“Be careful what you put on paper. It can last forever.”

When you write your “Letter to Your Grandchildren” you want to maintain one of your most precious gifts – your relationship with family. You never want to jeopardize your relationship with your parents, sibling, children or grandchildren. Never include something that will make someone mad, even if it is the truth. Not worth it.

Your letter should be about helping people, not hurting people. You should write it thinking every member of my family will read it. A clean conscience is worth more than gold or diamonds.

There is a place for venting and calling people out, but it is not in your letter to your grandchildren. If there is something very important to you that you feel has to be told, but would throw a family member under a bus, find an indirect way to do it. One way is to tell a story about what happened to a friend of yours or that you read about something in a book and felt that the lesson in the story was so important to you that you need to share it your grandchildren. Another way would be to change all the names and details so that no one is being mentioned directly. However you must make sure you that no one would ever know who the story was about.

“When in doubt, leave it out.”