What's Your Story? Mining for Memories

• Week 1: Pivotal events
  Most people have a core need that may motivate them throughout their life, such as fear of failure, security, belonging, power, etc. Is there a theme that is often repeated throughout your life? Are your life events associated with geographical moves? Relationships? Losses? We’ll examine our basic motivators or desires over the course of our lives, and whether they have changed.
• Week 2: Stories of home
  We may have travelled across provinces, countries and continents, but our hearts carry the memories of our first homes. What senses come to life when you think about your first home? What are the smells, tastes, colours, sounds and people you have encountered along the way? What connection does your first home provide to your heritage and identity? We’ll consider how our first home gives meaning to our life stories, along with cherished memories.
• Week 3: Trust and independence
  Children learn to trust that a parent or a parental surrogate will be there to fulfill their needs for survival. How would you describe yourself during your early, formative years? How was affection shown to you as a child? Was independence fearful or exciting for you? We’ll recall our first independent stands and the rules for what we could do on our own.
• Week 4: Teen to twenty
  At some point, we all strive to break free from our dependence upon parents or others as we grow towards maturity. How did your childhood prepare you to fit into the world? Did your greatest influence come from parents? Friends? Environment? Necessity? How did you define what you were good at doing? We’ll consider what we discovered about ourselves and who we were becoming.
• Week 5: Intimacy and love
  Our first approaches to love and intimacy are learned early from our parents or parental surrogates. What are your earliest memories of expressions of love and attachment for you? Has this changed over the years and how is love expressed in your life today? We’ll reflect on whether love and passion differ in our lives, and whether love differs from intimacy.
• Week 6: Legacy letters and ethical will
  The way we live our life expresses who we are and our values. Seemingly random events over a lifetime can have a cumulative effect on who we are and the meaning we give to our life. What underlying principle in your life has carried through in all you do? What will others say about you and your life when you are gone? We’ll consider the legacies we want to leave behind and the legacies left behind for us.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Gain new insights on your life journey
• Build six new legacy stories through remembering, reflecting, writing and sharing
• Enhance self-understanding of your narrative and be inspired to keep writing

• Participation in Zoom lectures
  
• Creative writing exercises using guided autobiography prompts
• Weekly writing assignments of 800-1,000 words
• Small-group work and sharing personal narratives
• Giving and receiving feedback on personal writing
• Instructor feedback on writing techniques and style
• Reflective essay (applicable only to certificate students)

No textbook is required. We will provide all course materials online.