Still With Me vs. Letters To Heaven: Which Remembrance Journal Fits?
The short answer: Letters To Heaven is a personalised keepsake notebook — a name on the cover, open pages inside, lovely if you already know what you want to write. Still With Me is a guided grief journal — 80 gentle prompts across nine chapters that ask the questions for you. Choose by how the griever writes, not by which cover you prefer.
Two different ideas of a remembrance journal
Letters To Heaven-style journals are personalised memorial notebooks: the name of the person you lost printed on the cover, and lined pages inside for free-form letters, thoughts and memories. The personalisation is the heart of the product — it makes the book itself a keepsake from the moment it arrives.
Still With Me takes the opposite approach: the structure is the heart of the product. Each edition — for the loss of a mother, father, partner, child, grandparent, friend or pet — contains 80 gentle writing prompts organised in themed chapters, so every session begins with a question instead of a blank page. It is available in hardcover and paperback, printed to order close to you.
Side-by-side
| Letters To Heaven (personalised notebook) | Still With Me (guided journal) | |
|---|---|---|
| Inside the book | Lined pages, free-form | 80 guided prompts in nine chapters |
| Cover | Personalised with a name | Edition-specific design (not name-personalised) |
| Best for | Writers who want to compose their own letters | Grievers who freeze at an empty page; first-time journal keepers |
| As a sympathy gift | Very personal on arrival; risk it stays unwritten | Shows the recipient how to use it; no writing skill assumed |
| Formats | Notebook | Hardcover and paperback |
Which should you choose?
Choose a personalised letters journal if the giver wants maximum personal touch on the outside and the recipient is comfortable writing freely — letters to the person they lost are a beautiful, well-established grief ritual.
Choose a guided journal if you can't know whether the recipient will manage a blank page. Grief research on expressive writing (from James W. Pennebaker's work onward) suggests putting loss into words helps — but only writing that actually happens can help, and prompts are what get many grievers writing at all.
Honestly: these products serve different grievers, and neither is "better". If the person you're buying for loves to write, personalisation wins. If you're unsure, guidance is the safer gift.
Frequently asked questions
Is Still With Me personalised?
The editions are personalised by relationship (mother, father, partner, child, pet and more) rather than by printed name — the personal part is what you write inside.
Can a guided journal also hold letters?
Yes — several Still With Me prompts explicitly invite you to write directly to the person you lost, alongside prompts about memories, gratitude and moving through the days.