Welcome
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What is the Girls' Diary Project?
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Who gave you their diaries?
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What did you find out?
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Do you still want to read more diaries?
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Is there a book about the project?
- I have some thoughts about diary writing I’d like to share. Does the research group still meet? Can I talk to you about diary writing?
What is the Girls’ Diary Project?
“I was asked to write a chapter on the spirituality girls for a book on girls lives – something I could not do on my own – and a group of women responded to a request to work on the chapter.
I trusted in a spiritual process – whoever came would be the right people to work on this project. In the midst of our first meeting, Petra offered that she had kept adolescent journals and still had some of them. In one way or another, each of these women had done writing of some kind: journals, diaries, poetry from their adolescent years. There was an initial agreement to bring selections of their writing to our next meeting to share and examine them as samples of girls expressing their inner lives and spirituality.”
Dr. Daniel Scott, Coordinator of the Girls Diary Project at the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria.
What followed was a collective examination, through years of discussion and email exchanges, of original adolescent texts and the authors’ own reflection on them. The process was both analytic and self-reflexive, because we were the authors of the diaries as well as the researchers.
The project ran from 2003-2008. During that time, the research group studied published diaries of adolescent girls, read what commentary there was on girls’ writing, and invited other women to contribute their diaries. Many of these contributions became part of the base of original writing that we studied in earnest.
We published a two-part article on the project, presented at conferences, and interviewed on CBC’s On the Island program.
Who gave you their diaries?
A variety of women who heard about the project by word of mouth from other participants.
What did you find out?
First of all, we noticed some similar qualities amongst the texts, even though they were written by girls in different contexts. We noticed:
- the richness of the texts: more than just a report on a day
- strong feelings and character as well as the intensity
- seriousness of her questions and how big they are
- mixture of life strands: love, hate, ordinary experience, deep musings, drugs, school, the future, meaning, identity, determination
- how the spiritual is there in the midst of all of the living
- already life is complex and difficult: all of us faced difficulties in these early years
The adolescent texts provoked memories of our original contexts and circumstances, sometimes helping us recall what was not said in our journals. In several cases, there was a re-opening of lives and experiences for re-consideration through our process, which led us to explore what the practice of writing means and meant for us.
As the project progressed, we reached several conclusions based on what we read:
- The range and depth of ideas that girls struggle with is universal: girls everywhere and through every age since the dawn of personal journals wrote about death and dying, a search for natural truths and belief structures, and alternative ways of gaining knowledge about themselves.
- When a girl writes a diary, she unites her inner and outer experiences, and guides herself into maturity and a sense of wholeness through a creative process.
- Girls’ personal writing reflects their descent and re-emergence into the world. Writing a diary performs the function of a rite of passage in a culture that does not offer a meaningful way to transition from childhood to adulthood.
- Diaries are treated with respect and critical attention only when the diarists are adults. This misses the important insights available in the sensitive and well expressed entries by girls.
Do you still want to read more diaries?
We’re always interested to read new entries. We love to make connections with the diaries we have already read, as well as expand our understanding of girls’ writing. If you wish to share your entries with the project, email girls'diaryproject@paperhat.ca.
Is there a book about the project?
Project member Shannon McFerran has drafted a book based on the Girls’ Diary Project research, Writing Ourselves Into Being: The Girls’ Diary Project. When the book is available, we’ll let you know here!
In the meantime, we invite you to read a sample.
I have some thoughts about diary writing I’d like to share. Does the research group still meet? Can I talk to you about diary writing?
With sufficient interest, we plan on opening a web forum on this site. Email us and mention what you’d like to talk about. Your suggestions will become discussion thread topics.