From time to time I go through file drawers looking for things to get rid of. My goal is to have less stuff for our kids to deal with some day.

Yesterday, I came across a bunch of journals, some written during various traumatic times. Reading them again for the first time in years, those times seemed much less traumatic.

For example, when our son Jeremy was denied early admission to his first- choice college, he was devastated. Nothing could persuade him that he was still the same talented, smart person he was before that letter came. It was a very bad week and my journal reflected my concern for him. (By the way, he was accepted at every other school he applied to and loved the one he went to.)

Then there was my celiac disease diagnosis seventeen years ago. It meant that I could no longer eat bread or anything with gluten. I was miserable. To me, there was nothing worth eating if you can’t eat gluten. I remember taking a jar of peanut butter and some rice crackers on our vacation to Africa that summer and that was about all I could eat. (By the way, there are a lot of great gluten-free foods now, and I had forgotten how miserable I had been then.)

I did write about happy times too, but misery made me more prolific. So here’s my dilemma. Do I throw those journals away so that the children don’t see me at my worst? Would they even bother to read them? How about if I keep them just a little longer to remind me that bad things get better?