If you write a daily (or occasional) journal...

My marriage was a difficult one and parenthood was also fraught with worry because my four children have chronic conditions so raising them mostly alone was often terribly frightening. When they were in bed I'd pour my heart out about the days events, how I felt, and wish for a better relationship with my mostly absent husband, their father, who was a selfish, often violent man. I was scared for much of my life. It was therapeutic and many entries were tear stained. They were very personal records. I'd hate anyone to read them. I was in deep despair and I know my children might feel some sort of guilt that my life when they were small and ill was so difficult.

I'd write every evening on my computer, mostly unloading my feelings and events of the day. I stored my records, from various computers over the years, on a memory stick. That stick went missing during a house move a few years ago and I am worried sick regarding where it might turn up and who will read it.

I also found my earlier teenage diaries when I was clearing out. I smiled about how I worried then about such trivial things and why I wrote so much about the ( unobtainable) boys I fancied. I think I might have spent my youth daydreaming about boys. I was so shy much of it was in my head. Again, such personal records and for my eyes only. Destroying those diaries from the 60s and 70s would be like erasing part of my life, but I should. There are some fascinating insights though, like having to find telephone boxes and shopping for mini skirts. I'd feel exposed and rather vulnerable if any of my diaries were read by anyone but me. They really are so personal..A journey into my head and emotions.

Casting around the forum I happened upon this thread and then realised I’d started it! Started and abandoned by the looks (I’m a dipper-in-er here, often absent for ages...sorry!). But I fascinated by all the answers and live reading the reasons why so many of us keep written journals and what we do with them. It’s interesting that some have started journals at the time of illness or crisis - I hope they help(ed).

I wonder if journal writers are also letter writers? I’m so sad that old fashioned handwritten letters seem to be a relic of the past. I do my best to keep the old way going but most people want to text or message or WhatsApp or email. What about you? I’m working on my granddaughter - she’s six - and send her postcards and letters as often as I can and occasionally she sends something back (the ratio seems to be 6:1 at the mo). I’ve seen her writing improve and hope getting a surprise through the post will fire her imagination and inspire her to keep writing by hand. Does anyone else do anything similar?

I destroyed my school and teenage diaries when I left home. Too much angst and ire in them! After that, with the chaos of a busy family I only kept an appointments diary.

I started keeping a proper diary when my dad was taken ill and I was trying to cope with the emotions of caring first for him and then mum and fighting for help from Social Services. It was mainly to keep track of all the abortive attempts for help. Who I'd asked and when etc. It quickly morphed into a journal where I could relieve my own emotions.

This was twelve years ago. I've been an orphan now for three years but the journal keeps going. I rattle away on the computer, sometimes reminisce a bit and print it out every so often. I don't mind in the least what happens to it after I'm dead. I shan't be here and I quite like the thought of my great grandchildren knowing what I was like and what my life was like - if it survives that long. I don't say anything libellous anyway - just in case!

When her DGC reached the same age as mine now are mum wrote her memories of childhood for them in a 'proper' book with a pretty hard cover, which I now have to continue with my memories before passing it on to my DD1. She insisted that it has to be written by hand, which I'm going to find very hard.

I cannot imagine life without my daily journal writing. I feel that if it isn't written, it didn't happen. I so much regret the years when I was too busy to write. My mother kept diaries and so does my daughter. We are trying to encourage my 10 year old GD to write regularly so that one day the 4 generations can be put side to side to compare our thoughts and actions on the same day.

When our DD was pregnant she borrowed the diary I kept the year she was born and said how helpful it was too her. Apart from that, no one can read my diaries until I am gone. And the same goes for my autobiography which includes as much about my parents and grandparents as possible as their lives were so different. My DD is a local historian and she and her children are very interested in family history.

I know it's pure vanity, but I want to be remembered through more than just a faded photograph and a few facts on ancestry. I enjoy reading diaries and biographies although of course they are about or by far more interesting people than me.

Like several other writers, my diaries have been a useful tool in settling arguments about 'what, where and when'.

I kept notebooks for my daughters from birth until they were 21, not particularly for them but myself, but gave them to both daughters. I now Write an ongoing letter to my grandchildren when I write about them and what they are doing, places we go to and funny things they say. I include photos and tickets and notes they have written to us and have also sent a postcard to the grandchildren from everywhere we go on holiday. . I wonder if when they eventually clear out our house whether the whole lot goes straight into the paper recycle.....

I would have no problem in reading or publishing someone's diary, providing they had died and no one living would be adversely affected by the publication.

If you write a diary, you must know that there is a chance someone will read it. I can understand someone keeping a diary through a crisis or over a couple of years and later destroying it but I am very doubtful about people who write and keep diaries over many years, yet claim they do not want anyone to read them and make no attempt to destroy them themselves. I think the hidden desire for others to read them is there even if they cannot admit to it.

I have a diary I kept for one year at a critical time of my life and I accept that my unwillingness to destroy it, means I have to accept that it will probably be read and shared after my death.

I suppose the safest thing to do would be never to put into print what you don't want others to know!

I agree about the young. Sadly I so wish I'd listened more to my Grandparents's tales of their life running a tea garden in Assam at the turn of the 20th century and also of their WW1 experiences.
Ah well. You diarists please save your work!

I write my autobiography bit by bit. I take a person or a place and get down on paper what it meant to me. These are to be read after I'm dead, if there is any interest.
DH amd I lived apart before I finally got to Germany( quite an undertaking in the 60s) and in this time we wrote evey other day. We now have 3 boxes of letters and don't know what to do with them. We sometimes open them but reading does't appeal to us.

I personally don't think that the young are interested in what Grandma did, you gain this interest when you yourself are old.
I keep all postcards from holiday destinations and we as a family still send them. This is a more interesting box and is often opened.

I love reading old diaries and journals. They give such great snapshots of their time in a way that history books don't. I particularly enjoy the wartime project diaries collected by the Mass Observation Unit.
Keep your diaries in a safe place. Let them be shared after you've gone?

I thought I would post here I'm writing a journal of sorts and as a result of a time when it felt as if all around me was negative decided to try and put only the positive moments.I've,bee surprised a bout what I've recorded even a few,poems.Found a book to put it in and one day tried to rub off the cover stains,only to discover it was part of the,pattern of the cover .Made,me ponder as I regularly spill my coffee,and for the designer of the cover to add it it wonder how many others,do the same .

One way to get rid of them is to immerse them in the bath until the writing can't be read.

I destroyed all my diaries as they only depressed me.

I have kept a journal on and off since being a teenager but have only saved some from the mid eighties onwards. I do worry about what I write and who will read it. I think someone suggested sending theirs to a social archive? That has given me an idea. I read Virginia Woolfs diaires about 15 years ago - I prefer them to her fiction, they are marvellous- so that kept me going.

I have kept a daily diary for almost the last 25 years. Don't know what made me start but it has become automatic to write it every day. Has come in very useful over the years when dates and events have been questioned. However, it is definitely for my eyes only as problems and worries are recorded. DH has instructions to destroy unread if I go on first, and I would do it myself if I was left behind.

I would love to write a journal or even an Autobiography, but if I was totally honest about all my feelings and actions, I know I would hurt a lot of people and deeply hurt my family, so it's best kept in my head and in my heart...

Not a proper diary but have kept notes of family holidays since 1967. Our first camping holiday in France- can you imagine we flew with our car to Brittany! Great way to travel with 2 little tots! Details of how much food cost,what daughter thought about loos(holes in floor!) Playing on the beach, seems like yesterday,they may find them interesting one day.

Goodness, phizz! I'm relieved you're still with us. Are you keeping a journal now? I'd be willing to bet that a record of your feelings around that time would make powerful reading.

phizz - that's a really happy story!

I was diagnosed with a terminal disease a couple of years ago.
I read through over 40 years worth of diaries then shredded them one by one.
Then they told me I wasn't going to die after all.
Needless to say I was delighted but a bit miffed about the loss of my diaries but I did relive some very happy moments (and some sad ones too, of course).

DH has kept a diary for some years now. He doesn't write anything of any great moment in it - just a rather mundane record of what we have been doing from day to day. I have said things like "why on earth do you want to remember that?" only for it to be demonstrated that 'that' came to be relevant at some later date! I used to keep a diary before we got married - never had time to keep it up after that. DS writes a journal because, like sweetcakes, it is helping him with a condition he is struggling with at the moment.

I've recently read that book. DANGER - SPOILER! It was interesting in itself - the author assumes the diary writer is a 'he' and that 'he' is dead but then discovers 'he' is a 'she' and is still alive. 'She' turns out to have led a disappointing life but is happy to have her diaries published.

I have years and years of diaries that my father wrote. I've read them all and they are very entertaining but then someone said perhaps I should not have read them but destroyed them. I write a diary myself but these days it is are mainly factual. I do have some from years ago that are less factual and I think I will destroy them soon.

I have kept a diary since the late 50's. All my school days, first few years working in London (what fun we had in London in the 60's!), early married life and children growing up.
I've recently re-read them and then destroyed every single one of them. There are some things that I really didn't want my family to read and some things that I'm not very proud of doing , to be honest - I was surprised at how awful I was during my late teens. I still have an online diary that I started a few years back and I will shortly be deleting that too.

I wish I had kept a journal more regularly but there was so much I wanted to write and then it became too much to keep it going so I stopped.
MIL kept a note of all her purchases and it was fascinating to see the costs and how that increased over the years. DH's brothers threw everything away when their parents died which was a real pity since they would not have minded a bit what was read after they died any more than they did when they were alive!

I can't see any issue about stuff being read after you have died unless it is inflammatory - but then you can't be sued if you are dead! Now there is a tempting thought!

I've kept a journal for the last 4 years its helped get to grip's with my illness and my anger over it also helped prove DH wrong( he thinks he has a great memory lol) about things that have happened.
They all know that they are not to be read but burnt ( something ceremonial on the beach when they scatter my ashes). These are my private thoughts and feelings and no doubt I would upset somebody if they read them