Crisis Journal 2025

When the Pandemic began in 2020, I started a journal of extraordinary days that morphed into an online community where writers shared their daily thoughts. The value lay not so much in the final product as in the act of capturing the gritty reality of daily life in lockdown, especially in the early days when we had no idea who would live and who would die.

Five years later we are engaged in a different crisis that may also change the way we live. While keeping a journal is always a great idea, it has special significance when the world is upended. Right now changes to alliances, government services, and the economy happen daily. We older women face uncertainty around Medicare, Social Security, and women’s rights. All this is material to write about.

What kind of journal do I mean? We see models of historical and policy analysis in the work of women like Heather Cox Richardson, who analyzes each day’s events in light of United States history; and Joyce Vance, whose ongoing analysis is guided by her expertise in constitutional law. While these are important perspectives, a personal approach is also worthwhile. Your account of the days to come is a story that only you can tell, valuable in its particularity and in its connection to universal human experience.

All The Details

How do the changes we experience, whether a shift in the value of your 401(K) or an uptick in rude behavior at the grocery store, affect your daily life? How does reading the news and keeping up with policy changes affect your mood? What issue or issues particularly call to you, and what is happening in those arenas? What small step could you take that would help you advocate around that issue? If you call your representatives or donate to a food bank, what responses do you receive? How did you connect with others inside or outside your circle of friends today? These questions are just a few of the ways into your daily writing.

As during the Pandemic, regardless of how constricted your choices might feel, writing your journal is a place of absolute freedom. As during the Pandemic, there will be value in looking back at this time, at the gritty dailiness of living our lives. And later, as after the Pandemic, there may be a very human impulse to forget what this year was like. But it is important not to forget.

We do not know how this time in our nation’s history will turn out. Remember how little we initially understood about the Pandemic? My expectations of how it would end were wrong, and I was not alone. Writing our daily truth is important because this moment is a crucible: a time when much is happening and we cannot predict the end game, or even the medium term.

Writing Helps

The value of writing a crisis journal begins with ourselves. To write the truth of our days is a revolutionary act, especially when freedom of expression is threatened. Bearing witness in this way is a creative act that places us in control of our own stories. But to capture how we experience each day can only be done in real time.

You and I should start now, because today is not a moment too soon. Write every day, even if it is only a sentence. Write a paragraph if you can. Put on a timer and write for five minutes. Capture your current state of mind. It will all look different in a year, or even a month. Only today can you write the truth of today.

In this moment are you scared? Defiant? Blasé? Enraged? Do you find ways to be joyful, regardless? Find ways to help others? Find ways to take care of your own precious self? I hope so, and I hope you write it down, as much as you find time for.

Take small adventures and write about them. Go to a bookstore in person. Meet a friend at a café and agree to talk about politics, or not. Visit a restaurant on your own and bring a book, or not. Go see a movie—something you could not do during the Pandemic but can now. Life is lived by tiny changes. Stay connected with the senses as you write. What did you eat, see, smell, and hear today?

What you name this writing is not essential. It could be the Diary of a Coup. The Journal of a Constitutional Crisis. Or just call it Crisis Journal 2025. And do not waste a moment thinking about what you will do with this material.

Maybe your journal will eventually form the basis of a novel or memoir that will retain the vivid power of lived reality. Maybe you’ll forego the computer and keep your journal in a physical diary that you pass to your grandchildren so they may know what life was like in this time when so much changed.

You might trade pages with a friend or start a journal group. Or you might keep your writing close, only for you. Depending on how things go, your writing might remind you how nearly we came to losing our democracy, or it might remind you of how much we lost.

As we write, we understand the nuance of our truth. No matter our politics, our responses to what is happening now may surprise and unnerve us. We may think we feel one way, or that we should feel one way, and find as we write that we feel something different. That is okay. This writing is for you; you need never invite anyone to read it who would be inclined to judge.

Make It Raw

This writing is meant to be raw, not polished; that is its value. Do not disparage what you write. If your Inner Critic starts on you (“No one will ever want to read this”), assure her that you yourself will want to read it, months or years hence. Remind her that your journal is Primary Source Material, that its authenticity gives it value, regardless of what you write, how you write it, and whether you sometimes skip a day.

So, Crisis Journal 2025?

Whatever you do or don’t do with your writing, do not underestimate the power of your words. We need writers who remember freedom and are able to write about it. We need writers who capture the color and texture of this particular day and the days to come. And each of us needs the hope and power that comes from writing our truth.

Please join me in journaling the essential nature of the days ahead.