Joe Soran

There are some hard truths in life that can only be learned by living long enough. And there are some truths I wish someone had told me when I was young. Here's one: Being a parent never ends. Never. Ever. When your children move out, it's not over. When they get married, it's not over. When they have children of their own, it's still not over. You never stop worrying about them. You never stop wanting to protect them. Their heartbreaks still break your heart. You stop

William Shakespeare may have been the greatest writer in the English language. But I believe there is someone whose words could mean more to your grandchildren than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. You. Imagine your 16-year-old granddaughter sitting alone in her bedroom, heartbroken after her first love has ended. She discovers a letter you wrote years earlier describing how you survived your own first broken heart. Suddenly, she isn't alone. Great literature teaches us a

“Some of the greatest lessons are the ones our parents never intended to teach us.” Our parents tried to teach us many things. Work hard. Tell the truth. Save your money. Treat people with kindness. Sometimes we listened. But often, the lessons that stayed with us weren't the ones they spoke. They were the ones they lived. And sometimes, those lessons came in the form of mistakes they made.Maybe your father was terrible with money, and you learned the importance of saving. Ma

Writing a letter to your grandchildren is a form of magic. It is time travel. Imagine your granddaughter at 35, struggling with a decision that will change her life. Or your grandson at 50, wondering if he has the courage to begin again. You may be long gone. And yet, there you are. He opens your letter. He reads your words. He hears your voice. Across the years, you are speaking to him. You are telling him about the mistakes you made, the chances you took, the people you

“Grandparents are both our past and our future. In some ways they are what has gone before, and in others they are what we will become.” — Fred Rogers When a grandchild looks into the eyes of a grandparent, they are looking into a living history book. Within those eyes are decades of laughter, tears, triumphs, failures, and lessons learned. Stories of a world that existed long before the grandchild was born. But something equally remarkable happens when grandparents look in

Years ago, I knew a man who spent countless weekends trying to teach his son how to work with his hands. They built things together. They fixed things together. Sometimes the projects turned out beautifully. Sometimes they didn't. Years later, the son barely remembered the shelves they built or the things they repaired. But he remembered something much more important. His father kept showing up. His father was trying to teach him patience. Responsibility. Persistence. The sat

If you ask me where most of my daily happiness comes from, I won't hesitate. It comes from my marriage. My wife makes me happy every single day — not in some grand, dramatic way, but in the small, ordinary moments that quietly stack up into a life. My happiness doesn't depend on her. But so much of it springs from her anyway, the way a garden doesn't depend on rain but blooms so much brighter because of it. Marriage is a long journey — longer than any of us understand on the

I recently enrolled in a class called “Writing Your Life Story.” It is organized through a local community college and held at a senior center. I signed up because the subject is very close to my heart. Writing your life story is not very different from writing a letter to your grandchildren. Both begin with the same simple but powerful idea: Your life has something worth saying. The class syllabus immediately caught my attention. We will explore why our stories matter, how t

There's an old truth that never gets old: you can learn more about a person from what they do than from what they say. Words are cheap. Anyone can say "I love you." Fewer people can show it, day after day, in small unglamorous ways that never make it into a Hallmark card. So here's the question worth sitting with this Monday morning: What did you actually do to make your love visible? Whose life got easier because of it? Because love, real love, rarely announces itself. It do

Sometimes, the best way to understand ourselves is to write about something else. One way to think about creative projection is taking something that lives inside us—our experiences, struggles, hopes, fears, and wisdom—and expressing it through a story. Imagine a grandfather writing about an old avocado tree in his backyard. For decades, that tree has endured storms and droughts. It has survived insects, disease, broken branches, and scorching summers. And yet, year after y

What story do you hope your grandchildren will tell their grandchildren about you? For me, it is our family beach house vacations. For one week every year we gather together a beach house. We play in the ocean. The young ones running back and forth as they joyfully try to avoid the incoming waves, eventually building up their courage to let the water get higher and higher on their legs. The older kids body surfing or boogie boarding. The smell of sunscreen. A bag of chips a

Because one day you won't be there anymore. Your grandchildren will still be very curious. Someday your grandson or granddaughter will wonder about you. They won't be looking for your bank balance, your job title, or the size of your house. They'll want something far more valuable. They'll want your stories. They'll want your mistakes. They'll want your courage. They'll want your wisdom. Today, you can still answer every one of their questions. Write your answer

Isn't that one of the biggest goals of life - to be better today than yesterday. To learn something that you can apply today to live a better life today. To learn something today so that you can apply it tomorrow and for the rest of your life to make the rest of your life better. The basic principle is to learn every day. To learn from successes and even more importantly, from your failures. To remember what you have learned and to apply it to the only thing you really have

We are old. And that's okay. Aging is part of the bargain we make with life. None of us can stop the march of time. The years keep coming whether we welcome them or not. That part is out of our hands. But growing old comes with a gift that youth cannot possess. We have seen things. We have loved people. We have made mistakes. We have celebrated victories. We have watched children become parents and parents become memories. And if we have lived long enough, we have experienced

I love quotes. They are distilled wisdom. They contain very important messages. In your letter to your grandchildren include a list of them. These quotes or maxims act as very useful tools for the minds and hearts of your grandchildren. They are thoughts to live by. They are short so they are easy to remember. They help make better choices in life. You are loved more than you know. Your worth is not determined by your grades, income, appearance, or achievements. Kindness is

In 1973, Ernest Becker published a Pulitzer prize winning book "The Denial of Death." Some of the key points are that humans are unique in that that can think about thinking. They can put ourselves in hypothetical situations, to contemplate the past, present and future. They can vividly imagine their deaths. This leads to a very common feeling of fear that Becker termed "death terror." To counteract the this "death terror" people have come to the realization that they hav

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" — Mary Oliver That question stopped me cold. I have been busy my entire life. Productive. Helpful. Responsible. I have said yes when I meant no, filled my days with good things that quietly crowded out the essential things. Then I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. And something shifted. The Most Dangerous Word in the English Language is "Yes." McKeown offers three liberating truths: "I choose to." "On

Rode in the back of a pickup truck at 60 miles an hour eating a popsicle. Drank water straight out of a garden hose and somehow survived without electrolytes. Played with lawn darts — giant metal spikes specifically designed to test sibling reflexes. Rode bicycles with: no helmets no pads no fear and usually no brakes. Sat in the front seat at age five while Dad smoked with the windows rolled up. Shared one seatbelt among four children and a German Shepherd. Wandered miles fr

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Pico Iyer Include travel in your letter. What delighted you? What surprised you? Who did you travel with? What meals were fantastic? Where would you want to visit again and again? Where would you not want to travel to a second time? Who were the people that you met? Did you ever get lost? How did you make the best of a bad situation? What were the simple pleasures you will always remember?

The world your grandchildren are navigating would be unrecognizable to the generation that raised you. Social media delivers an unrelenting stream of comparison, criticism, and noise — twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, directly into their hands. The economy asks more of them and promises less. Mental health struggles that were once whispered about now touch nearly every family. The pressure to perform, to achieve, to appear confident while feeling completely lost