Oh, the Places Your Family Stories Will Go!
Do you hesitate to write your family’s stories and history? Or finish? Or share them? If so, keep two valuable resources handy to adjust your perspective. The first resource is “On Children” from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.[1] The second is the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr Seuss.[2]
Writers often compare the creative process to childbirth. The Gibran poem and Seuss book help us understand that writing and sharing family stories and histories are like raising children and then releasing them to their destinies. Both writing and child-rearing are acts of love, grace, discipline, and much more.
To paraphrase Gibran, we writers are like the bows from which our family stories and histories, as living arrows, are sent forth into infinite tomorrows.
Yes, it’s sometimes hard for us to let go of our finished stories or histories. But we wouldn’t put our young adult children in our desk drawer or its digital equivalent and walk away.
There are several reasons we don’t start or finish pieces we’ve written about family and send them out. One reason could be that we’re telling ourselves, “No one is interested.”
When we send our writing out into the world, we seldom hear from readers. But that doesn’t mean no one is interested.
Truthfully, some people are interested in reading the family stories and histories we write about, and others aren’t. Some may not be interested now, but they will be later. Some may never be interested, but their descendants will be. Or some future researcher will be. Therefore, at some time or another, some people will be interested in what we’ve written.
It doesn’t matter how many people have read what we’ve written. It matters more what it means to the ones who have read it. For example, my sister sent me a copy of our grandfather’s life story he wrote shortly before his death in the 1950s. I doubt many people have read it. But I am grateful for his eight hand-written pages that helped me learn more about him, my grandmother, their ancestors, and their children. And because I’ve grown more interested in family history over the years, I value it more than I would have when I was younger. My grandfather couldn’t have known the roads his handwritten pages traveled the last 75 years.
These days most of what I write are family stories and histories I give as gifts to family members. However, over the years I’ve also submitted some writing to magazine and compilation book editors who published some of my pieces. For example, eight years ago, “It’s Not About Me” was selected for Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Empowered Woman: 101 Stories about Being Confident, Courageous and Your True Self.[3]
At the end of 2025, the same publisher surprised me when they dipped into their library of stories and selected “It’s Not About Me” for another book. They included it in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating the Spirit of America: 101 Stories about the Country We All Love.[4] It’s now at booksellers, ready to be read and join in the Declaration of Independence’s 250th birthday celebration. My story did, in Dr. Seuss’s language, “find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, . . .” I hope my story will encourage readers to go on writing adventures that help them jump over the high walls of limiting self-talk.
We can’t know who will read what we’ve written. But when we send it out, it will go to people we’ll never meet and to places in the future where we can never go.
- If you have been fortunate enough to read some of your family’s stories or history, how has this affected you?
- If you haven’t found any of your family’s stories or history to read, how has this affected your determination to write, share, and leave behind something for your family members?
[1] Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, (originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1923).
[2] Dr Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, (originally published by Random House, 22 Jan 1990).
[3] “It’s Not About Me,” Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Empowered Woman: 101 Stories about Being Confident, Courageous and Your True Self, (Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC, 2018)
[4] “It’s Not About Me,” Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating the Spirit of America: 101 Stories about the Country We All Love, (Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC, 2026).