Family Memoirs

Hello everyone
Thanks for clicking through! 
I’m really excited about this project and so glad that you’re here and willing to find out more. Our memoirs will only be created if we are all involved, and so it genuinely means the world to me that you are willing to be a part of it. 
It’s super-important to me that we enjoy this and that we don’t make it ‘hard work’… and also that everyone feels they are equal in the ownership of what we are doing. 
So, my thinking is we start off by just sharing one simple suggestion for how to get going, and see what emerges. And then all of us take the pledge to take just one step and spend say, an hour on it and go from there. This is totally a journey, and something we can build as revisit over time. 
I have captured some ways below that can help us to make a start. I’m open to suggestions too, as I’ve said, this is very much a collaborative effort and so please let me know if there’s anything you think we can do differently or better.
 
1. Interviewing the older generations 
Firstly, I’m wondering whether those of us with older parents or aunts/uncles could set up a time to ‘interview’ them on Zoom to begin to capture their story. If you have burning questions you’d like to ask your parents, then go for it, or if not, here is a suggestion of what could spark some interesting information. 
  • What are your most precious memories of growing up and family? 
  • What are some of the hardships you faced over the years?
  • Tell us something that no one knows about you 
  • What nuggets of wisdom would you like to pass on to the younger generations about life, love, marriage and having children? 
  • What are your memories of living in other countries… the good, the bad and the ugly? 
  • Tell us about your work/career? What did you do? 
  • What are your best memories of food growing up?
  • What are your memories of your parents? What were their names? Where did they live? 
It would be amazing if you could record the Zoom session as we will get it transcribed. If you haven’t done this before, it’s dead simple… this short article gives some guidance – https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-record-zoom-meeting?r=US&IR=T
Once completed, please send the recording to myself or Ann and we will get it transcribed, and then this information can form the beginnings of the website we create. 

2. Beginning to create our profiles for our family tree  
So that we can begin to create profiles of each of us, it would be great if you could complete the following and email to annmlowe@icloud.com
  • Your name (and name prior to being married if different) 
  • Where you live 
  • Name of your partner
  • Names and ages of your children 
  • Your age and date of birth 
  • Your job title/what you do
  • Parents names 
  • Details of any other countries you have lived in/where you were born 
  • Names of your brothers and sisters 
Ann will keep everything confidential, but if you have any questions about this please let me know. 
Thank so much! 
Excited to see where this leads, 
Sanjay x 
Spice Kitchen Elephants