Favorite books show next generations where our imaginations take flight and where we find delight.
“I have found the jigsaw puzzle of my life has changed and the old pieces no longer fit, and I shouldn’t keep trying to fit them back in the old places. I have learned to turn the new pieces over carefully and find the new me I was becoming. Happiness did not find me again: I made it happen.”
“Cleaning out” is a perennial, daunting pre-occupation. But, as I see it, the important thing is to begin. Here’s how.
The courthouse was quickly cleared, and Grandfather found himself alone. He made for a wooded tract. He tripped, probably because he had been hit in the back by a minié-ball, which he carried the rest of his life.
We discovered that these were not the letters of a young man in love. Rather these were letters from a man who twenty years into a marriage realized what he almost lost.
Choosing a title is about grabbing the reader’s interest and giving design direction. The best title is usually not what the client has had in mind.
Coaching, a partnership between two individuals, is still a new concept in the African context. It is my desire to coach others to grow in her or his personal, professional and spiritual growth.
Sometimes adult children feel they know their relative's stories well, and don't want to pay for a personal history. But there are other considerations.
Ben Hylden, a college student, persisted in finishing the story that dramatically changed his life. Here is an excerpt.
“We carry our ancestors in ways we don’t know or understand,” said James Walsh, a University of Colorado history professor.
Grandma Hazel Lagerborg, was a formidable woman: sturdy, hard-working, and nearly six feet tall. I might have been frightened of her were it not for the twinkle in her light blue eyes.
With a little coaxing from a question in a place card, we share our stories at the table.
After he moved from Samoa to America, Pulutausa Fatu Utuone Aiono Nu’u changed his name to Joe, but at a great loss.
People who cared deeply about Howie persuaded him that what he knew had to be told. And he agreed that if even one person was helped by it, he had to tell his story.
From correspondence saved with a beloved grandmother, journals, family snapshots and memories, Linell Joyce set out on the formidable task of preserving the story of her life as a CIA wife and mother
In writing a life story, it’s important to stay true to the story as told by the person who lived it. What really happened can shift over time, not necessarily intentionally. Memory and imagination both whittle down and embellish an event. And is the result less “the truth?” Perhaps it is more.
“Do you have a favorite site in the park?” With a far-away look in their eyes each responded, “Yes, but I’m not sure I want to tell you where it is.”
Once your personal history project is complete—whether a book or a CD—how do you distribute it to family members and special friends? One excellent way is to weave it into a celebration.
On a tour of the German Medieval but now modern city of Regensburg, our tour guide clustered us around two bronze-covered bricks imbedded in a cobblestone street. As we peered at the stones, the guide explained that their purpose was to connect us with a tragic story.
In this introduction to his story, High Mark 11, World War II pilot Ralph Jenks’ granddaughter recounts visiting the beaches of Normandy with her grandparents and other family members on the 60th anniversary of the invasion.
We all have signature stories: those stories that come from the core of us, and that we tell over and over and over. My mother-in-law, for example, was a World War II war bride. While my father-in-law was stationed in Vienna, they met in the opera house.
When I chose to tell the story of my grandmother’s accident on horseback high in Rocky Mountain National Park for a first sample book in a Legacy Story series, the choice was a practical one. I had photos. I had my grandfather’s account of the story from his newspaper columns. And I knew it was a life-changing event in their lives. Slam dunk.
In any personal history project, photographs can amplify the text in extraordinary ways. The pictures are as significant as the words, and they require many hours of work.
In each person’s life there are turning points and defining events that influence the course of a life–or ones attitude toward life. If we can identify some of these in a Retelling project, they become like stones of remembrance.
Within his ten-year pursuit of a four-year college degree, he spent two years traveling the world with a sleeping bag and a Martin guitar, singing for his supper. He encountered thugs, lepers, the bulls of Pamplona, and a horse that bamboozled a town.
Read excerpt “Shootin’ the Flume”
CONTACT US | Copyright © 2025 by Retelling. All Rights Reserved. | Powered by Squarespace
Precipitating moments that cause ripples throughout our lives can be quiet ones.