About the Book
This guidebook is not about grammar or about the importance of correct English. It is about your memories, how to bring them forward in all their pregnant splendor, and how to successfully capture them as written stories. Written well, your life and your experiences, will entrance your readers with even the humblest of recollections. These individual stories, well told, become your personal memoir, a written legacy. Alex Haley once said, "Whenever an old person dies, a small library burns." Early in my teaching I realized that I was a coach, a guide, a kind of "midwife" to my client's stories. They are the authors, and with my guidance, they celebrated the discoveries, adventures, courage, unexpected insights, love and humor of their Lives. I, the cheerleader, was the one who kept them on track, safe, and enthused. I wrote this book in response to my students repeated requests to "come home with me," to keep them writing. Stories are about process. What did I do and why? What happened next? How did it change me? What did I learn from the whole experience? And how did other experiences in the following years change my earlier perspective? Many of us recognize that at least some of the experiences of our lives are important and are worthy of recording. However, these "important" stories only begin to touch upon the wealth of stories we contain, or the richness that we are as human beings. So many of us aren't aware of the treasures we have to share - and ask, "Why would anyone be interested in what I have to say?" But think about your favorite books, or movies, or musical lyrics. Do they talk about people who have struggled and overcome challenges? That is why we love them - they speak to us - and we relate to them. How we have negotiated the humble day-to-day problems of life reveal a lot about our spirit, sense of humor, and our ingenuity. Problem-solving techniques, attitudes about politics, religion, education, marriage, sex, child-rearing, work, community, money, art, all of this, told out of the experiences that formed them, will be of profound interest to future generations. Your experiences - how you have lived - describe your collection of tools and how you used them for specific types of problem solving. The stories, your tools, will be your legacy for your grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Sacred Scriptures are almost always stories about journeys through trials. They include humor, tragedy, discovery, paradox, birth, death, and a continuum of gathering consciousness about people living their lives in community with others. These stories are full of lessons that give their keepers useful techniques for living day to day lives, as well as for reframing their lives after times of devastation or discovery. These stories strengthen the tribes (families) that keep them.
About the Author: Nancy Fazendin Tsuchiya's life-long passion has been to listen to the stories and experiences of others, and to collect them as precious gifts to share with whomever hungered for this basic soul sustenance. Nancy has been teacher of, and ghost writer for, memoir writing since the early 1990s and she, in the process, has learned a thing or two. This book is a simple, easy to understand, guide into finding your voice, your memories, and your greatness. Nancy grew up during a cultural shift where suddenly there were no more aunties and grandparents around to answer questions, teach basic skills, or dispense common sense. Society had just tipped from a village and family centered cosmos to a predominantly corporate galaxy . . . and kicked the tempo up a notch. Born the third child of five imaginative, active children, her birth slot included the early necessity (and gift) of being highly sensitive to others' well-being (for her own survival). She learned by observation and instructional stories and grew up under stern "rules" dictated by parents, school, and church. When larger family gatherings were possible, Nancy relished the stories swapped by those 'relative' strangers; her father's five siblings and their spouses. Even more wonderful were the stories her grandmother, Gumma, would tell of the olden days; the days when people got around on horseback, and died regularly of terrible epidemics, and were always doing heroic or dastardly deeds. The entire family, her parents, her grandparents, and the gang of aunts and uncles were gifted story tellers. They swapped tall tales, argued hotly over details, and laughed a lot. Gumma would even burst into song or tears in the telling of her stories. Nancy absorbed it all like a sponge, along with the other older grandchildren. Today we have social media for sharing with extended family, but we don't always have time, or coinciding time slots, for the rich sharing of rambling trains of remembrances. The love, courage, insights and experience of our elders are in danger of being lost due to this cultural shift. Nancy's education includes a BA from the University of Minnesota with a double major of Journalism and Sociology, a minor in Photojournalism, and 69 years of being human.
