trusting your past to a book of life (and wisteria)

I'm not all that adept at social media. I notice things, but it takes me time. So that when Modern Heirloom Books began tweeting from and about my memoir book, Handling the Truth, I didn't quite understand, at first, from whence this kindness was coming.

I have since learned. Modern Heirloom Books, founded by a woman with a long (senior) history in magazines—Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Parenting—is an organization, an idea, that stands up to time.

Here's what they do:

Forget about stuffy family histories. No old-fashioned photo albums, either. We expertly curate your “stuff”—from boxes, phones, and hard drives; hone your memories; elicit stories that surprise and delight; and design a book that is graphically and narratively evocative.

We’ll take a journey of discovery together, and present you with a modern book of life that will resonate for generations to come—and that you will revisit again and again.

The more I've come to know Dawn M. Roode, the founder of this lovely organization, the more I see just how deeply she has come to think about this process, and just how perfectly right she is—a woman to whom you can trust your past.

Last week, on a blog that is genuinely and reliably thoughtful, Dawn wrote about how to use photographs as prompts for writing life stories. She may be quoting again from Handling the Truth, but she does far more than that.

She takes you somewhere.

Go with her.

The wisteria above, by the way—the gift of last evening's dinner party with friends. The earth is tangled, politics are cruel, there is far too much inequity.

But look at the wisteria and breathe.