My Advice:

Dear Hannah,

OMG!!  This is AWFUL!!!! Your diary should be a place you feel completely comfortable expressing all your thoughts and feelings, even if they’re not so nice!! That’s the point of a diary! If you were only going to write happy cheery love poems, you should get a job with a greeting card company!

ARGH!!! I am so incredibly mad at your dad!!

I know what it’s like to have my diary stolen, and mine was stolen by MacKenzie! I thought that was awful, but when I think about it, it would be much, much worse if it had been stolen by someone I trusted NOT to violate my privacy—like my parents!!!

I think you have to talk to your dad about this, even though I know it’ll be really hard. Maybe you could get another adult involved in the conversation – your mom, if she’s around, or someone else you both trust, like a pastor or teacher or family friend.

Regardless of whatever you wrote about him in your diary, your dad really violated your trust – he made you feel like you can’t trust him again. Let him know how bad it makes you feel that he would snoop into your private thoughts like that. Explain how you need a place to express your feelings, and that it’s a healthy thing for a kid (or anyone) to do. Hopefully having someone else in the conversation will help you both keep from getting too heated and help you stay focused.

I’m sure some parents might say it’s okay to read their kids’ diary, because it’s a parent’s job to keep their kids safe. In some cases, maybe parents need to read a diary to be sure you’re not getting into dangerous stuff. Maybe your dad was worried about something serious. Maybe he really didn’t understand your position in the fight and was trying to understand you better. But I still think it was a pretty rotten way to go about it.

As far as you never wanting to write in a diary again…I can understand that. It also makes me super sad. Because writing in a diary is exactly how I would survive something like this.

You might want to take a break from writing in a diary, but I’d encourage you to find other ways to express yourself. Otherwise you’ll just bottle all your feelings up and then you’ll explode! Here are some ways you could express yourself without a diary:

• Drawing/painting/cartooning
• Taking a drama class
• Making music of some sort
• Writing stories or poems
• Getting involved in an online creative community like www.Storybird.com
• Fashion design/sewing

When you’re ready, you might consider starting a new diary, but take some precautions. You could keep a diary in a computer file titled something like American History Report.  Or you could get a diary with a lock. You could keep your diary somewhere you don’t think your dad would ever check, like your underwear drawer (unless he puts your clean laundry away).

However and whenever you come back to writing a diary, I really hope you do. And even more, I really hope you and your dad are able to come to an understanding about what happened and how you can trust each other in the future.

I hope that helps!

What do you guys think? Has anyone ever read YOUR diary??
What did you do??  Post your comments below.