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The photo legacy you leave your kids
Prepare your family photos so they provide comfort—not a burden—to your children when you're gone. It’s one of the most meaningful legacies you can leave your kids.
Don’t leave behind three obsolete devices filled with thousands of digital photos for your children to find when you’re gone. Prepare your pictures so they provide comfort—not a burden—to your children: It’s one of the most meaningful things you can do for your kids.
Prepare for the inevitable.
We are all going to die one day. Hopefully you’re not thinking about this inevitability too often, but it’s wise to prepare: Have a will drafted by an estate attorney, prepare your finances and insurance, and organize your records. Even this common wisdom is too often ignored by many.
So is it only the organizationally obsessed who will think about something as mundane as preparing your photos? I hope not.
The legacy of family photos, stories, and the artifacts of memory—scrapbooks, letters, heirlooms—may be of greater value to your heirs than your monetary legacy. Don’t underestimate how much a connection to the past will mean to your loved ones someday!
All that stuff can be a burden to your kids.
It’s convenient as heck to have a basement in which to toss those extra boxes of stuff. But Americans have taken consumerism to new levels in recent years, with shows about hoarding captivating television viewers and paid storage facilities dotting suburban landscapes. We love our stuff, for sure. And while I doubt you are a hoarder, chances are your closets and garage are housing plenty of stuff.
Julie Hall, author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, speaks from decades of experience when she says that the next generation will undoubtedly be burdened by all that you will leave behind. “I can virtually guarantee they will not care for these items the way you do, and often are upset and resentful when having to sell or discard them,” she says. “When this happens, hasty decisions are made to ‘just get rid of it.’”
Her advice? “Choose only your favorite things and let the rest go. Future generations will be most appreciative.”
Organize your family photos so they provide comfort, not nuisance.
Don’t assume that your library of family photos is exempt from that “just get rid of it” mentality. If what you leave behind is messy or overwhelming, well, then it’s more of a burden than a gift.
Here’s how to approach your photo organization project, in seven simple steps:
1 - Organize.
Tossing family photos can be one of the hardest things we do. There is a guilt associated with it—those pictures meant something to someone, after all. But do they mean anything to you? Will they matter to your children? Before you can determine which pictures to keep and which to trash, you must first organize them.
Choose a method that suits you, and dive in: Chronological, thematic, or by individual.
If you think creating a straight visual timeline of your life is best, keep in mind that it’s unlikely you will know exact dates for everything; sorting photographs into decades might be most efficient.
Sorting pictures by theme—birthdays, vacations, Christmas, childhood milestones, etc.—is a popular option for those who may want to create books or slideshows down the road. It can be fun to see the similarities in your traditions or amongst your children, too.
It’s possible that you are undertaking this organization project with the idea of divvying up the treasures for your kids. The most challenging part here, particularly with physical photographs, is that multiple children are likely to appear in one photo. I suggest creating one pile for those shots, and prioritizing having those images digitized first.
2 - Toss.
Delete pictures from your phone. Throw away old photos. Easier said than done? Yes, but once complete, this process can feel liberating. And it will be tremendously less burdensome for your heirs. Find advice for how to start trashing digital photos in this helpful article. And don’t forget to place the digital images you choose to keep into albums or folders sorted by date or theme—a hard drive filled with thousands of pictures in no particular order will be more overwhelming than inviting!
Do the same thing with the piles of physical photos you sorted in step one—begin to throw away any that do not hold meaning. Get rid of duplicates and indecipherable pictures.
On the most basic level, ask yourself: Does the picture tell a story that you want to remember? Is it a spectacular photo? If the answer to either of those is YES, it’s a keeper. If not, consider if someone else may value it, or put it in the garbage.
3 - Caption.
Now that you’ve sorted and narrowed down your collection, it’s time to preserve the most basic details of your important pictures. Use a photo-safe pen to write names, dates, and places on the back of your physical photos. Write legibly, and include full names whenever possible. Don’t assume your children will remember their toddler friends’ names or even their grandparents’, for that matter.
If you are technologically savvy, consider inputting all the caption information into the metadata of your digital photos. If that’s too ambitious, print out the most important ones, even on regular office paper, so you can write the information on them.
Seem like a crazy amount of work? Perhaps it is a lot, but consider this: What value will these photos hold if your family members do not even know what they represent? (None.) Alternatively, what value will they hold if you share not only the vital details, but the stories behind them? (Priceless.)
4 - Designate.
Don’t leave it for your kids and your grandkids and your siblings to hash out who gets what. Determine who might want your photos, and divvy them up accordingly.
Many people find that gifting old photos, especially, to their loved ones, is a worthwhile endeavor to do now. Sit with those you love, use your photographs as prompts to share the stories of your life, and see how much they are cherished! Your time and story sharing are the best gifts you can give. If you can’t part with your pictures just yet, share your intentions for bequesting them when you are gone.
5 - Create.
There are strong reasons why we hold our family photos dear. They connect us to the past, testify to our triumphs and experiences, and make us remember. And smile.
Share the smiles with those you love by creating something special from your favorite photo moments:
enlarge and frame a single print
send a digital image via email with more than a #tt hashtag: write its story, share the memories it conjures up
By creating something—and sharing it—you are giving life to the stories behind your photos.
6 - Permit.
Give permission to your children to toss your things. You may have an attachment to your stuff, but your children will find their own connection to what you leave behind—and it may be to something completely unexpected.
Let them know that you do not expect them to keep everything, and if you have a preferred charity, tell them you’d be happy to have your things be donated. Likewise, tell them which photographs and heirlooms you would most like to pass on, and why. When your loved ones are armed with this knowledge, their decision-making becomes much less emotionally charged, and they are more likely to hold onto and cherish those things that hold true meaning.
7 - Hire.
If all of the above seems too daunting, or if your time is simply taken up by other priorities right now, consider hiring a professional photo organizer. They can jump in at any stage of the process or help out with just one step.
This Week in Personal History... July 25
Our collection of links for the week of July 25, 2017, runs the gamut from frivolous (Meryl Streep’s hair) to significant (the value of storytelling to bridge divides).
“Your legacy is every life you’ve touched.”
—Oprah WInfrey
This week’s collection of links runs the gamut from frivolous (think Meryl Streep’s hair) to the significant (the value of personal storytelling to bridge divides). Which story lingers with you after reading? Please comment and share with other memory-keepers and storytellers!
Roundup of Personal History Blogs - July 25, 2017
In the News
“The dead help the living face what lies ahead. In exchange, the living must translate the lives of the dead into history. They can find myriad ways to do so, from visiting gravesites to writing someone’s biography.” An interesting look back at the phenomenon of postmortem photographs in The Atlantic.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORYTELLING IS BRIDGING DIVIDES:
Storytelling evenings aim to engage Muslim & Jewish communities in conversation at a time when the climate is strained. “The ability to have conversations across difference has never been more difficult and never been more important.”
In Beirut, where the tradition of public storytelling has faded in recent decades, a new phenomenon is drawing crowds: autobiographical storytelling events where participants share their experiences on a theme such as love, transition, or roots.
On the Blogs
ANNUAL TIME CAPSULE
Birthday letters are an easy way to keep a consistent & meaningful record of your life, writes Olive Lowe of Phoenix-based Life Stories by Liv.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Family names can reveal more than just family history—they can be indicative of social & cultural influences, and sometimes plain old taste. Australia-based personal historian Rose Osborne takes a light look at the women in her family.
MEMORIES IN CONTEXT
For Richmond, Virginia–based Carol McLaren, July 20, 1969, is a date with both personal & historical significance. Read about her memorable childhood experience that just happened to coincide with “a giant leap for mankind.”
Worth Checking Out
Spotted: Meryl Streep donning a teased-up mouse-brown wig to better resemble Katharine “Kay” Graham, who she’s portraying in a Spielberg-led biopic. It’s based on The Washington Post publisher’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1998 memoir, Personal History, which I highly recommend you read (whether you plan to see the film or not)! Get a taste of the book in Nora Ephron’s original New York Times review from 1997.
“Your legacy is every life you’ve touched,” said Oprah Winfrey in her 2017 commencement speech at Agnes Scott College. View highlights in this brief video.
Quick Takes
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir
This Week in Personal History... July 18
Unexpected stories, digital photo storage, & pop culture offerings that tap into the value of oral history make the cut in this blog roundup for July 18, 2017.
“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”
―Antonio Porchia (Italian poet)
This week's posts examine how everyday conversations with folks we already know can yield unexpected and rich stories; outline the best options for saving your precious family photos in the cloud; and highlight a few pop culture offerings that tap into the genuine value of oral history and memory-keeping.
Roundup of Personal History Blogs - July 18, 2017
In the News
“I wanted to show the quiet, normal moments of this family of African-American women: our everyday life, our happy moments, our down moments. ‘Mitochondria’ is a family album, a visual diary of our intimate lives.” Check out this rich gallery of family photographs, telling stories from the life of artist Nona Faustine.
On the Blogs
WHAT PROMPTS STORY SHARING?
There are many techniques to get people started sharing their stories. Yet sometimes, life presents an opportunity to listen that is “out of the box.” Read Just a Whistle by Marjorie Turner Hollman for a glimpse of just such an opportunity.
“SO, I ASKED A QUESTION...”
Even if you have known someone for years, you never really know their whole story. Timing is everything for learning more about the people you love and admire, as Lori Gillespie discovered.
VIRTUAL PHOTO STORAGE
Photographs play an important role in preserving family stories. Where are you keeping yours? So many cloud-based photo storage options are available today that picking one can be a daunting task—here's guidance from the experts at Nevada-based Legacy Tale.
Worth Checking Out
“This is the first time that the two of us have ever spoken about her as a mother,” Prince Harry said of Princess Diana as he flipped through a family photo album. “She was our mum. She still is our mum.” While they are royals whose stories captivate people all over the world, these two sons privately cherish their personal history & memories, as revealed in a documentary premiering July 24 on HBO.
Please leave comments about any of the topics featured here (they’re nothing if not conversation starters, I hope!) and share with other like-minded memory-keepers. And if you're a blogger with content you'd like to see featured here, of course click the link and share what you’ve got!
What Are You Reading?
Let me know what you've read that the rest of us might enjoy—memoirs, how-to or business books, even articles.
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir
This Week in Personal History... July 11
The weekly roundup of blogs for July 11, 2017 includes posts on family reunions, legacy letters, & stories of mom, curated by Dawn Roode for all memory-keepers.
“Every man's memory is his private literature.”
― Aldous Huxley
Welcome back, memory-keepers! I hope you had a festive and safe Fourth of July week, and that (if you must) you're easing back into the work week with a smile on your face ; )
This week we take a dive into family reunions, legacy letters, and stories of mom.
Please leave comments about any of the topics featured here (they’re nothing if not conversation starters, I hope!) and share with other like-minded memory-keepers. And if you're a blogger with content you'd like to see featured here, of course click the link and share what you’ve got!
Roundup of Personal History Blogs - July 11, 2017
In the News
“Aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, children and grandchildren—everyone who grieves my Opa has different memories, different recollections of him. Standing by that photo album, I realized we were putting our memories & knowledge & stories together like a puzzle to see a larger picture of the man we’d lost.” Read more in Love by the Puzzle Pieces.
“People almost always tend to gravitate to very personal, impactful stories in their lives. So if you say, ‘Tell us something that's really important to you,’ most people tell something that makes them tear up at a certain point.” Read about an interesting community oral history endeavor in Southern Colorado.
On the Blogs
LEGACY LETTERS
Legacy writing can be both healing and historical, and can make a lasting difference to your family & friends. Here are 5 tips on how to write a ‘love’ letter to your family from Sarah Hamer.
FAMILY REUNION FUN
“On the eve of the reunion a few of the cousins gathered at my parents’ house to celebrate my father’s 85th birthday and started sharing stories,” writes Bruce Summers of Summoose Tales, whose post focuses on how he integrated “adult Show & Tell” at his latest family reunion.
Check out the inspiration behind Bruce's story-sharing device and find a Show & Tales event near you (from personal experience, I can attest you won't be disappointed!).
IN SEARCH OF...
Meghan Vigeant of Stories to Tell is seeking women to interview about their experiences gathering their own mother’s stories. Have you interviewed or recorded your mother telling her stories, delved through her journals, or interviewed other family members about your mom? If so, reach out to Meghan—who knows where the conversation will lead?!
Worth Checking Out
One of the best ways to get to the heart of someone's story is to ask them great questions.
Even oral historians who have conducted countless interviews still hone their craft. A new (rather meta) podcast, The Turnaround with Jesse Thorn, turns the tables on interviewers, making them the interviewees. The first episode with Ira Glass was a delight.
Radio Rookies, produced by WNYC, has compiled resources to help students conduct better interviews—but I would say these links (which include advice on how to record interviews, how to choose a topic, and a handy question generator) are great tools for anyone wanting to interview their own family members to capture stories for posterity.
What Are You Reading?
Let me know what you've read that the rest of us might enjoy—memoirs, how-to or business books, even articles.
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir
This Week in Personal History... June 27, 2017
Weekly roundup of blogs & news stories of interest to personal historians, memory keepers, and life storytellers curated by Dawn Roode. Comment, share, contribute!
“Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.” –Stephen R. Covey
If you’re visiting this site, it means you’re a memory-keeper, a storyteller, the family archivist. However you identify yourself, I am fairly certain you’d agree that preserving our most meaningful stories for the next generation is paramount.
Welcome to the first in what promises to be a weekly roundup of stories geared just for you!
Personal history is a vital industry that includes oral historian bookmakers like myself, videographers, ghostwriters, genealogists, biographers…and many more; we are united by a shared mission of preservation & story gathering. This site has plenty of advice and book ideas & inspiration, and we’d love to work with you to create a coffee table book bringing your stories to life. But we can also refer you to personal historians with services more closely geared to what you’re looking for, or who are closer to your home—many of them whose blogs are featured in this roundup.
Please leave comments about any of the topics featured here (they’re nothing if not conversation starters, I hope!) and share with other like-minded memory-keepers. And if you're a blogger with content you'd like to see featured here, of course click the link and share what you’ve got!
Roundup of Personal History Blogs - June 27, 2017
In the News
Explore 22k immigration photos & read the accompanying personal stories from the @naagovau's collection on the revamped “Destination: Australia” site
Did you know your home movies may be unwatchable soon?
“Why You Need to Stop Procrastinating and Transfer Your VHS Tapes to Digital ASAP”
“Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them”
Some insightful writing & glorious photos documenting lesbians from all walks of life, from perhaps a surprising source: “American Women: Pride”
On the Blogs
“Turn, Turn, Turn” by Verissima Productions' Pam Pacelli Cooper on the nature of change, and her company's next big documentary endeavor (can't wait to learn more!).
“Stories Are Everything” by Dawn Roode of Modern Heirloom Books: Why Soledad O'Brien and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. value stories so much.
“In the Beginning, or How We Created Something from Nothing,” a conversation between personal historians and partners Samantha Shubert and Susan Hood on the occasion of the first anniversary of their business, Remarkable Life Memoirs: “There’s such a market for preserving people's stories that I feel really positive about how it’s going to go for us.” So do we, so do we! Happy first anniversary, ladies ; )
What Are You Reading?
Let me know what you've read that the rest of us might enjoy—memoirs, how-to or business books, even articles.
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories
“Stories are everything.”
Two major benefits of stories & story sharing are bringing genealogy to life, and helping us feel connected to the past. Learn why experts value stories so much.
During an evening discussion focused on grief and resilience, one theme continued to pop up: the importance of stories and story sharing.
The noted panelists at the New York Open Center, including award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., opened up about their own family histories, personal loss, and the things that helped them heal. And amidst the many nuggets of wisdom they passed on to the audience, quite a few of their prescriptions for resilience were applicable at any time in our lives, not only during a period of grieving.
Here are two huge benefits of storytelling that were highlighted during this dynamic conversation.
Stories help us feel connected.
I remember asking my grandmother where we were from. “America,” she would say. Before that? “It doesn’t matter.”
I once asked her something about her school years; she teared up, but remained silent. “I did not have a happy childhood.” Case closed.
My grandparents’ past was a complete mystery to me. And I am not alone.
While some kids grew up with tales of “remember when” and “when I was little…” around the dinner table, many others—often children of immigrants—were told little to nothing about their family’s narrative before they were born.
Soledad O’Brien, whose father came from Australia and her mother from Cuba, says her parents both decidedly left the past behind. “We’ll just start anew,” she says was their prevailing attitude. Like my family, O’Brien’s didn’t talk about the past at all. “Repressing things is a very solid strategy!” she said with a laugh.
Of course, it’s a strategy for coping and, yes, beginning anew. But apart from fueling that fresh start, the decision to bury family history—so common among immigrants in the first half of the 20th century—does nothing to connect the next generation to their past.
O’Brien was a Season Three guest on Finding Your Roots, and she says that she derived great value from learning more about her family history. “As you’re trying to figure out yourself, these threads begin to matter more and more,” she said.
“At the time, I was feeling insecure as an entrepreneur,” O’Brien said; but recalling her family’s history of perseverance, and drawing from that history of strength, “felt heartening, and emotional. There is this story that I’m connected to.”
Those stories helped O’Brien “feel somehow rooted to a place.” The stories made her feel connected. “Even if you don’t know you have a gaping hole, you do,” O’Brien said.
Stories bring genealogy to life.
DNA drove the original idea for Gates’s previous genealogical series, African American Lives, which explored race, roots, and identity with guests including Oprah Winfrey, Ben Carson, and Chris Rock. Gates would watch his subjects stare at new genealogical documents; they would read the words, but as he says, it wasn’t the pages of data that moved them. “They broke down and cried over the stories,” he recalls.
And so it is the stories that take center stage in his current PBS series, Finding Your Roots, whose fourth season, currently in production, will air this fall (guests include Larry David, Bernie Sanders, Amy Shumer, Ted Danson, and Paul Rudd).
“Every society has a genealogy tradition,” Gates said at the Open Center event.
“You are, in part, the sum of your ancestors” Gates said in the Washington Post, and researching one’s background helps people figure out “how you became uniquely you.”
“What you get from a genealogist is a binder of documents; you don’t get stories,” Gates said. “You have to translate that stuff into stories, and I’m very proud to be able to do that.”
Often guests on Finding Your Roots hire the team of genealogists from the show to continue their family research privately. They want to flesh out their family trees even further—and to “meet” more family members...discover their stories.
What is revealed can be life-changing to the guests, Gates said.
His own most treasured family heirloom remains to this day the one that jump-started his interest in family history: a photograph of his great-great grandmother Jane Gates. “It’s precious to me.” That connection with his own roots—Gates says he passes by and looks at the photo every day in his home—“gives me solidity and stability. It makes me feel good.”
And maybe that’s the best part of sharing stories, after all: Stories make us feel good.
As Soledad O’Brien said, “Stories are everything.”
Related reading:
- There are plenty of reasons to share family stories, from raising resilient kids to helping understand oneself.
- No one will tell your life stories but you. Start small by saving family photos & preserving stories so you create a lasting, meaningful legacy, one step at a time.
- Interested in working with a personal historian who can interview you or a family member to elicit & shape your stories for a book? Let's chat.
9 reasons why your adoption journey is worth preserving
Nine reasons why preserving your family’s story in an Adoption Journey book is a worthwhile investment, including making it part of your Gotcha Day celebration.
“On our wedding day, Mike and I vowed willingly to accept children from God. Little did we know on that day how our journey would take form...””
Mary Lou and Mike Engrassia of West Babylon, NY, were amazed, overjoyed, and even a bit overwhelmed as a path to parenthood they never expected unfurled before them.
That journey, and the memories of feelings, experiences, and challenges met, is a part of their life they cherish. Their adoption journey made them who they are as parents, but more importantly, who they are as a family with their daughter.
One way to preserve that journey for the future is to create an Adoption Journey book, highlighting for your child(ren) a side of their parents—and their unique family—that likely wasn’t evident from any child-centric baby books, or even their own treasured life book.
Here are nine reasons why an Adoption Journey book may be an investment well worth making.
1. An heirloom book takes your unique adoption journey into the future.
Whether you have a formal way of presenting your special recollections of your adoption journey or not, you no doubt regularly make the effort to share them with your child verbally. “I have told my children the stories many times,” says Teresa Baldinucci, a mom of three adopted children in Patchogue, NY, who sees the value in preserving those stories in book form, as well.
An Adoption Journey book ensures your family’s precious journey will carry on intact to your grandchildren and beyond. Indeed, pulling it out, like any family memory book, is a surefire way to spark conversation and reminiscing—essentially, keeping the family story sharing going.
2. Your journey to becoming a parent makes the story of your family different.
Once an adopted child is settled into his or her forever family, milestones and the related keepsakes become much the same as for any other family. “It is the journey to that day that makes the story different. And the journey of adoption starts long before your child is placed in your arms,” Mary Lou says.
For her and Mike, that journey included heartfelt talks about their options, much research, even more paperwork (including numerous rounds of fingerprinting), and a home study before they finally got The Call. “‘It’s a girl!’ Then over the fax at work came a blurry photo of the most adorable baby with full cheeks—Yuan Le Yi—waiting for us in the Hunan Province.” Along with 13 other families, the couple spent 11 days in several different places in China. The endless paperwork was finally capped off with a sealed brown envelope given to them when they left China, along with strict instructions not to open it. “Upon going through customs at LAX, the envelope was opened, and Yuan Le Yi became a United States citizen,” Mary Lou shares.
Now that's a story worthy of preservation in a book!
3. You may forget all the moving parts that synchronized to make you a family.
“When we were going through the process, every day seemed like an eternity. Funny, though, as I try to recall all of it now, years later, I really had to try and think about the timeline,” Mary Lou says. Recreating a visual timeline of the adoption journey can help spark memories, and for children, bring a new understanding of the emotional journey their parents undertook to become a family.
Having an editor who can help recreate the entire adoption process by going through files and stacks of papers, your old date planner and photographs, is a proven way to document your family’s origin story accurately. But going beyond that with interviews of your recollections and feelings during that time is what brings your family's story to life, what gives it power and depth.
4. It’s a beautiful thing to commit the dreams for your family’s future to memory.
While you think you’ll remember Every. Single. Thing. from the time you get home with your child, well...most new parents simply don’t. Sleep deprivation is an equal-opportunity affliction for ALL parents, after all!
During the first weeks at home, emotions run so high that specific, detailed memories may not gel for the long term. Adoptive parents often have the additional challenge of a child who is “mourning” the loss of familiar people and surroundings. Even a baby who came from less-than-ideal circumstances is still undergoing a major adjustment. “Our daughter immediately bonded with me, but it took her longer to bond with Mike,” Mary Lou says. “During those first weeks together as a family, we experienced a wide gamut of emotions: joy, stress, tears, though most of all intense love.”
And it’s not just the whats, whens, and hows that can begin to fade from memory; it’s the notions of what the future may hold, as well. “It's no different than when expecting a birth child. As a parent, you hold dreams for your as yet unknown child, and those are things you want to share with them in the future,” Teresa says. An Adoption Journey book is a wonderful option to not only celebrate your child(ren) and the family you have become, but to reflect upon your dreams for the future. What do your children dream of? What do you hope for them? Including handwritten notes in your book can be a heartfelt way to connect the past journey and the future of your family.
5. It has the potential to become a “holiday” tradition.
Whether you call it Family Day or Gotcha Day, the yearly celebration of the day you all officially became a family calls for a sentimental tradition. Thumbing through an Adoption Journey book is an ideal way to spark memories—and increasingly thoughtful observations and questions from your growing child.
6. It can simplify your life.
Mementos of your adoption journey can multiply, and get misplaced. “An adoption journey book is a great idea, one I wish I had, rather than having to have so many different ‘tools’ that I have used to create keepsakes of our journey. I have notebooks and files, photos in boxes, and more,” Mary Lou says. But even if, like Mary Lou, you’ve already saved your keepsakes in an organized way, you might want to consider having your mementos digitized (to save space) and memorialized in a book (to reveal and preserve their stories, beyond just their sentimental value).
Even digital photos, videos, and other electronic files can be challenging to find years later, especially as platforms evolve and laptops and other personal devices are upgraded. A book is a forever platform, and one that is always accessible for prompting remembrance and joy.
7. Family stories are gifts to our children.
Not only do the stories we tell our kids help them relate and feel like an essential part of the family, they strengthen them and, research shows, make them undeniably more resilient. As author Bruce Feiler wrote in a viral NYT piece:
The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.
By preserving your family’s unique narrative in an Adoption Journey Book, you are giving your child(ren) a valuable tool that, in the long run, will not only help stir memories, but will also help solidify their identity.
8. It may ease your anxiety.
You know that perpetual worry—stoked by your friends’ relentless Pinterest-board updates—that you’re not doing enough in the way of memory-keeping? That your photos are scattered across devices and that you only made a milestone book for your first child, then...nothing?
Creating an Adoption Journey book with a personal historian is a guaranteed way to ease that nagging guilt, to create something worthwhile and meaningful without any of the DIY angst. We do the heavy lifting; you get the heirloom of a lifetime.
Oh, and one more (not-so-little) thing:
9. Remembering is an enjoyable process.
Any family that wants to preserve their adoption journey in a heirloom book must commit to doing two essential things:
Gathering materials (adoption files, mementos such as plane tickets and fingerprint cards, family photos), and
Talking about your memories and journey with a professional family biographer.
The “talking” part is not only easy, it is rewarding. The act of reminiscing about your family's stories with an open-hearted and interested listener can be healing, empowering, and centering. So even before you've received your book, you will have received a real gift: the gift of sharing.
What is your reason for wanting to preserve your family’s adoption journey?
We're willing to bet there are many reasons for preserving your adoption journey as there are reasons for adopting in the first place. Why do you want to preserve your family’s adoption journey in a book? Please share with us in the comments below, or give our founder, Dawn, a call at 917.922.7415 to see how we can work together.
Related Reading:
An Adoption Book Primer: Learn the difference between a life book, an adoption story book, and an Adoption Journey book.
Spread the love.
Do you know any adoptive parents who might be interested in an Adoption Journey book?
Please share this post on social media or via email and help us spread the love!
Who will tell your life story?
No one will tell your life stories but you. Start small by saving family photos & preserving stories so you create a lasting, meaningful legacy, one step at a time.
Chances are, nobody will. That is, unless you tell your story.
May is Personal History Month: a time to raise awareness about the importance of preserving our own stories, of recording memories and family history in a way that can be accessed—and appreciated—by our future generations.
Perhaps it’s obvious that your memories and stories matter. But be honest: What have you done to preserve them? Have you taken the first step to ensuring your legacy?
Even the family memory keeper needs help.
I have always been the memory-keeper in my family. Even as a young child I took pictures at every party or outing, crafted scrapbooks with meticulously handwritten captions, and have kept journals with varying levels of commitment throughout my life (beginning with a little lock-and-key Holly Hobbie diary).
But over the years my gathered ephemera took on the weight of “stuff” as I moved from college dorm to a barely-there Manhattan apartment to a Brooklyn brownstone with just one closet. With an ambivalent heart during one streak of “practicality,” I tossed my childhood diaries and stacks of letters. I even removed many of the things I had once carefully arranged in those scrapbooks, opting to pile them into a shoebox that fit more easily into my limited storage space instead.
Necessary, perhaps, but shortsighted nonetheless. I certainly don’t advocate saving every little thing (oh, how minimalism appeals!), but my point is this: Even for a devoted, lifelong memory keeper such as me, many of the things that trigger memories—and prompt the stories that make up our lives—get lost along the way.
And as our lives become more and more entrenched in the digital realm, artifacts of our youth—of the milestones and life transitions and the special moments—get buried deeper and deeper in the digital abyss.
Start saving your stories, one at a time.
It can be daunting to think of writing (or even telling!) your life story. So don’t.
Start saving your stories, one at a time. For now, at least, forget about culling all those boxes of old family photos from the attic. Don’t stress about fleshing out your family tree.
Just start small:
1 - Save your family photos.
Begin setting aside the best few photographs from each major life event—or from any small yet joyful moment in a ‘regular’ day. (It doesn’t have to be a monumental moment to be worth remembering; some of my favorite memories are of the everyday variety!) Make sure to record the details, too: who, what, where, when. Put them in a digital image’s metadata (it’s easier than you think) or write captions on the back of your printed pictures.
2 - Share one story.
What’s the one story Grandpa tells every time the family gathers at Thanksgiving? Or the story your kids always beg you to re-tell at bedtime? Is there a childhood adventure you think of often that you’ve never shared with your kids? Whether it’s a story so often cited that it’s become family lore or a brand new gem, if you don’t proactively record it, it will be forgotten. It pains me to type that last sentence, but let’s face it: The oral history traditions of our ancestors have long since fallen by the wayside, and it’s up to each of us to preserve our own personal histories.
3 - Do something special with that story.
Did you hit “record” on your smart phone when you told your one story? Did you type it up? However you chose to capture your story, take it one step further and make something with it—then share it. I’ve got a few easy and unique ideas for you in an upcoming blog post, but for starters, why not have dinner with a few loved ones who would appreciate the story, and share it again? (It’s my experience that once the story-sharing starts, it’s contagious—and that always makes for a joy-filled get-together full of reminiscing!)
Your one story might turn into “Chapter One.”
The reason for starting small is to avoid being paralyzed by the overwhelming possibility of telling your WHOLE story. The irony of starting small is that, more often than not, one story becomes two, and two becomes four. You get the idea: Stories multiply quickly.
In honor of Personal History Month, why not take the first step in preserving your memories? Follow the simple three-step plan above, and get in the storytelling spirit!
Are you doubtful that you’ve got any stories worth telling? Check out this list of reasons why your story—yes yours!—matters. And read this, too.
Trust me, your stories convey your values, forge connections with loved ones, and contribute to your family history. Your stories are a most meaningful legacy.
Your stories—even just “Chapter One”—matter. But you must tell them.
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of Sept. 23, 2026, is overflowing with recent reads on memoir, life story writing, and family history preservation.