Memories Matter
Featured blog Posts
READ THE LATEST POSTS
Life Story Links: May 5, 2020
A plethora of stories about storytelling in the age of Covid; musings on what we pass on to our kin; plus video and biography links worth your time.
“Nothing can match the treasure of common memories…”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What We Pass On
THREADS OF TIME
“Necessity prompted me to pull out my fabric and sewing machine to create cloth face masks for our family, but Mom, gone 20 years now, was right here with me as I stitched, and remembered lessons she taught me,” Marjorie Turner Hollman writes in this reflection on her family’s sewing traditions.
AN INHERITANCE OF VALUES
It’s Leave A Legacy Month in Canada, and Scott Simpson of Heirloom Videos by Cygnals encourages everyone, wealthy or not, to leave a legacy beyond financial gifts: “What gets recorded gets remembered.”
STORYTELLING SCHOOL
The Moth has created a weekly educational blog with family-friendly stories and activities for children of all ages: Engage the hearts and minds of the young people in your lives through storytelling.
The Covid Diaries
LIVES INTERRUPTED
A window pane. A hospital ID. Unfolded laundry. When a history professor in California challenged his students to choose an artifact to represent their experiences during this pandemic, some of their responses moved him to tears.
A CASE FOR CORONAVIRUS JOURNALING
We are experiencing “a period that historians will debate for decades, even centuries to come. Our chance to control some of that narrative is in our hands.” And when it's safe again, “we will want to be able to look back at how far we have come and celebrate one another—together, knowing the story of our experience will live on.”
“REMEMBER WHEN…”
Memory researchers say these months will eventually become a blur for those of us isolating at home. A look into how memory works, and which memories may prove more lasting.
A VALUABLE INTERGENERATIONAL RESOURCE
Let us remind ourselves of the many positive roles that our grandparents typically play: as kin-keepers, caregivers, storytellers, and moving reservoirs of social histories. Of grandparents, memories, and the pandemic.
PRESS PAUSE
I can feel overwhelmed by all the ways I “should” be spending my newfound time at home. It’s okay, though, to get lost in our memories or stare out a window.
PRESERVING THEIR ‘PIECE OF THE EARTH’S DIRT’
The recent stay-at-home directive has led personal historian Pat Pihl to think about the role that home plays in developing our character. Here she shares one client’s reflections on 50+ years “at the farm” and the impact it has on three generations.
The Writers of Our Lives
THE ACCIDENTAL BIOGRAPHER
“She was an unknown writer with no experience in biographies when she wrote to the elusive Samuel Beckett. To her surprise, he wrote back.” This obituary for award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair entices me to read her work. Here, she is remembered as a friend.
THE MEMOIR IN ESSAYS
“An author’s ability to forgive that earlier version of herself is especially prevalent in the memoir-in-essays, perhaps because of the extended time period covered as a writer composes essays across years or even decades.” LitHub offers up a reading list of recent autobiographical essay collections.
ART AND OBJECT
“I believe that work like mine...can be inspiring to anyone who’s ever felt undervalued or unheard, or anyone who’s inherited material related to someone interesting but unknown,” Eve Kahn says. Her biography of American Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams used a trove of personal letters to recreate a life.
In Video
“DEAR DIARY…”
Hat-tip to personal historian Michelle Sullivan for sharing this video, which she so aptly captions “Kent State: a child’s perspective...or, the importance of encouraging journaling by children.” It’s a fine example of a personal history in the guise of a public radio news report.
“THE MAN WITH A BEAUTIFUL SMILE”
“New York’s elderly population need extra special care. Their stories should also be celebrated,” editors at Untapped New York say as they introduce this documentary project about an almost 100-year-old New Yorker and Holocaust survivor, George Sachs.
...and a Few More Links
Have you heard of The Mass Observation Archive?
How looking back at our old photos boosts mood and relaxes the mind
Amid the pandemic, a family learns their neighbors are their long-lost relatives.
Short Takes
Let’s be kind to ourselves
I can feel overwhelmed by all the ways I “should” be spending my newfound time at home. It’s okay, though, to get lost in a good book or stare out a window.
My news and social media feeds are filled with articles on how to maximize my time at home. How to make the most of home-schooling. How to revive old hobbies, finish abandoned projects, take part in viral video challenges and bake bread and educate myself more and more and more. Zoom calls and Google Hangouts and radical self care (huh?).
I’m feeling a sense of overwhelm. There are days I ride the waves of productivity and move forward with ease, and others where I walk around the house unfocused and feeling a sense of unidentified dread.
Can you relate?
These are strange times, indeed, and there is no precedent in our lives for how things “should” be, how we “should” feel.
Press pause
I just wanted to say: Let’s be gentle with ourselves.
Let’s allow for days where not “enough” gets done.
Let’s allow for days when, rather than organizing our photo archives (a project on my list, for example), we browse our old photos and get lost in the memories they stir.
Let’s skip the journaling for a day to escape into the pages of a long-favorite novel.
Let’s take time to honor our feelings, and to allow ourselves to just be—no judgment, no expectations.
Personally, I will continue to jot down ideas on my own to-do list, and professionally, to offer up family history activities and memoir writing tips on this site, just in case you’re ready for them.
Just remember: It’s okay for some items to remain on our to-do lists indefinitely, and to bookmark activities for later.
I’m here as a personal historian to listen to your stories when you feel ready to share, to move forward with a legacy project that’s been on your mind for ages, and to offer wisdom for your DIY projects, too. And I’m here as a fellow human navigating this new normal with vulnerability and good intentions—let’s do our best, together.
❤️❤️❤️
Life Story Links: April 21, 2020
Hybrid memoir, journalistic memoir, and writing about estranged family members; plus timely storytelling and oral history resources and Mother's Day ideas.
“We’re all products of our context in time and place.”
—Linda Joy Myers
Front line workers were heroes during the flu epidemic of 1918, as they are now during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during influenza epidemic (1918). Original from Library of Congress; digitally enhanced by Rawpixel.
Writing Our Lives
HYBRID MEMOIR, EXAMINED
In her essay “What Are the Boundaries of a Memoir?” Beth Kephart uses new books by Mark Doty and Paul Lisicky to look at “the hybrid memoir—these books that spring from the wells of the curious self, that dissolve the borders between the writer and the world, that operate somewhere between the lyric braid and the collage.”
THE MISSING
“It’s not my uncle’s absence that haunts me—after all, I never knew him. It’s that no one—not my grandparents, my parents, or any of my mother’s cousins we visited with over the years—told me stories about him, or about losing him.” Joanna Hershon on those missing from the figurative family tree.
ON WRITING ABOUT FAMILY
In a thoughtful conversation that talks about excavating family history and approaching memoir as a journalist, Sopan Deb describes his work as “a portrait of a broken immigrant family and my attempt to put it back together the best I can.”
Timely Resources
DEDICATED PASSENGER SEARCH SESSIONS
With a $30 donation to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, a researcher from their American Family Immigration History Center will uncover your family’s connection to Ellis Island in a personalized 30-minute research session. Successful searches will receive a free digital copy of the ship manifest displaying your ancestor’s arrival in America and, when the Foundation’s office reopens, a free copy on archival paper by mail.
CORONAVIRUS JOURNALING
The New York Times offers up tips for starting your very own coronavirus diary, while North Carolina–based The Cheerful Word delivers this free download with 100 writing prompts for these extraordinary times.
FOOD MEMORIES FOREVER
With so many of us spending more time in our kitchens these days, why not take time to write down the recipes that mean something to us—along with the stories behind them? Check out this free printable for a personalized recipe book from The Storied Recipe; and my custom set of food memory cards (I mailed a few cards to each family member with a handwritten note asking them to record their favorites).
Ah, Stories!
UNEXPECTED SOULMATES
I always tell my clients that longer doesn’t mean better when it comes to storytelling, and I think this three-minute animated tale of love nurtured from afar is proof of that concept:
Mother’s Day Tributes
HONORING MOMS
Now more than ever, the gifts of listening and connection are meaningful things we can give to those we love. Here, I offer up four ideas that fit the bill for Mother’s Day giving.
WORLD MOTHER LIVE 2020
The World Mother Storytelling Project is a far-reaching global initiative that teaches us to listen to and tell our mothers’ stories. Murray Nossel, co-creator of the Narativ listening and storytelling method, will host the free event, which will be live-streamed from Town Hall in NYC on May 10, 4-6pm. Apply here to be an event storyteller.
...and a Few More Links
“What to do when your parents give you junk from your past.”
Free download: 56 Essential Family History Questions to Ask Your Parents and Grandparents
Passenger search tips and tricks from the Ellis Island Database (video)
Life Story Links: April 7, 2020
Lots of advice for preserving personal history during the coronavirus pandemic, plus recommended videos & tips for capturing family stories and writing memoir.
“One voice has the power to forge connections and create a better, more empathetic world.”
—Dr. William Lynn Weaver, StoryCorps participant
In this time of sheltering-in-place and extreme social distancing, maintaining connections by good old-fashioned telephone calls is one way to go. Photograph of American Telephone & Telegraph Exhibit at New York’s World Fair, 1939, courtesy Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
In the Time of Covid-19
THE QUARANTINE DIARIES
“What makes history is people who write some stuff or keep some pictures,” Mr. Herron said. “This is how we communicate across centuries.”
PERSONAL HISTORY QUESTIONS
I created this guide, 56 Essential Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late, in hopes that more people will use their housebound time to forge meaningful connections with their older loved ones.
ACTIVITIES FOR ALL AGES
Family Search has compiled myriad in-home and online family history activities for families to do together “designed to bridge the distance between loved ones.”
ASKING QUESTIONS
This pandemic is the time to preserve your family’s stories, writes Ellie Kahn, a personal historian in the Los Angeles area. And Arizona–based Olive Lowe of Life Stories by Liv offers four easy steps to use Google Voice to record those story-sharing conversations.
‘RAPID RESPONSE COLLECTING’
“As a historian, you’re always thinking about what’s missing, of what you want to know more about. I think what people will want to know about this crazy time is what everyday life was like, what it was like to live through.” Museums scramble to document the pandemic, even as it unfolds.
FROM AN ARCHIVIST’S PERSPECTIVE
Hat-tip to New York–based archivist Margot Note for highlighting the following articles in her always informative newsletter:
“Write it Down”: Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic
Presentation: Archiving COVID-19: A Guide
Consider joining Margot’s Facebook community for news of upcoming webinars (she recently hosted the popular “Close Together/Far Apart: Creating Family Archives While Social Distancing,” for example).
Ah, Memories
IN PICTURES
“Photo albums make me think of family: the big, bulky leather-bound behemoths that Mum whips out at Christmas. They’re time portals I can peer through to see my dad looking like Morrissey in the ’80s,” Meg Watson writes. “Making one for myself was a totally new, and surprisingly emotional, experience.”
ADOPTION JOURNEY BOOK
For adoptive parents interested in preserving memories of their journey, here is a road map for what to save, how to record memories, and when to begin compiling everything into a book.
HOME & AWAY
In her new memoir, Always Home, Fanny Singer writes about her “uniquely delicious childhood” as daughter of food icon Alice Waters. Now she ponders the future of her mother’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, and “what can make us feel grounded and sane…at a time so pregnant with precarity.”
Watch List
TIME TO LEARN
The free video archive of 2020 RootsTech sessions includes discussions about copyright, DNA, genealogy research techniques, and tackling difficult chapters of our family history.
THE WRITER’S LIFE
“I had no idea when I taped this…class that it would be released during a time where we’re living in a great deal of isolation and searching for ways to grow, witness, help, find peace within the chaos,” memoirist Dani Shapiro says. Watch “Writing for Inner Calm: A Mindset, Methods, and Daily Exercises for All” with a two-month Skillshare trial.
STREAMING TREASURES
The Library of Congress “has an extraordinary trove of online offerings—more than 7,000 videos—that includes hundreds of old (and really old) movies,” writes Manohla Dargis, among them this lyrical slice of life in 1948 New York City, “In the Street.”
A few other videos that might be of interest:
Survivors Testimony Films Series from Yad Vashem
And a 29-second advertisement with a message from Shaquille’s mom Lucille to “Preserve What’s Priceless”:
History Made Personal
REMEMBERING OUR SOLDIERS
A 41-year-old bricklayer from the Netherlands turned his childhood passion for World War II history into an act of remembrance lovingly tending the graves of Allied soldiers.
SALVAGING A MUSEUM’S ARTIFACTS
On Jan. 23, a fire gutted the upper floors of 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where the Museum of Chinese in America’s collection was housed. Now, as workers sift through what survived, families are celebrating hundreds of boxes of heirlooms that were unloaded from the building’s scorched interior.
...and a Few More Links
Nick Flynn on making collages from found ephemera as “an atlas of my journey”
Invisible life lessons from war in a peacetime house
Review: The Memory Book: A Grief Journal for Children and Families
Rawpixel has curated a collection of vintage images of the Spanish Flu and historical medical images.
Short Takes
56 essential questions to ask your parents to capture their personal history
Don’t wait until it’s too late—have meaningful conversations with your parents about their past with questions designed to spark memories and make story sharing easy.
If you’re reading this, congratulations—you’re on your way to a most enjoyable and important journey! Who are you interviewing? A parent? Grandparent? Beloved aunt or uncle? Whomever it is, clearly their stories matter to you, and I am thrilled to be able to help you capture them through an oral history interview.
Print out this guide or use it as inspiration to develop your own list of topics and questions for your loved ones. I’ve got three key tips at the bottom of this post to help ensure that you capture these important family stories successfully, and I am always here as a resource to help guide you on your journey. Whether I can one day help you turn your stories into an heirloom book or help you get the ball rolling on a DIY project, my message to you is this:
Start now. Don’t wait. I can recount too many tales of people telling me “I wish I had asked my father…” that it saddens me deeply. It is my mission to convey a sense of urgency to everyone. Perhaps you have a little extra time on your hands right now… Please, ask your parents and grandparents the questions that matter now, before it’s too late.
Family history interview questions
Childhood & Family Life
Describe the home you grew up in.
What were you like as a child?
Do you have memories of what your parents said you were like as a baby?
What was a typical day like in your family when you were little?
How does your family tend to show their love for one another—through physical affection including hugs and kisses, gift giving, reaffirming through saying “I love you” or some other phrase, etc.?
What would you say makes your family unique from other families?
What did you do when you were bored as a child?
If you had to create a family motto, what would it be?
How did you feel about school, and what type of student were you?
Did you have a best friend, and if so, how did that relationship play out over the course of your life?
When you were little, what did you answer to the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
What were you like as a teenager?
Food Memories
What meals would be in your family’s cookbook—the foods that make you feel nostalgic for your childhood or for home?
What are your oldest recipes and where did they come from?
What smells transport you to this day right back to your childhood?
Who are/were the best cooks in the family? Tell me about them.
What family dishes would you miss the most if you never tasted them again?
If cooking and food were an integral part of your subject’s life, explore 20 more food-themed questions here.
Life Transitions & Milestones
Tell me about your experience…
…deciding where to go to college
…pursuing your career
…getting married
…getting drafted into the war
…serving in the military
…becoming a mother/father/grandparent
…falling in love for the first time
Tell me about your first job.
Did anyone ever throw you a surprise party?
How did you feel on your wedding day? What memories of that day stand out for you?
What can you tell me about the first time you experienced loss? Who died? Did you go to the funeral? How old were you? How did it effect your outlook on life?
Decisions & Lessons
What is the best decision you ever made?
What is a memorable time you have failed, and how did you recover from that experience?
What lessons(s) do you most recall learning from your parents? Grandparents?
Did you have a favorite teacher in grade school, or another role model who had a major impact on your life?
Can you share about any hardships (in history, such as the Depression or a war, or in their personal life, such as a divorce or unemployment) that you experienced in your life, and how you survived/thrived/coped?
Tell me about a significant time you said “no.”
Do you have any regrets? (Encourage elaboration here; sometimes a prolonged silence is the best invitation to speak.)
Traditions
What holiday did you most look forward to while you were growing up?
What were some of the traditions your family observed related to that holiday?
Do you have any family traditions that have been passed down for generations in your family?
Does religion hold a strong place in your family? (If “yes,” there are a variety of follow-up questions to ask to pursue this thread!)
What is the most memorable gift you have ever received? Given?
Are there any specific family heirlooms you inherited? Why do they hold meaning for you?
How are/were birthdays celebrated throughout your life?
In what ways have you/your family kept your culture alive (through language. foods, cultural traditions, for example)?
Fun & Games
What songs have held special meaning to you over the years?
Who was the trickster in your family?
Do you have any funny stories from your past?
What’s your favorite family story to recount around the dinner table?
Did you play sports growing up, and if so, what were those experiences like?
What was the main form of entertainment in your family when you were a kid (board games, listening to the radio, playing music/singing, reading books, putting on shows, etc.)?
Describe what family vacations were like, and if there were any destinations that you traveled to often?
Tell me about a time you were incredibly embarrassed.
Big-Picture Questions
What values would you like to pass down to the younger generations of your family?
How did you learn resilience?
What would you tell your 20-year-old self?
What would you like your legacy to be?
Are there any questions you wish you had asked your own parents?
3 keys to capturing the best stories
Ask open-ended questions.
Sometimes simply planting the seed of a memory yields the most thoughtful and meaningful stories. “Yes” or “no” questions do not promote conversation, so avoid them in favor of questions that help set the scene (“remember when…”) or probe your subject’s personal history in unique ways (“imagine if ________ hadn’t happened…” or “what about _______ do you wish you remembered better?”).
Consider this a conversation more than an interview.
Listen generously, ask follow-up questions, and let your interview subject go off on tangents that yield interesting stories and prompt unexpected memories. Your goal should be to get the most meaningful stories from your loved one, and if that means waiting another day to discuss what you thought today’s topic was, then so be it!
Ensure successful preservation.
Use more than one way of recording your interview. If you are using a voice recorder, use two. Ensure your subject feels comfortable, that the environment is quiet, and that the recording device is close enough to capture their voice. Find more specific tips (including equipment recommendations and even more family history–themed questions) in this guide from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
More free resources
Visit my Resources Toolkit to for more free downloads, including lists of questions to spark Thanksgiving and Christmas story sharing; a guide on how to use family photos as prompts for writing life stories; plus more tips for writing about your life in short vignettes.
Get inspired to preserve your family stories
What to save for your adoption journey book
If you would like to document your family stories in an adoption journey book, here is a road map for what to save, how to record memories, and when to begin.
It’s been a while since I worked on an adoption journey book, but I have recently gotten a few inquiries about them and thought I would share some helpful tips on how to best preserve your memories of this transformational time in your life.
Including images in your adoption journey book of your child’s everyday moments during the early years (think eating, bath time, reading a book) will help to bring those experiences to life in the most amazing way.
What is an adoption journey book?
While a life book is your child’s story, an adoption journey heirloom book is your story—you as an adoptive parent, and you as a member of your growing family.
Your adoption journey book might include:
memories of the first meeting, the long journey home, first weeks together, first bonding experience...the memories that you don't want to fade
a visual timeline of the adoption process
photographs through the years
maps of your child’s birthplace and where you physically traveled
handwritten notes from your journal, especially during the early days as a new parent
typed or handwritten letter with dreams for the future
thoughts on what it means to be a parent—and a family
memorabilia such as your ticket to your child’s birthplace, or the email alerting you to your approval as adoptive parents
insights and feelings—the inner story of your adoption journey
There are so many paths to parenthood. Your journey, though, is the one that matters to you and your family. An adoption journey heirloom book is a beautiful means of honoring your family’s unique story and of preserving the memories and emotions for your children—and, just maybe, for the next generation.
How to keep track of your adoption journey
Did reading the above list give you palpitations? Angst at realizing you have no idea where you would dig up all that info, or guilt at not having kept a journal? If you are eager to create an adoption journey book but unsure how to access your memories, I can help you.
But if you’re thinking about this earlier in the process, first, I congratulate you; and second, I offer you a road map for keeping track of your journey so documenting it in a book later will be an even smoother process. I generally recommend undertaking making an adoption journey book around the first or second anniversary of your adoption (also called a “Gotcha Day” or “Homecoming Day”).
Some ideas for what to save:
1 - Keep an accordion file of things to help you fill in a timeline of your adoption process:
all adoption paperwork (including email correspondence, postponements, requests for new forms, etc.)
airline boarding passes
postcards from the locations you travel through
ticket stubs or restaurant menus
2 - Save photos of:
your travels, in the airport, at the adoption locale
first family photo
milestones for your child(ren), including new foods, first American travel destination, first friends, etc.
any photos showing you in the country of origin for your adopted child
photographs of special, everyday moments (parents feeding a baby, reading to your children, hugs)
images that show your child’s personality (active kid running, a funny child laughing).
Ideally, you will have a mix of photographs that will help you recall this special time in your family’s life, including both the monumental (the day of adoption) and the everyday (bath time).
Consider keeping a journal.
While a journal will of course help you preserve memories for an adoption journey book down the road, writing about your feelings will also have an immediate benefit: Journaling has been shown to have a positive impact on physical well-being and to be a helpful stress management tool.
A few topics to consider journaling about:
forging bonds in the early stages of adoption
how you choose to share details about your child’s origins
ways you intend to incorporate your child’s culture into his/her life (traditional foods, holidays, language)
moments of grace
moments of struggle
Adoption is a lifelong journey.
Adoption is a lifelong journey. And while an adoption journey book such as I am recommending typically focuses on the process of adoption and the first year of settling in and becoming a new family, you always have the option to delve into your stories later in the journey, too.
I focus on these early months because, for one, they are so emotional and life-changing; and two, because they are often the most difficult to remember in detail in later years—when you will undoubtedly want to share them with your child(ren) as they mature.
For those of you who are in the midst of your adoption journey or who have already made an heirloom book, what other things might you suggest?
Additional reading:
Life Story Links: March 17, 2020
This week's curated reading list includes a number of moving first-person reads, notes on the process and craft of personal history, plus keepsakes and photos.
“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”
—Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
Vintage St. Patrick’s Day postcard
Process & Craft
PEOPLE TALK
Editor Lisa Dale Norton on how to handle dialogue in your memoir writing (is it okay to invent what you haven’t recorded?).
“CHUNKING IT OUT”
There’s a lot of organization and structural editing that goes into crafting a narrative from a series of interview transcripts and a box of photos; I love Lauren Befus’s analogy of “piecing together a large puzzle” of our clients’ lives.”
TRIBAL & PERSONAL HISTORY, CONVERGED
“I don’t know how people write about real people,” Louise Erdrich said. “If you can’t find a direct quote of them saying what you want them to say, how do you put words in their mouth?” Her latest book, The Night Watchman, is a blend of truth and fiction, real people and real events plus a good dose of the imaginary.
FREE LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Preservationist Margot Note teaches how to organize and preserve your family and personal legacy during a free webinar on Sunday, March 22 at 1pm.
Voices
THE EROS OF ESTRANGEMENT
In this adapted excerpt from Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light, Joshua Wolf Shenk explores specificity of place; dislocation and alienation; and what we do and don’t reveal in memoiristic writing.
ORIGIN STORY
FamilyScrybe contributor Taneya Y. Koonce’s musings on how interviewing her grandmothers and learning their stories helped shape her identity.
ANTHOLOGY: “WHY WE WRITE”
“The real reason that we're writing is to create opportunities for conversation and empathy and understanding and to have that present in the pages of this book,” says Randy Brown, a military veteran who gathered 61 authors to make a case for writing about war.
“A MEMOIR AND A RECKONING”
“This, I understood finally, was history: not the ordered narrative of books but an affliction that spread from parent to child, sister to brother, husband to wife.” Alex Halberstadt on writing a family memoir when your grandfather was Stalin’s bodyguard.
More Life Stories?
NO REGRETS?
A recent Wall Street Journal article reports that a growing number of adult children are interested in hearing more of their parents' stories. My thoughts on the so-called trend, and what we can do to ensure that such interest abides.
CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES
Who were your heroes when you were growing up? How did they make a difference in your life? Personal historian Carol McLaren of Arizona–based Unique Life Stories shares recollections of her childhood inspiration, Helen Keller.
The Stuff of the Past
PRECIOUS FAMILY RECIPES
The Internet keeps countless recipes in neat, tidy digital files, so handwritten notecards are quickly becoming cherished keepsakes. The folks at Martha Stewart have advice for how to best preserve them (and there are a lot more factors to consider than I imagined).
PHOTOS TAKEN, PHOTOS NOT TAKEN
“I don’t have the answers...around when to put the camera away and when to keep on clicking. But I do believe we owe it to ourselves to authentically examine how photography fits into our own lives—paying mind to when it enriches and when it detracts from our now.”
ADIEUX
Deanna Dikeman’s portrait series doubles as a family album, compressing nearly three decades of her parents’ goodbyes into a deft and affecting chronology.
THE WHISPER OF FAMILY GHOSTS
“I think about the material things—letters, pictures, tablecloths—that connect children to the houses they left behind. Pieces of paper, bolts of fabric, woven together in a chain and stretching across diasporas.” Hannah S. Pressman on the import-export business of our memories.
...and a Few More Links
StoryCorps is pulling some of the more heartwarming stories from their archive to uplift during difficult times.
Combing through thousands of digital images, these photo organizers help to “tell your life story.”
The eclectic museum safeguarding Selma's long and intricate past
Short Takes
“I wish I knew”
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of adult children are interested in hearing more of their parents' stories. Are you among them?
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, “The Questions You Wish You Had Asked Your Parents,” cites a growing interest in people wanting to know more of their family stories.
The uptick in awareness of story preservation is attributed to the rise in home DNA kits, the popularity of family history via sites such as Ancestry, and the younger generation’s comfort level with documenting every aspect of their lives: “Younger people are more transparent and used to telling the story of their own lives, often online for many to see, and expect it from others,” writes Clare Ansberry.
This recent article in The Wall Street Journal indicates that more and more families are realizing the value of preserving their stories.
All of this is no doubt accurate, and I do find millennials in particular curious about their parents’ lives before parenthood and even nostalgic about their own childhoods.
But I would argue that this interest in our collective family history is nothing new—at least, not when talking about family history in terms of stories.
While finding distant DNA cousins is indeed new, wanting to know more about our parents’ lives is not. Unfortunately, all too often people don’t recognize that desire until it’s too late.
I’ve written before about how it may seem like your grown kids don’t care about learning about your life—but that in fact, they merely don’t care to pay attention just yet. And that’s the key here: We either need to get the younger generations to realize the urgency in capturing their elders’ stories, or convince the older generations that not only do their stories matter, but that they will be treasured by their family when they are gone.
Is story preservation a new trend?
The message of that WSJ article is that, apparently, both of these things are happening—changes are afoot that are opening our eyes to the need—and value and desire—for documenting our family stories.
I hope this is the case. I know personal historians such as myself and those quoted in the article are making every effort to spread the word and stress the importance of preserving our legacies.
I’m not convinced, though, that enough people are on board.
I hope that more and more people begin to see the value in asking their parents about their lives before parenthood.
I hope that more and more people realize that now is the time to begin asking—not later, not when it’s more convenient or they’re less busy.
I hope that more and more family elders acknowledge that their lives have been interesting, that the paths they have taken hold lessons for the next generation, and that their stories matter.
Most of all, I hope that you FEEL the urgency and take the first step toward preserving your family’s stories for posterity.
Avoid having to say, “I wish I knew.”
If you’re a DIY’er, consider writing about your life or interviewing your family members.
If you would like to explore how working with a personal historian can make the process easier and yield a more professional product, please reach out to chat.
What I know: I still hear from far too many people about the regrets they have: not asking their parents about their lives until it is too late; until dementia has crept in, or their parents have passed.
It is my mission to help people have no regrets. Won’t you join me in this mission?
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.