Does it look intimidating? It’s not. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long while (see my example at the bottom of the Media page).
We’ll start with the first ten years of your life.
What? I can’t remember that far back! I’ll prove to you that you can.
There are two ways to use these sheets. One is year-by-year, and another is by filling out the key events first and filling in the rest later. You choose what you’d like to do.
First of all, when were you born?
See? That’s the first thing to put down on the left-hand side. Put your date of birth and jot down a few things about that event underneath.
- Where were you born? City, hospital, country.
- Where was the family living at that time? Do you have an address, a picture of the house?
- Can you find your birth certificate? Ask your parents if they have it. If not, order one and look carefully at all the information on it. Mine states my full name, names of my parents, date and time I was born, where I was born.
Let’s move on to the next year.
Put the number 1 in front of “AGE” and then put the year behind it – refer to my timeline example below if you need to.
What do you remember about the first year of your life? Probably nothing. But what happened during that year?
Did your family move? Was another sibling born? Did a family member die? Did a world event happen? If you can’t remember, Google the year and see what was going on then. If there was a world event, did it have any impact on your immediate family and therefore you?
Keep filling out the first Timeline page up until the age of 10. Then start another one for the next ten years and so on.
My real memories started around age five when I went to kindergarten. That’s when you start to mix with a whole new group of people and expand your world.
Documenting events.
Draw a line to connect from the year to the events you’ve remembered.
Sometimes I’ve remembered something but don’t know which year it fits into. I’ll put a star * beside it to know that I need to do some searching for the actual year of the event.
For example, I knew the first man to step on the moon happened in the summer when I was a certain age. I remember my mother waking me up because it was late in the evening, and I know it was summer because I was wearing really lightweight pjs. But I wanted to find out exactly when this happened.
Again, Google is your friend!
Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon on July 16, 1969 and I saw it live on our old black and white television with the rest of my family huddled around. Mom woke me up to watch it and it was late at night, which was more exciting to me at that age than the actual moon walk!
YOUR TURN
Print out a copy of the Timeline from the bottom of the Media page and start in on the first years. OR … print out as many as you need to fill your life now (if you’re 56, you’ll need six), then put in the big-ticket events and work from there.
You may be surprised by how much you remember.