1: What is Personal History?

Writing life stories, a rewarding career choice. Show notes Thanks for joining me for this early episode of my new Life Story Coach podcast. As a working personal historian, I get the question all the time: "What is personal history?" My overall aim with the show is to create a space for conversation about the field of personal history and life story writing (and making videos and audio), both for people already working as personal historians, and for those of you who may be new to the field. Or maybe you’re just curious, and thinking about shifting into a new career as a full-time writer. What is personal history anyhow? Honestly, most people have never heard of it. Even now, after working for years in the field, I still get a blank look from people when they ask me what I do for a living and I tell them, “personal history.” It’s no wonder, because the term is so ambiguous. Here’s my definition: Personal history is the craft and business of helping people record their life stories and family histories. These legacy projects can take the form of a book, an audio recording, a video, even a website, but the type of life stories I create are books, printed and bound long-form narratives with some images. I write in first person, that is, in the storyteller’s voice. My goal is to capture not only their stories, but also their voice, to create a narrative that they would have written themselves, had they been a writer. So, who are these storytellers, and why do they want to do a book or other legacy project about their life? And who are they doing it for? I’ve been asked to speak to many groups and on the topic of what is personal history, and I’ve never yet addressed one where at least someone—usually more than one—had dabbled with writing their life stories. Let me be clear. These aren’t writers groups. These are groups of financial advisors and estate lawyers and businesspeople—people who don’t consider themselves writers, and don’t necessarily have the urge to write. What they do have the urge to do is preserve their memories, to pass along the stories of their lives to their kids and grandkids. The desire to reminisce and reflect back on our life is a natural part of life, especially as we get older. If you who studied psychology or education, you’ll remember Erik Erikson’s developmental stages—the steps we each pass through in life, stages defined by specific needs relating to our sense of identity, like the baby’s need for nurturing from its parents or the middle-aged, empty-nester’s need for a sense of deeper meaning in life. In later years, the need revolves around reflection, looking back at our lives to find that sense of meaning, to make sense of this long ride of life. The yen for telling stories, of course, isn’t new; after all, we tell stories about ourselves and our experiences all throughout our life. But in the golden years this need sharpens and intensifies. Who benefits? And it’s not just about making sense of our lives for ourselves. It's also about the desire to pass that accumulated wisdom on to the next generations. It’s a way to connect to younger generations, to say, “I get it, the world of my youth was different, let me tell you about ME, not as your parent or grandparent, but about me as a person.” Because all the great stuff an elder has experienced and learned, all the fun times and sadness and challenges and joys? Those are treasures, valuables in the truest sense to pass down to their heirs. Because those people they love today, and the generations who will follow, they will have fun times and sad times and challenging times too, and wouldn’t it be great if they knew how someone upstream in the stream of generations dealt with all that? People don’t need the research to tell them what a gift it is to leave this is for their kids and grandkids, but it’s there anyhow, study after study that have identified traits like greater resiliency and stronger sense of self-identity among ...