The Gift of Personal Stories

It can be intimidating knowing where to begin. There are a million stories, experiences and memories floating around in your head. Where and how to start is a daunting thought.
Whether you are filling out the book or want your parents or grandparents to fill it out, it needs to be started -- today! This book helps your organize and relate your stories. You don't have to go in order though... read through the prompts and write what comes to mind first. Each chapter is designed to trigger your memories and recollections so you can begin writing your life story.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Family Background
Childhood
Teen Years
Higher Education
Military
Independence, Work and Career
Love and Marriage
Parenthood
Middle Years
Golden Years
Ethnic Heritage
Regrets, Mistakes, Milestones, and Turning Points
Beliefs, Values, Lessons and Advice
How Life Has Changed
Now
Favorites
Special Questions
Continuation Pages
Family Tree
Favorite Photographs and Mementos

This book will guide you through chronicling your life as you go or inspire grandparents to remember their past and share it. Either way, the writing prompts will have the recipient their way!

Image Credit: MorgueFile.com

Inspiration: After a visit from her parents in which her mother broke her hip, Pamela began watching the way they interacted and cared for one another after almost 60 years of marriage. It made her wonder "Where had I been all the years while they grew old?".

In order to show them how important they were to her, she began compiling a list of special questions reflecting her loving interest in them and their lives. She planned to give it to them for Christmas that year.

Around Thanksgiving, she completed it and planned to have it bound before Christmas. Then the call came. He mother told her that her father had passed away. She had waited too long. Now she would never hear firsthand, from her dad of his life, lessons learned and wisdom.

Amid her emotions of anger and guilt, Pamela found a way to translate these feelings into something that would help others avoid her mistake. She enlisted the help of her husband and they expanded to questions and prompts so that anyone could use the book. The result, The Story of a Lifetime: A Keepsake of Personal Memoirs, was a book with almost 500 questions to enable the recipient to record his or her story and philosophy in their own voice.

Says Stephen Pavuk, "We wanted the book to go beyond the historical events of a person's life and to reach into the personality and soul."