Journals and Papers

Do you want to leave something for your child, for the world? Can journals be preserved? Can they become a family legacy? You bet! Have you considered willing your journals to a caretaker; someone who will cherish them and make sure that they are passed throughout the family, or given to a grandchild? Maybe there are some journals that you really wouldn’t want to share. In which case, that should be known too.

You can select a close friend, or someone in your family to be the keeper of your journal collection upon your death, especially if you have kept volumes of journals that include family stories and events. Even if your journals are specific to you, it might be nice for a future grandchild to know who you were and what your were about. Imagine a teen in the family having trouble and not knowing where to turn, being given one of your journals during a casual conversation. The teen wonders what he could even find within the written words, but after reading a few passages is engrossed in a life that seemed just as confusing as his is now, and he feels somewhat of a kinship for someone he has never met.

For those journals where you don’t wish a soul to view, leave explicit instructions to your journal caretaker about how to dispose of them. Perhaps you want them burned or shredded.

Your journals might be a form of a memoir and could be publishable. Do you want the family to pursue such a project and publish your memoirs? Can they use your journal entries? What if you had close ties with an organization over your life and had written several entries about events and people. Should these be made public?

It’s hard enough trying to figure out and get a will drafted up for your personal items, let alone determine where your volumes of journals are going to go. But if you were an avid journal writer and have a significant collection of journals, it might be worthwhile thinking about what is to happen to your writing after you are gone, or unable to write anymore.

One person’s writing (no mater how trivial or important to the author) may be another person’s treasure.

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