What are Life Interviews
Simply put, Life Interviews are short oral histories that highlight the turning points, challenges, and significant moments of a life lived. Your story links you to your family’s shared history and to future generations. You may be surprised to discover that the story you tell triggers memories that lay dormant for years, or that in returning to those times you revise your perspective.
Every person is a living library full of stories and information. This fact makes – even beyond inheritances – a person’s life stories among the most valuable of things that they have to pass on to the next and future generations.
Helping Deal With Grief
After a loved one has passed, much like a trove of letters, a Life Interview offers a way to experience a loved one again. To see them intimately, to hear their familiar voice, to make certain memories of them endure.
The woman in the photo is my mother who died at the age of 92. My regret is that I didn’t record a Life Interview with her. I realize now that I knew her in her role as the mother of six children, but many of the experiences and decisions that formed who she was are mysteries, unknown to my siblings and me and her grandchildren.
What is involved in the creation process?
A Life Interview is really about telling your story, using a good selection of questions and optionally photographs, letters, music, and keepsakes. These triggers can help your memories flow to events and milestones that may have lain dormant for years.
Video is the perfect format for Life Interviews because you are free to pause, ponder, and rephrase. You may be surprised by what emerges once you go back to certain recollections. Your story, told with honesty, may reshape how you think about and evaluate the life you have lived up to this point and share with others.
My name is Michael Richard. I live in Rockport, Maine. I have been working professionally doing web design, photography, and video assignments for a number of years. I’ve made three documentaries and worked for Tufts University, Washington State University, and the Maine Arts Commission, among other clients. I look forward to telling your stories.