LISTEN to the podcast of this blog post on Spotify:
WATCH the podcast video on YouTube:
In this series of podcast/blog episodes, I share real-life stories and experiences from my clients and people I have chatted with through a decade of working in the aging sector. Below is a summary of how each podcast/blog is outlined.
*Details of all podcast/blog stories are adjusted to ensure confidentiality of all parties.
In this episode :
- The Situation – What the client was experiencing or the circumstance they were facing.
- The Client – How the client was perceiving and responding to the situation – their mindset, emotions and result.
- The Guidance – How I helped shift their perspective to renew their mindset, emotions and result.
An Extra Intro to the Situation
About 5 years ago, I started looking at life story journals to purchase for my own grandparents. Something that they could document their memories and stories in for myself and my brother and other family members to have as a keepsake of them.
I recognized what a loss it would be to lose a grandparent. And although this is the circle of life, it’s the stories and lived experiences and meaningful memories that I knew I would miss.
Maybe I’m an old soul, but I find so much comfort and importance in knowing about who came before me.
What did the generations before me experience?
What did they learn throughout life?
I believe it is my responsibility, or rather our responsibility as the younger generation, to recognize that if we LISTEN and LEARN from those who have come and gone before us, we have a firmer and stronger foundation to set off on our path and our own mission.
Every generation should be leaving something to lift up the next. And every new generation should remain in tune to what the previous generation accomplished so we aren’t spinning in circles and repeating history.
In my search for a life story journal for my own grandparents, I couldn’t find anything that checked all the boxes for me.
The journals were either too small for arthritic hands, the text was too small for visual impairment, the cover of the book was too flashy or had weird graphics, the layout and prompts in the book didn’t make sense.
Maybe I was just being really picky, but I kept thinking, ‘I could make a better journal than this…’
So in late 2023, I created my own life story journal and I self-published it in time for people to order it as a Christmas gift that year.
Then after I received feedback on that first version of the journal, I refined it and then relaunched it last fall, fall 2024, and I attended a number of local markets as a vendor and sold my journal and was able to talk to people in person about it and my Age Planning business, which was really cool.
Shameless plug – my life story journal is called Leaving Legacy.
It has over 150 journaling prompts that are broken into 15 categories across the lifespan – it goes from infancy and childhood, into teens and relationships, parenting and grandparenting and then there are some extra ones like fun facts and favourites.
The journal itself is 8.5 by 11 inches, which is a good size to hold onto and leaves lots of room inside for writing. The entire journal is minimum 18 point font to help those with visual impairment.
On the cover of the journal, I’ve included a blank box so you can write the name of the person who filled out the journal, right on the cover.
If you have multiple grandparents or parents filling out journals then you can tell as soon as you pick it up whose journal it is.
What else…oh it’s available in a sage green colour and a clay orange.
Both are the same, just a different colour option.
(You can go to nestage.ca/leavinglegacy to have a look and to order these journals. You can have them mailed to you or I can send them directly to your loved one. The journals are $30 each and that includes shipping!)
But let’s get to today’s story now, because I love this one. Stories like this are exactly what I hoped for when I created this journal.
The Client
MINDSET & EMOTION
So – an adult daughter purchased a Leaving Legacy journal for her mother, whom was 90 I think she told me.
She gifted her mother the journal and her mother wanted nothing to do with it [sigh].
She said it was too much work to write in the journal and no one wants to hear her stories anyway… she has no interest to sit and write, it’s a waste of time…
But then a few months later, the daughter comes to find out that her mother has in fact found a completely new surge of life from this journal and she’s actually started writing her own ‘book’ on the computer because there wasn’t enough room in the journal!
The prompts within my Leaving Legacy journal were providing her the outline for typing out her book on the computer.
And my heart just exploded when she told me this story – for 2 main reasons that I’ll tell you and also give some meaningful explanation to each.
#1. The mother had found an activity of life reflection and was healing.
#2. Someday her family will read her memories that she has been documenting and they are going to gain comfort, knowledge, wisdom and healing from her writing.
The Guidance
So let’s dive into what I mean a little bit.
#1 LIFE REFLECTION & HEALING
This 90 year old woman was getting a big huge dose of life reflection in her voluntarily writing and creating her own book from my journal prompts, which on a deeper level, means she was healing.
I have had many people tell me that completing this type of life story journal is a very healing experience for them because you’re allowing yourself to recall old memories and return to a previous stage of life and state of thinking, of which you are now able to reflect on as someone with 60, 70, 80, 90 years of life you’ve lived.
And that is POWERFUL.
That is healing for the soul if you allow it to be.
Because the flip, or the opposing way of thinking about this, (which I think is really heartbreaking, but people would say this to me at every market I went to selling my journal)…they would say, ‘People don’t want to read about the memories that I have’ or ‘my life stories aren’t the kind that you share’.
Those are the responses of someone who has not processed their traumas and does not understand the incredible value of their lived experience and personal lessons that they are withholding from the next generation.
Because like I said at the beginning – every generation should be leaving something to lift up the next.
To start the next generation from a higher foundation than they had started from.
That means the stories and experiences of our eldest generations for better OR for worse are lessons that the young need to hear.
Jess Davis
Healing happens between generations. Generational healing happens when an older generation allows themself to acknowledge and process their wounds and then teach a younger generation what they learned in order to create healthier lives for current and future generations.
When someone believes, ‘my life is not worth reflecting on and I have nothing to teach’, that is a detrimental thought to not only that individual’s health and healing, but it’s also detrimental to the success of future generations.
#2 DOCUMENTED FAMILY WISDOM
Someday this woman’s family will read her memories that she has been documenting and they have the opportunity to gain comfort, knowledge, wisdom and healing from her writing.
When I talk to family members who have purchased my journals, I’ve heard of them using the journals in a few different ways.
Some people give the journal to their loved one and ask them to complete the journal, with the intent that someday when their loved one has died, they will have this book of memories to read and feel comforted by through their grieving process of losing that person.
They will always have their stories to return to when they need a dose of comfort and healing and a sense of closeness to their loved one.
Other people use the prompts within the journal to create conversation and gain new stories and perspectives from their loved one that they otherwise would have never heard.
From this, family members are not only able to acquire knowledge and wisdom, but the older adult is given purpose and value from recalling memories and sharing them in conversation.
For families with an older adult who is dealing with mobility or vision challenges, cognitive decline, a general lack of energy or maybe even are in palliative care, the simplicity yet depth of a conversation from these life reflection prompts can be exactly what a family needs to meaningfully engage with one another.
LEAVE YOUR LEGACY
So, all to say I just felt SO fulfilled to hear of this family benefiting from my Leaving Legacy journal. It’s exactly how I hope legacy gets stirred up for an older adult and their family.
If you want to check out Leaving Legacy and order one or two for your family, you can go to my website nestage.ca/leavinglegacy and find all the details. There’s a little video of me flipping through the journal pages as well.
3 reminders before you go –
#1. Go check the show notes for any resources or links I mentioned in this episode that peaked your interested. (I link these directly in the blog above.)
#2. Please share this episode with a friend whom you think it would bless. Because in order for more families to benefit from my Age Planning resources, I need listeners like you to spread the word.
And #3. I would love to hear from you – email me with your thoughts on this episode, or to suggest a topic you’d like to hear on a future episode – hello@nestage.ca .
And remember, we’re all aging. Aging is the same as Living. And it is a privilege to live and to age.
Jess
