life review

Life review is a process of recollecting, evaluating, and attributing meaning to our experiences, our memories—particularly helpful in times of significant change. And the end of life is most definitely a time of significant change! As such, life review is a wonderful path to finding meaning and a sense of wholeness during what can be a very hard time.

Life review activities can include: autobiographical writing, storytelling, instructing younger generations, genealogy, even blogging! What we do, life story interviewing, lets you focus on telling your story, without the need to compose your prose or type up your manuscripts*. We support you in your life review process with a specially-trained companion, a professional interviewer with years of experience in end-of-life care.

*a bit of the Legacy Life Stories story: I was inspired to start this service by a dear friend who said with exasperation: “I want to tell my story, I don’t want to spend all my time typing!”

legacy projects

Legacy projects offer a powerful way to transform end of life wishes into action—a process of taking time to purposefully create something for the people you love and care about.

These projects can take all kinds of shapes: a recipe collection, a photo album, letters to loved ones, a painting, a memoir, a quilt, a handknit scarf, a poem or song, a time capsule. We offer the opportunity to create your legacy in the form of your own voice telling your life story, with our professional support and guidance.

Legacy work is an active way to care for those you will leave behind, and as such, it can be a powerful coping tool not only for you, but the people around you.

WHY LIFE STORY INTERVIEWS?

connection

People often wish to have meaningful interactions with each other at the end of life, but it can be hard to figure out how to make that happen. The exploration of life stories contained in our interview recordings often work as an inspiration and even a catalyst for richer interactions at end of life– topics for conversation and shared reminiscences that emphasize connection, move interactions beyond the superficial, and focus on the life of the dying person, rather than their death process.

grief support

After a person is gone, these audio recordings can be a valuable part of the mourning process and a ‘piece’ of that person their loved ones can revisit as time passes. Just as photographs serve to preserve and remind us of what our loved ones looked like and moments we shared, these audio recordings preserve and remind us how they sounded: their voices, their laughter, the rhythm and cadence of their speech, the subtle but familiar intonations that reflect emotion.

Life story interviewing complements PALLIATIVE AND hospice care in that it offers caregiver respite, companionship, legacy pROJECT SUPPORT, life reflection, grief support for the dying person, and potential bereavement support for loved ones.