How to Celebrate Your Heritage with Storytelling
Family history and family heritage are a great place to start when you are first right in your own story or working with someone else. Knowing how to start can be the tricky part. In this blog post, we'll explore storytelling moments and how to celebrate your heritage with storytelling, so you can help people start their own stories!
The Legacy Storytelling Method is a 52-week storytelling project in which participants are asked to write one story each week for 52 weeks. This process allows participants to break down their storytelling project into manageable pieces. You can read more about how to manage storytelling projects here.
Celebrate your heritage: Favorite Memory
How we celebrate our heritage is unique to each person. What you might make may not necessarily match what the person next to you makes, and that's okay! There are also times when a family tradition is based on culture but isn't specifically tied down by ethnicity or country of origin. If you feel like you don't have a heritage, think of a family tradition.
If you don't feel like this prompt applies to your family or yourself, think about a tradition that is meaningful to you or a tradition you want to start. Daydream what those moments would look and smell like!
How to Start Telling Your Heritage Story
Do you find yourself often wondering about your family roots? Do you know where your grandparents came from, or what their first school was like? Have you been meaning to start a storybook for the next generation of kids in your life, but just haven't found the time yet? Here are some prompts for starting storytelling moments that will help people learn more about themselves and their families.
- What is your favorite family tradition?
- What is/was your favorite thing to do with your father/father figure?
- Did you have something special you did as a kid with your parents?
These simple questions will help bring your best heritage Memories to life.
Why it matters
Celebrating your heritage is a great way to make people feel connected with their roots. It's also important for family traditions that can be passed on from generation to generation, such as storytelling. If you're looking for ways to do this in your own life and don't have any specific ideas or moments of celebration, then we suggest doing something small like telling the story about how you cook with your family. That could lead to an interesting discussion about where those traditions come from —and other stories related to it!
Problem-Solving for Telling Your Favorite Memory of Celebrating your Heritage
A lot of us have favorite memories from our heritage, but when it comes to telling the story, we run into a bit of trouble. How do you decide what's interesting enough? What if your family is a little more conservative and they don't want certain things shared? What if you're not sure how to weave in anecdotes without them feeling like an interruption?
Not to worry, these are guidelines to help you get started. Once you start writing you'll find that it gets easier as you go along. Feeling stuck? Here are some more prompts about your heritage and your family traditions. If you have the printed pages or printed journals, feel free to write whatever you'd like in them and cross things out.
Week 33 of 52 Weeks of Storytelling – Favorite Memory of celebrating your heritage
What’s Next
There are so many different things that families can share together, so take some time today and think about one memory of celebrating your heritage that stands out the most in your mind. Follow the prompts and see where it leads you! You can help your loved one share their story too – check out 5 Minute Storytelling here.