It’s not so long ago that my grandparents passed away. At the time, all I had was some photos to remember them with and many years of loving memories of the times we spent together.
Those moments with them as I was growing up meant everything to me as a kid. The stories they would tell me about their exciting adventures, how they met each other, and the many fascinating stories of my parents brought joy to me and kept me awake for long into the night. I wanted a way to make sure that those memories with them could be treasured and not forgotten as I became an adult.
I searched for years to find a platform that would enable me to record the memories I grew up with while they were fresh in my mind. And (as if by chance) I stumbled across a website called Rakonto and found exactly what I was searching for – a way to record as many stories as I can remember of my grandparents and put the stories into a collection with the few photos I had of them.
I shared these stories with my parents at first to see if they could add anything to them or provide details of other interesting facts or stories I didn’t know of, and then eventually, I shared them with other family members to broaden the feeling and impact my grandparents had on our family.
It was a great success, and before I knew it, I had more stories, photos, and even files added to the collection. While also pinpointing locations on the mapping feature to understand where they had traveled to on their many adventures.
The Idea grew
I was amazed and absolutely over the moon with what I could achieve at Rakonto! It seemed as though I would never find a platform that would provide me with the solution I was looking for, and the success of my grandparent’s collection got me thinking of what other collections I can create.
The School Years
Not as exciting as my grandparent’s fascinating stories, but like the Clint Eastwood film “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”, my school days also reminded me of that, and I knew that my kids or even their kids one day would be fascinated with what I did during my younger years.
I narrated story after story of each note-worthy memory I could conjure up and dressed up each one to make it sound more interesting. Along with the many photos I had saved on my computer since camera phones took the world by storm.
To me, those good, bad, or darn right shocking memories of my school years didn’t seem as interesting nor share-worthy, but as I shared them among a few select friends (A feature very much welcome from social media platforms, and no more being trolled by fake friends on Facebook that want to have their say on my posts), they remembered those memories that made us laugh and reminisce at the times during school.
It gave me great enthusiasm that just like my grandparent’s stories were exciting to me, the stories I tell will be exciting to my kids and grandkids.
The Family Gatherings
From weddings to infamous birthday parties and yearly gatherings with cousins, aunties, uncles, etc. The number of stories I was able to remember, whether short or long, I could attach documents and photos to was another reason to keep creating collections.
By the time I was married, I had narrated over 50 stories and created 4 different collections while adding to each one every now and again when a new story related to the collections.
The family grew, and so did the number of times we got together, which resulted in more stories to tell.
Why record and share your stories with Rakonto
Just do it!!!! You may think it’s pointless or even where to start in the first place, but once you start telling stories and putting photos, files, and adding locations to them, they become more compelling. And the people you share them with give you more ideas and also want to collaborate with you.
One of my favorite features is the automated transcription that creates subtitles on the stories so people can follow along easily. The automatic timeline Rakonto creates for you is awesome too, as I keep creating stories, the timeline grows too.
I can now have all of my stories safely stored on a platform with manageable collections that I can share with whoever I want while knowing that our family history will be heard for generations to come. I can’t thank Rakonto enough for giving me the opportunity to create my own collection album with the many stories I am to tell.