What Is A Grandparent’s Journal

A grandparent’s journal is written for the express purpose of revealing your early life to your grandchildren or even your children.

Remember when you were younger, and it felt as if the people you loved would always be there? You believed you would have all the time in the world to do all the things and have all the conversations. Sadly, you don’t know how much time you will have with anyone.  

How much time do you spend with your grandchildren? Regardless of the frequency or length of time, does it ever feel like it’s enough?  I will bet you aren’t spending that precious face to face time discussing your childhood with your grandkids.

Of course not. First, you’re listening to their dreams, what they want from their future life. Second, you want to make your time together into lasting memories, with them and for them.

Unfortunately, perhaps after the loss of a loved one, you begin to wonder what their earlier life was like, what the times were like when they were growing up. And when it’s too late, there is no one you can ask.  

I was fortunate enough to have my Gram live near me for 55 years. We talked all the time and she brought to life many stories of her girlhood for me. I heard about some of her pets, her home life, and her parents. Not everyone has this opportunity. Which is why I began writing a journal for my grandson.

“If there was no other motive in view [except] to have the privilege of reading over our journals and for our children to read, it would pay for the time spent in writing it.”

— Wilford Woodruff

 Creating a grandparent’s journal

Nothing could be simpler to do. I suggest a spiral-bound 8 x 10 or larger journal with at least 100 pages. This will allow you space to add photos, stickers, and doodles to add color and personality. So, don’t forget the colored pencils. Write from your heart and let the words bubble up and flow onto the paper.

To make this easier I’ve included a list of prompts.

1.      Where you were born, the date and place.

2.      Who named you, and how was your name chosen?

3.      Your parents, names, birth dates, and places of birth.

4.      Your aunts and uncles.

5.      Your siblings oldest to youngest.

6.      Who were you closest with in your family?

7.      The history of your family.

8.      The origins of your family.

9.      How you got to where you are now.

10.  What is your first memory?

11.  What kind of child were you?

12.  What special memories do you have of your mother?

13.  What memories of your father?

14.  What memories of your father’s parents?

15.  What memories of your mother’s parents?

16.  Did your parents read to you as a child?

17.  What were your favorite pastimes?

18.  Did your family play games together?

19.  If so, what were you favorites?

20.  Did you have pets?

21.  Describe your bedroom.

22.  Did you share or have it to yourself?

23.  What was your favorite Television show?

24.  What was a special meal your mom made for you?

25.  Did you help around the house?

26.  Did you get an allowance?

27.  Who were your childhood friends?

28.  Where did they live?

29.  What was your neighborhood like?

30.  Where did you first go to school?

31.  How did you get there?

32.  Did you like school? Why?

33.  What were your favorite books?

34.  What was your favorite kind of music?

35.  How did you listen to it?

36.  Did you go to concerts? Who did you see?

37.  What were your favorite movies?

38.  Who were your favorite movie stars?

39.  Did you keep a diary?

40.  What did you do during the summers?

41.  Where did your family go on vacation?

42.  How did your family spend the holidays?

43.  What were your favorite holiday foods?

44.  Do you have a favorite recipe to share?

45.  Who was the clown in your family?

46.  After school did you play any sports or belong to any clubs?

47.  Did you ever leave school with your friends without permission?

48.  Did you do something that you were never caught doing?

49.  How did you wear your hair? Did you wear makeup?

50.  What did you think you would be when you grew up?

51.  What was the biggest thing you remember happening while you were in high school?

52.  Who was president?

53.  What’s the best thing that’s been invented since you were a kid?

54.  Did you imagine what kind of house you wanted or where you would live someday?

55.  Tell all about your first date. How old were you? The who, the where, the when.

56.  Did you go to college?

57.  What was your first place like? Did you live alone?

58.  What was your first job? How much money did you make?

59.  What was your worst job?

60.  Did you go on any road trips?

61.  What about your love life? Was there one that got away?

62.  What is your best relationship advice?

63.  What was the most romantic date you ever went on?

64.   How you met grandfather, and what about him now?

65.  What about your first home and baby together?

66.  Did you enjoy being a mom, what was your favorite thing?

67.  How was it when you brought home my dad/mom for the first time?

68.  Tell me about my parent as a child?

69.  What kinds of hobbies, activities or vacations did/do you enjoy as an adult?

70.  Where have you traveled that you love best and why?

71.  When you heard you were going to be a Grandma the first time, how did you feel?

72.  How old were you when I was born?

73.  Did you babysit me? What did we like to do, just the two of us?

74.  What is a favorite family recipe, and why?

75.  Will you write it down here?

76.  What is your favorite quote, and why?

77.  If you could be any age, which would you choose?

78.  If you could do it all over again, would you change anything?

79.  What hopes and dreams do you have for the future?

80.  What would you most like to be remembered for?

81.  What is your best life advice?

82.  What makes you the happiest?

83.  What is the most important thing you have learned?

Wouldn’t you like to leave some of what you saw, thought, and felt, for someone in your life? I truly feel that it is never too late nor even too early to begin.

I hope you liked this post, and that you will share it with those you love.

How Journaling Improves Your Life

Discover Journaling Benefits

How you keep your journal, be it pen and paper or digitally is less important, but just as personal a decision as what you record. You can record the events of your days, plan a vacation, analyze your dreams, remember your gratitude, or use a bullet journal to organize your life. Journals can help you capture your thoughts, plot out your future career path, or provide light-bulb moments of clarity for a better understanding of yourself.

As well as decluttering your mind, keeping a journal can have many other benefits. Here are four important ones.

1.     Stress reduction

By putting your feelings on paper, you acknowledge your stress rather than ignoring it. All those anxieties and worries stop swirling inside your head, allowing you to step back and view from another perspective the things that are troubling you. It can even help with problem-solving!

2.     Improved mental health

Journaling is often recommended by psychologists and therapists. Journaling helps you to work through the issues that come up in your therapy sessions, supporting and complementing the healing process. It can be a powerful tool in removing psychological blockages. And, once you feel better, burning or throwing that journal away, can feel positively liberating.

3.     Improving your cognitive skills

Your journaling habit helps your brain to function more efficiently. Studies have shown that the act of writing strengthens the learning process and stores facts and concepts more firmly in your memory. Writing helps to develop new neural pathways in your brain, connecting new information with data already stored in your memory.

4.     Goal achievement

Studies have found that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down! Journaling gives you the space to work through ideas, setting out the details and the possibilities. Writing about the process helps you to track progress, so you can see how close you're getting to achieving your goal or where you may need to pivot instead to reach that goal.

The habit of keeping a journal gives you a physical and mental discipline and focus that will influence other areas of your life. Writing down your goals and aspirations gives you a strong motivation to achieve them!

“In the journal I am at ease.”

— Anais Nin

Activate Your Creativity

Keeping a journal is not just recording the events of your life or how you’re feeling. It can be a way of supporting your creative life. It’s a low risk, private as you want, way of writing down your brilliant thoughts, your ideas, your dreams, and your resolves.  And once allowed to soar, there’s no telling what sort of creative magic your mind will come up with.

It can be very instructive to read the journals of writers, artists, and actors and get an insight into how they used journaling to grow and develop in their field.

Here are five ways that keeping a journal can enhance your creativity.

1.     Capture your ideas

Between the pages of your journal, you can keep safe all those ideas that are just beginning to form, that are not quite ready to be explored on canvas or turned into a short story, book or article.

2.     Ignore your inner critic

Journaling can help hush your inner critic, that little voice that polices all your thoughts and ideas. Research has shown that when you write without expectation of an outcome, the part of your mind that acts as a sensor steps aside and lets you get on with it. Journaling, free writing or morning pages allow you to write for the sake of it, no editing, no agonizing. And that frees up your creative flow!

3.     Find your voice

Journaling is freeform, messy writing. No one is going to read it, so you can feel free to test out and build your own voice rather than copy someone else. It’s a time to experiment, explore styles, and not worry about what doesn’t work.

4.     Create new ideas

As you get into the creative flow of journaling, you free your mind to bring forth new ideas. The process makes space for ideas to well up, ideas you may not have had if you were trying too hard. And there’s no commitment to take any of them further unless you want to, and it feels right.

5.     You choose what is important

Your journal is yours and yours alone. You can write down your secret fears; you can write your truth. Once it’s down on paper, then you can decide if you want to do anything with it. You can take aspects of your truth and turn them into a poem or a painting. Journaling gives you practice in acknowledging and embracing your truth. And your art will sing more authentically because of it.

Create A Journal Jar 

You may have bought yourself a beautiful journal, all ready to get going. But maybe it’s hard to start. Perhaps it’s hard to think of what to write. After all, you don’t want to spoil that beautiful new notebook.

Help yourself get into the habit of journaling by creating journal prompts, and making your own journal jar, using these five easy steps.

1.     Find a suitable jar. You can use anything, a mason jar, cookie jar or a vase.

2.     Then write down the prompts suggested below onto slips of paper and put them in the jar.

3.     Whenever you’re stuck for journaling ideas, just pull out a prompt.

4.     Set your kitchen timer for thirty minutes.

5.     Put your prompt in front of you and simply write down whatever comes into your mind.

Here are some suggestions to help get you started.

Lists

Start easy by making lists. You can write as little or as much as you want under each listing.

1.     Dream vacation destinations

2.     Best meals you’ve had and where you ate them

3.     Favorite movies

4.     Favorite books

5.     Favorite songs

6.     Top goals to achieve this year, in five years, in ten years

Reveal

1.     Something people don’t know about you

2.     Things you wish you had done

3.     Your secret desires

4.     The most outrageous thing you’ve ever done

5.     Biggest gamble you’ve ever made (this could be a career, relationship, travel – anything that felt risky)

6.     Letter to someone you’ve wronged

What if

1.     If you could meet anyone from history, who would it be?

2.     If you could meet any fictional character(s), who would they be?

3.     If you could host a dinner party with anyone from history or fiction, who would you invite?

4.     If you could go back in time and fix anything, what would you choose?

5.     If you could change one thing about yourself right now, what would it be?

6.     If you could make money doing what you love, what would that be?

It’s the little things

It’s easy to think of the big things you love in your life, what about the little things? Like maybe the way your dog greets you when you come home, or the narcissi that bloom without fail every spring? Think across every part of your life.

1.     Family members

2.     Pets

3.     Movies

4.     Books

5.     Food

6.     Activities

7.     Nature

8.     Home

Take a backward look

Try to think as widely as you can, from managing to get the early bus to trying a new recipe or meeting your exercise goals.

1.     Write down all the things that made you feel good.

2.     What did you learn this week?

3.     What did you achieve?

4.     What promises did you keep?

5.     What were you grateful for?

I hope this post encourages you to begin your own journaling habit. In many ways, it is one of the most rewarding and empowering habits you can adopt.

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