When a parent passes away, adult children are left with an extensive to-do list to close out the estate. It’s a difficult time—a blend of grieving, paperwork, phone calls, taxes and other chores. But there is one thing a person can leave behind to lift the spirits of those left behind—a book of life stories and memories in the form of a personal memoir. 

Writing a personal memoir is a rewarding experience. It’s an opportunity to step back into the past and remember the good, the not-so-good and everything in between. You can re-experience your childhood, your memories of parents and grandparents, lessons learned, favorite moments of each child and so much more. Yet it’s the “so much more” that often keeps people from getting started in the first place. It’s not uncommon to find yourself questioning how you will ever finish—and so you never get started. Sound familiar?

Beth Carvin, CEO of JamBios, a memoir writing platform with a one-memory-at-a-time storytelling format that lets you write in bite-sized chapters and invite family and friends to add details with a click joins Enterprise Radio. Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Beth Carvin discuss the following: 1) What is JamBios, and what inspired you to create it?  2) What’s different about this from a journaling program or just using a Microsoft Word document to record different stories from your life?

It’s been more than a year since the eruption of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, when it was revealed that ostensibly private information about more than 50 million Facebook users had been leaked to the political data firm—details about users’ likes, friends, and profile information. The incident was an enormous blow to Facebook’s reputation, with scores of users abandoning their Facebook accounts in the wake of the incident...

Bringing home a new baby is an incredible experience, but it can also be intimidating and exhausting. Learning the ins and outs of parenthood takes time, and those early days are often pretty overwhelming. This Mother’s Day, why not lighten the load a little by pampering the new mom in your life. Here are some suggestions to help you get started!  Jambios: Shopping for a woman who “doesn’t need anything” but deserves everything? Consider the JamBios collaborative digital (or printed) book! Write as much or as little as you’d like, invite relatives and friends to add their own recollections and then simply upload those beloved stories and photos to create a truly one-of-a-kind gift.

Writing a memoir is an exciting opportunity to dig into your memories and create something personal and lasting for your family and friends.

Getting started may feel overwhelming but it need not be, especially if you involve others to help remember with you. By reaching out to important people in your life and asking them to add memories, you can enrich your biography with stories from others that you might never have discovered otherwise.

Collaborating with others on your memoir not only makes your book better, it also makes the process more fun...

Compiling a lifetime of memories into a memoir is no easy feat. Take it from some of the authors who have written some of the most celebrated recent memoirs in recent history—Cheryl Strayed, Joan Didion, Anthony Bourdain. What they have in common is not that they lead particularly interesting lives—a lot of people have recovered from a drug addiction, for example—but in how they turned those life experiences into stories that can resonate with so many.

It’s no secret that getting out your worries, fears and dreams can make you feel better. For those that have no one to talk to, or for those that just like to put their ideas on the page, writing can be helpful. For more about therapeutic writing, I contacted Beth Carvin, CEO of JamBios. Here is what she had to share...

Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control has reported that one in eight Americans over the age of 60 complains of worsening memory loss. The problem may be related to a medical condition, emotional problems, cognitive impairment or simply the indignities of aging, but it’s distressing regardless of the cause.

As it turns out, one way to preserve and in some cases even enhance memory is to proactively revisit your past. One form is a technique called reminiscence therapy that is widely used in applications ranging from mental health interventions to memory care in nursing homes. But simply committing your life experiences to paper (virtual or otherwise) can be helpful and even therapeutic.