What to Do With Journals Written Under My Old Name

2026-10-14 · Yesterself

Somewhere you have a stack of notebooks, or a folder of files, or an old blog with a login you can still guess. The handwriting is yours. The nights described are yours. The name on the first page, or in the sign-off, or in the file name, is not one you use anymore.

Maybe you changed it when you transitioned. Maybe you married, or unmarried. Maybe you went back to the name your family gave you after years of using the version that was easier for other people to say. The reason matters enormously to your life and hardly at all to the practical question in front of you, which is: what do you do with several pounds of paper signed by someone you have stopped being called.

There are four honest answers. None of them is the right one for everybody.

The four options, plainly

Leave it alone. Put the box somewhere dry, label it in a way you can live with reading, and stop treating it as a task. This is the option people underrate because it feels like avoidance. It usually is not. An archive you have not decided about is still intact, and intact archives keep every option open. Doing nothing on purpose is different from doing nothing by default: the difference is that you said so.

Annotate. Add to the record without subtracting from it. Slip a dated page in the front of each volume, or write in the margin in a different colored pen, or keep a single index card that explains what the reader is holding. Everything old stays legible; you simply stop being the only person who knows the context.

Transcribe. Retype the parts that matter into a new document under the name you use now. You get a clean, searchable, shareable version, and the original stays in the box. Transcription is slow and it is also, for many people, the first real rereading they have done. Budget for that. Do not start it the week of anything hard.

Redact. Cross out, cut out, tear out, black over, find-and-replace, or burn. This is the one people mean when they ask the question, and it is the one worth slowing down for, because it is the only option on this list that cannot be undone next year.

Why erasure costs more than it looks like it costs

Here is the argument for hesitating, and it is not a sentimental one.

Old journals are evidence. Not in a courtroom sense, usually, but in the ordinary sense that they are the only surviving record of what you actually thought at the time, as opposed to what you now remember thinking. Memory quietly rewrites the past to agree with the present. That is not a flaw you can discipline your way out of; it is how remembering works. The notebook does not do that. The notebook just sits there being inconveniently specific.

You may want that specificity later, for reasons you cannot predict now:

• To answer the question "did I know?" — about a person, a job, a health worry, a relationship — with something better than a guess.
• To tell someone who loves you what the years before they met you were actually like.
• To recognize a pattern the third time it happens, because you wrote it down the first two.
• To be gentler with yourself, having seen how little information the earlier person had.
• To have something to hand to a niece, a nephew, a kid, a researcher, or nobody at all.

There is also the quieter cost. Removing the old name does not remove the old self; it removes the paper trail of the old self while leaving the self exactly where it was. Some people find that the erasure they hoped would feel like relief feels instead like a gap they now have to explain to themselves every time they open the box. Others feel genuinely lighter. You will not know which you are from here, which is precisely the argument for not deciding permanently on a bad Tuesday.

None of this is a rule. If a journal contains something that is dangerous to you if found, or if opening the box costs you more than the box is worth, get rid of it and do not let anyone, including this page, make you feel careless about it. This is not medical or therapeutic advice, and if these notebooks sit near something heavy — grief, a diagnosis, an experience you have not been able to put down — a professional is a better companion for that than a filing decision.

The middle path: one dated preface

Here is the option I think most people are actually looking for.

Write one page. Today, or this week. Date it. Put it at the front of the box, or as the first file in the folder, or taped inside the cover of the earliest volume. It does not touch a single old word. It says something like:

These notebooks were written between 2009 and 2018, under the name I used then. I am the same person and I go by a different name now. I have left them exactly as they were written, including the name, because changing them would make them less true, not more. If you are reading these after me, read them as letters from an earlier version of me and not as a correction to the current one.

That is it. Five sentences and a date.

What the preface does is structural, not emotional. An archive is read through whatever frame the reader brings, and until now the only frame available was the name on the cover. The preface supplies a better one. It moves the old name from being the label of the archive to being a fact inside the archive — one detail among thousands, historically accurate, no longer the headline.

It also puts you on the record as the author of the framing. If someone finds these in forty years, they find both the writing and your instructions for reading it. That is a very different inheritance from a box with a name on it and no explanation.

Practical notes on writing it:

1. Date it. An undated preface is just more unlabeled paper. The date is what makes it a layer rather than a revision.
2. Say the range. "Between roughly 2009 and 2018" is enough. Precision is not the point; orientation is.
3. Say how you want it read, in one sentence. This is the part that does the work.
4. Do not apologize for the earlier person. You are framing a record, not writing a disclaimer for it.
5. Write a new one whenever you want. Prefaces stack. A second one in 2032 is a gift, not a contradiction.

You can pair this with light annotation later — a marker in the volume where something changed, a card noting who a recurring initial refers to — and never touch redaction at all. Most of the benefit people want from erasing turns out to be available from framing.

If you are still mid-decision about the name itself, or about who gets told, that is a separate piece of work; trying out a new first name on paper and keeping a record while going back to a maiden name both deal with the front end of this, where the old journals are not yet old.

A short word about what comes next

Whatever you decide about the paper, the archive keeps growing. What you write this year will be the old journals eventually, read by someone with a different name, different circumstances, and a strong opinion about who you were.

Yesterself is built on that idea. It is a journaling app — the journal that writes back — where each morning brings you one letter from your own past writing, and your evening reply becomes tomorrow's mail. It is end-to-end encrypted, with no account, no email, and no password; your identity is twelve words you hold. Export is free forever, in open formats. It is not released yet; there is a waiting list.

The point, either way, is the same one the preface makes. You do not have to agree with the earlier writer. You only have to keep the letter, and say clearly how you would like it read.

Common questions

Should I destroy journals written under my old name?

You can, and some people are relieved they did. But it is not reversible, and the reasons for keeping an archive often arrive years later. If you are unsure, box them and set a date to reconsider rather than deciding in a difficult week.

Is it wrong to cross out the old name in my own notebooks?

They are yours and no one gets a vote. Just notice that crossing out leaves a visible mark of the crossing, which is sometimes louder than the name was. A dated preface at the front usually does the same work more quietly.

What is a preface page and what goes on it?

One page, written now and dated, placed at the front of the box or file. It says who wrote these, who you are now, and how you want them read. It reframes the whole archive without altering a single old word.

Do I have to reread the old journals to decide?

No. Deciding what to do with them and reading them are separate tasks, and you can do the first without the second. Many people label and shelve the box for years before they open it.

What if the journals are digital and searchable?

The same choices apply, plus one more: a find-and-replace is fast, silent, and total. Make a copy of the original files before you run it, so the edit is a version rather than an erasure.