The Legacy Guide: Capturing the Facts, Memories, and Meaning of Your Life

The Legacy Guide helped me to reorganize my mother's memoires that she left us. In addition, it was an invaluable resource to delving further into memories and family stories that I had never known or had forgotten. I wish that I had had this guide when my father were alive so that his stories could have been written down for my children. When using the guide the authors stimulate your curiosity and family treasure trove of memories in so many ways. The varity of examples that they cite are also a great help when gathering material. I am grateful to have this new resource that I know will be invaluable to me as I organize my own life story.

I've read a good portion of The Legacy Guide and as a result have a better idea about how I can learn from my own life. I don't know that Franco and Lineback put it just this way, since they're talking about a "real" book that we could write, but I've come to think that in our memories each of us has a unique reference "book," like a life encyclopedia, from which we can learn deep truths about who we are and what we can contribute. Not too long ago I gave up recalling only comfortable memories and took on examining defeats, failures, and disappointments without wincing or ducking away. While we have much to learn from successes, there is also amazing insight available through recalling and analyzing our less successful moments. Happy memories or not so happy, our past is a textbook about life that is unique to us--it's as though a key reference volume sits on the shelf of the big library and we're the only ones who can read it. It's a useful book regardless of whether it gets written down, but there are some great additional benefits to putting key parts of it on paper--not the least of which is that others may then access parts of it and benefit from our experience. The Legacy Guide is a guide to writing this sort of honest personal history--one's own, or the story of another person who is important in one's life. In their introduction, the authors talk about missed opportunities to understand others' lives--particularly parents, now gone--and subsequently provide stimulating summaries of seven life stages, engaging stories that exemplify good biographical writing, and wonderful, probing questions to ask the people we want to know and whose lives can teach us so much. That would particularly include ourselves....... Reading this book prompted me to look at a personal journal that I kept many years ago. The journal is indirect, mannered, and so subjective that it's hard to figure out what was happening. I'm left thinking that I was trying to impress either myself or those who might read it after I couldn't. Many years later, I'm not impressed. Much better to use the progression from facts to memories to meaning framework that The Legacy Guide suggests. This book facilitates an important, maybe vital, process. We can know ourselves, and others can know us more usefully, if we think through and discover the meaning of our life experiences.

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who is trying to capture and preserve important moments and memories. The book is well organized, and it has many great exercises. It is perfect for writers and non-writers alike. A really great find.

I teach a course in Life Stories and Legacy Writing at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, so I'm always looking for books I can recommend to my students. There are many "memory jogger" books of the type that ask things like "When was your first kiss" or "tell me about the first day of school." This one provides similar but better triggers for memories but also helps readers find a pattern in their lives, which I think will be helpful for people working on their own. During this session I've recommended this book and Tristine Rainer's book, YOUR LIFE AS STORY, for students who want to do more on their own. I'm glad someone is asking for "facts, memories, AND meaning," and with such good examples.

An excellent book with easy-to-follow instructions on how to bring out the life stories of loved ones -- including yourself. I used the method with my mother when she was in assisted living and had little to talk about. Together, we captured her life memories for myself and my family. She, in turn used the questions at the dinner table with her friends to relive their life experiences. In her last days my mother wanted the caregivers to read and reread her stories as a way to say good-by to life. The book provides a way to organize the memories of your life and the lifes of people reaching the end of their allotted life span. I would highly recommend the book.