Ana Juma

Where I come from and how I got here…

Hi, it’s Ana Juma. I’m an author, creative entrepreneur, and journaling mentor on a mission to support people in cultivating self-understanding through words.

I am also the founder of Prophsee, an independent publishing house that brings together creative minds to express themselves through writing experiences. I have experienced the benefits of journaling firsthand and am now committed to sparking the renaissance of flipping through the pages in a world where everyone is scrolling.

The early days

Born and raised in Portugal, I was a quiet, yet cheeky child. I liked hip-hop but took ballet classes. I was an A-student but dragged myself to school. I dreamt about being an artist but graduated in Marketing & Business. I was living to match the expectations others had on me.

Most people don’t know about this, but…

Being a deeply sensitive person, in my teenage years, I went through the terrifying experience of struggling with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. It felt like I was a slave to the voice inside my head that encouraged me to engage in self-hatred. I was blessed with opportunities to live a joyful life, yet I couldn’t seize them for my own inability to love myself. I was falling deeper and deeper into my own darkness and couldn’t seem to find a way out.

This had me secretly coming in and out of rehab until I was 20. Walking hand in hand with life’s fragility made me start asking the “big questions” at a young age and look at aspects of myself that the average person hardly finds the courage to do. During that time, the pages of my journals were filled with the emotions and stories I was too afraid to express out loud. My journal was also my therapist, my confidant, the safe space to express the full range of being a imperfectly perfect human.

In every end, there’s a beginning

There was no way out of my illness – but there was a way through. What I thought to be an irreversible breakdown, it was actually a breakthrough. The difficult times led me on a seeker’s journey of finding answers in books and poetry… And this is how personal development became (secretly) an integral part of my life. I started to heal.

Taking back my power

In 2015, I left the security of a corporate job and moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to pursue my interest in personal transformation. I joined the Mindvalley team and watched over their online community of 3 million students, making sure that their message spread far and wide to fulfill the vision of raising human consciousness through education.

During those years, I explored journaling for productivity and self-growth. I began writing a daily gratitude list before bed and in the morning stream of consciousness. If my friends and colleagues were interested in starting a journaling practice, I became their go-to person.

In 2018, I developed my first journaling method and created the Life Journal, a system to live with intention through the virtue of keeping a journal.

Growth never ends

Two years forward, in the bricks of the pandemic, and as the collective began to deepen its sense of inward traveling, I launched Prophsee with the vision of creating journaling tools that help us heal and grow.

On an individual level, I was going through what it felt like to be a second dark night of the soul. I turned to poetry to make sense of that no-so-gentle growth, and in 2022 my first book, Back to Earth, was born.

Today, you can find me furthering my studies at the Therapeutic Writing Institute, making videos online, hosting journaling workshops, writing books, and curling up in bed with my cat Yin.