Living Memories

The Benefits of a Living Memories Session

Share your stories.

Story telling is as old as humanity. One way that human beings transcend our own 120 years (as we say in Jewish tradition) is through communicating our stories to future generations.

When we find even one letter, one film slide, one photo, one sound, from a previous generation, we consider it sacred history. Today, we have pictures and videos, phone calls, texts and emails, available at our fingertips. We have ample ways to record our lives, and yet we often do this mindlessly, lacking substance and awareness, losing sight just how valuable our pieces of history are.

Let’s choose quality over quantity. The words you share and the stories you tell are timeless. They can be kept forever. What do you want to say? What is of utmost importance for you to capture, to communicate?

With a Living Memories session, you can be provided the opportunity to share who you are, why you are and what you are. You can take the time and space to slow down and reflect on your life, your accomplishments and relationships and areas of desired growth, past, present and future.

Clarify your values.

Clarifying your values in all areas of life, can serve as a compass that guides you toward more meaningful and fulfilling actions.

These values can be communicated more broadly to loved ones in the present, helping shine light into possible areas of how you can strengthen your relationships in the here and now (see Research.)

Share with people in your present what they mean to you, have meant to you, and hope will mean to you going forward. Speak to your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond, to all future generations, who seek the example of your wisdom and knowledge. Do this in the private, sacred and quiet space of a Living Memories session and then figure out a way to bridge this communication to others.

You can also remain quiet and keep these intimate moments of self discovery and connection to yourself. You choose what you want your Living Memories experience to be.

Improve well-being.

There is growing research about the possible positive psychological benefit of ethical wills, life review and life stories across the entire adult lifespan, not limited to people, who God forbid, are at the end of life.

One research article sums it up well:

“Life review involves a process of recollecting, evaluating, and attributing meaning to positive and negative memories. Although life review is about memories from the past, it serves to guide people through their present and their future. Life review takes place across the entire adult lifespan…When adequately encouraged in interventions, life review can be used to promote mental health and well-being in older persons” (Westerhof, 2016).

Make Memories Last Forever.

In Jewish tradition, part of what sustains our people, over deep time, over the endless eons of generations, scattered in many places, is our ability to make our history, become a living memory. Today, more than any other time period, we have the power to capture the past and keep it alive forever.

This is what Moses, our greatest teacher and leader told us to do at the end of his life:

זְכֹר֙ יְמ֣וֹת עוֹלָ֔ם
Remember the days of old

בִּ֖ינוּ שְׁנ֣וֹת דּוֹר־וָד֑וֹר
Considers the years of ages past.

שְׁאַ֤ל אָבִ֙יךָ֙ וְיַגֵּ֔דְךָ
Ask your father and he will tell you

זְקֵנֶ֖יךָ וְיֹ֥אמְרוּ לָֽךְ׃
Your elders, and they will speak!

(Moses at the end of his life, Deuteornomy/Devarim 32:7)