Generational Legacy’s Remembered Stories

Hello, My Friends

Merry Christmas, In our family we have a unique way of celebrating this season.
My hubby is not overly keen on celebrating Christmas. I teach and believe that each of us are entitled to their point of view, even if it is different to your own.
Hubby and I have different points of view around how to celebrate Christmas.
So. He’s as home and I’m visiting my daughter and the grandchildren, two hours away.

Today I want to talk about generational legacy’s.
What do you want to be remembered for?
When hubby and I were working on his family tree, we were looking for the burial sites of his forebears. In doing so, we kind of realized that after one or two generations most of our family stories are forgotten.
We become a photo in an album that no-one can quite remember who. Or maybe your name is remembered, but your life story has ceased to be.
What do you want to be remembered for, three generations after your leaving this plane of existance?

An epitaph on a headstone doesn’t really tell a lot about the life you have lived.
What if you could write a book about your life?
What would you include in your book?
Would it be all about you, or would it be about the people in your life who lived, laughed and cried along with you?

As a budding Toastmaster, I am learning to speak publicly.
Part of our evening agenda is to speak for two minutes on a topic of the masters choice.
What I’m noticing is that when the participants are sharing their stories in this two minute time slot, they are sharing the anecdotes that make their lives, individual and interesting.
How many of these stories will ever get to be passed onto the next generation, or the generation after that?

A generational legacy is passing the stories, both the hard times and the fun times, the lessons learned the easy way and the hard way.
Not necessarily as a ‘Thou shalt not do …’ kind of thing, but as interesting factoids of what life was like for our fore-fathers and fore-mothers.
They endured harder times than we know, when I read the headstones of families who lost 3,4,5 children under the age of 10, I imagine what it must have been like for those mothers and fathers.
I wonder what tragedy they endured that is now a forgotten memory.
When I walk through the cemetery and see twenty headstones with the same date inscribed on each in one area, it makes me question what tragic event happened that affected the community so severely. Twenty families who lives were never the same again.

How do you want to be remembered when it is your time to depart?
Have you thought about it? Have you thought about the legacy you want to leave behind?
Not just a money legacy, or inheritance, but a legacy that impacts your community, your niche in the world.
How are you making a difference now, so that in three generations time you will be remembered for the impact your life had on others?

Today we went for a walk through a Memorial Forest.
This was a first for me, I’d never seen or heard of one before, and as we walked around and through the trees, winding on the dirt path between all the little plaques that were placed on mounds of stones, reading the names and dates. It struck me again that each of these plaques represented a person’s story.
Some plaques were in little memorial dens, with seats, well tended. While others were at the base of trees covered in long grass, looking forlorn and forgotten.

I love the idea of having a place where someones legacy can be shared with those who visit.
If each of these little stones represented a written story of the life lived, told the tales and sagas of daily family life, maybe these stories could enrich our lives today.
I wondered if having a generational legacy park, that included an archive room housing the life stories of each of the people being remembered by a plaque would put a life to a lifeless name, age and date.

While you are alive you have the ability to write your legacy, you have the ability to make your story valuable, meaningful to you and those who love you.
Write your memoirs now, while the memories are alive with you. Have someone write your life history now, and include those who have already passed so they may also live on into the future.

Your challenge for today is to remember someone who has passed, and their life story. Begin to write your life story as part of your legacy, make it fun, make it interesting, tell the tales of the time when…
This one is for my dad, who passed away today 26 years ago, and for my nephew who also passed away at this time of year, 25 years ago.
Long may you be remembered.

oxoxo Linda.

As a certified Life Coach, I help you to help yourself, so you can create a well lived life your way. 

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