Stories Are Life Souvenirs with MelAnn

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The Family Storyteller System

lifesouvenirs.net

The Family Storyteller System

Because YOU are the best person to tell your family stories!

MelAnn
Jan 29
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The Family Storyteller System

lifesouvenirs.net

UPDATE!: The one time access for this ends today February 6th and no longer includes concierge services. I am working on new landing page for the monthly subscription system which will be $47 a month or $470 a year. If you pay the one time access fee for the system - you will have lifetime access and no monthly fees. But the price goes up or may go away entirely after today. The system will include a monthly playbook that walks you through the system so that you can easily, efficiently capture & organize your memories for the month, get storytelling tips for the season & holidays for that month, and tasks to perform to build your family yearbooks, milestone/memorial tributes, and family time capsule as you go. There will also be a chat platform to access community, feedback, ideas, etc for other family storytellers on this journey.


There is an invitation in your mailbox. It’s on beautifully embossed stationery addressed to you in fine calligraphy.

You know the moment it catches your eye that it’s something special.

It’s too early to be a graduation announcement.

Is there someone getting married you didn’t know about?

Is someone’s special anniversary coming up?

Maybe a retirement or special milestone birthday celebration?

You pause a moment. You take it in. It may seem silly to savor the moment, but you do it anyway because these invitations are few and far between.

You hold the special piece of mail to your nose. Deep breath. Is that a hint of jasmine your nose detects?

This isn’t a piece of mail you just tear open willy nilly. Oh no. You hold it in your hand one more moment and then, you gently open it.

“You are cordially invited to celebrate your own story and the stories of your loved ones.

Come dance on the magical dance floor under the stars; the light of our life stories illuminating and inspiring us along the way.”

The time is now. Let’s start gathering life’s mementos and expressing our stories, honoring our loved ones, and join our journeys to one another through our stories told by our words, our art, our tears, our laughter, our photos, and maybe discover & celebrate our legacy story along the way.

I am putting together a mastermind hybrid together. This is a special, pioneering group. I want to be hands on in helping you tell your family stories, as well as honor someone who has passed on.

Your family is important to you.

You take pictures of every day moments because you know even those smallest stories matter.

Now, let’s do something meaningful and memorable with those memories.

Start the journey now and you may have some really cool Christmas gifts that can’t be bought at a mall - or anywhere else!

I have a few journeys to walk you through.

Celebrating Milestones

Compiling Memories For Reunions

Creating a Family Yearbook

Creating a Memorial Tribute

Telling Your Legacy Story (I have a Template for this one - super excited to be doing this!)

Establishing a system that rescues photos from your phones, drawers, aging albums, etc so that they are organized and celebrated!

Stories are life’s souvenirs. Let’s make those souvenirs holdable, shareable and giftable in meaningful and memorable ways for your loved ones now as well as generations to come.

Your story matters & deserves to be celebrated!

Want more information?

Want to join us?

Know someone who has expressed something to you about having so many photos / videos and so little time / ideas on what to do with them? Let them know about this!



For this special group - and why this invitation is so special - not only will I walk you through the process of gathering your memories and compiling your stories; I will produce the end product for you. Whether it’s a photo-book or a tribute video - you won’t need any special skills to complete your project. I will do it for you at no extra charge.

The only thing I can’t do is tell your story. You have to do that part. I just help you express your stories in the formats you choose.

I don’t have many spots open for this hybrid group. I want to keep it small so we can build community as we move along this process. I have priced it so it’s accessible. I do want to fill this group before the end of January. We have an important task to perform at the end of this month to get on the path of new storytelling habits.

It’s time to RSVP. What do you say?

Sign Me Up!

Go to Checkout

What are you feelings about funeral slide shows? The automated slide deck of random photos in random order of the person being honored…

Chances are when you hear me say that I do memorial tribute videos, this is what comes to mind. But if you know me or have paid attention, you know that’s not what I do. There was a funeral recently where someone came up to me and said, “You didn’t do that video did you?” I now have a recognizable style - people just know… those random slide shows are not my work.

Anyway, I have a story for you …

Some of you may have heard this before. Maybe not. I know it’s been awhile since I shared it.

I used to be a scrapbooker. Up until a leak ruined my scrapbooks (hours and hours and hours of carefully cultivated and archived memories destroyed). This is important background for this story.

A friend of our family experienced a sudden, tragic, devastating loss. I went with my dad - and I think my mom was there, too. I specifically remember my dad because he was doing his thing - paper goods, food, caring for people. I sat down next to this friend and asked what I could help do. She said the funeral people just called and they needed to gather 35-50 photographs for the funeral video. Her photos were in a refrigerator box cut in half and in the corner in her garage (I was horrified at the lack of care and organization of life’s most precious memories.) She was divorced and these were basically the photos she got in the divorce. This was before digital photography was established.

They brought the box in and dumped it in the middle of the floor. And the process in the midst of their tremendous grief fog was fascinating to me.

1. Basically it was the first 35-50 photos they found of their person.
2. Some photos were omitted because aunt Susie might be upset over how she looked in the photo - that kind of thing. Grief makes some weird decisions.
3. Photos were handed off and entrusted to a stranger who didn’t even know their person to be put in a slide video for the funeral.

No wonder so many people have expressed to me how much they dislike the videos at funerals because they are just random and don’t really tell a story or they don’t even recognize their person they knew in this random menagerie of images. It might as well have been a stranger. Families do not experience this because they know the stories behind the photos & they are also in the grief fog. Other people there to honor the person aren’t privy to those stories and often those might as well be of strangers.

Well, this is why! This scene I just described above repeats itself several times a day every day. Strangers are entrusted with this task!

Another story for you….

Shortly after I moved to Amarillo, a young child of a single mom at church died and my dad volunteered me to do this photo slide show because the person who normally did them was out of town that week. I was that stranger entrusted with the photos of this precious child I never knew. I felt a huge weight in this responsibility. Slide shows / videos at funerals were relatively a new thing during this time - I don’t think I’d even seen one! So I asked some people what this child was like. And I took those precious mementos and scanned them into my computer and began crafting a story that would honor him in a beautiful way. I wanted to tell his story.

Every time I have run into this mother in years since she beams with smiles and tells me she never has forgotten what I did for her. She was amazed at how a stranger could tell the story of her child so well without knowing him.

It’s not about doing videos - never has been. It’s about celebrating the story of the person being honored.

My brother’s video - I can’t tell you how many people have told me how much they loved the video and people who didn’t even know Chris felt like they knew him after watching the video. One person was like wow! He was really like that? How awesome!

I have brought my storytelling skills to graduation videos, baby blessings, retirement celebrations, honoring a beloved pet, etc. I have taken those same storytelling skills and transferred them to crafting your stories into a photo-books, family yearbooks, time capsules and even your own legacy storybook.

I want to walk a group of people through crafting your stories. Let’s honor a loved one you’ve lost. Let’s compile a family yearbook. Let’s create your legacy story book. Unlike scrapbooks, photo-books are reproducible - and easily shareable and giftable … Let’s put together a time capsule (memory keepsake box) of tangible family memories…

Stories are life’s souvenirs. Let’s make those souvenirs tangible!

Why am I doing this?

I need to develop a system for packaging and delivering this products & services and I just can’t decide. So, I want to walk through the experiences with a group of people so we can come up with ideas and try and test and figure out the best way to do this.

I know there are people out there who want to do this and won’t be able to afford to once I establish the higher price points. So, this is your opportunity!

One of the biggest objections I get is that people don’t think they can do it. I want to prove to you that you can tell your family stories … and then I will also commit to producing the final projects for you once you’ve got your stories together. So, you don’t need any special skills. I’ve got you!

I want to start a family storytelling movement and it starts with the first catalyst group. I really want you on this journey with me. I want to partner with you when it comes to celebrating your stories. Let’s get started!

Go to Checkout!

FAQ

Here are some questions / comments I’ve been getting:

1. “The gathering / organizing of memories to do this seems overwhelming to me.”

I teach you the Rescue Method (as in rescuing our photos and memories) so it’s not overwhelming. If you are in this catalyst group, I will walk you through it as if you were a client for one of my $1200 tribute videos. Don’t let this fear be the reason you miss out on this opportunity.

2. Do I have to be local?

Absolutely not! I am in Amarillo. One of the reasons for this group is so I can test and work through systems to gather the memorabilia and stories from clients as well as deliver the finished products. You do not have to be local or even in the same time zone.

3. A loved one is dying / I am planning a celebration of life service now - what can I be doing now?

Turn on your video recording on your phone - video the ceiling or whatever - what you want to do is grab the audio - collect the stories! Celebrate the person now - especially if they haven’t passed yet. Let them hear the stories. If they can communicate, ask them about their favorite stories. What do they want to be remembered for? What’s the best thing they ever did? What was their best day?

Whether they can participate or not or if it’s after they’ve passed, collect the stories and photos and videos from friends and loved ones. I will help you go through it later as apart of this group process.

4. I don’t have tech skills, can I still do this?

Yes. I want to develop a system for people just like you … I want to remove as many barriers as possible so that everyone can do this.

We will be utilizing a phone app called Telegram, a private Facebook group, and another yet to be determined phone app to help you submit media and stories.

5. I can’t afford your videos - I’m afraid to ask what this costs!

I’m doing this because people don’t want to pay or can’t pay what I charge to do tribute videos. Plus - we aren’t just doing videos - I’m showing you great ways to tell your stories via photo-books, time capsules and other methods.

The power is in learning to tell the stories. Once you learn this and see the patterns of applying these principles to create keepsakes, you can use the skills in other ways to tell your stories!

Today: It’s $147 - one time. No membership. No ongoing payments. Just one fee.

This does not include if you order a photo book etc. I will set that up for you if you want me to at no charge; but you will have to pay to get that product printed and delivered to you. But my services are free and no extra charges for this catalyst group.

If you want to go through this with a friend or sibling, it’s $227 for two of you. (USE THIS LINK HERE)

Can’t wait to see you in the group. If you don’t know what I’m talking about - I will link to the two precious posts in comments below.

Enroll now! This price is temporary! It will go up in a few days!

Go to Checkout!

Thank you for reading!

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The Family Storyteller System

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