Joy is contagious.

Do you remember what it was like to meet your new baby for the first time? The overwhelming sense of joy and relief? Or the first moment your kids met their new puppy? Or your very first taste of mango?

Sometimes life goes so fast and gets so serious, we forget to rejoice in the simple stuff.

I too have had a tendency to miss the moments while pursuing the milestones. But this past week was a reminder that life’s too short to leave with our stories untold.

I had the pleasure of working with a new dad. His daughter, born 13 weeks earlier, has understandably redefined his life. He wanted to mark this momentous event with a Postscript.  “What was it like to meet her?” I asked. “Surreal, amazing, wonderful,” he replied with a smile. I gently pressed, “can you describe the exact moment it felt surreal to you?” He hesitated, then shared an idea he hadn’t previously acknowledged.

“The next day, as I was leaving the hospital carpark, I was so overcome with joy, I did something I never do. I grabbed a phone and took a picture of my face, to see if I looked as different on the outside, as I felt on the inside,” he said.

This was the first thing I told his daughter in the Postscript we wrote for her.

Postscript is a writing service which helps you shape and share stories in a letter, to remember and be remembered. Sometimes these letters are given, other times kept, lived into and stored for a later time.

Our minds are naturally designed to sift and sort through thousands of thoughts and memories a day. If we don’t capture them, speak them out and record them, we can lose them, as easily as we do our glasses and keys.

Reflective writing with another person is all about analysing an experience, recording its impact and applying the newly observed insights. The help of an investigative writer helps you pull and preserve memories you might typically diminish or gloss over.  You speak.  We write.  You reflect.

I have been doing Postscripts since the beginning of the year. Initially life letters, they’ve evolved into reflections on significant milestones, turning points, birthdays and anniversaries. “I feel lighter,” one man said after our Postscript session together. Another laughed and said I was “a hell of a lot cheaper than therapy!”

Beyond the letter, the biggest takeaway from this service seems to be a sense of contentment, a new perspective in seeing your story on paper and the decisions that lead you though and beyond it, with the help of another person.

I’ll admit, I am as curious and enamoured as you might be to see where this will lead, but in the meantime I am savouring each letter and its impact on the lives it describes.

P.S. If you value experiences over stuff and are curious to know more, I’m running a promotion until the end of financial year, or until all spots are filled.