I journaled like Michael Phelps during my son's birth

Jeff Knappenberger is a high school social studies and psychology teacher and basketball coach. His wife, Macawley, is a high school Spanish teacher and swim coach. This is the first edition of Peak Letters, our attempt to connect Peak’s stories with readers.

For Christmas last year, my wife, Macawley, got a journal called “One Line a Day.” 

Around the same time, she read The Athletic’s story about Michael Phelps and the way he journals. As a former college swimmer and now a high school swim coach, she was always fascinated by Phelps and found his detailed journaling process “eye-opening.” 

Rather than just writing what she did that day, she started to explain how it made her feel and really dove into the process. Luckily, she had plenty to write about: She was pregnant with our first child.

I had also wanted to journal throughout those nine months, but I just never got around to it. We were always so busy, and although the pregnancy was very exciting, it didn't feel real until it happened. 

A few weeks ago, though, as I was packing our hospital bag, I decided to toss in a little notebook.

I teach high school psychology and always talk to my kids about self reflection and the importance of looking back on memories and milestones that occur throughout our lives. We can only hold on to so much information when it comes to that stuff. Little details fade over time and you forget they even happened.

I think back to my wedding day. When it was all over, I couldn't believe how fast it went. It almost felt like a blur. I didn't want that to be the case for the birth of our son. 

So on the day Kellen was born, I pulled out the notebook, and while he and my wife were trying to sleep, I sat down in the recliner next to the hospital bed. 

Dear Kellen, I wrote.

I began to talk to him about everything that was going on in the world when he entered it. The Phillies won their Division. The Eagles beat the Cowboys. The next day was Sept. 11; it’s been 24 years since the terrorist attacks.

Once I started writing, it was easy to keep going and easy to get pretty emotional. 

I’m a sentimental person; end of year basketball team speeches make me cry. So naturally, the entries were on the lengthier side, especially as I dove into my hopes and dreams for Kellen. I found it nice to even write about who visited him on which days. I wrote about my dad, who came over one day to do stuff around the house for us. 

“He’s so handy, I hope he can teach you some of those skills one day,” I told Kellen.

These are the little details that I wouldn’t have ever thought about, let alone reflected on, if I didn’t take the time to jot down what happened throughout those days. And aside from simply wanting to have the small, miniscule moments recorded, I’ve found that reflection is important and helpful: where we want to go in life, what matters to us, what we want to work towards. 

For seven years now, I’ve been having my high school psychology students do the same project each year. It’s called “soundtrack of my life.” 

I have the kids pick eight life events that are important to them. They pair each one with a song that relates to that particular event as well as to a psychology concept.

Every year, the kids open up more and more. Sometimes it gets pretty heavy. But they all really seem to enjoy the project, maybe even more so because they’re also at a crossroads in life. I teach high school seniors who are getting ready to move on to a new chapter. There’s something about changing life stages that makes me believe self-reflection is so important.

Funny enough, I’d never really done anything like that myself until Kellen. That’s what journaling has given me recently. It really is self-therapy in a way. You’re writing with a goal of pulling something out of you. By articulating where you’re at and how you’re feeling, you’re almost forced to see things in a clearer way, and you learn a lot about yourself. I hope I can stick with this once I go back to working full-time. 

My wife and I both address whatever we write “To Kellen,” with the hope that he’ll have these to look at one day. 

Life is so short. We just want to have something written down from us that hopefully he can read one day. That is really important to me.

— As told to Elise Devlin