Why I Started Sending Mum a Printed Newsletter Every Month

Late last year, I was at my Mum's and she was upset.

Not because anything terrible had happened. She was fine, her health was fine, everything was basically fine. She was upset because she said she never knew what was going on with the family anymore. I'd mentioned to Dad about a photo and she straight away said she hadn't seen it and never gets to see any photo anymore. She'd see one occasionally, might get a brief update on the phone. But mostly, she just didn't get to know anything about what we were doing, how our week had actually been, all the little things that we usually share on social media. She was completely left out of it.

All because she didn't use the internet and didn't want a smartphone.

If you're in the same situation, I've since written a fuller guide to staying connected with a parent who won't use a smartphone — the newsletter below is just one of the options in it.

I'm a retired graphic designer and I've spent decades making things look good on paper, so I thought, why not fix this? I went home and I made her a newsletter.

The First One

It wasn't fancy. I wrote a few paragraphs about what had been happening, added some photos I printed at home, stapled the pages together, and put it in the post.

The call I got when it arrived is one I won't forget. She'd read it twice. She'd put it on the dining table. She'd already shown it to two people. She kept saying, she kept saying that she felt like she'd actually been there, she felt included.

I made another one the next month. And the one after that.

Why This Works When Everything Else Doesn't

I've thought a lot about this, because it surprised me how much of a difference it made compared to other things I'd tried.

Phone calls are wonderful, but they're quick and brief. You mention a couple of things and then say goodbye.

Photos help, but unless you're visiting all the time with a handful of printed photos, it's just a glimpse for them. They need an actual printed image with a bit of context around it so they know what, where and when something actually happened.

Video calls are technically the closest thing to being there, but Mum finds them stressful. She doesn't feel at ease using the phone and she can't see the photos properly on screen. She feels like it's too much too quickly and then it's over, rather than just sitting and absorbing everything.

A newsletter is different. She reads it when she wants to, as slowly as she wants to, as many times as she wants to. She can put it down and pick it up again. She can read a bit at breakfast and come back to the rest after lunch. No reply needed, no tech to wrestle with.

It's information she can actually receive.

What Goes In It

The newsletters I make are not curated highlight reels. I deliberately include the ordinary stuff.

What we cooked last Sunday and how my Yorkshire Puddings turned out (plus photos). How the grand-furbabies are and what trouble they've gotten into. What Brett said at dinner that made everyone laugh. A photo of my latest artwork, because she used to paint herself and is interested.

I used to think the big moments were what mattered, the milestones, the holidays, the weddings or engagements. But what Mum actually loves is all the little things. The ordinary week. The boring Tuesday. The stuff that actually happens daily that makes her feel included.

You can't get that from Instagram or Facebook. You can't get it from a birthday call. But you can get it from a newsletter.

Why I Built Family Press

After I'd been doing this manually for a while, I realised: the reason most people don't do this isn't because they don't want to. It's because sitting down to design and print and format a newsletter every month is genuinely a lot of effort and needs some skills.

So I built Family Press to do the hard part.

You talk. You record a few voice memos about what's been happening. You add some photos from your phone, link them up or don't, either way. Family Press turns all of that into a properly formatted, beautifully printed newsletter, and posts it directly to whoever you need it to go to.

No design skills. No printer, no hunting for a stamp, no trip to the post office you'll forget to make. You spend five minutes talking into your phone, and Mum/Dad or whoever gets something in the letterbox that looks like it took you days.

I built it for families where the person you love is a bit out of reach, geographically, technologically, or both, and you want to close that gap in a way that actually works for them.

What It Looks Like When It Arrives

The newsletter arrives as a proper printed document: A4, double-sided, saddle-stitched, on quality paper. It's not a home printer job. It looks like something worth keeping.

Inside: your stories, your photos, laid out properly. A calendar of family dates if you want one. A crossword or sudoku for a quiet afternoon. The weather, plus handy tips for gardening or cooking. All designed beautifully with the stories and photos you've been adding for the past month.

Mum's neighbours now ask about it. It stays on the coffee table. She shows it to the carer and they go through it together.

That's not what I expected when I made the first one. But it's what keeps happening, month after month.

The One Thing I Know for Certain

You don't have to build a whole newsletter service to do this. You can start with a piece of paper and a pen and the post office.

The technology isn't the point. The point is that someone on the other end of the letterbox knows you thought of them this month. That you noticed the small things and wrote them down. That you chose to reach them in a way they could actually receive.

That's all a family newsletter really is. Proof you were paying attention.

Family Press takes care of the design, printing, and posting so you can focus on the part that actually matters, the stories. Start your free 14-day trial and we'll post your first newsletter for free.