Detraction on CAF

[SecretaryMonday]

You may even want to go back and put in dated notations concerning what you knew later that you did not know at the time. That makes them part of the history of the family.

What a good idea.

 

[Tablefor9]

I love the idea of keeping a journal as history of a family. One of my favorite books, in fact, is A Midwife’s Tale: the Life of Martha Ballard by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

The only warning I would add is that my family has never recovered from some things learned through letters that were kept then shared because they were supposed to be “helpful”. We must keep in mind who else’s dirty laundry we risk airing, and which relationships may be impacted for good or ill, just as with spoken detraction.

 

[EasterJoy]

The only warning I would add is that my family has never recovered from some things learned through letters that were supposed to be “helpful”. We must keep in mind who else’s dirty laundry we are airing, and which relationships may be impacted for good or ill, just as with spoken detraction.

It might be better to blot out the parts that are deemed possibly harmful and then scan the pages so that the deleted parts can’t be ferretted out by looking at the imprint into the paper made by the pen. The originals can be destroyed while the censored and annotated copies are preserved.

I did this when passing on letters written to me by a friend after he had died. As I assured them, what was blotted out were things he had told me must not be disclosed to anyone.

 

[GusIsAGirl]

After having done the physical part of settling my father’s estate by sorting through things with my eldest sister, I really wish people wouldn’t write down things they don’t want their children to know. At least the sister who I went through these things with is discreet, and anything unpleasant (not horrible by any means, but just things about us offspring our parents wrote letters about when my father was overseas for a year) will not go beyond the two of us. We shredded and shredded and shredded and shredded. So think of your heirs when you are pouring out your angst on paper.

I don’t think asking advice on the internet is bad to do, it’s often good to get advice from an unbiased source.