This post may contain affiliate links which means we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase (at no extra cost to you). As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What is your absolute favorite memory as a child? Or is there a moment that you wish you could experience again? Maybe it’s something that you recall as a highlight in your childhood… or maybe it’s a moment that changed the trajectory of your life. Maybe it’s a memory of a time shared with a loved one that you don’t get to see anymore.
What would you give to be able to relive that moment?
You have it within your grasp to be able to give that gift to your children. I am not a psychologist and have no letters after my name. To my kids, I am “Mom”, and those are the three most important letters in my book. I am tasked with the raising of these souls… their spiritual, physical, mental, and educational well-being all fall under my jurisdiction. Telling their story is vitally important.
Why is telling their story so important?
Friends, this is not about some glorified social media moment. I couldn’t possibly care less about how many likes or shares a photo or video receives. We also aren’t talking about a bunch of random video clips that are permanently stuck on your phone or a hard drive that your children never access.
I am talking about giving your children their history in a beautiful and meaningful way… about bringing to life those moments for your children… those moments that they will look back on as their happiest, or the life changing events like when you met them for the first time, or the gift of being able to watch themselves at a young age with a loved one that has passed away.
This is their history unfolding.
You have the opportunity to capture it in the present. By capturing and telling their story, you are giving it life, movement, sound, and emotion rather than just passing it along through stories shared through words.
In coming posts, we’ll talk about all of the different ways to telling your family’s story, but one of our favorites is through video. There is something about this medium that helps bring moments to life. Through it, you add movement to memories and get to witness awkward first steps, watch a smile as it grows to light up a face, and see tender moments unfold. When you allow natural sounds, you’ll hear your child’s uncontainable laughter, or their tiny little cries (at some point, you will miss this – even though it may not be for years), or sink back in to the sounds from the environment that surrounded you when those moments took place. If you add things like music, transitions, slow motion, and some simple editing, you can create an emotional experience that you will want to relive with your children for many years to come.
Present their story in a way that allows you to relive it together over and over again.
There is something about a song that can take you back to a moment instantly. In our family, we literally have soundtracks for our lives. It is something that we deliberately curate before a trip. When we are traveling, that is the soundtrack we listen to as we are driving or getting ready in the morning. When we come home, that playlist becomes the structure for our films. Moments are inseparably tied to the song and when we hear the song, we get to relive the moment.
On a recent trip to a roller rink, one of “our songs” came on and I looked up to find the biggest smiles on both of my kids’ faces. We were all instantly transported back to our last family vacation. Grocery stores have the power to take us back to Thailand on a regular basis. Spontaneous hugs erupt as my son hears “our song” and remembers the moments he literally walked into our lives. It is the same song that I intend to hear as I dance with him on his wedding day and we’ll both smile, knowing exactly how far our journey together has brought us.
I get to be mom to two of the most well-adjusted kids on the planet.
While I would like to attribute that to some pretty stellar mothering, I would like to humbly acknowledge that it is by God’s grace alone that these souls in our care are genuinely happy and well-adjusted kiddos in spite of a story that includes the trauma of adoption.
There is so much about their stories that we will never know.
We have given them what we can, are happy to share the information we have, and will gladly explore finding more details as they get older and those options become available if they desire to.
The story that we do know – the moments we’ve shared together – our kids have documentation in every form imaginable. Their favorite thing is to re-watch their stories on video.
I believe that giving them their stories in this way has been a tremendous grounding tool for them and is part of the reason that they are individuals who process questions about their history in healthy ways.
Kids love family movie night.
When family movie night comes around, the top requests are often their adoption films. Movie nights open up all kinds of questions as they allow us to relive those memories. There is nothing off limits in those stories and our kids know that they are welcome to ask or talk about any of it. By sharing those moments together, they know where our story together begins. Adoption can be a tricky topic, especially when you don’t have all of the answers, but by sharing family time together in this way, they know that this isn’t an uncomfortable thing for us. It’s part of their history and we want to give them the tools they need to mentally process their journey.
If snuggling on the couch together can help add a level of pride for their story while bonding our family even closer together, we are all in! If it brings up new questions that maybe they hadn’t thought to ask before, great!
Whether you gave birth to your child or you met them in a hotel room for the first time half a world away, creating a visual history for your children is an incredible reminder of just how far you have come together. For you, it might have been lots of sleepless nights with a fussy baby. Or maybe you were like me and have a daughter who rejected you for the better part of your first two months together. It is such a blessing to be able to relive those moments (as painful as they were at the time) together now that we have such a sweet relationship. Those videos are a concrete reminder of just how far we’ve come together. If you’d like to see some of our videos, you can read about them, watch our videos, or learn more about adoption.
With the tools that are available today, telling your story in a beautiful way has never been easier. It takes time and energy, but it 100% worth the effort when you get to relive those important moments together as a family.
We are going to do our best to give you the tools and resources you need to make that possible. Be sure to subscribe if you’d like to be notified when those posts come out and check back often as we work to create content that will bring you closer to the goal of telling your family’s story beautifully.
One thought on “Why Telling Your Story is Important”