These are our stories

I do book folding. Despite the name, it’s actually the pages of books that get folded. I fold old books — one page at a time, two folds...

One of my first Life Stories clients, Mary, died last month. She was 94. Her father had been a sharecropper in Kentucky, and soon after I...

Alice and Edwin participated in my most recent Life Stories class. Alice had a career as a beautician. In her beauty shop, she had a Coke...

Six weeks before Judy was born, her father died in a car accident. So Judy and her mother moved in with her mother’s parents, Judy’s...

His days of making and flying kites with the neighborhood boys took place more than 70 years ago, but to hear Paul describe it during a...

"Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity there is no...

This past Saturday I ran into a client whose life stories I completed writing early last year. Bernice, who became a widow during the...

Mary was 7 when her mother died. Don was 8 when his died. Wilma was 12. Katharine was 17 when her mom died of lung cancer and leukemia...

Lou died last week. I am still in disbelief. After I wrote about her in a blog on Oct. 16 and linked it to my Facebook page, she...

In February, a woman from a neighboring town learned about my Life Stories classes and immediately expressed a strong interest in taking...

I am gearing up for fall Life Stories classes. This means I have times and locations set, and now I go through my list of prospective...

“Your heartache is someone else’s hope. If you make it through, somebody else is going to make it through. Tell your story.” — Kim...

In early spring I committed to working on writing the life stories of an 89-year-old Indianapolis man. His relatives who were hiring...

My “Remember When…?” discussion group at a local nursing home wanted to talk about moonshine last month. Bootlegging in the middle of the...

“Like a friend said, it feels like a library burns down every time an elder dies.” — Jim Northrup, “Anishinaabe Syndicated” #writing

A few weeks ago I met one of my Life Stories participants at a local printer and handed over a stick drive with her stories on it. The...

“I wish I’d have listened more,” my co-worker said, referring to her father’s oral stories about his military service during World War...

These days find me sorting donations at the local St. Vincent de Paul store, and one day last week I came upon a large grocery bag filled...

“The greatest asset any old person has is his or her life experience. When you have the opportunity to interact with an old person, you...

After taking a nine-week Life Stories class, my groups continue meeting for six monthly follow-ups to share stories they have newly...