No One Can Tell Your Story Better Than You

 

“My grandmother made me a scrapbook because I was once too young to remember; I am making scrapbooks for my family because one day I may be too old to remember.” – Unknown.

It’s no secret that I love to scrapbook – Christen and I have been touting the virtues of documenting and memory-keeping since our very first episode in November 2021, when we told you about December Daily. Since then, we have specifically addressed the topic of memory keeping six more times (including yesterday), and have broached the subject in various other episodes as well.

So why all the fuss about sticking photos on paper and writing down a few notes about it? As I mentioned in the podcast, the photos and stories that we preserve for future generations are clues to who we are and where we come from. Yes, we scrapbook to help us remember our lives (and believe me, we do forget), but also so that future generations can learn about our lives, too. 

My scrapbooks are particularly precious to me these days because I have preserved photos and stories of so many people I have lost, including my father, my sister, an aunt, several friends, and, of course, my husband, Mark, who passed a little over a year ago. I love that I can flip through these books and relive the stories that made me laugh and cry. Even more importantly, many of those stories were told by Mark, and I listen for his voice whenever I read them. 

I know that many people mistakenly believe that no one is interested in their stories, but I am here to tell you that it’s just not true. Every story matters. Even some of the most mundane daily routines become fascinating when they are recounted through the lens of time. Learning about how my great-grandmother picked cotton and how she and her family survived the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 gave me a glimpse into what life must have been like for her – something I would never have known if my grandmother hadn’t asked her to write it all down. Did you ever read the Diary of Anne Frank? Her accounts of the daily lives of herself and her family while they were in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands are known around the world.

A few years ago, while talking about all the places I have lived and how many times I have moved, Christen told me I should write them all down – to document them. She was right. Many of the places I have lived don’t even exist today. Some of the homes I have lived in have been bulldozed, one burned to the ground, and who knows what condition some of the others are in. My father and sister are dead, and my mother has dementia, so the only other person who shares my life history is my brother, and he is younger, so he doesn’t have the same memories as me. No one else can tell my story better than I can.

I’ve talked about scrapbooks specifically, but I wanted to share with you a few different ways to document your stories. On the podcast, I mentioned Project Life and My Modern Story, and I’ve documented in every type of way you can imagine, including 12” x 12” traditional scrapbooks, mini albums, traveler’s notebooks, and more. I’ve linked several things I mentioned in the podcast on our Heard it on the Podcast post this week, but here are a few video flip-throughs and photos to give you some ideas for how you can document your life, too.

Here are two Project Life (pocket pages) I snapped for my Instagram account:

• Week 12

• Week 13

  
  

Those pocket pages weren’t actually in pockets, of course (easier to photograph outside of the pockets), but you see how they are laid out. It's a fun way to document a whole week at once.

These are a few pages from the COVID journal I kept during the pandemic. 

• July 21, 2020

• June 30, 2020

• May 5, 2020

  
  

You can see more of my scrapbooking and memory-keeping projects by scrolling through my Instagram account or on my YouTube account here:  

Cindy M - Crafty Neighbor

No one else can tell your story better than you. Don’t leave your stories to be forgotten by later generations. Your family may not care much about it now, but later, when they are older, when you are gone, they will appreciate very much whatever you’ve been able to leave for them. It doesn’t matter how you preserve the stories…only that you do.

“One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide” ― Brene Brown.

Creating My Family Tree

 

This week on the podcast, we are discussing ancestry, genealogy, and DNA testing. I’ve been interested in my family history since I was very young, having been told my entire life that my maternal great-grandmother was part Native American. I’ve talked about my genealogical journey on my family website, and as I mention in the podcast coming up Wednesday, I’ve had some exciting finds and some frustrating failures. I pretty much gave up on my research when my kids got really busy with school and extra-curricular activities, as I just didn’t have time to spend on it, but now that technology has made the search so much easier, I feel the need to get back to it. Already, I’m starting to daydream about trips to Salt Lake City to research the archives there, and I’m tempted to test my DNA on multiple sites to see if anything new pops up. But really, I think I just need a place to start, and that’s with me.

I decided to start a family tree on Ancestry.com since they offer a free 14-day trial and I know at least one distant relative who also has a tree there; I thought I might be able to add her data to mine to build my tree quickly.

It took me only a few minutes to get my account started and to begin adding my family members to the tree. The process is guided for new accounts, and although I found it a bit annoying at first, in the end, it turned out to be a blessing, as I was able to add the better part of three generations to my tree in a matter of minutes without my genealogy notebook at hand. I did have to do a bit of editing on the tree, as it insisted on naming my daughter (and co-host) Christen Carlson, even though her name changed to Murray when she was adopted by my husband. I’m not sure what the precedent is for that, so I may have to do some research and I may have to change it back.

One of the things that did surprise me was the wealth of documents and information that is handily available with the ease of a mouse click. While adding my maternal grandmother to my tree, Ancestry offered hints about some possible document matches. When I clicked on the link, a pop-up appeared with marriage, birth, and death records that filled in some missing information that I had skipped when I added her to the tree.

All in all, it looks to be a powerful tool for researching and documenting ancestry, which is a far cry from the old Family Tree Maker software and handwritten records I used way back when. I can’t wait to get back to my tree to fill it out some more. I also need to decide if I want to keep the membership after my 14 days are over. If I cancel, my membership will revert to “Guest” access, and I can still access and edit my family tree, but all these wonderful search tools and documentation will no longer be at my fingertips. It’s a hard call, and I’ll have to think about it.  In the meantime, I think I’ll go add my DNA results to the GEDMATCH website and then come back to this family tree. How big can I get it in 14 days?

Have you used an Ancestry.com family tree? Do you have a subscription to Ancestry? I’d love to hear about it! Join us on the Facebook chat group, MMC Chat, or comment below.

Tell Your Story

November starts the real preparations for December Daily. I’m not going to tell you about that project yet again, but there are some good takeaways from projects like that. Since it is also National Novel Writing Month, I want to use the novel-writing theme to talk about documenting family stories, but instead of doing paper crafting, I want to focus on writing stories and using digital aids to create books you and your loved ones will treasure for many years to come. 

I will mention several of these in the podcast tomorrow, but I wanted to share a little bit more about them here. I think I’ve mentioned Becky Higgin’s My Modern Story multiple times in the last year of podcasts. This is a wonderfully helpful method for documenting family histories and personal stories of all kinds. She created this project as a heartfelt attempt to help others, especially non-scrapbookers, find ways to quickly and efficiently preserve those important memories before they are gone. The workshop is free and can be completed quickly in one evening or an afternoon. It utilizes her Project Life app and allows you to add stories or text of any kind, really, along with photos. It’s so simple and she has great ideas for where to find those stories, like taking posts directly from social media, etc. I’ve used this app multiple times to document family stories, and I plan to eventually convert the stories I’ve created there into a family history book – the pages can be used to create stunning, hard-bound books either by downloading the pages directly or by ordering through the app. There are, of course, some in-app purchases, which are optional, and you can make your storytelling as simple or as complex as you like.

Along those lines, for those of you who like the look of traditional scrapbook pages, but don’t have the patience, money, or time, there are lots of options for creating fun, colorful, and artistic pages digitally. Many of the major scrapbooking design companies now offer digital versions of their products, which you can use with Photoshop and other applications to create beautiful scrapbooks right on your phone or computer. In fact, the aforementioned Project Life app can recreate the look of traditional or pocket-based scrapbook pages by using digital papers and other elements right in the app (in-app purchases available). Once you’ve created your pages, you can download them to print at home, order prints from the app, or convert them into a bound book as described above.

And speaking of bound books, don’t forget that online photo retailers like Shutterfly, Snapfish, Persnickety Prints, and Amazon Photos also create lovely bound books to preserve your family memories. You simply create your pages at home on your phone or computer, upload them to the print retailer of your choice, arrange the pages as you like, and order…simple as that. Most of them also offer an in-app method for designing your pages, where all you do is drag and drop your photos and text. This is a fantastic way to document those family stories, with or without photos and/or text. What’s even better is that you can order multiple copies of a book to give to other family members. Remember Christmas? It’s less than two months away….

One last word about documenting stories…and yes, it does involve December Daily. December Daily Prep Day is coming up on Saturday, November 12. This is a day that many participants look forward to as we spend our day online with the DD community getting our supplies ready and pre-making pages so we are ready to document when December 1 rolls around. There are often tips for organizing, beautiful page ideas, lessons of all kinds, and, of course, a lot of camaraderie as we all start to get excited about not just December Daily, but the holiday season as a whole. You can find out more about DD Prep Day in the links below.

Whether you scrapbook or not, celebrate Christmas or other holidays, or just spend the fall and winter months hibernating in your hidey-hole, this is a great time to start thinking about the stories and the legacy you want to leave behind. Do you have cool stories about your ancestors? Do you have more recent memories that you don’t want to forget? Or do you have a trauma that needs to be brought forward into the light of day so you can heal and move on? Documenting your stories is a great way to do it, and the options for how you get started are truly endless. If you need more help, or encouragement, or have questions, please feel free to email me or comment below…I’d love to help you get started telling your stories.

• Ali Edwards - December Daily
• Just Write - also at AliEdwards.com
• My Modern Story by Becky Higgins