Raise your hand if this scenario sounds familiar: It’s your birthday, and your mom hands you a present while laughingly announcing, “It’s you who should be giving me a present! I did all the work to get you born!”
Go ahead and roll your eyes, but it’s true and everyone knows it. We owe so much to our mothers and grandmothers—to all the foremothers who made us possible.
As a women-owned business, RLM takes Women’s History Month very personally. Historically, so many human stories have been lost because they weren’t considered important. It’s our job to correct that misconception. It’s our mission to lift up the voices of everyone who has been told that their history isn’t really History.
On the contrary, we believe that life stories are the crucial first draft of history. Your experiences—and your reflections on those experiences—are the basis for our shared understanding of the human experience. Which is what history really is, after all.
Recently, genealogical companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have made a mint telling people where they came from (although they’re a lot less accurate than they’d have you believe). While we’re very supportive of genealogical research in general (and specifically that of independent genealogists), that’s only half the story.
The other half of any life story is what it all means—to you and about you. How did you get to be you? What were your most important influences? Who taught you things, challenged you, showed you the world? What did you learn, and what can you pass on?
Your legacy is a lot more than your DNA. Share your storehouse of wisdom with your loved ones now, and with the generations yet to come. Add to the great library of humanity. Be the ancestor you wish you had. Historians of the future will thank you!
But remember that writing your story is also a gift to you, the author. There is nothing more fulfilling than feeling that you’ve been heard, that your life is worthy of examination and respect. We at RLM honor that desire. We hope that our beautiful designs for memoirs and family histories demonstrate how seriously we take it.
And so (drumroll, please!) we’re very excited to tell you that we’re developing a step-by-step guide for creating a family history project. More details to come soon, but if this blog post has inspired you, stay tuned and stay in touch!
From all of us at RLM to you, happy Women’s History Month! Now, go out and celebrate by grabbing a pen (or a laptop) and getting started!