For the past three years, along with co-authors Dr. Barb Braband and Dr. Kaye Wilson Anderson, I have interviewed dozens of children who have a personal Memory Book in South Africa, India, and Kenya, in an effort to uncover the value of telling their stories. The initial research “Evaluating the use of a memory book by children orphaned in South Africa” has been published in The Journal of Pediatric Nursing, July/August 2014 issue. More recently, research looking at all three countries of South Africa, Kenya, and India where children are using a memory book reveals this simple tool produces similar themes of focus for children living in Africa or Southeast Asia: identity, relationships, emotion, coping, and hope.
Whether words, drawings, stored mementos, or photographs, children are preserving memories of lived experiences while growing up with traumatic loss. Most children were eager to reveal the contents of their personal memory book, often pondering over photos and returning to pages to read and reread what they had written.
When asked, “What is your favorite thing in your Memory Book?” many children pointed to the letter to God they had written. Some children pointed to the letter they had written to a parent who “was no more.” One young girl removed a letter from where it had been kept and began to read the letter addressed to herself. “I remember the day I was told my mother had died. I remember the dress I wore, the smell of cooking, and the sadness on my grandmother’s face. My brother and I were the only ones left when all our family members died. I am thankful for my life.”
When finished she neatly refolded the letter and placed it inside her Memory Book; a valuable keepsake representing the themes children are preserving inside this “priceless treasure” - identity, relationships, coping, emotion, and hope - after so much as been lost.
