Your Life, Your Story

Since this subject seems to interest a couple of you, I thought I'd post some thoughts about personal histories in a new post. Not that I'm an expert or anything, but I do have some thoughts. Lindy asked what the difference is between a journal and a personal history. A journal is a daily, personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections. It is kept on a regular basis (ideally), and therefore chronicles your everyday life and how you feel about it.

A personal history, though, is more like an autobiography. It is written from a point of view of recollection. For example, mine could start out, "I was born eighteen days late, the first daughter of David and Lauren P*, of Villa Park, California."

Here's a good definition: "a person's own biography, or written account of his or her life, distinguished from the journal or diary by being a connected narrative, and from memoirs by dealing less with with contemporary events and personalities."

Basically, it tells the story of your life. You ought to include details such as when and where you were born, who your parents were, what you loved to do as a child, what you liked to do with your friends in highschool, how you met your spouse, what you studied in college and why, when your children were born and how you chose their names, etc. The trick is to make it interesting to read.

If you've ever had the experience of losing someone close to you, you'll understand that after they are gone, you suddenly have many questions you wish you could have asked them, whether it's about their life, what they remember about certain times in history, or simply the name of their high school. All of these things can lead you to other people who may have known them and have memories of them as well. I've had that experience on a number of occasions now, and it is quite frustrating and saddening. Neal and I, for example, conducted an oral interview of the woman who helped care for him when he was a child. She has led an extremely interesting life, but unfortunately, is illiterate and not capable of creating her own history. She's not even sure how old she is, but she remembers incredible events from her childhood and funny stories about Neal and his siblings that we have now recorded onto a tape. I remember my dad doing the same thing with my great-grandmother when I was a child. Conducting oral interviews like that is a great way to get to know someone and bring their memories to the surface.

I guess it all comes down to understanding the eternal nature of your family and your ancestors, and how you fit into the family tree, something I feel deeply about. I hope that by recording my own life story, even if it's only the beginning of it now, I will alleviate any frustration for anyone after I'm gone. This may seem like a somber idea, but I feel that it's really quite important.

Like I said before, this is obviously a huge undertaking, and not something I plan on finishing anytime soon, but I'd like to get a sort of rough draft going, so that when I have more time, I can go in and fill in details and memories as they come to me.

This website has good information to get you started. They're trying to sell you something, too, though.

Here is another website with some good ideas and articles about writing personal histories.

Here are some suggestions to help you get going on what to write, some prompts, if you will.

Here is a book written by a member of the LDS church, called How to Write Your Personal History.