Summer holidays are a fantastic time to reconnect with your family, so instead of having the same conversations you do every time you get together this summer, why not delve into your family's history?

There's much more to generational storytelling than listening to the same stories over and over. While those stories will certainly give you insight into your parents and grandparents' lives, they also offer other clues. Clues about your family's physical and mental health, relationship dynamics, religious and spiritual practices, and traditions and values.

Proxemics is similar to body language in that a subject’s positioning will either subconsciously or intentionally offer clues to help you make sense of your family’s photo albums. Therefore in addition to reading a subject’s body language, recognizing the spatial distances between family members in old photos will give you a better understanding of their relationship dynamics.

Photographs hold a lot of clues to our past. By decoding body language, you'll have a better understanding of what was happening at the time the photos were taken. When decoding body language in photographs, almost everything can be split into two categories. Read to learn more…

While I absolutely love books—from the smell of the ink to the feel of the paper between my fingers as I flip through the pages—a book isn't the only way to share your family's stories. 

Here are a few unique ways to preserve your family's history and memories, some of which you're probably already doing. 

If you've always wanted to put together a family history book but weren't sure how to get started, then this is the DIY guide for you. However, it’s important to note that making a family history book is an incredible undertaking, and your book project could take many months, or even a year, to complete.

If this task has been collecting dust on your to-do list, then I challenge you to get started on it today. If you choose to accept it, your mission is to dig out all of those old albums and boxes of photos and finally organize your family’s photos.

Have you ever wondered whether you truly know your own family’s secrets? Or maybe, you have secrets that you keep from your children and the rest of your family?

With so many resources publicly available these days, including DNA testing, ancestry websites, and access to government record collections, we’re able to learn more about ourselves and our family’s history than ever before.

Before I dive in, let’s consider this... why is it that we (and by we, I mean the collective we) rarely take the time to sit down and talk to one another? For me, it's that I get bogged down by things I'm working on or feel I have to do, instead of just taking the time to connect with the people in my life. Does this ring true for you as well? Here are three ways to feel more connected to your grandparents, even if they're no longer with you.