Old Letters

It shows that you have grown as a person. I also have lots of stuff kept from my younger days that I feel embarrased about but I think it's normal and healthy. I am not the person I was then and that's a good thing, isn't it?

If you are writing your life story you don't have to put in every tortuous detail- think about who you are writing it for. A general audience? Your peers? Your grandchildren? I think what you include and what you leave out depends on who is going to be reading it.

It is your choice- to hide or to tell?

I would hate anything I had written to a specific person to be read by others, much less published, so to me there would be no dilemma if I came upon letters written by someone else. I would have a very cursory glance to see if they were personal or not, and if so I would destroy them.

In this case, as you wrote the letters there is no such dilemma (as far as I can tell). I would reclaim them, take the info you need and destroy them if you don't want them to be read when your own possessions are cleared out.

I have destroyed letters and cards which my parents and grandparents saved, and I no longer keep any cards which I receive. If you don’t clear them out someone else will have to do so when you’re dead, and I take the view that any private writings are just that - private.

After my husband died, I destroyed all our letters to each other. They were ours and only ours and I did not want them to be read by anyone else after I die

When my dear aunt died, I found many letters written to her by my uncle, when he was a prisoner of war near Nagasaki Japan.

They were an incredible historical record, but I felt that they were so very personal that I destroyed most of them, but I did keep a few because I think that they need to become part of the family history.

karmalady

After my husband died, I destroyed all our letters to each other. They were ours and only ours and I did not want them to be read by anyone else after I die

We each still have all our old love letters. Whoever’s left will do the same as you, for the same reasons.

I never work on the basis that one will be left, either at all or with mental capacity. Life can change in the blink of an eye.

After my Dad died, I found letters to him from my Mum - having recognised her writing from the envelope.
I burned them all - they were words between them and not, I believe, for my eyes.

I have had a similar experience LizS when clearing out my late parents' belongings and found lots of letters, including ones from me when I was young and like you, reminded me of times I had forgotten about. I still have them and I have taken photos of them to have copies. My grandchldren are fascinated with these things and old photos from the last century, seeming really ancient to them. It is a very personal thing as to whether to destroy these things or not, sometimes it's good to archive them for future generations, depending on what they are about. I tend to ask my family what they think about these things before making the decision.

I have lots of letters to my mum from her mother, my German grandmother, dating from 1940. Problem is it’s in old German script which most can’t read now.
I never knew my grandmother who was trapped behind the iron curtain but would love to read what she wrote all those years ago. I would never throw them out. Perhaps one day there might be a way that it can be done, online maybe. Or a very elderly German. With good eyesight, some of them are in pencil, but not all thank goodness.