Why I Started a Company to Record Family Stories

Plus: An easy first step to get started (free download)

I loved my grandfather’s stories. The room filled with cigar smoke, I would listen to tale after tale as we played backgammon together. I loved to hear about his adventures with his football team, or the time he met my grandmother.

This is the kind of history we feel most connected to - that of our own families. Their experiences. Their emotions. Their eyewitness accounts of the moments that shaped their lives.

Sadly, when my Grandfather passed away, I realised that the details of those old stories had faded. I had missed the chance to make a record of my grandfather’s life.

"I can still recall some of their experiences. But will I be able to do them justice when I tell snippets of them to my children and grandchildren one day?"

Today, this is a common problem. We have Facebook pages, and old home movies and photo albums. But these are often left scattered in boxes, on old computers and discarded and broken phones - and they often don’t tell the important stories.

This is why, two years ago, I set up my company, Story Terrace. We help people to capture their Mom or Dad’s life story in a beautiful hardbound book, by matching them with a professional writer.

People like Peter, for instance, who started a new life in the West as a dishwasher after the Russians invaded his home town of Prague in Czechoslovakia. Or Sue, who gave up her job as a nurse to take care of her three children.

Sue, Peter and hundreds of others have come to us at Story Terrace for help with writing their autobiographies – to tell their stories for generations to come. Not as some kind of vanity exercise, but to give their families a profound sense of where they come from. To show that every life has its ups and downs, its triumphs and struggles.

I wish my grandparents had done the same as Peter and Sue. Their stories have faded faster than I could ever have imagined. I can still recall some of their experiences – experiences that have, after all, shaped my values and interests. But will I be able to do them justice when I tell snippets of them to my children and grandchildren one day?

So if you love your parents’ stories - if you want your children to remember their grandparents - then however you do it, capture them while you still can.

I am Rutger Bruining, Founder and CEO of Story Terrace, and I hope that together we can change the way that history is written.