Why I Paint Over My Words

I often paint over my journal entries instead of leaving the words on their own. The reason for that goes back to a therapy session this past December.

Writing first, then paint. The words stay, but they no longer carry the same weight.

I’ve been art journaling off and on since 2023. It was an important practice for helping me process emotions; important enough that I wrote about it in my memoir. But for a long time, I was also keeping a separate morning practice: three pages of writing every day, inspired by The Artist’s Way. That writing helped me process grief after my mom died, helped me work through self-acceptance, helped me see myself more clearly.

But by December, something had shifted.

Traditional journaling was instrumental in my healing, but it was after my therapy appointment on December 22nd, I saw that it was keeping me stuck. My therapist was calm but firm: she pointed out that these thought loops weren’t doing me any favors. I couldn’t figure this out any more, I couldn’t reason through these feelings.

The writing that once helped me process things was now keeping me in a loop, replaying the same thoughts over and over. I wrote my last word-only journal entry that night. The next day, I started writing in a composition notebook and painting over the page.

It felt freeing. I could pour my pain onto the page and then paint over it. My morning practice had morphed into something more creative, more healing, more alive. Sometimes the painting matches the mood: somber, abstract, heavy. Other times, it will be the opposite like a bright yellow flower.

I still have three years of journals from after my mom died. I haven't painted over those yet. They hold the heaviest things I've processed. I'm waiting for the right moment to transform them. But this practice, writing fresh each time and painting over it, helps me process what I'm feeling now without getting stuck.

For me, painting is somatic. It’s not about describing the emotion, it’s about feeling it through the movement of the brush. I am painting with my heart, what my heart feels like expressing. Whatever I'm feeling, the brush feels it. Sometimes when painting it's more like scribbling. I'm not necessarily angry, I'm just feeling whatever emotion that comes up.

This has become my morning practice. I write what I’m feeling, and then I paint over it. The words don't disappear, they peek through the paint. They’re still there, part of the art, but they’re not the whole story anymore. I’m not censoring anything. I’m transforming it.

I paint over the words and they become something else.