Leave It in: Why I Stopped Tearing Pages Out
Okay. How'd the morning pages go this week? Even if you only got one line down some days, that counts. I mean that every time I say it.
This lesson's a little different. Less "here's a technique," more "here's a mistake I made and don't want you to make."
The two pages I tore out
My first real attempt at morning pages, I filled almost two full pages complaining about a coworker. Just ripped into her. Petty stuff, some of it. The kind of thing you'd never say out loud because you'd feel awful about it for a week.
I felt awful about it anyway. I read it back over coffee and thought, this isn't who I am, this is ugly, and I tore both pages out of the notebook right there at my kitchen table. Balled them up. Felt lighter for about ten minutes.
Then I felt worse. Because what I'd actually done was tell myself that the true, cranky, tired version of me wasn't allowed on the page. Only the nice version got to stay. And that's backwards. The whole point of the page is that it's the one place the nice version doesn't have to show up.
Now I leave that stuff in. The tearing-out was the mistake, not the complaining.
Why leaving it in matters
Here's the thing about a journal page with the ugly parts torn out of it. It's not a journal anymore. It's a highlight reel. And highlight reels are exhausting to keep up, even in a notebook nobody's reading.
My opinion, and I'll say it plain: complaining onto paper counts. It's not beneath the "real" journaling. Some mornings the most honest thing you can do is get the bad thoughts out of your skull and onto the page so you're not hauling them into your car on the drive to work. That's a win. Nobody has to know. It's not a character flaw showing up in ink, it's just Tuesday.
What I'd actually do at home
A few practical things, if you're the tearing-out type like I was:
Write it, then close the notebook. Don't reread it the second you're done, especially if you're already regretting the tone. Give it an hour. A day. The heat cools off and it reads different later — sometimes almost funny, sometimes just true.
If you must edit yourself, do it on the next page, not by destroying the last one. Write a line underneath, next morning, like "still mad about this, less mad than yesterday." Let the record show the whole arc instead of just the polished ending.
Nobody else is reading it, so nobody else needs it to look good. I have to remind myself of this one all the time. There's no grade. Spelling doesn't matter. Neither does sounding like a decent, patient person on every single page, because some days you weren't one, and that's allowed to exist in a notebook.
If the physical tearing-out urge hits, wait 24 hours before you act on it. That's the only rule I'll give you here. Sleep on the decision to erase yourself. You can always tear it out tomorrow. You can't ever get it back once it's gone.
One caution, and it's a real one, not me being dramatic: if what's showing up on the page is more than venting, if it's something that scares you or feels bigger than a bad day, please don't just journal through it alone. A notebook's good for a lot of things. It's not a substitute for a person — a friend, a bishop, a counselor, whoever that is for you. Use the page and also use the people.
What's actually in my notebook
At the end of the day, my journal isn't a nice story about a woman who handles things gracefully. It's got the coworker rant. It's got a page where I was mad at Patrick about something so small I can't even remember it now. It's got weather-report mornings where all I wrote was one flat sentence about how tired I was.
It's also got the good stuff, though I'll be honest, I'm not great at catching that in the moment — I tend to write more when things are wrong than when things are fine. I'm working on that. But the point is the notebook holds all of it, not just the parts I'd want someone to read over my shoulder.
Heck yes, some of those pages are embarrassing. They're also the truest thing in there.
Before next time: if you catch yourself wanting to tear a page out this week, don't. Just fold the corner down instead, so you know it's a "rough one," and leave it be. 😊