I Use My Journals for a Very Specific Reason. If Someone Found It, They Would Get the Wrong Idea.

Dear Prudence Prudie replies to readers’ comments and suggestions. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? Aug 14, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Slate and Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Each week, Prudence asks readers for their thoughts on the letters she’s received. Her reply will be available every Friday. Hey Prudie, Heritage Hazard was disturbed by her Grandmother’s journals, which showed a life far more unhappy than the stories she’d been told, and worried that this revelation could hurt her family. As an avid journal writer, I use my journals as a safe place to record my anger, frustration, and sadness, and to work through depression that doesn’t define my overall good life. This grandmother’s life may be far less miserable than her journals would lead one to believe. The fact that she wrote them in a language her family didn’t speak may indicate they were her way of safely venting frustrations. —Avid Venter That’s a good point. It kind of reminds me of the Death Sex and Money episode featuring a woman who found upsetting evidence of her boyfriend’s doubts about her in his ChatGPT history. It was hard to read, but she also explored the possibility that this was where he shared his most negative thoughts in an unfiltered way, and didn’t represent a full picture of how he felt about her. When you get access to someone’s private thoughts, you don’t get all the context because those thoughts weren’t meant for you to read in the first place. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Hey Prudie, Re Heritage Hazard: I think you only supported one side of the coin here (that of not revealing the content of her Grandmother’s journals). Perhaps support for revealing the struggles and feelings of her grandmother could be important because it would give other family members the opportunity to understand Grandmother’s reality and that idealizing others’ lives is merely building a fantasy for the purpose of comforting themselves with what they desire reality to be. The writer could let the family know that their grandmother’s “truth” was very different from the family’s assumptions and ask if they wished to know what was written from her perspective. If so, she could share the contents of her story; if not, then she would have fairly completed and honored all obligations to her grandmother, to her family and to herself. —Danica Winter An idea that shaped my response—which, reading it now, I’m realizing I didn’t actually spell out—was my sense that the writer felt the information would be really upsetting to her family members. I think it was a combination of “My mom and her siblings talk about how they never heard a cross word between their parents and how their mom refused to consider dating again after my grandfather died, even though she was only in her 50s” and “I feel like I’m holding a nuclear bomb.” That’s pretty intense! What I felt went unsaid was that she felt really scared and worried about how everyone would be affected by the content of the journals, and didn’t feel ready to be responsible for the fallout. So I wanted to give her a way out. If she’d said she was itching to share the news, I would have encouraged her to go ahead. Because you’re absolutely right that the new insight could have huge benefits for those who were willing to grapple with it. Hey Prudie, Re Heritage Hazard: I worked for a long time with children with mental health issues and their families. This was in Hawaii, an environment with many cultures, and some older and/or recently arrived people couldn’t speak much English. Such families would often suggest that a family member might translate; this would typically be a younger member. Standing instructions were to discourage this strongly, in favor of our own translation service. The issue was fairly straightforward: Generational and cultural issues predictably led to translation issues. For example, a discussion that necessitated the use of clear and unequivocal language—say, discussing treatment options for a minor—often saw one party or another unable to use clinical language, trying instead to resort to euphemisms or avoid direct translation. So, my own advice is use a trained translator, who may even be able to work on the phone. The investment now could save a lot of upset and family discord down the line. —Greg W. Interesting! I wouldn’t have thought of this. Hey Prudie, Proud Mom, Frustrated Wife could say something like this to her husband: “I love you, and I think you are a wonderful man most of the time. But you are wrong about our son, and you’ve broken that relationship. Whether to fix it, or not, is up to you, but I absolutely will not be estranged from our son over it. I will spend time with our family without you, including the upcoming wedding, because you created this problem. I suggest you go to therapy to figure out why you can’t love and respect your wonderful son for who he is, rather than who you apparently want him to be.” Then she has to stick to this approach consistently. Let the father manage his own relationships, his own feelings, and his own decision to seek therapy or not. She is not responsible for him, and she has to resist her deep desire to “keep the peace.” —aardbark I agree. There’s no such thing as keeping the peace when one person is actively refusing to be peaceful! So like I said, she has to choose a side. I like your script. Hey Prudie, For the Names She Picked Sucked: You both make a list of names that you would agree to. If there are common names on the list, then you have solved your problem. If not, both of you open up your mind a bit and pick five names from the other list that you would like, to create a shortlist of ten names as a basis for discussion. Then you try to find a compromise. But under no circumstances ask a relative or someone else with a stake in this. This is your decision, and it’s going to be one of the easier parenting things you will need to do. You need to figure out a way to solve a problem, because this won’t be the last kid-related problem you’ll encounter. —Elsewhere Good strategy. I agree that naming is one of the easier parenting things, but it’s probably also one of the easiest to obsess over and fight over because the baby isn’t there yet and your energy hasn’t yet been redistributed to all the harder things. Advice Dear Prudence Family