Chapter 24 Connection War and Journaling

1) The war affects children by causing them to be unable to go to school, play, limited food and water available let alone eat what foods they prefer and makes their childhood stressful and frightening. The children in the war torn country are scared about what they loose on a daily basis, staying alive and if they will ever see their families again.
2) When the war is approaching her city she is calm and not very worried. But then she hears about how they are going to bomb Sarjevo and she get nervous and starts to freak out.
3) I don’t think that Zlata knows anything about the politics that started the war. Politics is a hard concept to understand and takes maturity. Many people never reach a level in their life where they are well informed about their government and political actions.
4) Zlata used to have a happy childhood with friends and play but now the war has taken everything from her. War is very disgusting and ugly experience for anyone but especially the children. War has become more and more technical and sophisticated, but the human effects and losses basically go unchanged regardless of the time in history.
Zlata is journaling her experiences when the war is unfolding. She and her family try to have a normal life but as time goes on they are unable. Recently in my social psychology class we learned about aggression. Journaling was brought up as a positive way to reduce aggression because it lets people’s feelings out on paper. It has also been studied as a good psychological method for reducing or management of PTSD post traumatic stress disease. PTSD is a frequent occurrence in ordinary people’s lives that have experienced extra ordinary occurs that traumatized them. When people journal it leads to them feeling better and relieved.
Although I have never experienced anything that has caused me PTSD I have journeyed for many years as well. Since I was in 2nd grade I have kept journals in composition books. I love to write so I started journaling and found that I love it. I love to re-read my journals every once and a while to remember my experiences and how I felt at that time in my life. They are a very good documentation of events that occurred in someone’s life. I recommend journaling to everyone. Journaling also helps you reread events in your life that maybe were a big deal or causing stress for you at the time, but when you read it later it helps you realize that you made it through it and everything is ok.