17-06-2025
Explore therapeutic benefits of self-expression at this workshop
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a world where sharing often boils down to a caption or status update, finding someone who truly listens to your happiness, fears, or doubts feels rarer than ever. Real friendships are harder to form, and people seem increasingly guarded. Perhaps that's why journaling has found new life.
Of course, we've all had those classic 'Dear Diary' days — a little scribble here, a secret there. But journaling today is more expressive, more intimate. It's no longer just about writing down thoughts. It's about tucking in a dried flower a friend gave you, pasting that first solo bus ticket, or keeping a chocolate wrapper that meant something.
To explore this creative, open-ended form of journaling, a three-hour mindful workshop is being introduced in Thiruvananthapuram for the first time on June 29. It will be led by Meera Nazer, a lawyer, economist, and one of the pioneers of journaling workshops in cities like Kochi, Kozhikode, and Bangalore.
'I used to journal as a child, in a playful way,' Meera shares. 'You know how, around New Year, we get leftover diaries of our parents? I'd scribble in them without any pattern.'
The workshops took shape much later, in 2023, during her breast cancer journey. 'When I was diagnosed, people around me started looking at me like I was fragile, like I was going to die,' she recalls. 'I've always been loud and outspoken, and people assumed I would lose all that. I wasn't scared, I was angry. Angry that even in 2023, with all the medical progress, people still saw cancer as a death sentence.'
