The Preserve Your Past Podcast

Picture this: a young girl with her family at Windmill Beach, laughter ringing out as they navigate the repair of a wooden split rail fence. This is a memory that shaped my life, and it's those small moments that often have the most significant impact. Today, I take you on a trip down memory lane, sharing stories from my past, from my book, Bridging Your Past and Future. More than that, I gui...

From a cozy campsite in Maine, I’m bringing you a heartfelt conversation on how parents can weave beautiful narratives for their children. Allow me to share inspiring prompts to capture  irreplaceable moments and milestones in the form of stories. You'll discover how these narratives can resonate with your children, regardless of age, and how they can help forge a stronger bond. This sharing...

Throughout my time speaking with people about my mission to help others “preserve their past through powerful personal stories.”  I have had a lot of people assume that this topic was mostly for an older family member, usually a mother or grandmother who was collecting the family’s history. I am here today to break this assumption and let you know why even if you do not fit into that group, you sh...

After talking with dozens of genealogists at the New England Genealogy Consortium 2023 in May about their passion projects and juicy family stories, I heard the same question over and over: How can I add more “story” to help my research be more compelling? After all of these conversations I created a talk specifically for Genealogy Associations and Clubs, and would like to share one of the five ti...

What if you could take all of the stories, memories, and family research that are bouncing around in your head and get them all out on paper easily so you could pass them along?  As a writer, I know the struggle! And as a teacher, I have a solution! Mind mapping.  A mind map is a graphic tool that helps you to visually organize information.  It helps me to collect my ideas, knowledge, and thoughts...

In reflecting on her past and thinking about the times in her life where family stories and personal stories were important to her, Melissa realized there were  specific times in her life when the passion and drive to preserve the past through stories was the strongest. In this episode Melissa shares 5 examples of times when our family or life stories are most important to us.  Related Blog Episod...

In this episode we look at a question from a listener that I believe is a universal issue for all writers and can cause overwhelm and stop us from getting started or even cause us to lose important stories and topics we’d like to write about  if not considered and planned for right at the beginning. Leticia asked: I am currently just writing in one journal.  I was thinking of having different jour...

But behind all your stories, is your mother’s story, for hers is where yours begins. -Mitch Album Happy Mothers’ day to all of the moms out there!  The new moms, the in the trenches moms, the empty nester moms, the moms who have experienced child loss, and those of us who can’t hug our moms today! In honor of Mother’s Day we are talking about your mother’s stories and the impact they have had on y...

Your personal stories are treasures; ageless artifacts that help preserve the reflections of life.  In this episode Melissa discusses how are stories connect the past, present, and future.  

In this episode Melissa discusses the importance of writing your stories in your own words and voice so that your family can see your authenticity and heart in your stories.

Melissa introduces the Preserve Your Past Podcast and walks through her goals for this podcast and her passion for helping listeners write their personal stories in order to preserve their past, write their stories and leave a legacy for their future generations.

We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. — Paul Tsongas In this episode, Melissa discusses the importance and reasons for reaching back to our past and reaching forward to our future generations and how the...