Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with Relationship Matters TV. I hope everyone is having a beautifully blessed morning, afternoon, or evening. So, you know I always get on my soapbox, but I’m not gonna get on it but for a minute. All I want to say to you is, you know there’s another variant and who knows what other variant is coming after that. Wear your mask even if you don’t want to get the vaccine, even if you don’t want to get a shot or even if you’ve gotten two and you’ve gotten your boosters, please wear your mask. Now here in Illinois, our governor has come down with COVID and as you know our president has come down with COVID. They’ve both had their vaccines and their boosters but they’re always around people without their mask. This particular variant is extremely contagious. Please wear your mask. I’m off of my soapbox now. Well, I’m excited about today’s guest because she is going to tell us a whole lot about how to find out about our families, how to write our family stories. Let me tell you a little bit about her before I bring her on. Her name is Ruthanne Warnick and she is a champion at capturing stories, stories and experiences and sharing them across generations to enhance your personal well-being and strengthen your relationships. So we’re gonna talk, you know, I know all of us have things or stories about our families we don’t know. We know that there are stories and when they pass, when our moms, dads, grandmothers, great-grandmothers pass, and then we start saying, you know, I wish I knew this, I wish I knew that. However, we didn’t ask. So let me bring on Ruthanne. Hi Ruthanne.

Ruthanne Warnick
Hi Dr. Jan, thanks for having me and it’s, I’m glad to see you, I really am.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So you’re all about capturing the journey. Now this is what I want to start with. How did you get into this?

Ruthanne Warnick
Well, quite honestly, about 25 years ago, actually 28 years ago, my father passed away and when he, and it was unexpected in the sense that it took several months, but during those several months, once we knew it was the end, there was no way to capture the stories at that point. So I knew then but didn’t appreciate then that all these stories went with him. Not only his stories and his parents’ stories but his grandparents’ stories. He was first generation to the US and I just, he and his brothers were first generation and I just realized how much was lost by not capturing those stories. So I started my own personal journey. His brothers were still alive so I was able to get some of it but of course that’s through their eyes, not through my father’s eyes. And then I realized how much we mean to do it, right? We’re gonna get around to it someday and we just never do. And that’s the biggest pain point for people that they share with me, that they regret, like you were just saying, they regret they didn’t ask the questions, they didn’t get the stories. So that’s where it all began for me, was when I had my first what I’ll call significant loss of someone in my life, in my family.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, okay. And I thought about that because my father, why I was interested in what you’re talking about is because my father lived a very colorful life and he was in the entertainment business. And my grandfather, who I never really, I met but I never really got a chance to really sit down and talk to him, and he was the first black entertainment promoter here in the US. And so he knew all these different people, you know, that he would bring to Dallas, he was living in Dallas. And so, and I didn’t know how many people he actually knew until I ran across an old newspaper article and it listed all of these different entertainers and I thought, oh wow, you know, I know he has some stories. And then my father, I’m leading up to a question, my father at one time managed Etta James and he would talk a little bit but he would say, oh I have so many stories but we couldn’t get him to write the stories down. And even though we asked him, we said, you know, okay we’ll give you a tape recorder and just talk, he wouldn’t. So how do you get them while they’re still here? He’s passed now. How do you get them to tell the stories, their stories?

Ruthanne Warnick
It’s a great question and today it’s so much easier than the time period you’re talking about because there’s so much technology now and it’s so easy. And quite honestly, the best, the easiest way to do it is to think of it as a conversation instead of making it a formal interview. Okay, dad, we’re gonna sit down now and I’m gonna get your, you know, all the stories from your life. If you just have a conversation and you ask a prompting, probing, maybe it’s not the right word, but a prompting question, you would be surprised how willing people are to talk about it because they’re viewing it as a conversation, right? They’re answering your question but in full detail and then you can ask more questions if you want them to expand on it. So today, I mean, we have a telephone that we could record on, we have Zoom sessions that we could record, we have email that you can just email back and forth and just ask questions and then you can collect all the answers. So it’s so much easier today. And to this point, I would like people to think not in terms of a person’s life story but in terms of stories from their lifetime because each story, while they may be connected and it’s all thread of, you know, threads through their life, it’s really different stories. And in those stories can be life lessons, they can be funny, they can be traditions in your family and where they, how they got started. So it’s, if we break it down into stories, it’s not this monumental like life story that we have to collect.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So not like ancestry, so to speak. Ancestry, I guess, is more like historical, historical stuff rather than its information rather than, as you say, going back and, you know, finding out all kinds of different lifestyles and…

Ruthanne Warnick
Right, right, right. Yeah, so ancestry, when you’re doing family tree, I say that’s data but it doesn’t have, usually have the stories. I mean, the story might be like for instance in my family where my grandparents came from Eastern Europe and came to United States. It’s not really a story, it’s more just factual information that we have but it’s not the story of what that was like to leave their whole family behind, you know, that sort of thing. So the stories are really sort of the, they say you have a family tree with branches, right? And the people are the leaves on the branches but the stories are the flowers and the fruit and all of that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so why do you feel that it’s important to have this, to have all these family stories and to share the family stories?

Ruthanne Warnick
So that’s where the relationship part comes in. It’s a sense of, there are a couple of answers to that question. It’s a sense of connection and belonging. There have been studies that show that children who know family stories and have had them shared with them and know something about their family history feel more connected and have better self-confidence because they are connected to a family and they feel that. If you’re the in-between, let’s say the grandchildren or children and the parents, if you have living parents, if you’re in between, then you’re really the link at that point between the older generation and so it’s almost a responsibility if you think of it that way that you have an opportunity even if someone is already deceased, you still have an opportunity to share your experiences with a parent or grandparent or whatever stories you do know. So that middle person or generation is the link. And then for the older generation, aside from just knowing that people are even interested in their stories and their life is an emotional and emotionally positive thing for them, right? Because it means someone cares, so it matters to someone and that their life will continue on through their stories. So I often hear people say, oh, you know, nothing really, yeah, I didn’t really do anything special with my life or, you know, it doesn’t, who’s interested anyway? But the truth is, is that we don’t appreciate wanting to know those stories until we’re much older, right? So our children, our grandchildren, they don’t know yet that if we capture and share those stories that we’re creating a gift for them that they don’t even know yet that they want.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, so have you, tell me some of the stories that, I know you help people to capture their stories and capture their family’s journey. So what are some of the stories that you’ve heard that kind of you went like, oh my goodness?

Ruthanne Warnick
Yeah, so I’ll use an example that’s actually in our family but it’s not totally about our family. So when my husband was, this is a perfect example of how one story can teach so much, right? So my husband was young, he was about 10 years old and he was at a Boy Scout meeting with his dad and they were introducing all the new scouts and this was in the 1960s, so it wasn’t terribly long after World War II, for example. So we all know what happened, you know, with the Japanese internment camps and all of that and there was still a lot of sentiment against Japanese Americans at the time. So they were at this meeting and all the scouts were asked to introduce themselves and as this one boy introduced himself, the scout master said a really unbelievable thing that basically that they were not welcome there. He was of Japanese descent and they were not welcome. So there was complete silence, this is a story that we tell in our family, there was complete silence in the room except that my father-in-law, so my husband’s father, leaned over and now this boy and his father were humiliated so they left the meeting, they just left. And my father-in-law leaned over to my son and said, well, if they’re not wanted here, then we’re going with them. And they got up and left and they never went back. And we have told that story to our children numerous times. So it not only tells about the character of their grandfather, right, but it also tells about what was going on in history at that time. It also helps them understand where our values, like their parents, as their parents, where our values came from and how we’ve translated it to them. So a story can just be, you know, it can be something, you know, that’s just a silly family story, but it also can be something, you know, much more powerful like that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So I’m thinking about my mother and my father really and when I look back and I would get some information or their personalities and it did kind of give me more of a connection, you know, and I think a lot of it, like you said, with that particular story, you find out really what kind of person they were and it translates down to who you are. So I can see where younger generations would benefit from it. And like you said, when a younger person asks an older person about their life or some stories about that time that they grew up in or whatever, that older person does feel like, oh wow, you know, that they are interested in what I have to say. So now you’ve told me a benefit for younger people. When it comes to relationships, how does this really translate into relationships?

Ruthanne Warnick
So in the present, it can create a bond. Now sometimes there has to be an intentionality about it. So the, we’ll say the middle generation can take some responsibility for encouraging that younger generation or the children to listen to the story so that they do feel a closer relationship to that person. As an example, I once showed my son, and he was already, you know, a teenager by then, I showed him a picture of my mother who was sitting on a chaise lounge at the beach when we were on vacation and she had, you know, hair down to her shoulders and she was just sitting there. My son said, what? Now of course he knew her at that point as in her 80s, his, you know, his grandmother, right? He said to me, and it was like, oh my goodness, exactly, he said, whoa, I never thought of grandma like that. And see, so he never thought of grandma being in her 40s or being a young mom. So then he could develop that sort of relationship that she was his age at one time, ask her questions, and it really connects a bond and relationship not only in the present, right, for the people who are living now when I say the present, but also people who came before. And when you start reminiscing, if you have siblings or cousins and you start reminiscing about things you remember about someone or things you remember from your childhood or holidays that you spent together, that also creates, it strengthens a relationship because you have that common, those common memories that other people don’t have. So again, it bonds that relationship.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, okay. So when you’re saying reminiscent, and so that’s what I’m doing, you know, while I’m sitting and talking with you because I think about, there was this one particular, well, at our church we had a senior citizens program and the older ladies, I’m an older lady now, but the older, my mom and the older women, they were asked to talk about just what they did when they were younger. And I never knew then about my mother loved to dance and she started talking about where, when she would go to a party or something or to a club and they had something called nickel jelly. And it’s like, what the heck is nickel jelly? But that’s what they called the, I guess how much they had to pay to get in. And so, and I started thinking about that and I thought, oh wow, you know, so you did that, you know, and because when you look at an older person or your parents, your grandparents, you look at them like what the, how they are now. And you don’t relate to them, you relate to them in a certain way. But I can see what you’re saying, but when you see them and they tell stories about when they were younger, of the things that they said, the things that they did, how they felt, then you can relate to them. I think this is very important and especially for younger people because a lot of times there’s a disconnect.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes. So now what steps, what are the steps, what do you do when someone comes to you and they say to you, okay, I want to capture the journey of my family?

Ruthanne Warnick
Right, right. So it depends on if they’re looking to capture a particular, in other words, honor or pay tribute to a specific family member. So I leave that to them or if they want to tell their story. But I actually have a checklist of themes. So the way I like people to think about their stories is based on theme. So were there transitions in your life that you either challenges or opportunities that you might want to share how you moved through those? Are there traditions in your family? So I provide them with a list which are really just sort of prompting triggers to say, think about the most important stories or funny stories or life lesson stories or do you want to focus on family history, like how your family, you know, what you know about your past family members. So I really leave it to them. And once we do that, then I can begin the interview process because I know where they want to focus. Because again, we’re not doing their whole life story and it’s way beyond where did you go to school. I mean, we get some of that, sure. When were you born, you know, where did you grow up? But that’s just sort of the data. That’s again, that’s the data. So I focus on where they want to focus. If they were in the military, sometimes they want to focus on some military stories. But they don’t really know because they, you know, they have had a full life, however old they are, whether they’re 40 or 90, you know, they’ve had a full life. And so I help them fine tune where they want to focus. So it’s not just, you know, on and on. And then I interview them over several sessions. And as once I have the transcription from the interview, I can then glean the stories and then they can provide me with photos and I can put that all together for them. But it’s really helping them glean the stories. Now I will say in an interview, it can go in any direction, right? So sometimes it goes off in another direction, which means that that’s a story that they want to tell. So sometimes I have to reign it back in a little bit, but that’s really how I develop the stories for them in terms of what stories they want to tell.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So, okay, I’m listening to this. And so how do you get people to even be interested in their family stories?

Ruthanne Warnick
So if they’re not already interested, I try to come from the place of regret because most people share with me that they regret that they didn’t get family stories. Okay, so the next step from that is I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It doesn’t seem like they were that interesting anyway, you know. So then I have the long list of all the reasons. But I like to say to people, if you’ve lived as a human being, you cannot, well, that’s a double negative. I was going to say you cannot not have stories, but you have to have, you know, stories from your life. It’s just some people don’t think that they’re very important or anyone cares. So sometimes I do a little bit of mind shifting a little bit for people.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So now, so what you’re saying is the person you’re interviewing might feel that they really, you know, like you said, aren’t interesting or really don’t have a story. But if the younger person says, I really want to know about my grandmother, you know, what kind of person she was, but she won’t open up to me. And so what do you do to get, let’s say, that grandmother to open up? So do you come, do you go from, let’s say, I’m trying to put myself into this. Now, my grandmother would not open up to me. Okay, so, but I wanted to know, right? I wanted to know what she thought, what kind of little girl she was, just what she thought about education, all kinds of things and her experiences around different things. How would you, what would you do to get her to open up to you?

Ruthanne Warnick
So sometimes just the fact that it’s not a family member can be, you know, can allow someone to be more comfortable and be, you know, if they see it as like an interview conversation and they won’t open up to a family member or maybe they don’t want, they feel like they might be judged in some way by a family member, so they’ll open up to someone else. If they’re really hesitant to share, maybe because they just don’t think it’s that interesting, then that, let’s just use you as an example, you could, it’s not really guilting them, but basically saying, I’m giving you and the family a gift. We would really like it if you would do this. So it’s kind of, most of the time, you know, if someone doesn’t want to do it, then they don’t want to do it. But what I find is that it’s not that they don’t want to do it and it’s not that the person, like let’s say it’s not that you don’t want to do it, it’s that people don’t get around to it. That’s really the biggest challenge. It’s not so much that they don’t want, because once people get started, then it’s almost like trying to turn the faucet off, you know? So yeah, it’s that, it’s mostly people just don’t get around to it is the biggest, biggest problem.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, and I know people regret, you know, when a loved one has passed, they regret that, you know, I wish I knew more about them, I wish I knew more about who they were. So do you make a scrapbook for them or what’s the finished product?

Ruthanne Warnick
Right, right, right. So I share with them a couple things. First of all, I give them the raw interview so they can just have that just with no editing. Then I take it and I glean the stories from that because, you know, when you’re talking back and forth, a lot of it is, you know, not necessarily the story part. So I glean that and then I ask them to submit photos of the person in the story or the scene or whatever is related to the different stories. I’ll take that and then I can create for them that several formats. One is just a straight PDF, you know, just a document that they can have and they can read on their computer. They also can, I can create that PDF into a flipbook so on their computer they can read it as a book and turn the pages. And then it can also be made into a hard copy. If you think of like a photo book but 10 times enhanced because it has the stories in it. My quote is, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then the picture plus the words is priceless. And so that’s what I like to say. It’s not just the pictures, you’ve got to have the story. And then once you have the story, you have the picture with it, it’s a magical combination. So they end up with several formats, the raw interview, the video if it usually is Zoom often, the PDF with the photos, a flipbook format, and the hard copy format. So they can share it by using it PDF or flipbook. See, then it can be shared digitally, it can be shared, a link can be sent to anyone. But I will tell you that to me, there is nothing like a hard copy written something that you hold in your hands. And that’s why I believe in the power of writing letters, writing legacy letters, writing, this is what I want you to know, the important stories, even if it’s not in a book, even if it’s in a box. I have letters and poems that my mother wrote, a letter that my father wrote to me when I was getting married. And I will tell you, it is magical to, you can feel that person when you are reading their words. I mean, it’s true when you hear them as well, but there’s something almost like eternal about the written word. And when I say written, it doesn’t have to be handwriting, you know, it could be typed, but I’m just saying it’s, you can feel the person when you hold that in your hand. So I’m a strong believer in that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So I’m chuckling because that means that we’re old school.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yes, yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, because we like to hold it, you know, the book or read letter. But I will tell you, it never, you never have to worry about, except for handwriting, which is why sometimes I also type up things that we, because, you know, younger generations can’t read handwriting anymore either. But there’s, you’ll never have the written word go out of, not out of style, but where technology changes, you know, and used to have CDs, you had cassette tapes and you had CDs and eight track tapes and now you have, you know, thumb drives and you have links, but they change all the time. So now you have a box of tapes, right? And then I have to have them digitized, then you have to, where is the written word will never go, never go away. We should include them all is what I’m saying. It’s not either or, because the digital world is also a beautiful world.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, it is, except for when it crashes.

Ruthanne Warnick
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And we have a comment that came in from Gwen Dunbar. She said, I tried this with my aunts, but I ran into a roadblock trying to get them to open up because they weren’t comfortable sharing, but most importantly, there were conflicting points of view.

Ruthanne Warnick
I see.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, what happens when it’s a family and that you get into that and not as a family member trying to talk with them, such as Gwen, but when you’re talking with them because they want, you know, they want to know about their parents or grandparents and they want to hear stories, but you hear these conflicting stories, what do you do?

Ruthanne Warnick
Well, if it’s an actual conflict, that’s a little bit different than if it’s just, I don’t really remember it that way, this is how I remember it, then yes, we all have a lens through which we see the world, we see our childhood, we see our lives, we see other people that we have relationships with. So it’s okay to have different points of view or saying, this is how I remember, or I was actually five years older, so it was different for me, you know, that sort of thing. But if there’s a real conflict, then that’s not really a category that I get into, to be quite honest with you, because that’s some family unresolved conflict and that goes beyond capturing the stories as generational connection. If there are unresolved things, I encourage them to resolve them, but this may not be the format for doing that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, okay, I understand that. And speaking of writing things down and having things, Sandy Barney Ennis says, I have a postcard from my daughter she wrote in camp telling her dad that he took her $2.50 off of her dresser and she wants it there when she was coming. I cherish that.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yes, that’s like, that’s the littlest thing and you have that. It’s so many things. First of all, the, you know, the daughter wrote it, but it’s also a snapshot in time. I don’t know what age she was, but it’s saying she was in camp, she was probably pretty young. And so it’s a snapshot in time too. So it’s a great example.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, okay. And we, I like to put my comments in and we talked about writing things down and Renita Dixon says, I’m the same way. Yes, love books, write it down. Had a question to come in. Oh, okay. Of your clients, what amazing stories come to mind?

Ruthanne Warnick
Amazing stories. So some of them are funny, some of them are more serious. I have heard from people stories about their families from the Holocaust. So that’s, you know, it’s very serious, but it’s very important for them to have that, I’ll call it documented, but have it in story form, you know, not just data form, not just like this is what happened, but whatever stories they have. So those are, you know, those kinds are difficult. The most amazing story, boy, I should be prepared for that, shouldn’t I? I’m trying to think of some funny ones.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, you know what, Ruthanne, what I’m going to do is go to a quick commercial.

Ruthanne Warnick
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And that way when we come back, you can tell us a real funny one.

Ruthanne Warnick
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, seriously, we’ll do it.

Ruthanne Warnick
We’ll do.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so we’ll be right back after just this quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick commercial. Don’t go away.

[Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
We are back. If you love those commercials or those promos, we do them in-house with Low Ski Too Low Pan. So if you’re interested in having a promo done for your service or your product, contact me at jan4now125@gmail.com. Let’s get back to Ruthanne.

Ruthanne Warnick
So I was watching those, I’m going to get back to the previous question, but I was watching those commercials and it did remind me of something that I want to throw in right now if I could, since that first commercial that you were showing where there was some tension in the families and in the relationships and some arguing and that sort of thing. And one of the things that I help clients with and do a workshop on is some people call them legacy letters, some people call them living eulogies or ethical wills or different names for it. But it’s a way of writing to, writing again, you’re writing, putting into words. It can be what you appreciate, it could be wisdom that you’re passing down, but it can also be what you honor about a person, what you love about that person, what that person has meant to you in your life. It can go in many different directions, but as long as we’re on the topic broadly of relationships during this segment, it’s a beautiful way for someone to not only express it, especially if they’re not likely to verbalize it, but they can put it in writing. But then the other person can always reflect back to it and say, oh, I remember, you know, whether they’re upset or not, you can just say, let’s say you’re not feeling a lot of self-love or whatever, you could then take that letter and read it. Or I had written one to my daughter a number of years ago and I took a picture the other day and I sent it to her again by phone and she, you know, it brought her back to a place and she said to me, mom, you really thought that about me in a good way. So it was like reminded her how special I thought she was. So again, it’s, and those are all part of stories, right? Because that’s the story that we passed down. So I just wanted to mention that because that particular commercial made me think of how something like that can help mend relationships too.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right. Well, before we go on to your amazing stories, Sandy Barney Ennis said, for 50 years, I believed the death of my father was one way and a couple of weeks ago, a cousin told me something totally different. What am I to believe? And I never told her what I had been told.

Ruthanne Warnick
Hmm. So that sounds, I mean, there are ways to research it beyond family story. That’s an area that again could, without knowing the details of it, could have some wounds and some conflict there. So that would be addressed in a different way. But it sounds like there would be ways for you to confirm the story. Sometimes we have to be careful what we wish for though. So that’s all I’m going to say. That’s what happens with people with DNA searching and stuff too now, right? Yeah. So you have to, you know, be careful what you wish for. But yeah, so that gets into sort of potential family, I’m going to use the word conflict. There may not be a conflict there, like an emotional conflict. It’s just a conflict of information. Yeah. So that would need some sorting out.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So tell us something when someone was having you to help them with their story, something comedic, something you needed, you had to laugh yourself.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yes. So it reminds me so much of so many of my own stories. I have to think, okay, I have to tell somebody else’s story, but I might actually just tell this story anyway. We had, and again, it’s just an example of these family stories. My father was born April 1st, which is April Fool’s Day. And when we were kids, we loved to tell, you know, play jokes on him and all of that. But also because I’m Jewish, you know, matzo balls and matzo ball chicken soup and all is a big part of our, you know, cuisine, so to speak. And one year we decided, so there’s a difference between fluffy matzo balls and hard matzo balls, meaning they’re just much denser. And it’s kind of like this little debate, you know, of the, like, do you like the fluffy ones or do you like the dense ones? And my grandmother always made dense ones, so that’s how my father liked them. But, you know, my mother came from fluffy matzo balls. So one year we were all getting together for a holiday and we took a golf ball. These are the kinds of stories people should tell. We took a golf ball and then we covered it with the matzo ball dough, basically. And then you boil it in water and, you know, we went about our business and then we served him his soup and just put the matzo balls right in his bowl, just like normal. And he takes his spoon, you know, and he’s trying to, so he said, oh, okay, dad, is that, you know, is that hard enough for you? And he thought that that was the funniest thing. So when we tell that story in our family for the grandchildren who never met him, that’s like a story. I asked my daughter one time, like, how do you connect to grandpa? Because you were so young. And she said, when I hear stories like that, I can picture, I can picture grandpa laughing. I can, so I’m trying to, I guess, say that stories can just, you know, they can just be funny and silly, but they can also have a powerful connection. And that’s what I was referring to before about the relationship. It’s a connection and they have so much power, even when they’re just silly like that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And with a picture, if they’ve never met him, with a picture and hearing that story, wow, that would mean they could just really feel him.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s just, it’s an example. So yeah, we have lots of, you know, funny stories and not all of them have to have a lesson to them. Some of them are just, well, how did that get started? You know, when you heard, I even had somebody recently on Facebook, she did a whole month series and people could write to her and then she would post them. And if you had something from a past family member that got passed down to you that has particular significance to you or to that person and somehow you ended up with it, like there’s a story behind it, a family story, and people wrote in and wrote it and wrote into her and every day she would post one. And the stories of how this one thing, this physical tangible thing, how cherished this one, like maybe it was the one thing they left Europe with or the ones that, you know, the stories were just remarkable for their families to know that the story behind the thing, right? So another example of the kinds of stories we can tell.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So do you ever get stories where they talk about a recipe that’s handed down and the story behind that particular recipe?

Ruthanne Warnick
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are really good ones because again, a recipe is data again, right? You’ve got the recipe, but you know, there’s the old joke, like why do you cut the ends off the meatloaf before you put it in the pan, right? Because that’s how grandma always did it. There’s no, right, because there’s no reason really, it’s just that’s how grandma always did it kind of thing. So the recipes also get changed through the year. So you can notice like here’s the like really terrible, terrible unhealthy version, you know, with all the butter and the fat and the cream and the whatever. And here’s kind of the modern day, you know, version and how it gets altered through the years. But yeah, there are usually lots of story. The story could be about the recipe. The story could be about memories making the recipe. It could be stories about how we had that recipe at every single Sunday dinner, right? So it can really evoke a lot, hopefully good, but bring back a lot of memories of your experiences and relationship with that person. So there’s the recipe, but then there’s the memories and the experiences with the person. So there’s always a lot of dynamics to a story.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, right. I was thinking about when we would eat and my son mentioned this the other day, when we would eat dinner, my mother, you could not drink water while you were eating. You had to drink, if you wanted water or milk or whatever, you had to drink it after you finished eating. And my son brought that up the other day because he remembered one time we had all gone out together for Mother’s Day and he said, I remember when we were all together and they had the water and, you know, juice and whatever on the table. And then somebody was eating and my mother said, no, no, you’re not supposed to drink anything until you finish eating. And they all kind of looked at her saying, what? You know, and it’s just like a little story, but when we think about it, we laugh.

Ruthanne Warnick
That’s right. So now every time you drink a glass of water at dinner or whatever, right, you think of grandma.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Exactly.

Ruthanne Warnick
It’s the same kind of thing, right? You know, my mother had a song for everything. She would say, isn’t there a song about that? And she knew, she just knew all the Broadway, she knew everything. So now, you know, that’s become like, just like the water, you know, that’s the thing. Oh, isn’t there a song about that? You know, and then you think of grandma.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, exactly. Right, right, right. So another question came in. What would be your greatest triumph in helping people capture their journeys?

Ruthanne Warnick
My greatest triumph, my greatest triumph would be, each one would be a triumph, to be quite honest. They will be. So if I’ve helped someone get around to it and not regret that they didn’t get the stories, then that would be a triumph for me. Because it’s really a family at a time, right? And then that’s how I look at it is, you know, it’s not about writing a memoir or a biography or publishing a book or becoming, you know, something well known. It’s each family reaching out and taking the time to make it a priority and important enough to their family to capture that for their generations. So I consider each one a triumph.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, because you don’t want to live in that regret. I wish I had, I wish I had talked to my great-grandmother or wish, and this is a message to young people, take the time right now and talk to your grandmother, your great-grandmother and your mother and listen to the stories. So Ruthanne, if people want to get in contact with you and you help them capture the journey, their family’s journey, where can they reach you?

Ruthanne Warnick
So if you go to ruthanne, you can see the spelling of my name there, it’s ruthanne@capturethejourney.com and there’s a way there, first of all, you could download my free seven no-tech, low-tech ways to capture stories, family stories starting today. So you could request that. Also, if you have an idea in mind, a project in mind, a milestone event coming up in your family or there’s someone you want to honor and you want to talk about like capturing stories and what kind of project that could look like for you and your family, there’s also a way to reach out to me there that just says contact me and email me and be happy to set up a call with you and see what you have in mind.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, well thank you, Ruthanne. I appreciate you coming on and I’m sure some of my audience members will get in contact with you because, you know, that’s, it’s just so important because it is a legacy, you know, and we all, so I think I’m gonna sit down and think about my story.

Ruthanne Warnick
Well, I’ll close with this. I will say don’t wait for someday. Just don’t wait for someday. That’s where the regret comes in. Someday I’m gonna get to it and someday never comes. So I’ll leave you with that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you so much, Ruthanne. It’s been a plum pleasing pleasure.

Ruthanne Warnick
Good, thank you so much, Dr. Jan. This was fun. This was fun. Thank you so much.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, you have a beautiful blessed rest of your morning, afternoon, evening.

Ruthanne Warnick
Yep, yeah, coming into evening where I am.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, bye everybody. Thanks for listening. Well, this was great, very, very interesting. I’m leaving the way you can reach her at the bottom and I want to thank all of you for tuning in. And this is, you know, I never thought about the stories. I always thought about it from a historical kind of way, like data, you know, what was happening then, what was, you know, stuff like that. So this has been very interesting. I have a little something here that I want to remind everyone of. Let me show you because, okay, thank you. Okay, so if you are available on August 1st from 6 to 10 p.m., a very good friend of mine is having her first, her first event, the inauguration. And if you go to Eventbrite and you look up the inauguration, you can find more information about it. And guess what? They are raffling off a car. I mean, a real car, really. And so just go to Eventbrite and, you know, for $65 to get in and there are all kinds of giveaways and stuff. Just think you might win the car. Unfortunately, I can’t win the car because I’m, you know, being a part of it. Maybe I’ll send somebody there in my place. Okay, and don’t forget my journey, my queen’s journey. I am Miss Senior Illinois and in September I am going to compete in Hershey, Pennsylvania and I’ll be competing against 45 different women from all across the United States. Send me your prayers, send me your good wishes, send me your luck, whatever it is you’d like to send me so I can bring that crown back to Illinois. So it’s been great. I want to thank you all for coming and I will see you again next week with a very interesting guest. All right, everybody have a beautiful blessed rest of your morning, afternoon, or evening. Bye-bye.

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