Inside a Journal Workshop: Real Stories from Scottsdale

I’ve been thinking about this weekend a lot, and not in the polished, “everything went amazing” kind of way, but in the quiet moments after where you’re replaying conversations in your head and realizing how much people are actually carrying. 

I went to Scottsdale to host four journal workshops with Modern Luxury, and before any of it even started, I had one of those moments where you feel like everything is about to go wrong. The boxes of journals I shipped in showed up completely destroyed – corners crushed, covers bent, some marked up – and I just remember standing there staring at them thinking… this cannot be happening right now. It felt overwhelming, honestly a little devastating, because you put so much care into something and then it shows up like that. We had to go through every single one and sort out what was still usable, and at first I was stressed, trying to control it, trying to fix it, and then at some point I just started laughing. There wasn’t anything else to do. It wasn’t going to be perfect, so we just kept going anyway. 

And that ended up being the theme of the entire weekend without me even realizing it at the time. 

Because when the workshops actually started, none of that mattered. No one cared about a bent corner or whether everything looked perfect. What mattered was what people walked in with. 

Over 300 women came through those rooms, and every single one of them had something sitting in their heart. You could feel it almost immediately. Not in a heavy, overwhelming way, but in a very real, human way. And what stood out to me the most is how badly people want depth. Not surface-level conversations, not “I’m fine,” not going through the motions - but real, honest, I don’t actually feel okay conversations. People are craving a space where they can actually say what’s going on in their head without filtering it. 

There was one woman who said something I haven’t stopped thinking about. She told me she feels overwhelmed almost every day, not because something big is wrong, but just because everything feels like a lot all the time. And she said she’s tried gratitude journaling, she’s tried writing out her day, she’s tried different things, but nothing really helped her move through it. And then she said, “I think I’ve been needing something that actually guides me.” And I could see it click for her in real time, that maybe the problem wasn’t that journaling didn’t work for her, it was that she didn’t have something leading her deeper. 

That’s the difference. It’s not just writing to write, it’s being asked the questions you wouldn’t ask yourself, it’s being pushed – gently, but honestly – to go somewhere real instead of staying on the surface. And watching that shift happen, not just with her but with so many people in the room, is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. 

Because people shared things that you don’t normally hear in everyday conversation. Things they’ve been holding onto, things they haven’t said out loud, things they maybe didn’t even realize were there until they sat down and gave themselves the space to look at it. And it wasn’t forced, it just…happened. That’s what surprised me the most. When you give people the right environment and the right tools, they go there on their own. 

And it made me realize how much people don’t need something perfect, they just need something real. They need a way to process what they’re feeling, not ignore it, not push it down, not cover it up with distractions, but actually sit with it and understand it. 

I left feeling exhausted, but not in a draining way, more in a this-meant-something kind of way. Like the kind of exhaustion you feel when you showed up fully and it mattered to someone. 

And I keep thinking about how many people are out there feeling the exact same way as that woman, just overwhelmed in their everyday life, trying different things that don’t quite stick, still looking for something that actually helps them move through it instead of just cope with it. 

This weekend just reminded me that it’s not about having everything perfectly put together. It’s about creating something honest enough that people feel safe enough to be honest too.