Introduction to Living Stories Services
We discover our truth by telling our stories.
I would be pleased to collaborate with you or with someone you love on preparing a personal history or ethical will (LifeLetter®) for more purposeful living and for posterity. Both personal histories and ethical wills are Living Stories that can be recorded earlier in life, shared with loved ones as appropriate, and updated over the years as “works in progress.”
It’s never too soon to prepare a timeless treasure of your personal history and LifeLetter for your children or loved ones You might also consider giving this precious gift to a beloved relative or friend whose story and memories you don’t want lost.
Memorial books honoring someone who has died are also beautiful gifts of remembrance for family and friends.
Good Times to Record Personal Histories and Ethical Wills
~ Entering a new stage of life: e.g., marriage, parenthood, a major birthday
~ Transitioning through divorce, retirement, empty nest, midlife or any other challenging passage
~ Celebrating parental milestones such as the first day of school, confirmation, and graduation
~ Approaching the end of a religious or secular year
~ Facing old age, serious illness or death |
Preserve your Personal and Family Histories
Within each individual, family, and business are unique and meaningful stories to be discovered, shared and passed on. Using sensitive questioning and deep listening, I facilitate an enjoyable and clarifying storytelling process, culminating in a book, set of audiotapes or CDs that will be an invaluable gift to the future. Recording your stories honors, celebrates and integrates past experience, preserves heritage and continuity, and offers a legacy of living for family and community.
Services:
• Guided life or historical review
• Oral history research, transcription and editing
• Integration of illness and other challenging narratives into the larger story
• Consultation on do-it-yourself projects
"This packrat has learned that
what the next generation will value most is not what we
owned but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how
we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth
the storage. "
~ Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe
"There
was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an
impossibility. Inside the dullest exterior, there is a drama,
a comedy, and a tragedy."
~ Mark Twain |
| "Linda deftly led me through my life’s story, making the experience one of energized enlightenment and fun. I am delighted to have something so special to give to my children. I look back on the time Linda and I spent together as one of personal healing and growth."
~ Kit Neustadter, Executive Director, Redwood Arts Council,
Cancer Survivor
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Plan and
Prepare Your Life Legacy
An ethical will or LifeLetter® is a legacy document sharing your values, beliefs and wishes with loved ones or the community. Your Lifeletter can be freestanding, a part of your financial and estate plan, or woven into your personal history as a way to deepen the stories of your life and harvest them for wisdom. At any time in life, preparing a personal legacy is a wonderful way to mark a special event or major transition, whether joyous or difficult. This gift can help open communication with loved ones, strengthening memory, meaning and connection.
Services:
• Preparing your LifeLetter through recorded interviews, writing or editing
• Life legacy project consultation and coaching, in person or by telephone
• Intensive ethical will writing workshops and weekly classes
"Prepare for your death one day before you die."
~ Rabbi Eliazar |
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"Linda's ethical
will seminar provided me with valuable processes for clarifying
my values and my lifelong intentions for my daughter. These
tools were relevant immediately as well as over the last
ten years. Linda brings her educational and counseling background,
professional experience and wisdom to guide groups and individuals
through processes of change that result in reaching intended
outcomes, even when addressing challenging topics."
~
Alexandria Hilton, President, Bellissima Consulting |
Review Your Life to Navigate Life Transitions
Most lives consist of relatively stable chapters alternating with transitions of uncertainty – whether mid-life, career change, new parenthood, illness or loss. With each transition we’re challenged to rethink our lives, assess the stories by which we live, and renew our vision of the future. A guided life review maps the terrain you’ve traveled to date, allows you to reflect on critical questions, and provides an excellent launching pad for planning next steps. This option focuses on the healing and integrative process of life review and its use in story revision.
Services:
• Guidance and support through challenging life passages
• Audiotaped review of your life’s chapters and transitions, past and current
• Post-taping feedback session to illuminate central themes and essential stories
• Coaching sessions to clarify values, reorder priorities, and work towards goals
"Storytelling
is fundamental to the human search for meaning . . ."
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
"There
is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."
~ Maya Angelou |
"Linda helped guide
me through some rough waters during my current transition
from one job to another. She combines
a personal touch with a professional presence that makes
the fear of change manageable. Intuitively, and sensitively,
she helped me find my truth. She made a huge difference
in my life. I will be forever grateful to her."
~ Fritz Saam - Mental Health Case Manager |
Benefits
for the Narrator
- Celebrate and value life accomplishments and milestones
- Discover meaning, perspective and purpose
- Discover your voice and express yourself
- Open communication with important people
- Strengthen bonds with loved ones and community
- Clarify values, priorities and goals
- Heal the past: resolve conflicts; forgive and find peace
- Connect to the past and plan for the future
- Revise and renew your story
- Give a gift that will last lifetimes
For Recipients of Living Stories and LifeLetters®
- Discover enduring values and sage advice as guideposts to living
- Receive messages of love and care
- Gain knowledge about and appreciation of heritage
- Improve communication and build relationships
- Strengthen memory, continuity and connection
Services and Pricing Tailored to Your Needs
Fees are determined based on the selected services and your budget. First, I listen. I can set up a complimentary introductory conversation to discuss the scope of the project and various options for doing it. Once I understand your choices and you select the right service, I will give you a firm estimate. Appointments and projects are tailored to fit your needs.
Factors that determine pricing are the number and length of sessions desired, the services you need, and the type of final product you want (e.g., audiotapes/CDs, books), if any. Prices range from several hundred dollars for a consultation, a few interviews, or a workshop to thousands for dollars for a complex book or a large company or family history. Sometimes, family members or friends will share the cost, or an agency might write an oral history grant. I will gladly explore ways to work with you within your budget.
Options: Personal Histories
- Consultation and coaching for do-it-yourself projects (hourly fees)
- Starter Option: planning meeting plus eight hours of audiorecorded interviews (guided conversations). You receive: a set of labeled audiotapes in a cassette album
*More sessions can be added. Special sessions for ethical wills, narratives of life challenges, messages for children
- Enhanced Option: Starter Option plus tape transcription and light oral-history editing, or moderate editing into a reorganized, shaped first-person narrative.
You receive: a simply-bound manuscript (spiral or velo-binding or a three-ring binder) plus audiotapes in a cassette album
- Custom Option: Enhanced Option (up to ten hours of taped) that transforms a fully-edited manuscript with photographs and other documents into a uniquely-designed, formatted, printed and bound heirloom book (includes set of audiotapes in a cassette album)
*Note:CDs are highly recommended as a back-up to audiotapes and can be added to any option for an additional fee.
Options: Ethical Wills/LifeLetters®
- Consultation and coaching for do-it-yourself projects (hourly fees)
- Starter Option: planning meeting plus four hours of audiorecorded interviews*
You receive: a set of audiotapes in a cassette album
*More sessions can be added
- Enhanced Option: Starter Option plus tape transcription and editing into a reorganized, shaped first-person narrative
You receive: a simply-bound document plus audiotapes in a cassette album
- Written or edited legacy document using your notes and ideas
- Writing workshops and weekly classes
Options: Life Review for Life Transitions
You might choose to review your life story as a private process of personal discovery, spiritual awareness, or healing. Similar to recording a personal history, I guide you through series of informal questions that help you remember and tell the important stories of your life. However, this option is intended to illuminate the themes, patterns and essential energies woven through and beneath the stories. The process of life review also helps with integrating a challenging event or chapter into your larger narrative.
Interviews cover the entirety of your life or focus on your spiritual autobiography, career/vocational path, or relationship history. Taped interviews can then be followed by coaching sessions to revision your journey and initiate meaningful and manageable goals and activities. When facing any major passage, participating in Life Review for Life Transitions sessions can offer the perspective, insight and support needed to initiate a new chapter in life with a renewed sense of purpose.
- Standard Option: planning meeting, eight hours of an audiorecorded review of your life’s chapters and transitions, plus a two-hour follow-up feedback session*
* Fewer sessions are possible; more can be added.
- Coaching sessions to:
~ assess values, purpose and priorities
~ identify and work towards goals
(hourly or monthly; in-person or on telephone)
- Support and guidance through life passages (hourly)
For more information and a complimentary telephone consultation:
Linda Blachman, MPH, MA
510-466-5053
linda@lindablachman.com
www.lindablachman.com
• Biography services for attorneys
• Business and organizational histories
• Executive transition legacies
• Manuscript editing
• Memorial books and obituaries
• Celebration books for special occasions
• Writing for healing workshops
What is personal history?
Personal history is the preservation of a person’s life
story, memoirs, or life values in printed form or on audiotape,
videotape, CD or DVD. I use audiotapes for interviewing which
can be converted into CDs or transcribed and edited into a book.
What is a personal historian?
A personal historian records and preserves people’s memoirs
and life stories. I have been recording life stories for over
a decade, as well as assisting individuals in preparing Ethical
Wills and planning non-financial legacies.
How does personal history
differ from genealogy?
A personal historian records a person’s life stories and
experiences, while genealogists research and record a person’s
descent from his or her ancestors. Geneology is the skeleton;
personal history and stories add muscle and skin; and an Ethical
Will fills in the vital organs—the heart and “guts”
of a life.
What is an Ethical Will
(what I call a LifeLetter®)?
The LifeLetter is a personal legacy expressing spiritual beliefs,
values, life lessons, and messages of forgiveness and love. It
is written or recorded by a parent or adult for a child or someone
beloved now, for the next generation, or for the community as
a whole. The LifeLetter dips below the stories to evaluate a life
as a whole and to harvest its meaning. It can be shared during
a lifetime or become a codicil to a will of tangible possessions.
Why should I hire a professional?
If you are able to sit down
by yourself with a tape recorder, video recorder, or pen and pad
of paper and record your stories and your Ethical Will, good for
you! The problem is that most people never get around to it, saying,
“It’s too hard to do this alone,” or “I’ll
do this later.”
For most, it is too hard to do
alone and “later” can become too late: the stories
are lost, and memory, connection, and history are diminished.
The hardest part of my grief when my mother died after years of
suffering from dementia was that I didn’t really know her
story, didn’t have it to pass on, and now never would. Do
it now—before memory fades, before it’s too late.
See it as a work in progress which you can revise and update over
the years.
Working with a professional interviewer
offers you the structure, guidance, and support to efficiently
accomplish the project. You can relax while the personal historian
draws you out, facilitates a rich, enjoyable and comprehensive
process, and prepares the gift-product, always respecting your
expressed needs and wishes.
How long does it take to
record a life story?
Recording your story or LifeLetter can average from a few hours
to twelve hours or more, depending on the breadth and depth of
your memories and experiences. Sessions last from one to three
hours each and are typically spread over days or weeks. The project
can be completed in an intense few days or extend over many months
if, for example, you wish to have your tapes transcribed and edited.
The project is tailored to your inclination and available time
and energy.
Do I need to prepare?
Although some people like to prime the memory pump through listening
to old music, looking at photographs, and rereading old journals,
preparation is not required. I ask questions to get you started
and to draw out the most interesting and meaningful material.
You can decide how structured or unstructured you wish the interviewing
to be. You can pause at any time and can refuse any question.
This is your story; I help you tell it in the way that is most
natural, comfortable, and meaningful for you.
WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF RECORDING A PERSONAL HISTORY?
Every project is different because each person’s stories, desires and preferences are unique. In a typical project:
- We may have a complementary telephone consultation to talk about your ideas and needs, the type of services you are seeking, and a general price range.
- When you are clear about your preferences, I provide a written estimate and letter of agreement and, once approved, we schedule an introductory planning and getting-acquainted session.
- Meetings typically take place in your home (or in your loved one’s home), but they can be in my home office in Berkeley. I am also available to travel nationally.
- We’ll schedule two-hour taped interviews one or more times per week. For out-of-town clients and those who prefer working more intensively, I can schedule morning and afternoon sessions over several consecutive days.
- I provide several formats for telling a life story, prepare questions, and guide you through the process. No other preparation is required although, if requested, I will suggest “homework.”
- Once the taping is complete, you will receive the audiotapes in a cassette album if you have chosen the Starter Option.
- If you choose the Enhanced or Custom Option, the tapes are transcribed word for word. The manuscript is then edited and prepared in accordance with your desires.
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