My Story

My intention was to document my children’s lives. I took a lot of pictures of them as they grew up. The problem was that I never knew what to do with them. I never sorted through them, never noted who was in the pictures, what we were doing, where we were or more importantly how I felt about the occasion or my children. Many of my pictures were put in albums in such a haphazard way that they were not even in order by year.

After my children were grown, I still had all those years of pictures and I was still taking more. Nagging at the back of my mind for all those years was the thought that I really should do something with all the pictures I had of my kid’s childhood. But the task was so overwhelming that I couldn’t even think about it.

Then I attended a retreat. One of the workshop options was scrapbooking. I looked at it, dismissed it and then looked again. I’ve been telling myself I’m not creative since my father criticized me for not coloring inside the lines.

I decided to try it anyway. I walked into the room and the inside were long tables with scrapbook pages laid out and next to them was pictures and strips of paper and coordinating triangles. All I had to do was adhere the paper to the end of the page, add the triangle and the pictures and the scrapbook page was complete! Wow, even I can do that.
All those years of pictures came flooding back to my mind. I decided to begin scrapbooking. I was given the best advice ever: “Don’t worry about the 30 years of old pictures. Start with what’s current and stay current. You will get to them eventually.”

Then I started my own career teaching others to scrapbook. And I found the product that allowed me to sort through those pictures without feeling overwhelmed. As I sorted I realized that I had lost the stories and the memories that went with those pictures. Sometimes I couldn’t tell which son I was looking at. In many pictures I couldn’t tell how old my son is – 3 years or 4 years – 18 months or 2 years. Those ages look so similar. Is he in 8th grade or 9th grade or 10th grade? How will I ever make an album for him now?

While I can’t recapture those memories for my children, I can capture them for my grandchildren. And I can tell the story of my life today for my children and grandchildren to have after I am gone.