From photos to stories, memories, and medical history, your family legacy consists of many components all of which are important to pass on to the next generation. Much of a person’s family history is lost throughout the years through lack of communication, poor communication, or just due to the lack of a means to easily gather and store all these important memories. With our modern technology, condensing, modernizing, and storing your family legacy is easier than ever. Some important components of your family legacy that you should consider digitizing and gathering together are family medical history, photos, videos, and stories.
Passing on your family medical history is crucial for each generation. It ensures you are preparing each generation for the best life they can live. Your kin will be able to determine if they need early screenings for particular risks, help with early detection of genetic diseases, and just understand their family medical history better so they can make the best choices for a happier and healthier life. Gathering as much information for as many of your family members and as far back as you can go in your family tree will give the best look into your medical history for the next generation. Gathering this information up in a digital format that can be easily added to and updated is ideal, as it will allow family members to continue to add to this document and easily share it with their next of kin.
While most photos these days are already in a digital format, many people still have photos shot on film that can easily be lost due to only having one physical copy of the photo or can be lost in an accident like a fire, flood, or other natural disaster. This is why we can’t stress enough the importance of digitizing your family photos. You really won’t regret the time you take to scan and save photos onto a digital cloud or digital photo storage. Digitizing your photos will allow you to easily share and pass on these precious memories with all your family members. Also, starting a digital photobook will allow you to open this project to all your family members so, they can add photos and add to your family’s history and story.
Modernizing family videos and storing them in one digital space is also so important for passing down your family’s legacy. While many videos can be easily uploaded from our phones onto a cloud or digital storage, we may have some old family videos that are not yet digitized on VHS tapes or on camcorders. Taking those old memories and digitizing them to be easily viewed will ensure these memories won’t be lost along with those tapes as they age.
For many, an important part of a family legacy is through the art of food. Saving family recipes digitally will ensure the next generation will secure these nostalgic recipes down to the last detail. Recreating food is such a powerful way to connect with one’s culture and family. Digitizing your family’s recipes in a digital document or on a cloud will allow you to easily share and pass on these iconic family dishes.
Finally, you always hear that someone wished they had asked more questions or asked about a particular time in a loved one’s life before they passed. It is often the case that we miss out or lose these parts of our family history because they were never recorded and passed on. Taking time to record important stories, lessons, and anecdotes will allow the next generation to develop a stronger connection with their family, culture, and history. Whether it’s journaling important events and memories or filming a video regaling a tale, recording these memories and storing them for future generations is such an important part of your family legacy.