares with us and more.
Yay. Perfect. Hi, Juna.
How are you?
I'm great. It's so nice to see you.
Yes. I'm so excited for you to be here. How's everything going up there?
Oh my gosh. Cambridge misses you. I miss having you here. You have to come back The weather is finally perfect and it's really nice. So anytime you wanna come visit,
And Bianca, you are an amazing children's author
Oh, thank you.
yeah. And I know that you are very much into journaling.
Yes,
have been
yes,
since you were a kid.
Yes.
Yeah,
time.
me because journaling is one of those things that, you know, everybody thinks they should do and they don't. But it's, got a lot of science back evidence that it is really important for not only stress reduction, but even self-awareness and just building self observational skills, which is Really big part of resilience. also can be an emotional anchor because if you write about your emotions, if you name your emotions, there are so many benefits to writing.
I'm sure you could tell us more about that, As far as the brain goes, writing, journaling, reflecting, going over things, whether it's emotional things or just trying to figure things out, it gives you that metacognition where you can just step away from yourself and, be able to solve problems better, all kinds of things.
Right?
so many good things.
it's cool to hear your perspective from the brain and the science background because all of it's been true in my life and, and I've been, so it's been fun to explore the research and see just how good journaling actually is for you and for kids too.
Yeah. And so you were gonna talk to us about how to get started and maybe like the benefits and how to even do it for someone who's always tried to, like I, I told you I buy so many journals all the time 'cause you know, there's so many pretty
There are.
Moly skin. I always say
I.
I always said moleskin, but I think it, no, I don't think it is. I think you're right, actually. I heard someone say it the other way and I was like, oh, I've been pronouncing this wrong my whole life.
Well, sadly, most of my
Maybe I.
a few pages written in 'em, and then most of the rest of it blank. And a lot of times I feel like. Oh, I need to start a new one, you know, and then I just get another book, but it never gets filled up. And the saddest part is when I had kids, gonna write down all the things they were saying and things like that.
And I did start, but
So cute.
And this was before we videoed and photographed everything they did. So,
It's never too late.
Yeah.
I think just there's some hesitation like there's a right way to journal and there really isn't, like, it's just, there's no one way to do it. So if you find, a specific notebook, you like it, it doesn't even have to be in a notebook.
Like I find myself writing on the back of paper napkins if I'm waiting in a coffee shop or on my notes app a lot of times. So there's no one way to do it. Yes. especially if I'm traveling. If I don't have my notebook, I just find anywhere to put stuff down.
if you're not doing it every day, it's totally fine. Which is great.
layers of failure for me with journaling, which I know failure is not a dirty word for me, so it's fine. But, like everything you mentioned, yeah, like if I write it on a, a scrap piece of paper, if I'm, you know, somewhere I feel like that's not right, I need to get a book,
yeah.
have the right book, I'm not gonna do it. What's the most effective thing you can do?
Well, I guess if we're talking about effective, like what is the goal you want out of it? For me it's a lot of it's just processing emotions and working through problems and just getting things out of my head. Or else I just kind of get stuck in these like thought loops and cycles and I just need to get it down.
so sometimes just the process of getting it outta my brain onto a piece of paper is effective. So like, not having that piece of paper for posterity doesn't really matter. but I do have boxes and boxes of journals
I mean, things get lost, but I do try. If I, if I'm feeling very organized, I will try and like put everything into journals or put it on a doc or something, but so much gets lost and it's, it's okay, I didn't realize how many journals I had until we moved to Cambridge and I had these like boxes of just my whole life from between, you know, when I was a kid till now and someday I need to deal with that and figure out what to do with that because I do not wanna.
So tell me, when you started to journal, did you have one of those little diaries with the little locks on it?
With a lock in the key.
Okay.
Did you have one of those?
And I
those are the best. They're so fun. Like, yeah, so I, that's how I started.
That's the other thing.
Like what if somebody picks it up and looks at it? There's
I know.
show I was watching Younger. It's like a,
Oh, yes.
I don't know
And
it, it's
I've seen. produced Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh.
It's great.
And so, it's very entertaining. But there was this one scene where this woman wrote notes about everything about her boyfriend. So she wrote like Daily notes. I don't know if you remember that episode.
Yes. Oh, I did not see that. That's a nightmare.
yeah, she put like stickers next to every day. Like if he made her Happy and like,
Okay. That's a nightmare. That has not happened to me. Well, I grew up, I was an only child, so I didn't really have to hide it from siblings I had privacy, so, yeah, no, that would be a nightmare to have your boyfriend find all of the things you're writing about him because it should be unfiltered and you're not writing for an audience So I do need to have a big bonfire of these journals at some point.
I mean, it's true, like our thoughts are, so if we are unfiltered, like there's that book, the Artist Way where you're supposed to do morning pages and you just
Yeah.
indiscriminately, all of the
Yep.
Supposedly we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, maybe more.
And most of 'em are repetitive.
Oh, interesting.
a lot of thoughts we would never even act upon or even they're not even true. Like there's a lot
Right.
go on in our brains that aren't true at all about how we feel. 'cause we've changed. And, like I tell my students all the time, like our brain makes thoughts like our GI system makes gas. So it's just like, just all the time spewing out thoughts and you
Hilarious.
pick
Yeah.
and sort them through,
yeah, for sure there is. I do a lot of Would you rathers with my students? And I always do. Like, would you rather have mind reading or flying I never want mind reading. I don't wanna know anyone's unfiltered thoughts. But it does help writing them down and processing them that way.
yeah, I mean there's a lot of big feelings. Kids have big feelings. I mean, if you look at my journals from when I was a kid, you would think I had this terrible life. I hated my parents. I was always in drama with friends, which was not the case at all. But that's what you write about, right?
Upset.
To, when you're upset.
Me,
process things.
But like when they call you with things that are upsetting, but they might not always share things when they're great or normal.
Exactly, yeah. So I think it, for kids, it is a great way to help with emotional regulation and just being able to, you know, name, feelings, process them separate, kind of like have a little distance from it, being able to read about it,
Mm-hmm.
which does help with resilience.
Yes, definitely. I just wanted to make a point of what you said about thoughts. Like, you wouldn't want that train of thought. You don't wanna read other people's minds. you know, one of the most valuable things that a lot of my students who are now much older now, tell me that they learned was that you shouldn't listen to every thought you have.
Can you give us your take on that as an author and, you know, you write fiction, right?
I write fiction. But there's hopefully a lot of emotional truth in it, and you can be a little more honest with fiction maybe because, it doesn't, I write some personal essays too. But yeah, every thought you have doesn't have to have the same amount of weight or you take it seriously or you can just let things like pass through, acknowledge it, let it go.
For me. I can't let things go a lot of times until I just like get it out. And that's often not talking to, I would more likely write it in a journal than call my mother and tell her about it. And that's just because I, maybe am more introverted. That's how I deal with those kind of thoughts.
Or a
Yeah.
when you write things down, you're like looking inside of your own brain so you can almost, you know, when you, listen to other people's problems, it's so much easier sometimes to see what's going on.
You have that distance.
That what you find with journaling?
It is similar to that. It is almost looking, well, especially looking back on my old journals, it feels almost like another person, even though that person is still a part of me. And you are able to recognize patterns and maybe see why some things are triggering for you and, it does give you a bit of distance.
And also I think a lot of empathy. Like when I look at my younger self, the writings of my younger self, I just really kind of wanna give that person a hug and I feel for her. And I feel like in my day-to-day life, I'm maybe more hard on myself and just like, you know, more critical. So I try and keep that empathy in the present.
It's hard, but I find like journaling, it does kind of have that ability to just give you that distance and separate yourself from the problem.
back at what you wrote in the past, you have more empathy for yourself, is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
because
It, it's,
as another person
yeah.
Very
even though it is me, I'm so different from who I was at, 20 or. 30 even,
older students that went through the program
know
a good club.
yeah, so tell us, how you would recommend starting to journal if you never journaled before or if you have any tips and techniques.
I think
what are
I.
you know, that you think kids, when should they start?
I mean, my first journal was probably when I was in first or second grade. That one with the lock and the key. So you know, it can start whenever, but I think as you said before, there's so many cool looking notebooks. Like make it fun, make it something you want to open up. Like get a great gel pen or a glitter pen or a cool notebook, make yourself a cup of tea.
Make it something that feels like cozy and inviting. And also try and shut off like that perfectionist mindset it should be a place where you just feel like safe and free and creative, hopefully.
Mm-hmm.
Make it fun, make it into some kind of ritual that you look forward to. And for kids, if they don't know where to start, you can offer up some prompts to get started. That's been the book I've been. Developing.
It's just like a month of prompts to get kids excited about journaling and creativity and,
you're
Hmm.
another book, but it's
But it's a journal.
That's so exciting.
so
us
yeah,
Tell us your motivation and.
I've been thinking about it for a while because it's, something that I've done my whole life every single day. It's the most consistent practice that I have,
Wow.
it's helped me so much with anxiety, with creativity, with discipline, I think with everything, with focus, even with sleeping. And so going into this program we the program we did at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, I went into it with, through looking at it through the lens of creating this journal and how I could take what I was learning in those classes. And incorporate it in this project. And I was actually surprised how much reflective writing we had to do as students.
Hey, before we dive in further, I have a really exciting announcement to make.
Brain Builder and Brain Boss is a subscription series that I've been working on all year at Harvard and MIT for families to create a language of Brain Talk that can decrease the drama and increase resilience. so I'm continuing to build the tools.
And for that brain bun the adorable plush doll was born Brain Bun teaches kids and families alike to have this language of neuro literacy and brain talk that you can use in everyday life that increases physical and mental resilience.
Look out for Brain Bun and Friends coming up in. A new YouTube channel launching in August. It's for preschool kids and I'm gonna have a subscription series for families. We also have one of the friends here,
um,
meet Zen Cloud here, and you can get on the wait list for both Brain Bun and Zen Cloud. They will be launching in late fall early winter of 2025.
Now back to the interview. .
just because to be a good leader, you really need to know yourself. You need to know your strengths, your weaknesses. Your triggers, all of that. And so that just made me realize that I think this could be a great thing for kids as well.
as you were saying, a lot of kids don't know how to get started and what to do. So this book would be just a guided month of getting started and prompts for instance, a prompt. That I did a lot with my kids at Writeopia, which is the nonprofit I taught
W-R-I-T-O-P-I-A. Yeah.
Cool.
it's is a called a dream ramble. And so you just like set a timer for five minutes and there the only rule is you can't stop writing and so you can't go back. You can't erase, you can't look at what you've written. It's just like a total stream of consciousness. That often helps shut off that perfectionist mindset, which, I mean, I know when I open a blank notebook, I often feel intimidated and like, what's the perfect first sentence?
And so it's, I stopped myself before even getting started or a blank doc to start new book. So just having that five minutes of just silliness and like writing, like, and if you don't know what to write, you write, I don't know what to write for five minutes, but usually that leads to something else. So that's a, that's a good first one to get started.
So
How long do you journal for every day now
I would say a half an hour every morning.
Do you
I,
timer on?
I don't put a timer on.
Okay.
have a number of set pages I have to do, but I do it every day. Even if traveling, even if we've got, I have work. I do it every day I feel the difference when I don't. I get a coffee and then I do it.
Yeah.
Wow.
I've started doing
what
before that, which is It doesn't matter what time I wake up. Yeah. So I do,
You don't skip a day. That's amazing. And you can feel
I
in your mood
can feel the
of thought
both. I don't do it.
you then.
exactly.
Okay.
a meditation.
Uhhuh.
And I don't meditate. So this, I guess is the closest thing I get to that.
Cool.
Like do you have a whole format for yourself?
I don't have any kind of format. I write whatever is coming. I often find myself writing, you know, little moments of gratitude or goals that I wanna accomplish for that week or that day. Any lingering problems from the day before, I try and kind of work out a little bit. But there's no step format.
And some days if I wanna just write a list of things I need at the grocery store, that's also fine. Like it could be anything.
Okay.
I'll do, you know. 10 pages of actual writing. This is before I start writing any other things, like any fiction or anything like that.
So it's like a warmup. Yeah, exactly.
I did that. You know that morning pages I told you about with The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron. So I tried that
Right.
I actually call it the brain dump. I usually have
Yeah.
Before going to bed.
You said it was helpful for your sleep? Yeah.
yes. So if I'm going through a really tough time, I'll also do it again at night and it helps.
So when I was doing it, this was my problem. So I would do the whole, I would just ramble. When I'd go back to read it, I was like, oh, I'm a crazy person. Like what is all this? I'm writing. So what do you, what are you supposed to do with the gibberish that comes out?
Do you read it again or just leave it?
I mean, I go back sometimes like years later, but I don't go back. Tomorrow morning I will not read what I wrote this morning.
That's good to
So I just try and not, because then you get like the judgment as you're saying. Like, what am I talking? This is ridiculous. That's kind of what stifles, creativity and it prevents you from.
Moving forward and starting a practice. So try to give yourself a little grace and not judge what you did. And I do that by not reading it right away until I have that distance of some time, and then I look back at it and have that empathy. But I won't read what I wrote the day before.
Okay.
You write something that like, you're so worried anybody would ever read, and then so would you just throw it out? And what if you're afraid to throw things out? Like what? If you wanna keep things?
These are great questions. There are a lot of things I should throw out. I mean, what's the worst that, I'm trying to think of the worst case scenario. I, I mean, I guess, I mean you can just rip them up.
like 10 years
Lock it up, rip it up. Also, like most people aren't as interested in you as you are in yourself.
Like, I cannot imagine my stepson wanting to go through my journal, like he would be so bored. it's, I feel like no one really cares. As much as I'd like to thank everyone's dying to read my journal, I don't think anyone really cares.
Okay, so
If there's something
just hang up. Number
just,
if you're afraid people are gonna read it, just throw it out
throw it out.
So that's
Just do it, and then deal with it later. So if it's something that you're like, if anyone saw this, this would ruin this relationship. rip it up, throw it out. Because I think it's, you don't really need it later. Like it's, it's just the process of doing it that really matters.
How would you get somebody started if it's a kid or a mom or adult?
well, for an adult, like for you, I would say ditch the perfectionism. Don't judge yourself. Just like try and tap into that like playful, playful, childhood. Impulse. Like just have fun with it basically. And I guess that's the same thing for, for kids. Yeah. Like have fun with it. Make it special.
Like you don't want it to feel like homework. No one wants to come home from school and feel like they have to write a personal essay.
Yeah.
sounds horrible.
Like what?
you could.
for them? Tell us
um, but,
you go in, you go
but also I go into schools, and I do mostly creative writing and some memoir writing with the kids. But I think like also give them privacy because, you know, they. This isn't something that they feel like they have to share with you.
This should be kind of like a private, safe space for them to process their feelings. You know, maybe some of the feelings are about you. My poor mother really got a lot of it in my journal. and so would I have written, if I've known she was gonna be like correcting it, like homework, I never would've.
I think it's just giving, making it like very free and giving the space, getting some cute pens. I feel like aesthetics are a big part of what gets kids into things. So a cute notebook, cute pens, and soon you'll have, I'll have all of my prompts available to get kids started with, if a blank notebook is too intimidating, which I totally get, just fun.
Points of entry.
When I think about our brains and the way we process things and the more we know about how we process things, when you're journaling and you're only writing about things that are upsetting or annoying or, you know, it could become like a negativity fest kind of thing.
mm-hmm.
I wonder if there's a way to balance it out and like maybe, using prompts, not only focus on things that are annoying you, but obviously like the gratitude journals exist and all that,
Yeah.
really just balancing it out because it could become an extension of your perpetual complaining mind or
Right.
And then that just
Yeah.
Say you do start writing about your mom or sister, and it's just like you can get into this whole pattern of reinforcing your negative thoughts about them. So if there's no correction, like, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, there's notebooks with CBT now, so maybe
Oh, really?
They could guide your thoughts to like, oh, well what do you love about this person? Even though they're annoying a lot of times.
Right, exactly.
you know, because if I just let myself ramble, I probably complain a lot on paper. So, so I think I would have to like kind of reel myself back and say, let's, let's make sure that you're doing some positivity stuff too.
I think you will find yourself rambling into that too. With the book on designing, there are several prompts of just reflecting on small moments of joy, of awe, of gratitude, because I totally agree with you. I think sometimes it's easy to overlook those moments, and so I have kind of naturally do that in my journals where I, I make myself, right?
If I'm having a hard time, five things, I'm grateful for grounding exercises kids don't necessarily have those skills yet. So the journal will scaffold in those prompts so that they start to develop those habits. So it is a place to rant, but also a place to dream and be hopeful and appreciate, the little moments of beauty too,
Which is nice, which is why it's so nice to have your in intentioned prompts in this journal instead of just maybe having a blank journal.
Yeah. I think ideally at some point you don't need these journals, but at the beginning to get started, it's great to have, someone who's intentionally guiding you through a month, through research, through experience, And then you can kind of jump off from there.
Although maybe I'll do two months.
Two
The month might be, it might, maybe I'll do another month afterwards. I, I love getting prompts still to this day, so it, it's just fun every once in a while to have prompts. I mean, I make them up for myself now. That's part of my job is making up prompts for kids, so I just make them up and use them for myself as well.
So what was the prompt for today?
For today. I didn't have a prompt, but some prompts I've used in the past are, I mean, I've written letters to my future self and my younger self,
Oh,
which has been really fun. So, you know, kind of envisioning where I wanna be in five years, what I'll be doing, who I'll be surrounded by, what I'll be feeling like, those are fun prompts that I like to do.
I've done those, the future ones. Also I have these two founders of, They're founding this AI app the future self and they're coming on in a
oh,
Yeah. They're called KYMA
that.
MIT
Oh, cool.
but, so it's like your future self talks to you, but it's an AI. And you train your future AI to talk to you. But, um, I don't think I've ever really written anything to my past self, which I've been thinking about more recently.
Hmm.
that.
you should try it, Gina.
Yeah, gimme a prompt for
and
self.
so I think you just start with, what age do you wanna to reach out to? But I mean, on the other hand, like, would your past self listen to anything your future self has to say?
I would
five years old or four years old.
Yeah. Well then you could think about like, what, what was it that you liked then who were your friends that like, try and remember that time and then tell your, like would your. 5-year-old self even believe like where your life is now. I feel like mine wouldn't, but it would be really cool to be able to give them a sneak peek of what's coming up.
Nice. Interesting. You know, I've done this kooky thing recently when I'm feeling really unmotivated or if I'm having some negative thoughts about myself or whatever's stopping me, making me procrastinate, for example, I don't know what happened. Like I must've listened to something or read something.
I can't remember. But I talked to myself in Korean, which I haven't spoken,
Whoa.
Korean. I only know like baby Korean
That's so interesting.
was like when I was in first, second grade
Wow.
never really, you know, spoke it after that. So then, I wasn't adopted or anything, basically I was Americanized and I, I did not really speak Korean, so I thought it was really interesting.
The things like my mom used to say to me when I was little, you know, like her pet names for me or things
I love that.
it was
Yeah.
I'm not like crazy like talking to myself in the mirror. I'm just saying just little words of encouragement
Oh, I love that.
Yeah, it's kind of a fun
And did
It's like a little goofy.
And did you feel like a protectiveness over your past self or like a love or empathy or how did you feel about 5-year-old Una?
It made me feel I could get up
I.
start doing stuff. Oh, you know what it was, I was listening to David Goggins, you know David Goggins?
Mm.
a lot and he, like, he's like this crazy ultra marathoner. G-O-G-G-I-N-S.
Okay.
He has a book called, can't Hurt Me. He's a Navy Seals. He had a terrible traumatic childhood. And, he talks about like his awful childhood and, he talks about this one thing called a cookie jar, Whenever you feel down or demotivated, you can reach for that cookie jar where you have all the little things you've done in your life that you've overcome. so like for us,
I love that.
of like going back to school, getting our master's in education
Yeah.
like
Yeah.
than the rest of the students.
me more than you, but. So that
Me too.
cookie
I love that.
Yeah.
Totally.
why
That's a great idea.
that's what I spun that into like a little exercise for myself where I would call myself like a baby pet name that my mom used to call me or something.
I love that so much.
weird?
feel like I wanna turn. It's, it's great. I think it's so healing and helpful and motivating. It works.
It's so funny, I bought this and I'm gonna buy your book too when it comes out, but this was interesting 'cause this is
love that.
and you just open it
Yes.
And you open it up to whatever date it is and there's like five paragraphs. you just write a paragraph and it's like five years worth, so you can just open it up to
Oh, cool.
day you have.
That's great.
I've done like one. I'm gonna do it now 'cause
that solves a storage problem. You have five years in one, one book.
then it's like a problem. 'cause you have to fit it into the paragraph. No more
It wouldn't work for me. 'cause I need a lot of space and I don't like feeling like I just have to fit it all in one tweet. I know
link this to a bigger book.
Exactly.
So leave us with a few tips maybe just a few prompts we can work with
or anything else you'd like us to know
well, I mean there's just so many. We talked about a lot of the benefits and metacognition is really, I. Something that like when kids start to see like what they're thinking and why they're thinking that, that's super helpful.
Mm-hmm.
like framing it in the way of like, for your kids of like, oh, it's meta cognition and identity development and emotional regulation.
Like no one would ever do it. That sounds so boring. So it really is just like, here's a cool book. Here's some glitter pens. Take, you know, take 15 minutes. And just like sit down and write. And I won't interrupt you. And you could do, I mean, we were, you could even start with a, would you rather, like, would you rather be able to read minds or be invisible?
Like start with something like that and just see where that takes you.
I had a rather question.
Ooh,
Go.
Go for it.
going.
I wanna do your, would you rather.
so I was asking my family, if you had to go to a brand new planet, would you rather go with Trump or Elon Musk?
Oh my gosh. That, see, that could start, 10 pages of a journal entry for me. That's an impossible. Would you rather?
You have to go
Oh my gosh,
You have to pick one.
that's impossible.
Was a funny conversation starter.
But yeah, so anything that's like a fun conversation starter can also be a fun journal, prompt, you know? 'cause you really are just having a conversation with yourself and that's like, so making it fun, making it special, making it pressure free, giving them space. Those are all tips I would have.
Be less judgmental. If you skip a day, it doesn't matter, you know, just the next day is a new day and take five minutes. Five minutes is better than nothing. It doesn't have to be a half an hour like I do. It can be five minutes when you wake up or before you go to bed. And it can be on your notes app, it can be on a napkin.
you know, whatever you have access to, but you've got the notebooks, so use one of those beautiful notebooks and just try tomorrow and see what happens.
I'm gonna try today and I'm thinking about it as sort of reaching inside into your mind and kind of untangling your own mind, kind
I love that.
taking a look at your own mind,
yeah, exactly.
Mm-hmm.
a beautiful way to look at it.
Sometimes you might not wanna look th
Uh,
You won't
sometimes it's easier to look than others. And if you're writing, modeling it, you know, for your kids, like if you're doing it and you mention you're doing it for 10 minutes, modeling it yourself always helps too.
On Nice.
Make yourself a cup of tea.
Yeah.
Let
You've convinced me. I'm definitely gonna. Start
I'm gonna be your accountability partner here.
And, I know all the scientific benefits, which actually I'll cover in the next episode, after this one.
So yeah.
Okay.
Amazing. Thank you so much for being here,
I miss you, Juna. This was really fun.
But please tell
I'm so glad we did this.
Spell out all the websites that you want them to go to and your books, and also where they can find you if they want you to come to their schools or you know what
Oh yeah. I love doing school visits. I love going to schools and talking to kids about creativity and writing and how to write a story. all of this is on my website, which is just my full name. Bianca Turetsky, B-I-A-N-C-A-T-U-R-E-T-S-K y.com. And then I'm just at Bianca Turetsky Instagram, Twitter, or XI guess.
Most of the time it is Instagram is what I use the most. So
if they want you to come to their school or something, just reach out to you on Instagram.
Yeah, that works.
awesome. And we were gonna try to go into some schools together.
We should definitely get together and make that happen. I'll journal about it tomorrow morning. I'll put it on my vision board.
That would be really fun too.
Hugs.
Miss you.
Yeah, I
I won't.
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