I’ve kept a diary/small journal for 30 years and decided this year will be my last one. Do any other grans keep one? ?

I have kept a diary for the last 43 years.I have found it useful on many occasions for looking up past events,or dates,or holiday destinations.
However,since my DH passed away last year I have found great comfort in reading of all the happy times we spent together, and reliving so many happy occasions and holidays over the years.
I am so glad I kept them as they have been such a comfort to me.

I started to write a diary when I was 15.I'm now 67 and have written one more or less every day ,every year since and still have all of them.Plus all the letters that my then boyfriend and I sent to each other back in the 70's when he was a soldier in Northern Ireland. So many have said I should burn them all but can't bring myself to.

My father was a diary writer all his life. There is a set from about age 8 to when he died in 2010 at age 94. There are some from 1930's missing and for last few years. I plan to donate to The Great Diary Project. (Bishopsgate Institute) You can stipulate how accessible they can be with various conditions. I kept one myself but stopped when I left home at about age 25 yrs. Strange to have just stopped a daily habit like that?

I would have loved to know how my great and great great grandparents lived - they are just names on the family tree.

Keep diaries with stipulation not to be read for 100 years - like census- might be an idea? You are writing for the future.

Thank you OntheMoors.
I know just what you feel. It’s complicated isn’t it?
I promise (next year) to resurrect this thread and let you all know what I decided to do.

Such an interesting subject Urmstongran. I have the same dilemma. I'm sure noone will want to read any of my old diaries so have often thought about destroying them but I struggle to do that. My very first one was early 1960's, a red Brownie Diary with an elf on the front. The spellings and everything I'd written there brings back all the memories of that time. Then following forward many years, I wrote down what I had done that day. If I happen to glance through one now, it's like I remember that day again, so clearly. As the years went by and after I had my children, I didn't keep them so efficiently, sometimes no entries at all, but then many years on again, I had a bad illness which lasted months. I found myself writing then, how I was feeling. It helped me at that time. Again, when I read back, I'm transported to that time, so yes, sometimes I think I don't want to go back to those times and remember so perhaps I should destroy those. So personal and private, perhaps I should have them cremated at the same time as I am! But no, as I prefer to be buried and have already bought my Plot! Anyway, good luck Urmsongran with your decision, would love to know what you decide.

A big thank you to you all for contributing to my thread. I’ve read every post and one way or another it’s really given me something to think about.

TwiceAsNice that was a very poignant read. It made me well up. Thanks to your diaries, a real insight will have been possible for the medics and also enabled families going through similar experiences to have something to relate to. I am so very sorry to hear that your own family journey ended in heartbreak.
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Expanding this theme (of writing) did any of you read an article in the Guardian about 10 years or more ago, when an article was written suggesting we write a letter to ourselves to be opened 4 years hence? I have done 3 of these. It is an interesting concept.

Academics and psychologists worked out that a 4 year gap was about right - far enough into the future in that, when one came to re-read the letter, the hopes and fears of the present time wondering for the future how events will unfurl, would have been forgotten about, making the opening of said letter to self very interesting. Any longer and it wouldn’t seem relevant. Any shorter was deemed ‘too soon’.

I plan to do another “letter to self’ next January. When I’m no longer writing my ‘Dear Diary’. Write a good few pages. Stop and come back and continue to add to it. Then seal the envelope and write ... To Be Opened by Me on (date). Shove it in a shoe box and forget about it. It’s a really insightful thing to do!

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I keep a brief diary, just looked for this day last year, one entry ‘coronavirus starts big time’ little did I know.

I kept diaries from childhood to teenage years. One day I found my boyfriend reading them. I was devastated and threw them all on the fire. I really regret not having the childhood ones to look back on.

I have always written a diary but the ones from my childhood have disappeared. I do have all my diaries from 1972 onwards. To me writing down my thoughts at the end of a day is like therapy and helps me get things into perspective. For the last few years I have kept separate holiday journals and these are interesting to look back on. Everyone in my family comes to me to ask "when did we do this or that?" It is quite satisfying to be able to tell them exactly when something happened. I re-read them occasionally and some of them can be quite hard to read (i.e. when I have gone through things like break ups and cancer) but it is nice to look back, especially when I look at what I used to do with my son and my grandchildren.

I started a diary given to me as a present by my older brother, at the age of 7 and have written one every single day since. I have them all and often look up something that comes up for discussion. Since 2006 I have written it on my computer. I also keep a pain management diary and a health diary, both done On a separate spreadsheet on the computer. They have not altered much during Covid, but do alter a lot when I am more active. They all have to go before I die as I would hate anyone to read them. It is all very personal but definitely helps me getting things down at the end of each day.

For the last six years I have used five year diaries (I'm on no. 2 this year) where I jot down a few things that have happened but sometimes world events, national disasters, etc. and, of course, Covid has impacted on most entries. What is good is that you can look back quite easily and see what you were doing up to five years ago. Amazing what things you forget and I often remind family of what they were doing this time in a particular year.

Yes, I've years of diaries. Some from my school days that make me chuckle. All the boys that you were madly in love with, moaning how unfair life was lol. Nowadays my diary is hard to fill as not doing much at all, just seem to moan a lot in it.

Reading through this thread again I have remembered that for one year (actually 6 months) June-Dec 1984 I kept a medical details/ feelings / events diary whilst my son was undergoing cancer treatment first in a semi-local hospital and then in GOS where he had one of the first bone marrow transplants.

The local hospital ( in Cardiff) asked that I keep a record as they had not sent a patient for a transplant to GOS before. It recorded all his treatment and our part in it and when I gave the Cardiff hospital a copy of the diary ( I have the original hand written one) they have used it ever since as a training resource for oncology doctors and nursing staff. Unfortunately our son didn’t survive but I am proud that we gave it to the hospital to be used. I received feedback from the staff about how useful it was, and hopefully still is.

My first diary was in 1946 when i was 9 years old and I still keep a diary 75 years later. Started off a line a day now a thick journal. They will probably all be thrown out when I'm gone but if I ever start to read them which I do now and then it is like reading a novel lots of things I have forgotten all about. I couldn't bear to throw them out.

Ydoc - your post made me sad. Here are some for you and I hope things improve for you very soon x

Stopped when I was 13. My mum found it and I got slapped legs and grounded for weeks. It was all made up but she didn’t believe me. ??
But, having read your comments on doing it for grandkids that has got my interest! ?

I used to keep diaries and wish I had continued.
A 'one off' one, from 1986 and then a run of them, from 1990 - 1996. No idea why I stopped as each Christmas I asked for a diary for the following year.
Maybe technology was improving and I just thought it more exciting than handwriting a daily diary.
Silly me!

Please don't bin them. In the future when a member of the family wants to build a family tree your diaries will be very precious. I have had diaries over the years, never wrote in them regularly but when I wanted to record something for myself. I look back sometimes at them and am surprised or sad at what I read. Very interesting. I know my grandchildren, now at university have always had their say as to what they DON'T want me to throw away. That's even down to little things they used to play with when they were little and came to stay. I have a trunk stored in my daughter's garage and she said, mum, can I throw that away. There's a lot of rubbish in it. I said no, it's not rubbish and the only people who can decide what should be thrown are my two grandchildren. They also have power of my several hundred books in my will. Because at the age of 12 or so they decided I had to put that in the will otherwise 'you know what mum will do' . Yes she'd send them to the local charity shop. You'd be surprised what they value, if you were fortunate enough to have them stay when they were young.

I have about 5 from my mother . They are from her later years after my father died . I have never say down and read them from cover to cover . They are kept in my wardrobe, and sometimes when they catch my eye I might turn to the same date in one of them. They contain things like
" Caught the bus into town, had a wander, it's been a very sunny day. Hellsbelles phoned in the evening for a chat "
They bring a smile to my face , but it's emotional to read as well. I know my own children would not really care for them, and I keep telling myself I need to read them and then get rid but I can't quite bring myself to do so. I've also come across a few times when she mentions me as in " if you are reading this " . Just typing that makes me want to cry, so I'm obviously emotionally attached to them !

I only keep a diary when I travel.

I did keep the kind you do, as a teenager, but gave it up because I realised that my mother was reading it. I knew this was wrong of her, but could think of no way of saying so without an almighty row involving the entire family.

It is obviously up to you whether you go on or not and what you do with the diaries themselves.

Have you considered donating them to a national library or a museum? I think if you did so, you would be entitled to state that they should not be made available to the public for sixty years or so, if you want to avoid the risk of people mentioned in them recognising themselves.

Might your daughter be happy to have them one day?

I have two diaries written by my grandmother, the first shortly after she was widowed as she wanted her daughters (my mother and aunt) to have something to remember their father by - he died when they were both under two. The second she wrote when she realised she had terminal cancer, explaining why she had decided against continuing treatment. This is hard reading, but did make her loss easier for us all.

I didn't know my beloved mum kept a diary, it was so extremely upsetting when we read it. My father has not been a great husband and unfortunately we lost my mum.
I too keep a diary of sorts but I only write in it when I'm at my wits end. My husband too drives me insane and I have to write it down the stupidness of it all. Does make upsetting reading when ypu read it back and find it's been bad for so long. Who knows I may make the break told him today.

I used to but when I go back through them I can’t read my writing
I have been writing a record each day during lockdowns.

In the 60's I kept a diary and then on and for and never for a whole year. Now I sometimes write entries on a document on my computer.

I recently had cause to look for an entry, an author is writing about the live of my great aunt. I attended her funeral with my sister and mother. I have an entry for that day. I'm so sorry it was only a line or two but we know just a few details more than the place it was held and that's nice.