Tell me your story…
They're the four most powerful words in the English language according to Daniel Gottlieb, psychologist, award winning radio host & author of "Letters to Sam: a Grandfather's Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life".
Our stories matter - and context helps us to understand.
We’re expanding on our memoirs- by putting our experience into an historical context.
We’ll begin by charting our ‘origin’ stories- 7 years at a time, over 12 weeks. It’s a means of understanding the circumstances during which we and our world-views were formed.
And should you wish to join a facilitated group - we'll come together weekly with one mission in mind - "being good ancestors".
You're invited to invest some time in creating a #PandemicPresent.
We've reached mid-life and beyond. We've done our best. We made the best choices we could for ourselves and our loved ones - given our circumstances and the times.
As we recall music, fashion, culture, current events, places we lived, relationships & experiences across the decades - what emerges is a clear picture of what we value, what once 'called us' and even interests and passions that may have had to lay dormant while we got on with the business of living.
This story-telling practice is an invitation to take a deep dive into the enthusiasm and sense of possibility we came into the world with, overlay the lessons learned, choose an intentional life moving forward . The stories are a way to pass along the wisdom gleaned.
Our stories bring us clarity - and they are our legacy. A gift.
Consider that we met our children, nieces, nephews, and their children as grownups or elders.
In our presence, they experience only our present.
What might they learn of having known us when we were their ages?
There’s a gift in our stories, the perspectives of a lifetime.
Grab a notebook, and once a week over the course of 12 weeks - we'll connect to share our progress.
Rest assured, by Week 12, you'll have clarity about what matters most, what's next and a rich bank of anecdotes and tales to pass along.
The recipe is simple.
Take your present moment, add a bit of focus, a dose of playful curiosity, and the structure of a weekly look at your family's story between the forties and the 21st century - in seven year increments.
What to do with it?
That's up to you.
You might choose to create a collage, a scrapbook, a photo album, a binder of stories, paintings, an audio file of reminiscences, or a video collection of narrations.
At it’s core - this is introspective. You need not share it with anyone.
We all have the capacity to compose the story of our life and embrace the whole of it - or simply appear as a footnote in someone else’s.
The point is to emerge from this experience with a compendium that is a tangible representation of where we are, where we have been and what has shaped our worldview.
Someone, someday will ask us what we did during the pandemic.
Won't it be lovely to have something share?
Let’s do this!
