Delores has spent decades teaching seniors how to capture their stories — because every life holds something worth preserving.
Give the ones you love — and those who follow — the gift of yourself.
When I teach Writing LifeStories classes, I tell students how important it is to leave a legacy. Let your loved ones know what it was like in your day — what you and previous generations went through, and how it shaped who you were and are. Tell your grandchildren what your emotions, plans, challenges, and successes were, and how that shaped what you taught their mothers and fathers.
The students wanted to let their loved ones know what their experiences were — and how their lives were both different and similar.
In class, students wrote stories about early childhood on the farm or in another country; about one-room schools; about meeting that special someone and losing the love of their life; about living through wars. Yet one thing was constant — they wanted the next generation to understand what their experiences were. Different from the behaviors and opportunities of today, and yet similar in so many deeply personal ways.
Adding layers of descriptive words, dialogue, and detail transforms a memory into a story someone will want to read.
Besides learning the why, what, and how of writing life stories, students practice the craft itself. Writing techniques like layering descriptive words, including dialogue, and grounding memories in specific sensory detail make stories more real and interesting. These are the tools that turn a list of events into something a grandchild will read twice.
These are the reasons real students gave for joining Delores's Writing LifeStories class — in their own words.
"I would like to write about our marriage of fifty years... I would like to leave a story for our grandchildren about their parents."
"I've been around for some seventy years so I've got lots of stories to tell. We are going to have a family reunion next summer and this seems like a perfect time."
"I want to tell their stories because their stories deserve to be told — but also because of what I have learned from them that has, to my surprise, made my own life better and happier."
"My wife and I have experienced the death of 23 family members and friends in the past two years. Think of how much family information and stories are gone — never to be experienced again."
Explore Delores's writing guide, Writing on Life's Journeys — or invite her to bring a Writing LifeStories workshop to your community.
