The Story

Why do we tell stories? What is the purpose? I feel that everyone tells stories for their own reasons. Just as we all need to hear stories for different reasons, some people for inspiration and there are those who need to learn something. I love the song by Brandi Carlile called The Story.

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true... I was made for you

Genealogy, to me, is the same. I fell in love with finding other people’s stories, their trials, their joy and their inspiring moments. I have found so many untold stories of unsung heroes. Stories are hidden in journals, documents and pictures waiting to be shared.

I read a book by Jodi Picoult called The Storyteller. It’s about a woman who learns about a Nazi Soldier and Jewish girl and how their story comes together. I love this quote in the story by the young Jewish girl. “If I had to die in this hellhole, and the odds were very good that would happen, then maybe someone else would survive, and tell their children the story a girl had told them at night in the block. Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora’s Box, a story that’s freely given can’t be contained anymore. It becomes infectious, spreading from the person who created it, to the person who listens, and passes it on.”

I just love that quote. Family History holds stories that are waiting to be told. My great grandmother Viola Stout wrote in her journal about why she writes. “My children and grandchildren might ask, ‘Why hash over all these things, just the facts are sufficient.’ Not for me. The unknown or heretofore untold parts of my life are the moving forces that motivated my actions and my thinking; made me what I am. We are all products of our background and our thoughts. To write my true story many things must be written that probably would be best left buried, but without which no one would really know my story nor me.”

Someday, somewhere in time, someone is waiting for the story that will help them in their life.