Reading daughter’s diary 25 years on and the consequences

You could, if you're feeling brave, hand it to her next time you see her. You could say something like, "Oh I found an old diary belonging to you, I thought you'd like it back! I wish I'd kept a diary when I was younger."
She can either receive it with shock & horror that you may have read it, or she could say she wrote absolute rubbish in her diaries back then and she'll bin it!

I kept a diary from the age of thirteen. It was an emotional outlet but I guessed it might be read at some time by a parent or sibling.
When the abuse began I hoped my diary would be seen because I had no other way of asking for help. Nothing happened. Either my parents respected my privacy and never peeked or it was seen as fantasy.
OP’s daughter quite likely wanted her mother to read her teenage rants.

Missiseff

Some of these comments have made me feel slightly better about myself. Both my adult children have disowned me & their attacks have made me feel lower than low. My DH says I've damaged her mental health and doesn't want me doing the same to her child, even though I have 5 step-GC's that love me. My DH is appalled and tries to tell me they're the problem and that, given what I have had to deal with in my life, they should be appreciating me not disowning me. I wasn't perfect, I made mistakes that I have to live with, but I wasn't, and am not, a monster.

DD, not DH says I've damaged her mh

Some of these comments have made me feel slightly better about myself. Both my adult children have disowned me & their attacks have made me feel lower than low. My DH says I've damaged her mental health and doesn't want me doing the same to her child, even though I have 5 step-GC's that love me. My DH is appalled and tries to tell me they're the problem and that, given what I have had to deal with in my life, they should be appreciating me not disowning me. I wasn't perfect, I made mistakes that I have to live with, but I wasn't, and am not, a monster.

No! I would never read my daughter’s diaries unless she had asked me to. They ARE private! Personal feelings and weird thoughts that creep into your mind! I Journal almost every day but I do not want anyone to read my scribbling! It just helps me put my brain in order! Sometimes I come across and read past scribblings and not only don’t remember writing them and/or quite shocked at what I have written! Brain dumps - that’s all they are. Ignore and enjoy what you do have in life. Each phase brings its own angst! Rise above it and ignore! Only living in the present matters!

wildswan16

I am amazed at your reaction. Your daughter was a teenager and was able to get rid of all her teenage angst by writing in her private diary. How can you let something like that change your relationship with her now? Just be glad she had a release for her (perfectly normal) teenage frustrations.

I wonder how she will feel should she ever join gransnet and recognise your current opinions of her.

Let it go and don't invade her privacy again.

I agree - a diary can be an outlet for a lot of different emotions - especially at that age. But re-reading the original post it seems that now her daughter is a mum herself, she is bringing up issues with OP’s parenting skills from the past. Given the fact that OP has now read her diary, I think it’s potentially going to be difficult for her to forget what she’s read, and even more difficult not to let on that she’s read it.

I am amazed at your reaction. Your daughter was a teenager and was able to get rid of all her teenage angst by writing in her private diary. How can you let something like that change your relationship with her now? Just be glad she had a release for her (perfectly normal) teenage frustrations.

I wonder how she will feel should she ever join gransnet and recognise your current opinions of her.

Let it go and don't invade her privacy again.

Well said SparklyGrandma. Far more hurtful is finding that your friends or your family are slagging you off on social media where everybody can read it and I’m not just talking about the RF.

Journals are sometimes used by their writers to offload the very negative, in order to distract discharge the negative so it doesn’t interfere with the loving relationships around us.

Your daughter may have been using her journal in this way - and had learned a technique for containing and challenging her anger. This is a good thing, and for a teenager, it was better to write it down in her private journal rather than let it out or act it out.

Maybe try and forgive her and try and appreciate that she didn’t let it all out at the time.

the diary was fueled by hormones. Just remember that some menopausal women can go over the top too - I'm guilty of that.

Quite recently, put an item n FB (I do not dthat very often) saying how very proud I was of the achievemets of my five AC. I did comment, that it had been pointed out to me, by them on manyoccasions of my failings when I had been parenting them, and whilst I was sure that their achievements - both personal and professionally had been down to their own intellifence, etc, perhaps just a small part might be contributed to how I had brought them up .

They all read this and laughed. They are now well into their middle years. The two youngest still have some strange own memories of events that did not take palce as they think, but all are now mature enought to know that what they thought in their teenage years usually have little to do with reality.

MadeInYorkshire

What would your diary have said of your own mother at that age? Put it behind you. The relationship you have now is what matters.

I just read your post MadeInYorkshire and words fail me .
I'm so sorry that this happened to you .
Sending you hugs and prayers .

I understand your sadness about your daughter's feelings at that time, but your daughter was a teenager, and most teenagers have negative feelings at times about their parents. Let it go; you parented the best way you could; focus on your relationship with your daughter and your grandchildren now. Do not tell your daughter that you read her diary. Thankfully, you provided a diary for her when she was a teen so she could "vent" safely. You were a "good enough" parent. Peace.

Please try not to feel too devastated. Some years ago I found my own teenage diary in my parents loft. I picked it up out of curiosity and started reading it. I was utterly embarrassed! Nothing nasty about my family as such, but I honestly don’t know how my parents put up with teenage me. The diary was full of pretentious, odious twaddle! I was so self absorbed it was untrue. I couldn’t even bear to read it, it was so cringey. I am sure your adult daughter appreciates you and would be mortified at what she had written so long ago. 💐

sarahcyn

@ Luckygirl3
It was left in the OPs house for her to find.

Probably not deliberately.
It was in the loft. My DC left stuff in our loft too but I probably wouldn't read any diaries if I was trying to clear out.

Even more less likely to read one since reading this thread!

@ Luckygirl3
It was left in the OPs house for her to find.

MadeInYorkshire

JaneJudge

Mine always threatened me with childline

Ha, ha, so did mine!

About 6 weeks before she died in November last year, my daughter appeared from her bedroom (not a very common occurrence), holding a large brown leather notebook absolutely sobbing her heart out ... I asked her what on earth had happened and she handed me the book. I lifted the cover, and without reading any of it, I could see that it as a suicide note. I closed the book and said that I didn't want to read it, and handed it back. She said that she had found it in the loft, and that she had written notes to me, her sister and her best friend when her mental health was at it's worst, and just before she had made an attempt on her life. Had she not been found on that day she would have died in January last year. She had no idea that she could actually be so vile, and it broke her heart.

When the police were here on the day she died, they had that brown notebook in their hands - it was undated, and they obviously believed that it was her suicide note, but it wasn't - this time there was no note, and I believe that this was accidental, (especially as ASDA turned up with her food shopping) she was just trying to get some sleep and get away from the voices in her head telling her that she wasn't worthy of life. If something did trigger her to do it then it is on her phone - the police took it that day, and didn't send it for download until the 7th August just gone, and there is a backlog of at least 12 weeks. In the meantime, we are left just hanging, waiting for an inquest date - disgusting ....

We have been advised not to read them, and we won't.

- so very hard for you all. Mental illness is so poorly understood and treated.

I agree with the general sentiments expressed here. Dont beat yourself up. this is the sort of behavior that is fairly normal in teenagers. She would be mortified now at her own behavior. I think that we never stop loving our children but there can be little patches where we struggle to actually like them. They probably feel like this about us too. But the important thing is to hang onto the love. They do become lovely people as they mature.

I sometimes want to write a diary to get rid of my angst but don't because my relatives might see it when I'm gone. And I would be moaning about them but it's not how you really feel. You should broach the topic of her feelings towards you but don't reference the diary, no way. She would go spare!

It is usually things that happen at the time of estrangement that cause estrangement...

Granted people bring up their childhoods to meet demands for reasons why...

But every relationship can generally be saved until the exact moment it can't

Sometimes it is a last straw and sometimes a big blow up...

But people don't generally wake up middle aged (the average age of estranging) and say "my childhood was rubbish, I am estranging"... it's usually a build up of recent events

You sound like amazing mum forget the diary

‘Curiosity killed the cat’ comes to mind. Hindsight eh? The OP will mull over this for a time I imagine. But then best to do a ‘Frozen’ .... and ‘let it go’ 🎵 🎶

On another note.
Isn’t it interesting that experiences within a household can be so varied in the ‘remembering’ of them. Or ‘misremembering’. I do sometimes wonder if some of these past experiences and recollections of them contribute to estrangements in some families? As in - adult children who look back and remember events as they saw them & believe them wholeheartedly - and yet “recollections may vary” by their parents or indeed other siblings. So sad to think this probably happens a lot.

I won’t add to your woes, there are enough people here berating you OP. I’ll just tell you that I once opened a diary written by my then teenage daughter and read one line ( in my defence her bedroom was worse than a pig sty and I was trying to clean it out). I read something I wish to god I had never read. It was private and none of my business but it really upset me. Nothing to do with me at all but I really should not have read it. I have to keep putting it to the back of my mind ever all these years later. It’s punishment enough for my stupid moment of curiosity and my lazy child’s very poor room management. I was also told something about her by her then drunken boyfriend I most definitely didn’t want to know. Some things are not suitable for parents. Try to forgive yourself and your teenage daughter, know very well that she will be the target of her own children one day. Let it go back to the past where it firmly belongs.