Writing your family story may not be top of list in your self-care routine, but perhaps it should be. According to research, developing an intergenerational family narrative may be the most important thing you can do to have a strong and resilient family.
Scholars have found that people in families with a coherent family story have better self-esteem, higher levels of social competence, higher quality of friends, and less anxiety and stress. Writing your family story creates a shared history, stronger emotional bonds, and a greater ability to get through difficult times because you know how family members coped with challenges in the past.
Writing about family can feel overwhelming
However, when you sit down to write about your family you may feel overwhelmed. There is a tremendous amount of information and you are so close to it all. Where and how do you begin? You stare at a blank page or fall down a never-ending rabbit hole of internet research. At some point you get frustrated and abandon your family story project altogether saying, “this is just too hard.”
It’s not too hard, but it is complicated. You think you are writing about other people, but you’re not. They are you and you are them in ways you know and ways you may not realize. And just as you feel overwhelmed, your kids will too if you create for them a catalogue of every family member and every key event. You’ll do a lot of hard work only to find they never feel engaged with what you wrote. The key is to write something that is both short and meaningful.
5 easy steps to creating bite-sized family stories
Before you throw up your hands and walk away, follow these five easy steps to create a bite-sized story that is perfect for sharing with your kids:
Select one person to write about.
Choose a parent or grandparent because these are the family members who have had the most significant influence on who you are and will be of most interest to your children. Go with a person who feels easy to write about. Sometimes people feel guilty starting with one parent or grandparent over the other, but your best bet to getting started is to go with the person who is easiest to access. After you successfully write about one family member, it’ll be that much easier to use these five steps to write about more. When you can, include your reflections about the person in your writing. This will put your kids in touch with two generations of their family—the person you are writing about and you.Choose one subject to hone in on.
Start with pen and paper, jotting down a list of anything that comes to mind about the person you are focusing on using whatever shorthand makes sense to you. Ideas can be found on this list of 20 questions that academic researchers have developed, or just jot the memories and experiences that come to mind when you think about their life. Don’t shy away from formative painful events. According to the research, narratives that include both good and bad times (an “oscillating narrative”) bring more wellness to families than do narratives that describe a continual upward trajectory (an “ascending narrative”) or those that take a turn for the worse and never return (a “descending narrative”). Spend about five minutes making your list and then put your pen down and review what you’ve written. Notice what you feel most drawn to write about and then select that subject. Again, the easier it feels, the easier it will be.Set a five-minute timer and start jotting.
Write the name of the person and subject you have chosen at the top of a clean piece of paper and jot everything that comes to mind for five minutes (set a timer). Then, take a few minutes to read what you wrote and use a different colored pen (I like to use green) to make edits by circling what’s important, crossing out avenues you’d rather not take, and jotting any additional notes that come to mind. Try not to censor yourself when jotting. You can always cross out anything you’d rather not include as soon as your jotting is done.Type your jotted notes, keeping them no longer than two pages.
Take your handwritten notes and type them up on your computer, making edits as you go. Limit this writing to two pages, double-spaced. This limit will force you to make choices and think more deeply about what you’d like to say. You may be surprised at how much ground you can cover in just two typed pages. If you find yourself going on for far longer, you probably have two subjects instead of one.Share your stories with family.
Read what you’ve written aloud to yourself and make any additional changes. Then, take your two pages with you next time you gather with your family and share aloud with them. It will take about two minutes to read each typed page, so you’ll be able to share what you’ve written in less than five minutes.
Repeat steps 3-5 for the same person a few times before selecting another parent or grandparent to write about. You may wish to devote a special notebook to your work so you’ll have everything in one place and can return to your lists for writing ideas again and again.
Rooting your kids in the past gives them a special power for their future
These simple steps can turn feelings of frustration and overwhelm into pride and joy as you spend time sharing small snippets of the lives of family members with your children, rooting them in their past and giving them a special power to face their future. And in just a few pages and a small amount of time you’ll create a legacy of health and wellness that will last for generations to come.
Jill Sarkozi, founder of Westchester–based Safekeeping Stories, helps individuals and small groups save their family stories with a practical, easy-to-use method.