{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Eps 1: What is personal history?","description":"It\u2019s a question I hear whenever I tell someone I\u2019m a personal historian. \u201cWhat is personal history?\u201d they ask. Picture this: It\u2019s the end of the day. The dishes are done, the dog fed and walked, the house quiet. You settle into a favorite chair with a new book and soon you\u2019re lost in the narrative, a story now funny, now sad, characters big and small. Just like in real life. And somehow all of it\u2014the events, the people, the places\u2014seem familiar. Because this is your mom\u2019s story. Or your granddad\u2019s. Or Great-Uncle Roger\u2019s. This, dear reader, is personal history. Sitting down to read a book about someone you love, written by a professional, told in your beloved relative\u2019s voice. What if you\u2019re the storyteller? What is personal history for you? How about for you, the storyteller, the family member giving the gift of your life\u2019s stories? Surprisingly, the focus probably won\u2019t rest so squarely on the final book. Yes, you\u2019ll happily anticipate the day you\u2019ll hold the book in hand. There may be tears, there will definitely by smiles. But the really profound experience for you, the storyteller, the thing that will engage your heart and mind, is the act of telling your stories during our interviews. We\u2019re all storytellers at heart; it\u2019s a condition of being human. It\u2019s how we pass down our understanding of the world, how we connect with each other, how we make meaning out of the chaos of everyday living. Not to mention, it\u2019s fun. But the fires we used to sit around to tell our stories have died out and the family meals happen less and less. We don\u2019t share the family stories as much as we used to because we don\u2019t spend as much time together, and when we do, a million things pop up to distract us. When you hire a personal historian, you\u2019re engaging the services of someone who wants to hear your stories\u2014the stories your family knows by heart and the ones you\u2019ve forgotten but will re-discover during our journey together. You\u2019ll experience the profound pleasure of revisiting in your memory the people, places, and events that shaped your life and made you who you are today. You\u2019ll have the chance, so seldom encountered in today\u2019s busy, disconnected world, to reflect back on the welter of experiences that make up a lifetime, to draw meaning and sense from them, to see  long-ago events and how they led you to where you are now. And, you\u2019ll do it all in the companionship of a caring listener. What does a personal history book mean for future generations? Honestly, we can\u2019t know. But here\u2019s a question you might consider: If you had the opportunity to read an account of your relative\u2019s life\u2014a favorite grandparent, a great-grandparent you\u2019ve only heard about but never knew\u2014how would you feel? Most likely, you\u2019d be eager to find that favorite chair and curl up with your ancestor\u2019s book, right? To learn about what their life was like seventy-five or a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. What was life like in America during World War I? Russia before the Revolution? Life on a farm, on a reservation, in a far-flung village? How did your ancestors cook their meals? Travel? Celebrate holidays? What was it like attending a one-room schoolhouse? Or working in a coal mine? A factory? Who was their first kiss? How did they choose whom to marry, and how did they raise their kids? How did they build the family business? How did they know what they needed to know to live? And if they didn\u2019t, how did they learn? We\u2019re closer to our ancestors than we realize. But if their stories aren\u2019t preserved, both the stories and the people remain a mystery to us. What is personal history to me, a personal historian? I still recall the first time I heard about the growing field of personal history. I was talking to my friend, Betty, a historian. Betty knew I loved to write, and that I was looking for something meatier than the assignments I\u2019d been doing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers.","author_name":"Your Story Your Legacy","author_url":"https:\/\/thestoryscribe.com\/how-to-write-your-life-story\/","html":"