Are you the legacy keeper in your family? The person who has a passion for genealogy and family history? Has your garage become a repository for all the family treasures, neatly tucked away until you can start safeguarding all those family stories? If this sounds like you, and you need a little motivation or inspiration on how to preserve those family memories, read on.
Preserving family stories is a passion of mine, but it can often become overwhelming. There just doesn’t seem to be a clear beginning, and the ending often seems far, far away. Yet, I understand the importance of it, and yes, I REALLY want to do safeguard these stories. Still, life gets in the way – a lot.
Luckily, there are many resources out there to help you keep those memories alive in whatever way works for you. Today, I’m sharing tips, tricks, and resources I’ve discovered to help you preserve your family’s stories. Read on to learn more about:
- How to start capturing family stories,
- Tips and tricks to begin tackling the project yourself,
- My favorite accounts to inspire and guide you, and
- Online resources you to help you
So dust off those old photos, grab grandma’s vintage baubles, and let’s start capturing those treasured family stories.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Table of contents
How To Start Capturing Family Stories
Whenever I’m asked how to start capturing family stories, my flippant answer is, “any way you want.” But really, I’m not trying to be facetious. If writing interests you, researching and capturing family stories is a great outlet to improve your craft. It’s a constant stream of new and interesting content, especially when you uncover something unexpected, such as an old, handwritten poetry book.
But we don’t need to be great writers to capture our stories.
We make things hard on ourselves when we try to create the perfect story with a beginning, middle, and end. Or we try to capture the classic “hero’s journey” where the person is living their life, and suddenly something monumental changes their trajectory. With struggle and perseverance, they overcome great odds and live happily ever after. (Hello, Disney.)
But writing a family story doesn’t have to be all words. Capturing stories visually is also a great way to preserve and safeguard a family story. Take a picture, add the what and when, and you have a story. It can be as simple as that.
This is precisely how I started.
I decided to use my Heirloom Explorer Instagram account to capture my family’s stories. Instagram is a visual medium, so it naturally lends itself to visual storytelling. Photos of my favorite heirlooms are my “writing prompts”. I add small captions to capture what the artifacts are and why I love them. Of course, I also use this blog for long-form storytelling, such as What Secrets Does This Vintage Mantel Clock Hold?.
Heirlooms and family stories pair nicely; after all, it’s mostly the story of the heirlooms that keeps us attached to the items.
– Lisa L. Duncan, Heirloom Explorer
Tips and Tricks for Tackling the Project Yourself
If you’re the one capturing your family stories, I applaud you! This is a BIG undertaking now, but it will be greatly valued by future generations. But, like all significant undertakings, capturing stories yourself can also feel overwhelming.
I often THINK more about “needing to capture more stories” than actually capturing more stories. And then there is the constant realization that what we are doing is truly never-ending. During these moments of overwhelm and paralysis, I need to remind myself that any progress made is a gift to future generations. Any story, big or small, with words or visuals, is progress.
As one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, would say, “bird by bird.”
Three Tricks that Have Helped Me Make Progress
Start Small
Choosing what or who to write about and how you want to write can be daunting. An easy way to start is to list 3-5 stories or people you want to capture and then rank them in order of importance. You must rank them according to your preference rather than someone else’s; after all, you are the one that needs to stay motivated! I think three to five is a good goal if you’re serious about making progress. It’s more than “one and done,” and still an achievable goal.
Eliminate Decision Paralysis
Often, we end up procrastinating because we have too many choices. Try eliminating decision paralysis by tossing a one-sentence reminder of the story in a bowl (or perhaps a vintage vessel). Then, challenge yourself to pick one story to expand on each week or month, or whatever pace works for you. It’s an easy way to create a habit, and it’s not a bad New Year’s Resolution!
Embrace “Good Enough For Now”
Let’s face it, capturing stories over multiple lifetimes is never-ending. There’s always one more anecdote, one more memory, or one more ancestor to add. Remove “done” from your mindset and focus on “good enough for now.” This little shift releases the need to have a story be “perfect” before moving on to something else. It also leaves the door open for you, or someone else, to revisit in the future.
Accounts That Will Inspire and Guide You
Now for the fun part. A little inspiration goes a long way in getting those creative juices flowing, so I want to share a few of my favorite Instagram accounts with you. Some of these accounts offer their services for a fee, but they also provide a wealth of information to their followers for free. I hope you check them out.
(Full disclosure: I have not paid for these services, nor am I getting paid to promote these services. These are simply accounts that inspire me.)
Storytelling Inspiration
The Art of Recollection
One of my favorite accounts that I’ve followed since nearly the beginning of my journey on Instagram is @artofrecollection. She discusses why she chose Instagram as the story-telling medium of choice on her website, The Art of Recollection.
Her feed is full of beautiful old family photos, and her captions blend thoughtful reflections, historical perspectives, and specific details about the picture. Her writing style creates a feeling of knowing the person in the picture and exploring what their life might have been like. She also generously shares how she researches and preserves her family stories.
Recently, she started to capture facts and stories of family members using “playing cards,” which she purchased and modified from @thecreativefamilyhistorian. I love this idea and may have to add this to my 2023 New Years’ Resolution list!
Modern Heirloom Books
Hiring a professional writer to capture a family story is a marvelous gift. Dawn Roode is a personal biographer and the face behind @modernheirloom. An accomplished editor, Dawn’s storytelling process begins with one-on-one interviews. She also reviews photos, artifacts, and memorabilia to help identify important storylines for the biography. She then turns these stories into beautiful keepsake books.
Her Instagram feed offers a wealth of information for people wanting to capture their own family stories. She also has several free guides and templates available in her bio link. Be sure to check out her “Thanksgiving Family History Guide,” “Christmas Family History Questions,” and “How to Use Photos as Prompts for Writing Life Stories.”
The Heirloomist
If you’re looking for a truly unique way to preserve sentimental objects or artifacts, check out @theheirloomist. Shana Novak is the professional photographer behind this account. She takes stunning photos of family heirlooms and preserves them by creating beautiful keepsake posters. A look through her feed feels like a stroll through a photo gallery. It’s also a reminder that family heirlooms come in all shapes and sizes, including an old tucked away matchbook or a treasured tee shirt.
I especially love this idea for fragile heirlooms or as a way to share those really sentimental objects that everyone wants, but can’t physically be shared.
Photo Digitization and Preservation
Finally, I want to include a few photo organization accounts I follow. Most of us come to this place of capturing stories because we have or have been “gifted” boxes of old family photos, and we want to preserve their stories.
While these accounts offer paid services to digitize family photo collections, they also share tips and strategies for doing this yourself, including how to organize your digital photos going forward. (I’m especially grateful for the reminder posts to clear out all those screenshots from your phone!) These accounts are definitely worth checking out if this is a project on your “to-do” list, and future generations will thank you. Many local photography studios also offer photo digitization services.
Online Writing Resources
Now that you’ve seen some inspiring accounts, I want to share a few more resources to help guide your research and writing.
I recently attended a family history conference by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. It was the first time I had ever been to such an event, and it was a mountain of information.
One of the presentations was by Kyle Hurst, titled “Adding Story to Family History.” Kyle is a Senior Genealogist of the Newbury Street Press, a family history publishing arm of American Ancestors or The New England Historic Genealogical Society. She offered several tips and ideas on how to write a family history through the lens of a biographer. While her presentation is no longer available, the NYGS website has excellent resources on Getting Started With Your Family History.
American Ancestors offers on-demand courses for a fee, including one that caught my eye: Digitizing Your Family History Collections which is available until January 31, 2023.
How about capturing family stories through recipes?
This free lecture on December 8, 2022, from the Brue Family Learning Center on Family Recipes, is sure to spark some ideas. When my parent’s celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary, we created a family recipe book using the online book publishing service Blurb. We collected family recipes, added favorite photos for each recipe, and commented about how the recipes became family favorites. It’s a fun way to preserve your family recipes AND safeguard your family stories!
Tell Me What You Think
How do you preserve and safeguard your family stories for future generations? Do you have some favorite accounts you follow? Tell me in the comments or send me a message @heirloomexplorer. I’d love to hear from you.
If you’re new here, welcome! I invite you to check out my other posts on Heirloom Explorer.