This is the summer you become a family storyteller

If you're ready to write your family stories, you don't need another class. You need community, structure, and permission to experiment.

If you want to change your family history writing this year….really change it….

I believe the answer is simple:

Start doing the thing.

And don't do it alone.

Here's what I've learned after years of watching people struggle with family history writing: we've been solving the wrong problem.

We think the issue is that we don't know enough. So we take another class, watch another webinar, absorb more information. We collect certificates and conference badges and carefully organized folders of handouts.

But if you're reading this article because you want to finally write your family stories, not just research them endlessly, then you already know the truth that no one talks about:

More knowledge isn't the answer. More action is.

And the missed opportunity in family history education is this: We've focused on teaching instead of learning. On content instead of change. On what the instructor knows, instead of what you want to do.

Here's how you can actually write your family history this summer. Starting with understanding why good intentions keep failing us.

Most genealogy education focuses on knowing, not becoming.

Family history education has spent decades focusing on head knowledge—as if writing a family story were like memorizing the periodic table. But writing about your ancestors isn't an intellectual exercise you can study your way through.

It's emotional. It's creative. It's deeply personal work that requires you to become someone new: the family storyteller.

And becoming someone new? That takes more than another weekend workshop.

What works instead? Learning by doing, with people cheering you on.

If you want to write your family history this summer, here's what actually works:

• Practice writing, not just learning about writing. The difference between knowing how to write and actually writing is the difference between reading about swimming and getting in the pool.

• Connect with people doing the same messy, beautiful work. Writing family stories can feel isolating when you're the only one in your circle doing it. Find your people.

• Give yourself permission to try, mess up, and try again without judgment. Your first draft doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to exist.

• Use templates and frameworks so you're not staring at a blank page. You don't need to reinvent storytelling from scratch. Build on what works.

• Stop waiting for the perfect moment when you feel "ready enough." Because here's the secret that changed everything for me: You don't become a family storyteller by earning the right to write. You become one by writing.

Think of it like learning to swim.

Kids don't spend months studying swimming techniques on Power Point slides and pool safety textbooks before getting in the water. They get in the shallow end, hold onto the wall, and start kicking their legs. They swallow some water, get scared, laugh, and they try again.

Someone who knows how to swim stays nearby, not to lecture them about proper form and shame them for not swimming, but to encourage them to let go of the wall.

That's how kids learn to trust themself in the water. And that's how you learn to trust yourself with your family's stories.

The difference between someone who has taken twenty genealogy classes and someone who has written twenty family stories isn't knowledge—it's courage. The courage that comes from doing the thing you're afraid to do, over and over, until it becomes part of who you are.

That transformation doesn't happen in a class starting at a screen. It happens when you sit down with your grandmother's letters, your great-uncle's military records, that faded photograph no one can identify, and you ask yourself: What story wants to be told here?

It happens when you write the first terrible draft and are thankful its done, because it's the beginning.

It happens when your cousin texts you after reading what you wrote: "I had no idea. Tell me more."

You don't need to feel completely prepared or perfectly qualified. You just need to begin doing the thing, not learning about doing the thing. Start now with one story, one ancestor, one curious question you want to explore.

That's exactly where every great family storyteller began.

Cheering you on,

—Denyse

P.S. The first cohort of Chronicle Lab is 1/3 full and enrollment closes Tuesday. The energy is building and I can feel this is going to blow our socks off. We're not just learning about writing family history. We're doing it, together, one story at a time.