I read the 2006 article "Connecting Through Memory Journals" by Jeff Watson last year. I have kept my own journals for years. I often don't know what I really think or how I really feel until I start writing and my thoughts and feelings reveal themselves as I write. In addition, I am the one in the family who is interested in interviewing older relatives and I have created books honoring my mother's lineage and my father's lineage. I found at least 4 or 5 branches of the living through my search for the dead. I discovered Beth Sanders' LifeBio memory journals last year. She has done such a good job of putting them together in a user friendly way, that they have become a favorite gift of mine to give others. What's more interesting in an impersonal world than someone's personal experiences! We are influenced by others years and years after they have taken their last breath on this earth.

In 1995, I started a journal for my niece and another for my nephew to give them when they graduate from high school. I live out of town and don't see them often, so the journals are a way of telling them about the cast of characters (living and dead) in our family, my observations about them at various ages, about the times I've felt most connected to them and why, about what I learn from them, news events that happened before they were born that affected others in the family and news events that have affected them during their lives, and about some of the lessons I've learned and would like to share with them. My niece graduates this June 2007. Though I don't expect her to cherish the journal now as she rushes head long into a life of her own; I know that sometime in the future she (or her descendants) will find it among her things and a portal to life in another time will open.