It’s time to add to the growing collection of stories that may one day inform your descendants about your life. If you’ve only just joined us on the journey of documenting these reminiscences, you’ve joined us at the perfect time. The order you document your stories does not matter. It only matters that you capture them. You can later go back through the blog posts marked as “monthly memoir prompts” and add more to your collection.
Given the season I’ve decided to concentrate on celebrations this month. I’m not only concentrating on Christmas, which is culturally appropriate for me but on the celebrations that are important to your culture. My most significant Christmas memory will be published here on December 14th, my younger sister Patti’s birthday (you’ll know why I chose that date when you read the story).
Please choose a celebration that is important to you and your family. Now withdraw to a place of quiet where you can think about past celebrations of this event. What is the first memory that invades your quiet space? Why did this memory rise to the surface? Was it important in some way to your development as a person? Does it remind you of someone you love? Does it connect to a time in your life when you made a decision that took you on a different path in life? Did you meet someone important in your life, someone who changed your life? Or was it simply a funny incident that brought joy to you and those around you? I could go on listing possible reasons for a memory to surface but I would never cover them all. So, I will stop and let you ponder why this memory is of enough importance to rise to the surface.
Now get your writing or recording device and get the story down on paper or into a digital file. Make a date with yourself in your calendar to review and revise the story. Don’t leave it too long, preferably no more than a week. Now read or listen to what you captured the first time and make the alterations that you can now see are important to having someone else benefit from hearing or reading the story. Your subconscious mind will have been editing as you moved through other parts of your life. You will now see the details you missed and the errors in those details. You will also, quite likely, have new insights into why this story is important and may be better able to frame it for the reader/listener. Make your revisions. With the taped story you may want to simply add an addendum rather than rerecording. That decision will depend upon how different the story needs to become. With the written version and current technology, it will be easy to modify it rather than just adding an addendum. That is unless you are keeping these stories in a journal. In that case you might wish to use the addition of an addendum as your strategy.
I would encourage you to think about other important stories related to a special holiday season. Capturing one is a job well done but capturing multiple stories will enrich your reader/listener’s understanding of your life. And your life is full of stories ready for capturing … if you only give yourself the time to allow them to emerge and be documented.
