You’ve seen the memes. 2017 is coming to an end and it’s time to assess your life. Did you accomplish the goals you set out for yourself this year? Are you in a better place mentally, spiritually, psychologically than you were last year? In my opinion, the best way to know the truth about ourselves is to ask ourselves the hard questions, be honest, and then do what we know we’re supposed to in order to stay on the right track or turn around and start moving in the right direction.
It was with this philosophy in mind that I came up with the questions for You’ll Be All Write: A five year journal for Black Women trying to live as their best selves.
Launched last month, the journal was inspired by a few things. Growing up my father used to ask my sister, my mother and myself this thought-provoking, character-revealing questions from Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions. We’d spend a good minute plowing through answering the prompts with either great ease or with much contemplation. These experiences taught me that questions, when answered honestly, can tell you a lot about not only the people around you but about yourself as well.
Years later, I would purchase a five-year journal that posed prompts that you were to answer every day of the year, for five years. I don’t fill in the journal consistently at all. Still, I’ve had it since 2014 and in the three years, with the sparse information I’ve included, I can see how I’ve grown, which goals I’ve accomplished, things that meant nothing, things that meant more than I thought they did and ways I can be and do better.
Seeing how much that journal helped me, I decided to create one for Black women, with many questions tailored specifically to our experiences in this world. The book was written with the hope that not only would the journal make Black women take the time to think more consciously about their lives but also discover ways to make it better.
You can read some sample questions below.
If you’d like to purchase You’ll Be All Write, you can order your journal here.
