So what is personal history, anyway?

Easy. It's the business of helping others record their life stories, values, and reflections for a private audience of family and friends.

Huh?

Books, audio recordings, or videos: those are the products—or, more likely, one or two of those—you'll create for your clients.

The first step is gathering the stories. The storyteller talks, you listen (and record).

Some life stories cover a particular period in a person's life, such as their childhood or war years; others start with remembered stories of grandparents and span the storyteller's life up to the present.

At the end of the process, you deliver a chronicle of their life in the form of a book, an audio recording or a video.

Why do people hire a personal historian?

Simple. They see the value of preserving their life story for future generations, but they don't have the time, the interest, or the know-how to do it themselves. Nearly everyone has the desire to reflect back on their life and make sense of it, but few have the skills to pull it off on their own.