Capture the Journey; Sharing family stories & create a legacy for your family with Special Guest Ruthanne Warnick

Hey, hey, No Problem Parents. Welcome back to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Oh my gosh, October's been such a busy month. And as if it wasn't busy enough, November is going to be huge. And that's because in November, we're celebrating nine years of Hello World and No Problem Parenting. Can you even believe that? Nine years. Are you ready to kick your parenting fears, your doubts, and your uncertainty to the curb? Do you just want to get clear on why your kiddo's behaving the way they are so that you can sleep at night and be excited for the next day?

Are you tired of battling with your kids and you're just ready to let go of the control and allow them to make mistakes without feeling like you're failing as a parent? Yes, it's time. Let's do this, parents. It is easier than you think and it doesn't take forever to make that shift in the behavior and the relationship with your kiddos.

In just 30 days, You're going to learn how to transform your kiddo's behavior, prepare for and even look forward to some misbehavior. And you're going to learn to change the conversations in your home. You can create a relationship of reciprocal trust with your kids, causing them to believe that they can rely on you to help them turn any problem into a no problem. So imagine if you were finally the confident parent your kids craved you to be.

You guys, I'm not kidding you. You can do this all in less than 30 days. Head on over to NoProblemParents.com or click on the link in the show notes and get started.

Get yourself ready for the holidays so that you're not even more stressed out than you already are right now. And before we get into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsors over at H&S Heating and Air Conditioning, Electrical and Plumbing. Hey, stay comfortable this season with all of H&S's hot deals going on to get you prepared for the winter. Heating a house efficiently is a challenge. H&S keeps you toasty when the temperatures plummet.

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This is so fun, you guys. Ruthann is the owner of Capture the Journey. Today, we're going to talk about how you can share family stories and create a legacy for your family through pictures, writing letters, and creating a sense of belonging in your family by passing down these family stories from generation to generation. You'll hear this at the end of the episode.

October is actually National Family History Month and November is actually National Family Stories Month. And so we are going to do an event on November 10th. Watch for that. We don't have the link ready quite yet because this all just kind of happened so fast, sign up for our newsletter at noproblemeparents.com so you'll get that information. We're going to do a free workshop on November 10th and then Ruthann is going to share with us her link for her December two-day workshop coming up in December that she's going to actually teach you the steps. She's offering a huge discount on that. So let's just get right into the episode. Welcome to the show, Ruthann.

It's wonderful to be here. Thanks so much, Jackie. You're welcome. And I'm just absolutely loving this topic. Before we get into everything, just tell us how you started this or what was the inspiration?

I'd have to say there's not really a moment in time. And I'm asked that question a lot. So I've taken some time to sort of reflect back on where was the start of this journey for me. So I'm going to say possibly when my father passed away, which is now, you know, 28 years ago. So it's been quite a while. And I didn't really understand at the time, like what was lost with him. I mean, the obvious is the obvious, but I'm just saying the stories and all that, that were lost and the history that, that I didn't even know I wanted. And I didn't even know I would need as I got older. So we've always had a close family and, you know, back a generation or so, Many of us lived in close proximity to each other.

So it's very different times. So you sort of, I guess, in a way, took it for granted that your family was just always going to be around, you know, your aunts and uncles and grandparents. And then they're not. And you realize kind of what's lost with this.

So some years later, I got interested in the family history part. And I have an uncle who's actually still alive, my father's brother. He's 99 now. But I started emailing him and asking him questions about my grandparents and about what it was like with him and my father and their other brother growing up.

And my grandparents were immigrants on my father's side. So there's lots of stories there. And I just I came to understand how much was missing. So I feel blessed that I was still able to ask my uncle those questions and get some information of family history.

And while they weren't really my father's stories directly, they at least gave me some connection, some belonging to my family members who were no longer here. And of course, I would say at that point, I already had children of my own. So that probably fed into it as well. is the legacy, like aside from my own behavior, what do I need to share with my children, either lessons I've learned or just for them to know that they belong to their grandparents and great grandparents and how, how we're connected, but that sense of belonging. Cause I think that family belonging is really a foundational experience for kids. And there've been studies that have shown that, that kids who know more about their family stories and their family history have higher self-esteem and more confidence. And it goes back to that sense of belonging in the most fundamental way before you expand into belonging to your friends and your community and your country and all the bigger ripples that go along with belonging.

It's just a fundamental thing. And it breaks my heart a little bit when people share that they may have had bad relationships with their parents or they don't have that grounding in that fundamental belonging. So maybe that impacts their... I mean, I'm certainly not a psychologist by any means.

But maybe that impacts their behavior later or how they try to find that sense of belonging when they don't have it at the most, what I consider the most essential and foundational level. So as far as how it impacts the different generations of the family, if you think about if you have a family where there's children, the parents and the grandparents, let's say, if the grandparents are still living, there is such a beautiful opportunity, not only for the child to connect with the grandparent through stories and getting the stories.

But it also gives a sense of mattering to the grandparent that their stories mattered, their lives mattered, because mortality becomes more of an issue, right? Obviously, the older you get. So just that sense of mattering that the next generation is that your love, your lessons, your memories, your experiences, whatever you share is going to be carried on through generations forward. It becomes a gift to future generations.

At the same time, when you care about a grandparent at that level, like you care about their life, you care about their stories, it's affirming to them that they not only did they matter, but that they are going to carry on. In other words, when they pass away, it's not going to be the end. Right, they're leaving a legacy. It's a continuation, not an end.

So there's lots of opportunity also for the parents who are in the middle of that scenario. If they have living parents, they have an opportunity to learn about their parent in a way that, you know, they're an adult now, so they can learn about their parent in a different way than when they were 10, you know, or they were the child. And you're still the child, but your relationship with your parent is different. So even at different stages in your life, you can get different stories and benefit from it.

We have so many stories that we share. I mean, some of them are just memories and they're funny and they're silly. And I have something I grabbed from Facebook one time. And it was basically showing a picture of like, this is what your grandma looked like.

And it's a woman like in a mini skirt with black boots. Because if you think of grandparents, the age they are today, like medium age grandparents right now, I mean, they, you know, they might have gone to Woodstock or, you know, they might have, you know, they're not all just, you know, old people for lack of a better word. They all had lives, you know, and I once showed my son as a quick story. I once showed my son a picture of my mother who was in her 40s and we had gone on a family vacation and to one of the islands.

And my mother's sitting on this chaise lounge and she's got blonde hair down to her shoulders and she's sitting in her swimsuit and she's got this funny look on her face. And I said, oh, I said, look at this picture of grandma. I said, I could write a caption for that. my son looked at it and he said, wow. He said, I never thought of grandma like that because he thought, you know, grandma was always, you know, 80 years old or whatever. So, so it was like, yes, Eureka, that's exactly right. You never thought of grandma like that. Like, I need to make sure that you knew grandma then, not just now, you know?

Yeah. No, that's super fun. That's super fun. And it's, it's like the styles even from when grandma was a teenager or high schooler or whatever are coming back now, right? They just, they're repurposed, right? It's so fun to see. Describe a little bit about what you do with Capture the Journey from sort of start to finish. So I have a couple of ways that I, that I work with people. I'm actually right in the process now finishing up a guidebook that, a digital guidebook that I'm putting together about writing legacy letters. It's, it's the working title is the important things, what I want you to know. And it's a guidebook for writing legacy letters and celebrating life. And so it can be a message to your children, to your grandchildren, to your not yet born generations. It can be a message to a living parent, even a sibling, someone,

if you're at the end of life. But I encourage people to write it at any point along the way. And since we're talking about parenting here, I've had young dads take my workshop because I also do legacy letter workshops. And now I've decided to put together this guidebook for people who just want to do it on their own.

But I had these young dads come through my workshop one time, and they wanted to make sure that if something happened to them, that their kids would know who they were, what their essence was, their values, their guiding principles, even like their hopes for their child. And that was really forward thinking. I mean, these were really, you know, young dads and they were two brothers and they just wanted to make sure.

And we were never guaranteed, right, what's coming tomorrow. And they weren't thinking of mortality like someone who's much, much, much older. But they were still thinking of creating this legacy of leaving something for their kids. And people write these letters and I call them letters because they can be as simple as that.

They can be a letter, but they can also be much more robust. Like it can include photos. It can include special memories. It can include affirmations like this is what, you know, this is how your personality is.

You know, lots of different information. And it's a leave behind, but it's also an in the moment. So you could, you wouldn't share it with a six-year-old right now. But if you're an adult, you might share it with your adult children or a living parent to say what I learned from you.

My my husband did that for his dad one time. Here are the lessons I learned from you. And here's how I learned them. Not because you told me that, but because this is what you showed me.

So there's lots of different ways to create that legacy letter far beyond just, you know, memories and that sort of thing. So it takes some thinking because when you say to someone, well, what are your values and your guiding principles? Like in your head, you sort of know what they are and you try to live them. But if you have to concretely say like, these are the most important things to me that I want to make sure you know, it takes some thinking.

yeah absolutely i love that i love that legacy letter and it doesn't necessarily just have to be a letter it can be notes it can be affirmations those kinds of things but you also talk about stories from your lifetime versus your life story that there's actually a difference so people tend to think chronologically especially if they're doing you know genealogy kind of uh you know history in that way but people think okay i'm gonna you know i'm gonna write some stories about my childhood and then young adult and then maybe when I got married and, you know, thinking in this linear way, whereas our lives are really a tapestry, not only of experiences with other people, but of experiences within our own lives. So in thinking of it as stories from your lifetime,

it doesn't have to be chronological or even linear because our lives, right, are full of ups and downs and ups and downs and sometimes ups and downs going on at the same time even, right? And so I help people think in terms of themes or different topics. So if you were writing about branching points or you were writing about motherhood or parenthood or you were writing the impact of it. So in other words, and then I have prompting questions that, that help you think, and the questions are not meant to like, okay, like on an exam, you have to answer all the questions and write a little essay. It's about, here are some questions. What comes to mind for you when you read those questions? And then that is your story because that's what,

that's what comes to mind. So if you're talking about a branching point, for example, a fork in the road in your life. Maybe something that happened to you, but maybe it's a decision you made to go a certain way. Maybe it's a career choice. Maybe it's a house fire. I mean, there's lots of different things that cause us to, you know, put a set of fork in the road, right? And then we have to make a decision. Sometimes the decision is forced upon us, but we still decide how we're going to handle that decision. So that's a story. Also, it doesn't always have to be a life lesson. But each one of those components is a story. And if I could take a minute to give an example of that. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. So when I first became a mother,

and I actually recently wrote an article for On Purpose Woman magazine, and it, it was talking about when I first became a mother and this huge tug of war I had going on in my own head, right? I had a career going at the time and, you know, my husband and I intentionally waited, you know, six or seven years before we're going to have children and we solidified our relationship and our careers. And then I became a mother and that was a huge branching point for me because it's like, oh, like, do I continue in my career? Do I go back to work full time? Like, I have this whole new dimension to me. So now I'm, I'm a wife, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm a, you know, an aunt, I'm all these different, I'm a niece, I'm all these different things, you know, friend, girlfriend,

and now I'm a mother. So this is a new thing, right? And how do I navigate that? And it was, it took me a long time to figure that out. I ultimately went back to work part-time.

Then I went back to work full-time and then for not very long, then our second child was coming. And I said, I have such a beautiful, and this is not the right decision for everyone, right? But I have such a beautiful opportunity here. So now I'm the mother for the second time. That was a whole different experience because now I knew what a beautiful thing it was to have an opportunity to, to really spend these years with them. And I became comfortable with that because I stopped listening to the outside world that said, you're going to give up your career and you're going to be just a mother. And, oh my gosh, I can't, couldn't even believe I said that to myself, right? That I was going to be just a mother, but that was because I allowed the outside to influence me. So the reason I'm sharing that story is because then I could share that experience with my own daughter. And I could say, as you're developing your career and you might be considering having children, here's some things to consider, not to say, do it the way I did it, but maybe I could help make that struggle less for her if I could share my experience and give her some ways to think about it so that when she had that child she wasn't just thrown into this complete disarray about how to what to do so yeah that's something that stories can do for us too they don't always have to be again so you know so deep if you will or so you know uh have such a big lesson to it but

But they do give us the opportunity to say, look, I I I hear where you're coming from, because when I, you know, parenthood was a big branching point. I mean, I don't think anyone can dispute that. Right. Absolutely not.

It's it's a whole life changer. And I love that that you can put that it's it's just literally your experience and what what you what you went through and how you made your decision. And again, like you say, it doesn't have to be the same decision your daughter makes, but just knowing that you struggled with it and then you made a decision and you tuned out the outside world and, you know, the outside world could have said to you, oh my gosh, I can't believe that you're going to give, you know, that you're going to stay at home with your kid and give up your career.

It could say to you, I can't believe you're even considering staying in your career and wouldn't want to be that stay at home mom in there for your kids. How could you do that? So the judges are out there no matter what, but it's really being able to tune into what is what feels right to you. And it doesn't matter what everybody else thinks. So either way, she can make a decision and feel good about her decision, just like you did.

Regardless of what that is. Right. So that's so that's what stories can do. So that's why I break it down.

It's really stories is a more familiar word. But for me, it's really experiences. Stories are experiences. Right.

even memories remember why do you have memories because they were experiences so that's what I encourage people to write about to capture and I I do it one-on-one if someone has a particular project that they you know that they want to work on they can always reach out to me we could discuss that project again you know I told you I have the guidebook coming out and these work workbooks or workshops. I'm sorry. So I wanted to also mention another example of connecting the generations and how generations can benefit from these stories, just to give listeners a sense of all the creative ways you can go with this and capturing the stories.

So when my mother turned 90, I decided we all, meaning all of her children, all of our spouses, So we were four children, spouses, nine grandchildren that, I mean, when you're 90, it's not like you need stuff anymore, right? You need love and family, at least in our family. That's how we looked at it. So we gathered, each of us gathered three photos that we, that represented our love of mom slash grandma, right?

And we, they submitted them to me. It could include grandma. it could be about great could whatever they chose three photos and then they wrote their own essay about whatever was special about grandma so what they learned from her the the most fun memories they have whatever they want there were there were no parameters they're just we're gonna this is the gift we're giving to grandma and so each of us that's four plus four spouses plus all the grandchildren wrote their essays. I compiled it and took their photos and each person got a page.

And we, we basically wrote to grandma, dear grandma, dear mom, dear, you know, Jackie, if the in-laws, you know, called her by her first name and we present, we put it together in a book and presented it to her. So now you've got 90 year old mom receiving this, like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that this was the impact I had just by being alive. We were able to write. The grandkids understood like they have, they're connecting to this generation, two generations up, right?

And now she's passed on now, but we now all have this book that has all of this in it. So it doesn't, again, doesn't have to be a whole life story project. it can be broken down in so many ways to get stories. I love this so much.

What an amazing gift. Yeah. And I'll add to that. November is National Family Stories Month.

So how perfect is that? That's awesome. Yeah. So that's perfect.

And yeah, please reach out to me. If you just, it's capturethejourney.com is my website. And I have a free download there about capturing no-tech, low-tech ways to capture family stories. You'll always know at my website if I have something, a workshop coming up, if I have something new being released, you'll be able to see if I have any new articles. But the additional piece is I'm about to launch, as I mentioned, this guidebook. So that'll be available. And I have a super special launch price. So you just, if you go to capture the journey.com, you will find, you will always be updated. So regardless of when you're actually listening to this, you'll always, you'll always have access if you just go straight to the website. Oh, this is just absolutely amazing.

We're going to need to do a workshop in November. I got it. You got me thinking now my wheels are spinning so that we can do a little sort of a example kind of thing for families right before the holidays. Parents, here's the thing about this. Like I love this idea and this project for so many reasons, but I'm going to, I'm going to put a little quick, let's change the conversation a little bit in our heads. You know, no problem parenting step one, seek first to understand step two, prepare for the worst. And step three, change the conversation. Any of you parents listening there today out there today, think about those kids that you have right now that maybe you're at odds with, you have a tween or a teen or even a younger one that's just like throwing a fit and you're not listening, right? Kids that you have right now that are disrespecting you and you're just at odds and you can't seem to get over this, whatever the problem is, or get a connection with your kids right now because you're just constantly arguing or feeling just super disconnected.

What a great way to change the conversation, not like holding a truce flag up there or anything necessarily, but just distracting from the problem and that no problem parenting, we only give problems as much attention as they deserve. So it means that you can have a struggle or a problem with your kid, but you don't have to have that consume your everyday life and, you know, and, and make every day just kind of stink because you're at odds with your kid. What a great project for you to be doing to distract from all the other typical normal hurriedness or disconnectedness that you're having with your kid and do something like this as an activity that really takes you away from the consequence, the discipline, the struggle, the battle with your kid and changes the subject and helps your kid kind of see who you are as a human being. And without saying,

oh, I did that when I was a teenager, or yeah, I know how that works out. Or, you know, you don't want to do this kid because that didn't go well for me. Instead, you could be having some different conversations and you, you give them the questions, right. Or you give them the topics to, to examples, right. So they don't have to even come up with them on their own.

Exactly. And, you know, photos can also be a beautiful way of doing that. I'm having a conversation, either photos, you know, as parents photos from when you were their age or photos of, about, you know, the grandparents, anything that can sort of start a conversation, you know, about it or tell a story really is what it is because we, we all have a, you know, we were all teenagers, we were all children, we were all young adults. So we have, you know, experiences. And while we certainly may have grown up in a different time period, we, you know, we still have, have stories that we can tell. And honestly, the more they know about whether it's fun things you did or funny things, or, you know, if you have siblings, you know, how you used to horse around,

just like to humanize you as a, as a, as a parent, you're still the parent, but you were also a child at one time, right? So it can, it can be fun, depending on, you know, what's going on in your, in your household at the time, but it can be a fun, just something simple. I love it. I think it's so great. So you've given us ideas for how grandchildren and their living grandparents can use family stories to bond. Are you giving a gift to the grandparent? But are there other ways that you want to share with us before we wrap up about how these family stories can be used to bond?

well I'll say for one thing that we have technology today that makes it so easy so that's what what I'll sort of leave your audience with is to say if you get in a conversation with a parent a child you're talking about funny stories you can always just turn on your phone and just record it so it doesn't have to be we're going to interview grandma today you know it just you know you get to talking you're sitting around I mean the holidays are coming up now granted you may have a lot of noise, but I mean, you still, if you're talking to someone, you know, talking to a family member and you start even reminiscing can be a lot of fun. You just turn on your phone. If you happen to be doing a Zoom call with, you know, with your grandparents or some other relative and you start reminiscing or talking about, you know, family history or anything,

just record the zoom it's so easy today to get them and not focus on what you're going to do with them that's so that's a conversation for a different day as they say but just the getting of the stories the capturing of them how you'll share it we you know we'll have a different conversation about that but capturing them it's it's just so much easier you know back back in the back in the day you know you either had to write it or use little cassettes i mean it's just so much easier now. So I encourage everybody. That's what I talk about in my seven no tech, low tech ways to capture family stories, which is the download on my website. It's just take advantage of that. I mentioned earlier that I emailed back and forth with my uncle who's now 99. And if I pop a question pops into me, I just email him and he is only too happy to share the story. So let's not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Now's the time instead of waiting for some day where it's like, oh, I was, I was going to get to it, you know, and, and then something happens. So there's a lot of regret around it, but we still do, as you mentioned,

you still have the memories. So before they start to fade, I encourage people to write them down, capture them, record it into your own phone, because you still have memories and experiences with that person, even if you didn't get all their stories. So it's not an all or nothing. There are lots of areas in between. So this is just so cool. All right. Everybody just needs to go to capture the journey.com. Learn more, stay tuned to no problem parenting, because I am definitely having Ruthann, you and I are doing something around this because it is so fun and it's just absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for sharing and for being here today. Oh, thanks so much, Jackie. I really enjoyed our conversation. I truly hope that I've inspired some people to take action and not wait for someday, but also to engage the family. That's a big benefit of it. It's just engaging and kind of grounding the family in those stories.

Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families.

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