2 Ways to Stay Connected with Living Relatives
Are you struggling with connecting with your family? How are your relationships with your living relatives? Do you want to do more? Having those social connections is so important today not only for our emotional health, but also our physical health. There have been many studies linking physical diseases with how socially connected you are. So I’m sharing two tips on how to get started and some specific tools to help you get inspired.
Find Safe Places to Share to Stay Connected
This has two different meanings. It means to find actual places where everyone feels comfortable and relaxed to share those family stories. It also means those places where you feel emotionally comfortable because you might have to be vulnerable when sharing some of your family stories. So is it the dinner table? Is it the bedroom? How about taking a walk? Sometimes you can plan for those settings, but you also have to be ready to grab those moments that just happen to fall in your lap.
Then think about the result that you want to have as you’re sharing your family history or your stories. What do you want people to know about you or your ancestor. You want to share stories that have both the positive and negative aspects to it. These stories teach of bouncing back from difficult moments and are much more relatable with the younger generations.
Document Family Connections
Of course you know that documenting your family life is important. But how do you do it? It could be through a number of different ways such as writing in a journal, taking photos, texting, recording phone conversations, etc. I think family historians are usually strong in this area just because we wish our ancestors had preserved more so that we can know them better. But don’t worry, I’m sharing more tools with you later in this article.
Some of my favorite ways to document these relationships are Project Life Digital scrap booking, making a family cookbook, and visiting the places where I grew up. Taking photos along the way is my number one favorite way to document. But I’m still learning about where and how I want to share these photos.
Tools for Staying Connected
Family Search Memories Tab– This tab lets you upload a photo and then record a 5 minute story about that particular photo. So when your family goes to that photo they can now listen an audio recording and get people’s voices along with their picture.
Virtual Reunions- Can’t get to this year’s family reunion? Then why not do it virtually, especially if your family is spread out all over the country. You can use Zoom, Facebook Messenger, Face Time, etc. to plan and execute it. RootsTech 2021 has an awesome video about a family that did this in 2020 and all of the steps that they used to pull it off. It’s called Laughter and Love: Using Virtual Reunions to Reconnect Your Family. They also share what worked and what didn’t so they can tweak it for this year.
Google Photos– This is a great way to share photos with your extended family.
WhatsApp– This is a social media app with Facebook and let’s you communicate in real time with extended family members. You do have to have a Facebook account to use this one.
21 Day Family Connections– This is an awesome way to connect with your family. This website has many different ways to connect such as pre-made plans that have a daily prompt that you do everyday. You can use their Idea Generator that gives you a 5 minute family history activity. Or you can make your own plan that builds those strong connections. Whatever you choose, this is a good place to go when you are feeling socially disconnected.
Conclusion
Being socially connected is important for our physical and emotional health. But just like with everything genealogy, you focus on the things that matter to you right now. Just remember to be socially healthy you need to have people in your life, have people you can count on, and have meaningful and satisfying relationships. Family history helps with all of that!
And as always…good luck and happy hunting!
Tiffany
P.S. Related Reads…
21 day connections experiment, family connections, family reunions, family stories, socially connected