Sometimes, Scrapbooking is Therapy

Posted by Aaron aka Sir Scrapalot on Sep 3, 2010 | View Comments

What are your favorite topics to scrapbook about?  I asked this question on my Facebook Fan Page and on my Twitter account yesterday, and I was not surprised by the answers.  Most people said things like their children, their loved one, or significant others.  Holidays, nature, and pets ranked up there too.  When I started scrapbooking, these are all the topics that I imagined scrapbooking about.  To this day, many of them remain my favorite topics to create layouts about.  Recently, though, I learned of the true power of creating a scrapbook page.

At the end of the school year last year, we decided to change my daughter’s school.  We had various reasons behind our decision, however, not really reasons that  six year old would understand.  She was sad to leave her friends, her comfort zone, and spent many nights teary eyed, asking us why.  My wife and I knew that when school started again, we would be in for trouble.  Fast forward to last week, as we started getting things ready for school, the reality of it all seemed to hit us again.  How could we do this to her?  What were we doing?  How could we inflict sadness, which we knew was imminent, on our own child?  That night, I lay in bed, thinking of these questions over and over.  I finally had to get up, and went to the computer.  I opened Photoshop, and I started a layout.  I do all of the design work first, so it was nice to have something to occupy my mind.  Then came the journaling.  It was nearing 2am, and I was still pretty upset.  So I sat there, and poured my heart out into the journaling.  Once I was done, I saved the layout and posted it.  I went back to bed, and fell right to sleep.

What did I learn?  Sometimes, scrapbooking serves a larger purpose than creating a beautiful layout, more than documenting an event, or funny thing one of my beauties has said.  Sometimes, scrapbooking is therapy.  Sometimes, the work of creating a layout and then putting your emotions into words, is the best way to sort through your feelings and clear your mind.  When I left my layout, I was still nervous for my daughter, but I felt better having put those fears into words.  Like talking to a trusted friend, scrapbooking had helped me through.

What lesson can you learn?  Go ahead, still scrapbook all those things you love to scrapbook.  Sometimes, though, take a chance like I did and scrap something that’s bothering you, or something that’s on your mind.  I think you’ll be surprised at how much it will help you work through your feelings.  I know I was.

Here’s my layout:

You can click on the layout to see the credits.