Member-only story
Telling Your Story: Just Do It
“There is no greater agony,” wrote Maya Angelou, “than bearing an untold story inside you.” Over the past, agonizing year, more than a few of us tackled our inner agony by telling our stories. Not for fame or fortune, just for the joy of telling that untold story.
Everybody has a story. This is an argument for storytelling, along with a few suggestions about how to tell your own.
I have just finished (you might have figured something like this was coming) a collection of stories for my children and grandchildren, thanks to the help and persistence of an interesting website called StoryWorth.com. This is a totally unpaid plug. Other sites may also be great, among them StoryCatcher, StoryCorps, Ancestry and MyHeritage.com; I just happen to have landed with StoryWorth and haven’t tried the others. Consider this anecdotal — but enthusiastic.
My enterprising daughter purchased — with my advance consent (an important detail) — a StoryWorth account for me over a year ago; that’s how long I’ve been working on this project. In the end there is now a collection of stories — as close to a family history as this family will come — about their parents and grandparents. But it is also about great-grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, far-flung cousins; cities and towns; quirks and foibles that inhabit the past. I would have given all my worldly goods…
