Writing Your Life History: A Journey of Self-discovery

By Hilda K. Ross, Ph.D.

This manual provides valuable tools such as the Life Framework, techniques for organizing your material, a reading list, memory prodders, and the writing hints that have been deemed worthy of special mention by the students. Hilda states: “My interest in working with the Life History stems from many years of professional involvement with the older people. Clearly the Life History helped them recall their abilities in surmounting great difficulties, providing a strong foundation for getting on with life with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. A completed Life History gives the writer grand rewards: an enthusiasm for getting on with life, a document for living for the next generations, and for your family and friends, an opportunity to know who you are.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483449029

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Ph.D.

Copyright © 2016 Hilda K. Ross, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means---whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic---without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4903-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4902-9 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 05/11/2016

CONTENTS

Before We Get Started

Acknowledgments

Preface

About the Author

What Is a Life History?

Your Goal

A Word

Section I: What Is Life History?

The Life History Course

For Whom Are You Writing Your Life History?

How Long or Short Should My Life History Be?

Students Are Asked:

Why Are You Writing Your Life History?

Responses From Families & Friends Who Received A Life History Journal

Life History Through The Years

Self-Discovery: As You Write You Will Rethink Your Life

Gifts Waiting For You At The End Of Your Journey

The Rewards Continue

Completing Your Life History

Section II: Organizing Your Information

Make Your Writing A Priority

Take Yourself Seriously

Your Writing Environment

A Quiet Place to Work

A Desk or Area Clear of Extraneous Material

A Place Where Your Work Is Visible

Equipment

Magazine File Box

Preparing Your Life Framework

What Students Have Said About the Life Framework

Using The Life Framework Shell

Develop Your Enlarged Life Framework Shell In This Order

The Number of Parts Is Unique to Each Writer.

A Life Framework Divided Into Parts

Sample Table of Contents

Your Life At A Glance

The Chronology of Events - a Skeleton of the Life Framework

This Is Your Research

Retrieving the Past - Another aid for recall

Section III: Beginning To Write

Where Do I Begin?

Ideas for Beginning

After The First Story, What's Next?

Keep on Writing and Storing

Also Consider

Examples of Primarily Single Topic Books

The Verbal Contract

How To Keep On Writing

There Is More to the Verbal Contract than Writing

What You Say Is Significant

Time Savers

To Improve Your Writing Keep Writing

How Much Do I Tell?

What Others Have Said

Everyone's Memory Is Unreliable - At Times

To Help With Recall

Wheel For Recall

Sample Wheel -- Early Childhood

Sample Writing -- Early Childhood

Sample Wheel -- Entire Family

Read, Read, Read For The Duration

Reading Can Improve Your Writing

Verify The Facts

Cultural Information

Checkpoint

Frequently Asked Questions

The Fear Of Writing

Which Part Of You Is Writing?

Limericks

Make Fun Of Irritating Situations With Humor

Checkpoint

Section IV: Aids To Writing

A Working Manual

A Suggested List Of Topics Basic For Every Age

Great-Grandparents and Grandparents

Your Parents

Childhood

Adolescence

Checkpoint

Adulthood

Jobs

Education

Marriage(s)

Raising Your Family

Single Person

Recognitions

The Ideal Person You Strive to Be

Dominant Focus

Turning Points

Sample Writing -- Adulthood

Later Years

Change

Markers of Aging

Retirement

Adult Children

Values

Philosophy

Marriage in the Later Years

Maturation

Personal Assessments

Summary

Sample Writings -- Later Years

Section V: Becoming A Book

Preliminary Pages

Title

Table of Contents

Dedication Page

Preface

Chapter Headings

Rewriting Your Rough Draft

You Will Be On Two Tracks As You Rewrite

Track I Changing Perceptions

Track II Rewriting

Checkpoint

One Year From The Beginning

Getting Ready For The Printer

Genealogy

Copyright

Social Security

Section VI: And, In Addition

Taping Your Life History

Before You Begin Taping

The Taping Session

Find A Reader

Procedures for Writers and Readers

Requests of Readers

The Reader's Role

Life History Reading List

Aging

Autobiography

Biography

Child and Adolescence

Fiction

Issues In A Bureaucracy

Marriage

The Northeast in the 1920s

Philosophy Of Life

Sequence Of History

Understanding Yourself

Writing

Final Words

BEFORE WE GET STARTED

Acknowledgments

Preface

What is a Life History?

Your Goal

A Word

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The encouragement and recommendations from students and individuals is gratefully acknowledged. In developing this Manual I was helped by Carolyn Holman, Ruth Williams and Martha Horner. I appreciated the time and expertise they gave to it along with Charles Capron, Arthur R. Brand, Milton Robin Ross, Jr., Paula Finck, Earlece Greenawalt, Peggy Stone, Marion Scheim.

And to all the students over the many years who have taught me so much.

Individuals who contributed to the development of the manual included Rachael J. Ross, Rosita Nordwall, Edith Moore, Celeste Carlile, Joanne Parsons, Bill Morgan, Anna Samons, Shirley Rackear, Ben McKearney, Trish Sample, Barbara Dockery, Arnold P. Von der Porten and Lois A. Reaves.

And a special thanks to Danny Burk who has masterfully edited this book and to Donna Chandler who helped me get it published.

PREFACE

My interest in working with the Life History stemmed from many years of professional involvement with older people. I have worked in Mental Health where a modified Life History process was used in the clinics. I had also worked in senior centers where I observed the joy of people sharing events in their lives. The opportunity for individuals to recount their past was a rewarding experience no matter in which setting it occurred.

The Life History process had a remarkable effect on helping individuals recall past successes, as well as to help them recall their ability in surmounting great difficulties; in the social setting, one person's stories always triggered responses from the listeners and in the telling strengthened inter-group relationships; in the one-to-one setting, the opportunity to delve into the deeper meaning of events was therapeutic. The final effect of completing a Life History was similar for most people - it served to build a strong foundation for getting on with life with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

A completed Life History gives the writer grand rewards: an enthusiasm for getting on with life; a document for living for the next generations and for your family and friends, an opportunity to know who you are.

For these reasons, I resolved to take the Life History out of the confines of Mental Health and the senior centers and prepare it for general use. I wanted to open its intense joy for the writer and to give the reader the rare opportunity of knowing the writer and all that he had encountered in a lifetime. In this way the writer could become a teacher to the next generation while enjoying the benefits of the Life History experience.

The material in this Manual expresses the concerns, interest, and questions of the Life History students who have taken this course over the past decades.

My interest is not so much to teach writing techniques but to help the writer get it down on paper.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hilda K. Ross, Ph.D., has taught classes in Writing Your Life History for more than 30 years. After obtaining B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University, New York University, the Union Institute & University, Dr. Ross held positions with the City of Stamford, Connecticut; with the University of Miami Medical School, Department of Psychiatry; and with the State of South Carolina, Department of Mental Health. She has published articles on aging in The Psychiatric Annuals, The Gerontologist, Community Health (Great Britain), Aging, and Geriatric Nursing.

Hilda states: My interest in working with the Life History stems from many years of professional involvement with the older people. Clearly the Life History helped them recall their abilities in surmounting great difficulties, providing a strong foundation for getting on with life with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

WHAT IS A LIFE HISTORY?

A Life History is the history of your life. It is the retelling of all that occurred in your past, recorded and documented.

Writing your Life History is a process. It is:

• A structured method for collecting facts

• Verifying the information

• Reflecting on the meaning of events and on the people in your life

• Reading

• Writing

• Revising

• Deciding how much to reveal

• Binding all the pages and pictures into a book

So, you can see that it does not occur by chance and is much more than just filling up time or just writing.

Students frequently confuse the Life History with Genealogy which as you know is a record of marriages, births and deaths. A Genealogy is not a single person's life story; the Life History is one person's life. If you have a Genealogy, include it in your Life History.

Completing this Course does not mean you have finished writing your Life History. This takes a minimum of 18 months depending on your commitment to the project and how much time you are willing to give to it. As Howard Fast so eloquently stated in his book The Pledge, no one is constructed instantly. It