Lydia Stucki

Storybooking: a Method of Bridging the Past and Future

Have you ever wondered how to teach your children the same values and ideals that your parents taught you? Storybooking is the process of discovering, preserving and celebrating your family heritage. It's a unique way of documenting and sharing family history. Storybooking with Heritage Makes will bridge your past to your future.

Family values, beliefs and culture give structure and meaning to everyday life. Identifying and recognizing those core guidelines can be done through a process called "storybooking." Heritage Makers, a personal publishing company that coined the phrase, believes families can be strengthened through this storybooking process of discovering, preserving and celebrating family stories.

Imagine this. At bedtime, you snuggle your kids on the couch and read from their favorite storybook - the one with a beautiful hardback cover that, on the inside, features the digital images of worn, black and white pictures of your grandmother as a child and tells stories of her growing up during the Great Depression. You read of how lucky her dad felt to have a job and see a picture of him holding a shovel in his hand. You see a picture of their family having a picnic and read that Great Grandmother's favorite food was watermelon. You read that they worked the farm together as a family and fished from the stream behind their house. Pictures show the house they lived in and the fish they caught. Your kids discover that as a child, their Great Grandmother enjoyed reading in the evenings, just as they do.

Do you see how this storybook reinforces family values? Do you see how easily it captures the children's interest? Do you see how it teaches family history and celebrates family heritage? It's storybooking at its finest.

And anyone can enjoy a personalized storybook. With today's cutting-edge digital technology, it's easier than ever to document, preserve and share your family heritage.

Heritage Makers shares its products via the direct selling industry with consultants and workshops. Clients set up a password-protected online account and then create projects using a simple drag-and-drop method. New projects can be based off a template (there are literally hundreds available) or started completely from scratch. With no software to download and the process operating entirely online, clients can access their projects from anywhere that has a computer and an internet connection.

Extended family used to live close to one another - it used to be easier to share stories and pass on traditions. But these days, many of our most treasured family traditions are fading. Today families live farther apart from one another and are under budget and time constraints that don't allow frequent visits.

If we do not consciously define, recognize and consider the elements of our lives that tell us who we are and how we should live, then society will do it for us. We must intentionally celebrate our family heritage and consider the values of our families. And storybooking can be the bridge between the past and future.

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