The Editor: The Lessons Hidden in Family Stories

What to ask when a story doesn’t add up

Every family has stories, from unspoken traumas, to the classics recounted at holidays and birthday parties. We tell stories (sometimes repeatedly) because we believe they are important. Why they are important, however, is not always apparent – not even to the storyteller.

During Legacy Interviews, family stories unfold daily, and some warrant an important follow up: 

“What is the lesson in that?”

Something amazing happens when Vance asks this simple question. Whether the tale is a family standard or a revelation, this question unlocks a new perspective.

A Fresh Take

When a guest is asked to identify a lesson in their story, they are taken off guard. A deep sigh or nervous chuckle buys time as the gears of their mind move their eyes to thoughtful darting. A transition is happening. They are no longer gathering pieces of remembered details and feelings. They are examining them. 

When we tell stories, we reconstruct the past, recalling sights, sounds, smells, and the emotions connected to them. Distilling a story into a lesson allows us to look at the pieces we have collected from a different vantage point. We no longer focus on what happened, but what it meant. This is where revelations occur.

More Than a Moral

It can take a moment for guests to arrive at a lesson in their story; rarely has it been verbalized before. This is a new kind of puzzle, but the pieces are all there, and they always solve it.

Answers don’t only emerge as moral lessons. The lesson could be an insight into someone’s values, or their feelings about a person or experience. Whatever it may be, this newly distilled conclusion is potent because it has context. 

Without the story, the lesson may seem trite. Without the lesson, the story may be irrelevant. Experience and analysis together create something greater – a story with meaning.

Find the Lessons in Your Family Stories

Stories contain power. Without investigation, that power is trapped, locked up as mere potential. Asking a question that changes how someone thinks about a story can release that potential.

What emerges sometimes sounds obvious, but even simple ideas elude us if they are not expressed. Valuable, powerful, and fundamental truths about our families too often fester in the realm of the unsaid. When we put them into words, the meaning woven in the fabric of our family stories comes alive.

Case Study: Drawing the Line

In the video below, Legacy Interviews guest Bob Bayes shares a childhood memory of his mother’s choice to excommunicate her husband’s extended family. When asked to find the lesson in this familiar family story, Bob puts into words for the first time a principle that has guided his entire life.

Bob Bayes telling a family story about how his mother made a choice that had lasting consequences.