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So, you’ve thought about writing your stories, but you certainly don’t have time. And you have no idea how to start anyway. Excuses.
Last Wednesday at the Palos Heights Public Library (IL), participants in Caregivers Share Your Story learned they could start writing their stories in only ten minutes. Caregivers can include all of us–we all either care for someone or ourselves.
First, they made a list of ten things they thought was important in their caregiving roles. These could be events, feelings, characteristics…whatever came to mind.
Second, they circled the one item that felt most important right then.
Third, they wrote nonstop (called a “free write”) for ten minutes. No thinking, no editing, just keeping the pen moving on the page.
Ten minutes later, each had a rough draft of a story. Something they could go back to some day to revise and refine. But the story was out of their minds and onto the page. Simple.
A photograph of a 2 month old human infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his maternal great-grandmother.
Do a ten-minute free write every day, and you will have a book length manuscript in no time to revise and refine. Think in the future how your grandchildren will enjoy reading how you gave their grandpa Old Spice every Christmas because that’s what he was wearing the day you met, how you took your temperature daily for years in your effort to get pregnant for their mom, how that new baby nearly drove you over the edge as she mushed her peas time after time into the crevices of her high chair, and on and on. The little things. The family traditions. The things that make us human. The things that make us family.
I have just a few writings from my folks and maternal grandmother. I wish I had many more. I want to know about their ups and downs. I want to know them better. But once they died, their stories died too.
So, don’t wait. Start now. Write from your heart. Your grandkids will appreciate it…some day.
Next time, I’ll talk about why it’s good (and fun) as a caregiver to write our stories.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Write Along with Me 
I have the “written down life stories” of my two grandmothers, my great-grandmother and my great-great grandmother (who noted that she was a descendent of President John Quincy Adams!). These stories are precious family treasures. These women told their stories in their own words. They were not published authors or well educated. They were pioneer women, farm women—who raised big families, milked cows, kept chickens, planted huge gardens, canned their vegetables and cooked their meals on cob burning stoves. They tell about their own parents and childhoods, and about meeting their future husbands (the first time Grandma Lois saw Grandpa Zeno was the day he rode by on his little grey pony named Dixie…she was in 8th grade and getting the mail from the mailbox. Such wonderful details about love at first sight in the mid-1920’s!). My grandmothers talk about traveling in covered wagons, crops failures, the sorrow of losing children to diptheria, the old sow getting loose in the hen house, the “cave” that housed 700 quarts of vegetables and meat for the winter. Brilliant memories and stories captured on paper for future generations. So yes…..tell your stories. Write them down in your own words. Share them with your family and these stories will become family treasures!
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Jane, I am so envious! I really am on a mission for everyone to write down something for our offspring. Just simple things, too, like what we just paid for gas on a road trip. And now the preparations here in Chicago for NATO meetings. I relish in the global, but mostly mundane. A writing friend of mine once wrote a story of a cereal bowl, describing each decorative design and what she ate out of it. Fantastic! Especially as kids eat cereal bars now-a-days. Writing our stories is an extension of age-old oral story telling, but writing them down greatly increases their longevity. Thanks for telling your story here. Readers can get good ideas. Lois
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As always Lois, a winning post!!! Did you see the spot on ABC news about caregiving? It is a growing issue, also I love the journal writing ideas you give as that ties into my own recent post on Leaving a Legacy. I think we are all connected in ways we can’t even imagine. I enjoy your work so much and as my own days of caregiving have ended, I am still planning for the future when I may need some too. Between us, I think we are covering important ground
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Sandra, How true that this is important ground. Something about aging makes me nostalgic for more information about the lives of my family predecessors. I did not see the ABC news on caregiving. I’m just so aware of how people close to me are involved in heavy-duty caregiving of either a parent, spouse, child, or themselves.Or even a neighbor or friend. And the idea of Leaving a Legacy is so important. To seriously consider what we want our legacies to be and then make sure we’re fulfilling what needs to be done. Yes, let’s keep up this important, in your words, “third trimester” work. Lois
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I began blogging about being a caregiver for my bi-polar mother because I had no-one else with whom to talk. It’s so astonishingly frustrating. However, I am a big believer in putting things into black and white. It’s a good way to sort one’s thoughts.
There’s a recent report from Australia about caregiving for the mentally ill titled Giving Until It Hurts, I put a link on my blog. (Plug!) Interestingly, I recently found a video on YouTube about caregiving and one of the speakers used that exact phrase.
Being a caregiver is so exhausting.
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I enjoyed reading your site. It’s challenging to caretake someone living with bipolar illness. I wish you much courage!
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