What I learned from passing a notebook back and forth with my daughter

When my daughter Sophia was ten, I handed her a notebook and suggested we write to each other in it. No rules, no deadlines. Just a quiet conversation on paper that we could pass back and forth when the mood struck.

I thought it would be a fun little project. What I didn’t expect was how much joy, surprise, and connection it would bring us both.

The grin that says “I saw your note”

There’s a very particular kind of smile you get when you open the journal and find a fresh entry waiting for you. I’d see it on Sophia’s face when she spotted my handwriting... a grin that spread wide and fast, like a secret she couldn’t wait to read. And I felt the same when it was my turn.

We discovered things we might never have said out loud

Some of her answers made me laugh — like the time she imagined her dream superpower as “being able to control the weather” (so random)  — but others stopped me in my tracks. She wrote about moments at school, worries she’d been carrying, and little victories I hadn’t known about.

The page gave her a safe space to share without the intensity of face-to-face conversation, and it gave me a way to respond thoughtfully instead of reactively.

It turned into a ritual we both craved

Our “Pass-Back” didn’t follow a schedule. Sometimes we’d write daily, sometimes a week would pass. But it became a rhythm in our relationship; a thread we kept picking up and weaving into something bigger.

And the more we wrote, the more the journal became a time capsule. Every page captured who we were in that moment: her messy handwriting, my overuse of em-dashes and exclamation marks, the doodles in the margins.

The biggest lesson?

Connection doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t require expensive outings or carefully planned “quality time”. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a notebook, a pen and the willingness to share.

Now, when I think about the future, I imagine us flipping back through those journals together — laughing, cringing, remembering. They’re more than notebooks; they’re proof of a relationship built in small, intentional moments.

And it all started with one blank page.