What a Gift to Swap Family Stories This Holiday Season!

Do you know your family stories? 

You know some, because you lived them. There are stories that make everyone laugh, stories to explain things, stories about love and beginnings, stories about overcoming hardships. Family stories build deep bonds within your family and with friends. 

Importantly, you get to define family. Family can mean you and your partner, a motley group of blood relatives, chosen family or a group of close friends. 

However you define family, you have origin stories, stories of births or meetings. You have stories of endings and challenges. Holidays, traditions, silly rituals and also harder stories, loss or illness,  … they all have a part in your family stories. And these stories matter. 

Why are stories so important? 

They allow us to share values without lecturing. 

They create common history, touchpoints we can come back to. Think about when you are with somebody and one “Remember the time …” becomes a series of stories. 

Family stories weave us together. Yes, there are rifts, where our stories pull us apart, and how we dealt with it is another story. 

Questions to Share Family Stories 

Some family stories get told again and again. Others don’t come up as often. Maybe one generation or a newer member of the family doesn’t know some older stories. Maybe there’s something about your family you’ve never thought to ask or wondered if you could. 

Family story questions can get you started. They serve as prompts for stories that don’t come up naturally. They can remind people about things they may not have talked about before or in a while. 

So many families gather for the holidays, why not give yourselves the gift of family stories. Maybe you have elders you know won’t be with you much longer and you want to hear what they know that maybe others don’t. You could have somebody record the stories. You can also just listen deeply. 

Some stories will spawn other stories. Some stories will lead to additional questions. And if you’ve reached the end of the gold in one story, you can use another question to prompt more stories and learn to know your family a little better. 

Get Family Story Questions, a gift from me to you to get you started. You’ll get question cards that you can print and put on your holiday table or bring out with the dessert. I also give some suggestions for how to use the questions. 

I hope you’ll download these questions and make gathering together a time to gather family stories. It’s a great gift to take the time to ask the questions, share the stories, learn more about each other and deepen your connections.

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