Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: September 18, 2018
Tangible memories, truth's elusivity in memoir, an autobiographical essay collection, a free chapter of "Your Meaning Legacy,” & a chance at a free writing book.
“All she ever wanted was to be remembered. And she understood that memories happened in the mind but also in the heart.”
—Michelle Gable, I’ll See You in Paris
“Kim Sisters” photographed by Robert W. Kelley for Life magazine. ©Time Inc. Many of the millions of photographs from the LIFE Photo Archive, from the 1750s to today, are available for non-commercial use.
Tangible Memories
TRANSPORTED BY MEMORABILIA
Massachusetts–based personal historian Nancy West writes about how something as prosaic as a paper placemat can bring back evocative and powerful memories of time spent at her grandparents’ Colorado cabin.
BLESSING OR BURDEN?
“Keeping everything honors nothing!” Don’t let your most precious photos and memorabilia become a burden to the next generation. The team at the Family Narrative Project has valuable advice to help you sort your memory-laden stuff.
SUITCASE OF TALISMANS JOURNEYS TO ISRAEL
Stacy Derby of Bind These Words in Chicago went above and beyond to help a client gift an invaluable piece of her family's history to the National Library of Israel. (Use Google Translate in your browser to read in English.)
Writing, Remembering, Reading
MEMOIR: THE ART OF THE SUPPOSE
“The truth is elusive, but don’t let that defeat you. Let truth’s elusivity galvanize you toward the deep dive for the facts, the shimmery details, the startle of a color red or a wind storm or a mother’s muffins,” said writer Beth Kephart in her opening address at HippoCamp 2018.
BOOK REVIEW
“We all have different versions of ourselves, depending on the story,” Mimi Schwartz writes in her autobiographical essay collection, When History Is Personal. Read a review here.
IT COMES DOWN TO STORY
Last week I attended Narrative Medicine Rounds in NYC to hear physician and writer Haider Warraich, MD, talk about “The Search for Beauty at the End of Life.”
YOUR MEANING LEGACY
Legacy planning expert Laura A. Roser offers a step-by-step guide to cultivating, capturing, and passing on non-financial assets such as values, wisdom, and beliefs in her new book. Download the first chapter here.
NYACK RECORD SHOP PROJECT
Listen to history: “Two chairs, a microphone, a few questions and a 30-minute hourglass-style timer. When the sands ran out, the interview was over. Some interviews began with the line: ‘Tell us your story.‘ And that was enough to get the ball rolling and the personal history flowing.”
...and a Few More Links
Lifetime of family memories commemorated through art
Five tips for historical research, from uncovering local history to plotting your family tree
Storytelling connects children with history, families and each other.
Actress Sally Field’s new memoir reveals a personal history that she has never shared before.
Enter by October 1st for a chance to win a free, signed copy of Helen Sword's The Writer's Diet.
Short Takes
Come & See Me This Friday!
Come out to Chatham this Friday to see our heirloom books—AND enter to win a wine gift basket! Meet 40 small business owners, SHOP LOCAL & get unique gift ideas.
I will be showcasing my books and life story packages in Chatham this Friday!
It’s a great opportunity for many local folks who have asked about what I do here at Modern Heirloom Books to touch and feel some sample books (yay!) and to hear about how the interviewing process works.
Honestly, it’s a rare soul who doesn’t cherish their memories—and seeing how those memories can be brought to life, showcased, and preserved in an heirloom coffee table book is often all it takes to get someone to take the first step!
Bonus: I’m giving away a wine gift basket!
I invite you to come on out to see my books AND to meet lots of other business owners from the area. SHOP LOCAL!!
While you’re there, you can enter to win a gift basket from Modern Heirloom Books that includes
a bottle of wine
heart-shaped wine stopper
gourmet goodies
a memory-keeping journal!
MUST BE PRESENT AT THE EVENT TO ENTER. I will draw one winner after the event.
Come on out & meet your neighbors!
Date & time
Fri, September 21, 2018
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
location
Chatham United Methodist Church
460 Main Street
Chatham Township, NJ 07928
details
First Chatham Small Business Festival sponsored by B.I.G. (Believe Inspire Grow).
Forty women-owned small businesses, including Modern Heirloom Books, will showcase their products and services, including
unique gifts (think holiday shopping!!)
skincare & beauty
healthy meals & health coaching
education & writing services
and LOTS MORE!!
Ample parking behind the Church’s building. Food and refreshments will be provided.
Narrative medicine: Stories nourish empathy
An introduction to narrative medicine through a recent NYC talk from physician and writer Haider Warraich, MD: “The Search for Beauty at the End of Life.”
I am devoted to the power of story. It compels me personally; it fuels my brand. I am also invested in helping caregivers, and promoting candid conversation about how we die. So it is no wonder that I found my way to exploring the field of narrative medicine.
“Narrative medicine is clinical practice fortified by the knowledge of what to do with stories,” said Rita Charon at TEDxAtlanta. Dr. Charon is a general internist and literary scholar at Columbia University who originated the field of narrative medicine,.
“Stories can offer the kind of contextual richness that promotes and nourishes empathy, prompting a provider to switch from asking ‘How can I treat this disease?‘ to ‘How can I help my patient?‘” —Kim Krisberg, AAMC News
Narrative medicine gives voice to the suffering, and takes into account a patient’s whole story—as Dr. Charon says, including “even the unsaid hints and guesses about what might be left unsaid.” There is story to be received in a person's words as well as their silences.
The more open we are—not just doctors, but all of us—to receiving those stories, the closer we become to making meaningful connections.
Every Word Counts
“Awakening and nourishing my own sense of story has transformed my teaching and my practice,” Dr. Charon said. “I was able to learn how to listen closely, where every word counts.”
When she first meets a patient, she says, she no longer goes down a medical history questionnaire recording answers, but rather asks for a patient’s story—“what do you think I need to know?”—and she listens. No writing, no typing, no computing; just listening…absorbing.
“Persons were deeply thirsty to give profound, detailed, eloquent accounts of themselves. They didn’t always know how, or how to start,” Dr. Charon notes.
She tells the story of a patient who, once prompted for his story, began to talk of his father who died, his sibling who died, and of his teenage son with whom he was having difficulty. He began to cry. Dr. Charon asked, “Why do you weep?” His response: “No one ever let me do this before.”
The Search for Beauty at the End of Life
I attended this month’s “Narrative Medicine Rounds” hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Medical Center. The September guest speaker, Haider Warraich, M.D., author of Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life, talked about the search for beauty at the end of life.
“You’re down to the floor of who you are in the presence of illness,” Dr. Charon said in her TEDxAtlanta talk. And indeed, Dr. Warraich’s stories attest that, in dying, we are most fully human.
His most important lessons as a doctor did not come from senior physicians, he says, but from elsewhere: namely, from the interactions with patients nearing death and their families, and from the questions that arose within him as a result.
The stories he recounts are powerful and poignant and, while part of many physicians' daily experience, simply not spoken of much in today's death-averse society.
“We’re always searching for meaning....both within our personal lives and within our professions,” Dr. Warraich said. “Even as we search for meaning in the world around us, the search for meaning is an inward search. I don't think that meaning is a quality that exists in the world around us, but is a narrative that we find within ourselves and then paint the world with it.”
Doctors surrounded by suffering are pursuing "the search for beauty in the arms of death." And the search for beauty, Dr. Warraich says, is essential.
“What is perhaps the most magical thing about beauty is that it can't be defined, and especially in our modern world where it seems like the only things that count are the ones that can be counted, I feel like beauty is such a compelling concept because it eludes any degree of quantification,” he said.
“The search for beauty is not just a trivial pursuit, it is essential for our very survival.”
Guided by Stories
“For once in the hospital there were tears with no pain.” These words punctuated Dr. Warraich's story of a patient who witnesses her daughter's wedding in the I.C.U. after a a medical team helps orchestrate the last-minute nuptials before the patient died.
“It was the most full-of-life room I had been to in a long time.” Here, Dr. Warraich describes his response to a family's beautiful acceptance of their loved one's death.
While "any story that goes long enough will end with death,” as Dr. Warraich said on Wednesday, paying attention to the stories of individuals promotes empathy. And the many, many stories of the people Dr. Warraich encounters on his medical journey will continue to inform us all about the universality of life and death.
Further Reading
A case for taking care of the elderly
“As with raising a baby, the answer might come from the heart. What is really needed is for us to love the old as we do the new and celebrate the end as we do the beginning.” —from “Seeing the Cycle of Life in My Baby Daughter’s Eyes,” by Dr. Warraich, NYT
saying goodbye, celebrating life
“It was the most full-of-life room I had been to in a long time.” —from “The Rituals of Modern Death,” by Dr. Warraich, NYT
the gift of remembrance
"Our loved ones’ stories are often buried treasures." —from Notes from a Funeral
remembering my parents
“Bringing his candor, wit and intelligence to his most intimate and mysterious of landscapes—our parents' lives—memoirist Richard Ford delivers an exploration of memory, intimacy, and love.” —listen to Ford's Narrative Medicine Rounds lecture from April 2018
Life Story Links: September 3, 2018
Opportunities for life story tellers including a memoir class, writing contest, & volunteering with seniors; plus, gratitude journals & digital photo archives.
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
—William Faulkner
Hal B. Fullerton. 1899. Cranberry bog and drain in Calverton, Suffolk County, NY. Gelatin silver print, part of the Empire State Digital Network accessed via the Digital Public Library of America. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format.
Some Storytelling Inspiration
PUBLIC ARCHIVE
Graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT Austin experimented with ways to make interesting archival materials available and useful to anyone with a computer. Check out the fruits of their labor, including photographs of the frontier and the paperwork of slavery.
ON GROWING OLD
“I just said goodbye to one of my clients,” Virginia–based personal historian Karen Bender writes. “Flo, 97 and on hospice, is going to live with her daughter in a different state for whatever time she has left.” Bender shares what “old age” means to Flo, from the book they worked on together.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Not all the life story projects Massachusetts–based Nancy West produces are traditional narrative memoirs: Here she shines a light on how to use photos to create a gratitude journal.
Opportunity Knocks
THE MAKING OF A FAMILY HISTORIAN
Wisconsin–based personal historian and educator Mary Patricia Voell offers a new online course designed to give participants of all ages the framework and tools to tackle their family history projects.
ARCHIVAL STORYTELLING
The New York Times is hiring a team “to exhume the photographs and stories that had been relegated to the dustbins of history and to explore anew the stories left untold.” Interested?
WRITING CONTEST
The Family Narrative Project is seeking entries for its 2018 writing contest: Submit essays that reflect the full range of family life by October 31 for a chance to win $500 plus a feature on their website.
VOLUNTEER WITH SENIORS
Check out the important work being done by Brittany Bare and her team at nonprofit My Life, My Stories, where marginalized seniors are paired with volunteers to help write their own memoirs. While in-person volunteering is currently only available in the San Francisco Bay area, there are other ways to help, too.
...and a Few More Links
Have you discovered the Digital Public Library of America yet?
My guest blog for Save Your Photos Month is about how to find what matters amidst all your digital clutter.
Foundation strives to put “a face” on history for younger generations
Podcast recommendations for life storytellers, creative entrepreneurs, oral historians, and anyone who loves a captivating first person story.
Short Takes
Listen up!
Podcast recommendations for life storytellers, creative entrepreneurs, oral historians, and anyone who loves a captivating first person story.
In the past few weeks I have taken two road trips with my family, and while we are huge music lovers and relish this opportunity for uninterrupted song play (not to mention great car acoustics!), there were times when we wanted something else.
Here’s a sampling from our non-music playlist that I hope you, as fellow life story tellers and memory keepers, may enjoy!
The Life Story Coach Podcast Interview
Since I had a captive audience, I previewed my recent interview with Amy Woods Butler, host of The Life Story Coach podcast; I figured my husband and son were as safe an audience as any. I am someone who typically likes to be behind the scenes—taking the pictures, asking the questions—but in this case I was delighted to have the tables turned on me.
Amy’s podcast is geared specifically to life story professionals like myself (so it's a bit of “insider baseball” for those of you who aren't in the business), but I do recommend a listen to this episode for any creative entrepreneur. A few of the topics we discussed:
the pros and cons of publishing your prices
making a highly customizable product easier to buy
trusting your gut over your mentor on occasion
stories deepening over the course of personal history interviews
using lifestyle magazine techniques to tell engaging stories
It was a true pleasure conversing with Amy on topics so close to my heart, and I hope the resulting podcast provides value and food for thought for some of you.
Listen to my interview with Amy and get helpful show notes & links here.
Discover more episodes of The Life Story Coach on iTunes.
Oral History Jukebox
The Oral History Association holds something they call Oral History Jukebox at their annual meeting. I won't be able to attend this year's conference in October, but found many of the clips from last year’s session (which turns an open ear to the granularity of oral history recordings, including insights into interview technique, archiving, and more) interesting.
It is always gratifying when an interview subject hits upon one small story that represents something larger, whether universal in nature or fateful for them. Here are two snippets I found particularly worthwhile:
woman ranger
In the following clip, Major Lisa Jaster recalls the 180 days she spent away from her family in Ranger School. During a long pause at the end (powerful even now for me as a listener), Jaster “is overcome by her intense memories of [a particularly] challenging and emotional moment,” writes oral historian Lieutenant Commander (Retired) Scott Granger. “Those of us in the studio struggled as well, and the interviewer, unable to ask a follow-on question, had to pause the interview to allow everyone to gather themselves before continuing.”
those that didn't make the team
“I think almost every black male friend that I had that wasn’t athletic is now dead due to that war.” Interviewers enter into conversation with Ike Blessit, a former outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, about Vietnam, sports, and friendship, and this two-minute clip speaks not only to the power—and importance—of silences during an interview, but also to ways of suggesting discourse without asking leading questions.
And One More, Just Because
If I'm sharing first-person stories derived through interviews, it's rare that I don't include one from StoryCorps. Not only have I long admired that they are trailblazers in making personal history interviews mainstream, but I am a fan of the ways they make those stories available and oh-so-tempting. Their animations, for example, provide a unique and inviting portal to listen, so here’s a recent one that moved me:
What are you listening to, fellow life storytellers?
Life Story Links: August 21, 2018
The importance of oral traditions, why interviewing subjects in a familiar environment elicits the best stories, family history resources & more memoirish links.
“In books lies the soul of the whole past time: the articulate audible voice of the past.”
—Thomas Carlyle
During a weekend trip to our nation’s capital, I escaped the oppressive heat in the Library of Congress and found inspiration at every turn. The next line of this quote from Thomas Carlyle reads: “the articulate audible voice of the past.” Indeed.
Places in the Heart
READING TILL THE END
“Papa left the summer I turned eight.” Cinella Barnes, who tells the story of her tragic childhood in her memoir Monsoon Mansion, reads excerpts from her book to her hospitalized father in this moving essay on the power of memory and questions left unanswered.
HIBAKUSHA EXPERIENCE
As the only country that has ever suffered nuclear attacks in war, Japan has a responsibility to ensure that memories of what Hiroshima and Nagasaki went through will be passed on to future generations.
ON LOCATION
Clinton Haby of San Antonio–based StoryKeeping prefers to conduct interviews in subjects’ homes when possible, setting the interviewee at ease and capturing a familiar environment for loved ones.
Family History Takes
ODE TO ORAL TRADITIONS
“Those stories, even if they are embellished in the retelling, make a statement: This is who we are. And we remember.”
AN APPALACHIAN ODYSSEY
A genealogist and a neurologist hunt for ALS genes along a sprawling family tree. “What makes [their] work pleasurable is also what makes it hard: Tracking familial disease meant tracking families, and every branch is complicated in its own way.”
BOOKMARK THIS
Last week I offered up a curated list of resources for the genealogist who cares about story.
Paper Trails
BOOKISH NOTES
“All we talk about...is books—your book, my book, this book, that book,” writes Sarah White of First Person Productions in Madison, WI, who shares takeaways from her creative nonfiction residency in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
INSIDE AN INHERITED DIARY
Carol McLaren of Arizona–based Unique Life Stories ruminates on inherited diaries & letters as windows to the past.
...and a Few More Links
Understanding vernacular photography: collecting found photos
Reuniting stumped readers with the books from the edges of their memories—a delightful read for library lovers everywhere
A bundle of old negatives provides a connection to immigrant ancestors and a vision of what Buffalo, NY, looked like generations ago.
Short Takes
Family history in the 21st century
Family history is more than names on a chart; it's people's experiences that hold meaning. A curated list of resources for the genealogist who cares about story.
So much is written about the overwhelming popularity of genealogy, and the proof is all around: accessible (and inexpensive) DNA tests, fun (and memorable) Ancestry commercials, stylized family tree art as gifts…you get the idea.
It’s quite possible you are one of the millions of family history enthusiasts who consider tracing your roots a worthwhile hobby. I count myself among them, too.
But I worry that with all the focus on discovering distant cousins and fleshing out the family tree, we may be losing sight of what makes family history so important: the history behind the names.
I am heartened that so many others, like me, are refocusing their genealogy lens onto discovering, sharing, and preserving the stories of those who came before us.
Sure, the research must happen, and the documents will hopefully be preserved; but the life experiences of our ancestors, when they are known, should be told in ways that are accessible. Trust me when I say that it is highly unlikely your ancestors will be thrilled to sort through 18 boxes of census records and ship manifests, no matter how meticulously catalogued they are.
They will, however, read a story.
Family History Told Engagingly
A recent survey indicated that American readers don’t respond so much to literary writing as they do to the power of story. Stories resonate. Stories make us feel, and relate. They inspire. Just imagine how much more powerful stories can be when they are about—or by—your own family!
So no, you don’t need to be a writer to begin writing your family stories—your kin will not care about a misplaced comma or a run-on sentence when they are being gifted with a story of someone whose blood they share.
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
—Rudyard Kipling
There are so many ways to go about preserving your family stories. I think it is important, though, to pick one and begin. To inspire you, I’ve compiled some resources to make dipping your toes into the narrative family history waters easier.
Resources for Telling Family Stories
Storytelling, Writing & Oral History
In her well-organized Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History, Judith Moyer writes: “Many people become concerned about ‘doing it right,’ yet they also recognize that a voice on tape is better than nothing at all. So they try just a simple interview, just talking to someone for an hour. Ten years later such people are thankful that they made the effort, and those who did not …well, they have regrets.”
On my own site, check out Books to Help You Write Your Family Stories, Even if You Are Not a Writer; and download the popular resource How to Use Photographs as Prompts for Writing Life Stories.
I’m a big fan of Family Search's #52Stories initiative, which provides the inspiration to write down one story every week for a year, bringing you 52 steps closer to completing your personal history. Plus, see how two folks have taken up the challenge successfully.
If you are considering interviewing family members to capture their stories, first, congratulations! Second, browse some questions in advance, but remember to use them only as a guideline—curiosity will assuredly be your best guide.
Genealogy & Family History
Your genealogical research will become the bare bones onto which you build the flesh of your family stories. So whether you spend just a few days confirming names and birth dates or you make genealogy a lifelong endeavor, these links will prove helpful.
This Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Genealogy is a whopper of a resource, with useful links, records overviews, step-by-step guides and more.
Preservation and archival basics, from what materials to use to protect your oversize genealogy documents to proper environmental control and photo and heirloom preservation.
The National Archives has catalogued an easy-to-navigate treasure trove of genealogy resources including tools for genealogists; genealogy events; downloadable family tree charts and forms; and how to start your research at the National Archives.
If you are considering hiring a professional genealogist to help with your research, search the Association of Professional Genealogists for specialists near you.
Consider yourself a history detective? Head to the far right column on this page for highly specific checklists for keeping track of your family history clues as well as “case files” of mysteries they have solved.
Branching Out
I am curious to see where your family history research takes you! Good luck in tracing your roots, and please, please remember to preserve family stories—your own as well as your ancestors’—as part of your genealogical journey.
Life Story Links: August 7, 2018
Grandmothers, mothers, Vietnam veterans, and more tell their stories for the next generation; thoughts on the craft of life story preservation, memoir & memory.
“I think of a good conversation as an adventure. You create a generous and trustworthy space for it...so the other person will feel so welcome and understood that they will put words around something they have never put words around quite that way before.”
—Krista Tippett
In Their Own Words
TESTING THE WATERS
A grandmother discovers grace and self-forgiveness while offering a safe place for a child to explore: Massachusetts–based personal historian Marjorie Turner Hollman tells one of her own stories and, I hope, inspires others to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to tell their own.
ON MEMORY & INHERITED TRAUMA
“I imagine the weight of her trauma in my palm, opaque and heavy,” Crystal Hana Kim writes of her grandmother in “Like You Know Your Own Bones.”
WAR STORIES
"I never talk about the war." Until now. Raul Roman undertook a three-year effort to document the lives and memories of North Vietnamese veterans and their families; hear some of their voices in Roman's recent NYT piece.
BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
“Eight years ago, I decided I was going to interview my mother and last year, I finally did it. I’m not 100-percent clear on what took me so long,” writes Cari Shane. “Perhaps the reality of what and why I was recording my mother’s stories; it was an acknowledgment of her mortality.”
THE PRESCIENCE OF A NAZI-ERA DIARIST
“The past informs the present; human memory is frail and fallible; and the only way to mitigate the discord between these truisms is to chronicle current events in granular detail,” Daniel Crown writes of Victor Klemperer’s legacy.
Craft & Conscience
THE FUTURE OF BIOGRAPHY?
Historian Charlotte Gray wonders what tomorrow’s biographers will do to engage readers and bring “them as close as possible to a credible version of a life.”
VALUING VALUES
Bethesda–based writer and editor Pat McNees explores two topics of utmost interest (and importance) to the life story community:
a meandering conversation about “the rocky shoals of truth-telling” that happened six years ago but was worth her time to revisit anew;
and why a code of ethics is crucial for those of us helping others tell their personal stories.
PICTURE PRIMER
“You know how disappointing it is to come across an orphaned photo. You are the ancestor of future generations who will want to know who you were. Don't let them down!” writes Alison Taylor of Pictures & Stories in Utah. Learn how to—easily—add metadata to your photos.
MY OWN NEXT CHAPTER
On the heels of relaunching my own company’s website, I wrote about the journey from magazine editor to entrepreneur and announce a new signature line of bespoke books.
VANITY PROJECT?
“It’s anything but vanity to know yourself and to want to share your story with the generations still to come,” writes Samantha Shubert of NYC’s Remarkable Life Memoirs.
MORE MEMOIRS, MORE MEMORIES
A client attended her 60th school reunion and learned that the whole gang was working on memoirs. “I was pleasantly surprised to hear this and thought: Will family memoirs be as standard to future generations as wedding portraits are today?” says Massachusetts–based personal historian Nancy West.
THROUGH THE LENS OF OUR FAMILY ALBUMS
Thomas Allen Harris, who has gathered people for photo sharing events across 50 different cities for years, says it is the stories that emerge from the images that bring people together, connect generations, and “open up the communication of the heart”—for “the heart,“ he says, “has its own song.” He is working on a pilot for a new TV show, Family Pictures USA.
...and a Few More Links
Adam O’Fallon Price waxes poetic on the virtues of the semicolon
Memory study casts doubt on the first thing you remember from your childhood.
Ethical wills can be a critical part of one's legacy.
Seven reasons to honor your engaged daughter with an heirloom book
New survey shows that storytelling moves us far more than literary quality.
Short Takes
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.