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Personal History & Making Choices – Part 3

May 25, 2016

Personal History and Making Choices - Part 3 by Pam Pacelli Cooper Our first two blogs about making choices  in personal history dealt with awareness and contemplation from: “What is personal history? Never heard of it, “ to “ This sounds interesting, but I want to think more about it.”  Ok, now, you've made it through those first two phases and your relative or your personal history client has thought about it and says they're ready to move forward. Ready to start talking or taping, right?  Not quite. The next step is huge. The  decision has been made to go ahead, but the decision about HOW to proceed has not. As someone who has painted a lot of rooms, I can say that I dislike the spackling and the sanding—I’d rather put the beautiful colors on the wall NOW—but having tried that a few times and ended up with a bumpy, uneven mess, I’ve learned the importance of preparation. If you want want a high-quality personal history, there’s a lot of “spackling” involved.   How can you help in this stage?  1.	Identify supports and obstacles to creating the project. Brainstorm about  how to amortize the supports and overcome the obstacles.  2.	Create a map:  There are many ways to do this, but your map must have a beginning, signposts along the way, and a destination ( the final product).  3.	Keep the larger purpose in mind: Why are you doing this, and for whom? If things get dicey or stall,  visualize the faces of your great grandchildren as they learn about their family, or imagine an historian coming across the World War II letters from your grandfather that you’ve donated to the local historical society.   You’ve made the decision, you’ve got the vision, you’ve made a map. NOW you are ready to take action!  This is the stage most of us are familiar with. It involves setting the steps of our carefully laid plan into motion and adjusting as we need to, always keeping the end in mind.  What has your experience been with these three phases? How did you help move someone through the first two stages to the third stage of being ready for the project? Do you have a system for creating a personal history map that's worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments section!

Categories: Personal History, Techniques

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