Can We Tell Our Stories?

We acquire knowledge and wisdom through stories. Facts build the roads, but stories take us around hairpin curves. We remember how the stories made us feel, even after the facts melt away.

From our family collection: A photo of my grandmother’s sister, Dorothy, sitting on the edge of an early 20th-century roadster. All rights reserved.

Fiction, Family & Facts

Do you have characters in your family tree that hook you by the heartstrings? They pull you in with their spunk and style. Soon, we’re invested in the twists and turns of their stories. Like kids at a matinee, we’re rooting for them to make it over every obstacle and dodge every bullet. We’re so emotionally invested in their success that we sometimes forget we’re the product of their survival. Family history is like that.

I spend a lot of time thinking about storytelling in the context of Family History. To writers, family history writing differs from fiction, creative writing, and even memoirs in subtle but important ways.

To mere mortals, it’s all a blur. Writing a thank-you note can be a challenge. Paragraphs can unleash their inner fifth-grade fear of failure. The potential for factual errors can trigger their own set of “can’t, shouldn’t, and never” statements. But there’s more. Family history inherently carries the burden of generations. Ambition, shame, and glory all compete in your ancestors’ Family Story. Clearly, the effort to “write the family history” is a humiliating trap best left to others.

It’s a wonder any story gets shared.

In previous generations, most family story writing served a specific purpose, such as establishing social status or validating a significant historical lineage. Sometimes, being the one to write the history allowed the author to paper over unfortunate indiscretions or improper dealings.

A child will hear a family’s origin story in many ways before it becomes their own. As they listen to elders share the story, they might latch onto familiar historical characters or famous battles to enrich the retelling.

CHILD: “… we’re related to Betsy Ross?”

AUNT: “(Bless your heart.) Of course we are! ”

Over time, children mature to appreciate the political, social, and cultural context that envelopes the kernel of a story they were told. Or, maybe they don’t.

I grew up with a custom blend of family secrets and household moves. That meant I was always the new kid in school, so I often found myself telling the story I’d overheard my parents share with neighbors or visitors. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but that didn’t matter. I learned that it just had to be consistent enough not to invite more questions. These well-meaning kids on the playground just wanted to know whether I was supposed to fit in. I had to have answers for questions like…

• Where are you from?

• Why did you come here?

• What do your parents do?

Anyone who has grown up looking different from their neighbors knows this experience. “Different” does a lot of work on the playground as the expression can include hair, skin, gender, ability, or religious differences into one neat phrase.

At a young age, we learn to blur stories into what our audience wants to hear. Sometimes, our well-meaning parents did that for us, too.

Now It’s Our Turn

We live in a transformed world today. We have instant digital access to the records, DNA, and contemporaneous materials that capture the facts of our shared history — and at a resolution that was unimaginable to our ancestors. We are also adults, able to appreciate the historical and economic realities as well as the social, emotional, and cultural pressures our ancestors may have felt.

As our turn comes up to share stories, we have the opportunity to update the formula. Who said we have to…

• Write the family story all at once?

• Be responsible for the entire story?

• Publish it as a book?

• Publish it anywhere?

• Write it in the academic style of journals?

• “Write” the narrative in prose?

I’m a firm believer in the power of writing to clarify thinking. Narrative storytelling, however, can take many forms.

This cuts to the core of Projectkin. You see it in our project recipes, timelines, and more. Writing published narratives like my grandmother’s 1948 tome was groundbreaking in its time. But it didn’t tell the whole story, and it was full of errors.

Today, it’s our generation’s turn. I’m prioritizing the stories. I want to get them told — in any form that excites the generations to follow.

That’s what we do at Projectkin

Next month, we have two special new events scheduled that drill into how we tell ourselves stories.

First, on Thursday, on June 5th,

Jennifer Holik

of

Soul Traveler

joins us for “War Stories and Healing Paths.” As we research records and celebrate the achievements that marked the end of WWII, it’s time to talk about how stories of war and trauma can help us heal.

Update: here’s the recording of Jennifer’s session:

Then, a week later, June 12th,

Randy Seaver

joins us for “Ancestor Bios: The ‘ABC’ Process.” This presentation builds on a series of blog posts Randy’s done for his Blogger site, GeneaMusings.com in which he described a solution for his struggles with writing. This post for his Substack is an example of how transformational the approach has been.

Life Memories of Thomas Richmond (1848-1917)

For Projectkin, Randy’s talk will share how he leverages modern AI to help him tell more stories. This one is part of our Project Recipes series, which will produce a “recipe” you can follow.

Update: here’s the recording of Randy’s session:

So what, you might wonder, has any of that got to do with that lead photo? Good question.

I pulled this photo from my connection because I think it’s a terrific example of a photo that begs a story. In our mammalian brains, narratives fill in the gaps. We tell ourselves stories that help us understand the facts as they’re presented to us. Not unlike interpreting genealogical facts, eh?

If all of this is new to you, why not join us on the family storytelling journey among Projectkin?