LEGACY TRENDS
Retirees preserving life stories for future generations
Retirees preserving life stories for future generations
Anew generation of retirees is discovering the joy and importance of preserving their memories and life stories for their children and grandchildren. Fueling this trend is a desire to create a meaningful legacy beyond financial assets and to enrich relationships with their children and grandchildren. This is especially important at a time when grandparents often live hundreds of miles away from their grandchildren and don’t get to spend a lot of time together. And it’s not only memories people are sharing― in many cases values, religious traditions and lessons learned are an important part of the mix. Estate planners and financial firms are getting on board. The Wall
Street Journal reports that financial firms working with wealthy clients are offering services to chronicle family history to go along with investment management and estate planning services.
With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, there’s a big market out there.
The interest in family history and preserving stories is seen in the popularity of Ancestry.com and StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. Since its founding in 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 65,000 interviews from more than 100,000 participants across the U.S. Ancestry.com reports 75 million searches every day.
I learned the hard way about the importance of capturing and preserving stories when my father― a seemingly healthy and vibrant man― died suddenly at age 74. I spent my life sitting around the kitchen table listening to his stories and, in the flash of a moment, they were gone. That experience, combined with my fascination for the kaleidoscope of memories and stories that com- prise a person’s life, led me to start a life-story (writing) business in 2014. I soon found out that the joy that I derive from listening to these stories is shared by the storytellers. “Mom has a new spring in her step,” says Doug, a retail industry CEO, after I interviewed his mother, a woman then in her 80s and a gifted storyteller with a wonderful sense of humor. When she passed away last summer, he included some of the passages from her legacy book in her eulogy.
A retired nurse from Wisconsin enjoyed the process of creating her book and revisiting memories from her childhood, marriage and family. “What is truly rewarding is the interest my children and grandchildren have shown in my book. This is probably one of the most valuable gifts I’ve ever given my family,” she told me.
Sometimes it’s the adult children who take the initiative. “I always loved hearing my dad’s stories, and they’re even more priceless now that I have my own children,” says Matt, a telecommunications engineer. “There’s a weight off my shoulders knowing that I’ve preserved those stories in a book for his grandchildren.”
The options for preserving stories range from books to videos to audiotapes. Online publishing platforms make it possible to produce one or more books at an affordable cost.
Every life has a story to tell. You’ll never regret taking the time to share yours with your loved ones and future generations.
EVERY LIFE HAS A STORY TO TELL.